The Real Cause Of Your Suffering GF Live 3-22-25

What we're going to look at together today in one respect is incredibly simple,

In fact is most of the things that we need to understand are right before our eyes all the time,

But our eyes are either distracted and looking in the wrong direction or they're just closed.

They don't want to see certain things.

So I would preface the material we're going to cover with telling you,

You mustn't believe in anything that I say ever.

You must,

As I always admonish you to do,

Test it,

Prove it,

See if it is validated by your experience,

Because if you can do all of that and see whether or not the insights,

The discoveries that we make together are in fact true for you as they are for the person speaking them,

Then we have something that we can build on.

Katie,

Let's bring up the title of our talk for today so we can have it on record.

The title is,

The Last Peace,

The Last Place on Earth You'd Ever Look to See the Real Cause of Your Suffering.

The Last Place on Earth You'd Ever Look to See the Real Cause of Your Suffering.

Please don't take this lightly.

Please don't take the time that we have together as some form of entertainment or something for you to while away 45 minutes or an hour and have the occasional,

Oh,

That's good.

I'm hoping that as a man or a woman,

An aspirant,

God willing,

That you've reached the point in your interior work where you understand it's not enough to phone it in.

It's not enough to have a momentary sense of well-being because a certain thought corresponds with a condition and suddenly there's a contentment that rifles through you and you think that that means everything is okay.

If anyone on this planet should know that everything's not okay,

It should be you.

Because you and I,

As we are,

Are the body of the evidence of a constant state of contradictions of things that we profess to be true and find pleasure in.

And then when things challenge our profession,

What we believe is true,

Then we simply find ways to excuse it.

Where's the last place that a person would look to find their suffering?

Take a nice deep breath.

There is a voice,

Maybe I should start by asking this,

How many of you have a voice in your head?

Something talking to you almost all the time.

This is important.

One of the main things that has to happen to start with is you have to start realizing something's always talking to me whether I want it to talk or not.

And even when I talk to whatever it is that's talking to me,

It's often in disagreement or in conflict with my wishes.

So there's an interior conflict that's going on all the time.

And all of my thinking,

All of these thoughts are a way in which I'm trying to resolve or reconcile what is only exacerbated the more I try to reconcile it.

So there's a voice in your head,

In my head.

Sometimes it's spoken and sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's a voice without words,

But that rifles through our intellectual emotional parts in the form of some kind of negative sensation.

And it's recurring.

It's all the time going on.

And we keep dealing with it the same way,

Thinking that one day we will deal with the blow that's going to liberate us from it,

When instead what we have to do is realize,

And we'll just bring this down,

How many of you have ever,

I don't know what,

Lost your keys,

Left your wallet on top of your car when you drove out of Walmart or whatever?

Had a moment where you went to the mailbox,

As one of the students said last night,

Or whatever it was,

And there was a letter from the IRS.

In those moments where someone sends you an email and it's evident they betrayed you or they're about to do something that's counter to what you expected,

How many of you know in that moment,

To some extent,

The voice that sets the dark dialogue in place?

I'm going to say it to you because we're going to look at it.

And Joseph,

Whoever's asking,

Is there a way to ignore this chatter?

No,

Trying to ignore this chatter is part of the chatter,

But I don't want to get distracted.

I'm talking about what is this voice in these unwanted moments?

And here it is,

As simply as it can be put.

I don't believe it.

I get on the freeway.

I don't believe it.

I look at my financial statement.

I don't believe it.

I get news about my health.

I don't believe it.

You say something that contradicts me.

I don't believe that you said that.

I don't believe that you said that.

I don't believe that you said that.

I don't believe that you said that.

I don't believe that you said that.

Why do you think self-knowledge,

True self-knowledge,

Is so important?

Higher self-knowledge.

And not just higher self-knowledge by itself.

It must be a form of knowledge that we take into the laboratory of our life and test to see whether or not this is true.

How does it hold up?

Why do we need higher self-knowledge?

And the answer is relatively simple,

Because the only thing we suffer from,

End of story,

Is ignorance.

I'm telling you that the only thing that we psychologically suffer from is the ignorance of what it is that's taking place around us,

Being unable to use the moment,

Instead being told by something in us that looks at that moment and goes,

I don't believe it.

I don't want it.

Get away from me.

Get rid of it.

So that we falsely believe that what we see going on around us is the cause of our experience in that moment.

Think along with me.

I see what you've said,

What they've done.

I look at the news.

I look at the report,

And I see in that moment what I believe is causing me this pain that I'm in,

This suffering.

Example,

We see someone that seems to be giving us a hard look.

The waiter is ignoring us in the restaurant.

Our supervisor at work makes a note of some kind after we've made what we thought was a brilliant suggestion,

So that in the moment of our own negative reaction,

Whatever it may be,

Anger,

Resentment,

Guilt,

Whatever,

In that moment,

We find ourselves,

Given what we see the experience as being,

Embroiled in trying to think through what we may have done wrong or what we have to do to make things right.

And it's all connected to this first knee-jerk resistance to what we say is this experience we're having.

And if it's not how to make it wrong or right,

Then how do we get the person that we blame for this pain to see that there's something wrong with them?

And all of this is just built into a kind of unconscious movement.

Now,

Can you see this scenario as I'm describing it,

That it unfolds this way?

Yes or no,

Please.

And it's endless.

There's always a struggle.

And the struggle is always with what we don't believe is happening.

So no matter what,

No matter how many times we've struggled to correct the experience that we blame for our resistance,

Nevertheless,

The next moment,

In one way or another,

We find ourselves that we're still in some kind of conflicted relationship with the world of events,

With the world of relationships that's going on around us.

And it never stops.

Why?

Why?

I mean,

I don't know about you.

I can't answer for you.

But at a certain point,

I imagine someone has to think to themselves,

You know,

I've been fighting all of my life with people,

Places,

Events,

Conditions,

Fighting with my own perceptions.

Why?

If I've never come to an end of this fight,

Maybe I need to examine not what I'm fighting with,

But rather with the part of myself that is in an incessant series of battles,

Trying to change a moment that the second before,

It just couldn't believe in it.

So the truth,

If it's known,

Which we will,

If we're ever going to be free,

Everything about our life is upside down.

It's all reversed.

It's reversed.

Now,

This is a little tricky to come and explain to you the nature of this reversal of how this mind is properly turned in the wrong direction,

Which is why Christ used the word repent.

He said that meant to turn in a new direction,

To turn to a new understanding,

Not the old understanding that drives this constant set of disturbances and the futile attempt to escape them,

But a new understanding.

And here's the new understanding.

Our experience of any given moment is not caused by what we see.

Rather,

What we experience in that moment is created by how we are given to see it.

What we experience in any given moment is not caused by what we see.

If it was caused by what we see,

And then we go out and we change what we see,

Then we wouldn't have any more conflict.

But there's always conflict.

And the conflict is because of the nature that sees the moment the way it does.

And when it does,

It is seized by the content of its own past experiences.

So that if you want to write this down,

The pain is in the explanation of that moment and not in its revelation.

The suffering is in the explanation of that moment,

Not in the revelation of it.

And if you've thought it through at all,

And I pray that you have,

We've talked about this innumerable times.

We're looking at a river,

Life as a stream of divine energy,

Planetary forces,

All interconnected,

Reconciling each other.

So that there's no moment in creation,

As we've discussed just recently,

That isn't part of the continuation of the perfection of those forces and what they manifest.

And that never stops.

There's no moment in which this isn't unfolding.

And if it's true,

There's no moment in which the divine creation in which you and I,

As made in the image of it,

Isn't participating in it,

Then how can the pain be in the revelation of creation,

Of any creation?

The pain is not in the moment revealed.

It is in the nature that explains that moment according to its conditioning.

Are you able to grasp some of that before I go on?

I hope you can.

So it's an unconscious nature in us that's responsible for how we experience each moment.

It tells us what we see,

Why we see it,

What we have to do about what we see in order to be free of that experience that this nature blames on the revelation of the moment.

But what we are capable of seeing,

And I'm going to work very hard to help you see it,

That in that moment,

If we want to be a free human being,

Meaning finally,

Um,

Uh,

Properly liberate ourselves from this constant state of disbelief of resisting him,

Her,

This,

That every moment,

Every piece of weather physically,

Or whether or not they do that,

All of that sits there.

So it's our experience of the moment,

The way we experienced that does what?

The justifies what we have to do in order to change the condition that nature says is causing our pain.

When,

If you've understood,

There's no such unwanted moment,

Let alone our resistance to it,

Get ready.

Now this is really important.

There would be no such unwanted moment unless prior to that moment,

We meaning this unconscious nature came into that with a preexisting sense of self,

Some identity that came into that moment with us,

Believing that a moment it didn't even know was about to take place.

Shouldn't be the way it was.

It never,

It never dawns on us.

How can I be that quick to be impatient with you?

How can I be so seized as I am to just break into what you're saying with what I want to say,

Because something about what you're saying isn't interesting,

Or I'm more interesting than what you're saying.

What is this nature that instead of like Christ going before us,

Meaning this light of awareness to liberate us from all of these false actions born of mistaken beliefs.

What is this darkness that we walk with into and through that we can't keep running into these moments that because we believe life shouldn't be that way.

You shouldn't be that way.

I shouldn't be the way I am.

Creates this summary conflict,

This instantaneous decision that this isn't right.

And once it's set in my mind that that's not right,

The thing that set that thing in motion,

Then sets me on a path to straighten everything out.

How are these beliefs fashioned in us?

If the pain is in the explanation of the moment and the explanation is produced by something that says,

I don't believe it,

Or I don't believe it should be this way.

I believe it should be that way.

How are these beliefs fashioned in us?

Because it is this body of belief that,

By the way,

We are so totally identified with that it never even comes to us to question.

Here I am.

I believe,

And you fill in the blank,

I believe that you should be like this.

And when you're not like this,

It is my belief there's something wrong with you.

And I wouldn't have the belief without the view that I'm better than you or that I know what love is and all of these things.

And from this identity fashioned from these conditions,

Social,

Economic,

Religious beliefs,

From that identity,

Everything is judged.

So that we're forever identifying with something one way or the other,

That we've been conditioned to believe we must be,

You must do,

They must have.

Because if it isn't the way I believe it's supposed to be,

Then I'm threatened by the way that it is.

If it isn't the way I believe,

If you're not the way I believe you should be,

If you're not doing what I believe you should be doing,

I am threatened by your actions because it is not in my belief system.

I can only disbelieve,

Meaning resist your manifestation,

And then in misery and make you miserable,

Try to change everything.

I hope you can see it.

What am I threatened by?

What is my anger towards?

I'm threatened by what I believe is indispensable for my security.

So that unseen in this level of mind is this contradiction.

Every such belief that we have is a dependency on the thing believed in.

We are dependent upon what we believe in.

We don't know we're dependent upon what we believe in because we don't know that we walk around with a literal warehouse of conditioned beliefs that the condition pulls out of that warehouse,

This sudden reaction.

And in that instance,

We're convinced that the problem is with the situation,

Not with the self that came in believing that you,

They,

This should be other than it is.

So the belief that we have actually creates the opposite effect that we look to it to begin with.

The belief creates the opposite effect.

Here's the point.

I believe you should always be like this.

I believe the world should always be like that.

When I have this belief,

I'm comforted by it.

I'm consoled by it because it's part of the process of what I call myself.

So I have security.

I find security in my beliefs.

I'm secure in the belief that if I can just be made into enough,

If I can make myself into enough,

As I imagined myself,

I have security in that belief because when I have that belief and the desire to become someone special,

Then in that belief is the security,

The sense of myself as becoming what I've imagined.

But it is the very imagined sense of myself as being important that when it's challenged by the world,

Which it always will do creates the pain,

Then I blame the pain on the circumstance.

Instead of seeing,

I came into that moment with a false belief that I must struggle with to prove true again and again and again,

And it never ends.

Are you following me,

Everybody?

I hope.

I'm going to go through a list with you so that you can see this.

I could talk to the cows come home.

I've been talking and the cows have come home a thousand times.

Talking changes nothing.

Seeing changes everything.

I'm going to ask Kate to post.

I've made five separate statements,

Insights that we're going to go through together to look at what we have just described to one another in this material.

Let's bring up the first of the five,

Kate.

Please don't post while I'm explaining this.

Number one,

We believe that our self-worth is inextricably tied to how others see us.

We believe that who and what we are,

The value of our life is altogether inseparable from the way people around us,

Friends,

Family,

Our society sees us.

This is inculcated in us.

We are conditioned to believe this.

We are born into a consciousness that conditions itself over time so that we grow up looking at our parents,

Worrying about someone who's judging them,

Struggling to make sure that they succeed in this realm so that they will realize all the power and authority granted when they are seen the way they imagined they're meant to be seen.

But we can see this and understand that the belief that I'm only as valuable as you see me being makes me a slave to you.

If I believe that my worth as a human being depends upon my children,

My family,

The people I work with,

Some culture that I haven't even come into contact with,

That I must somehow present myself as being very worthwhile,

Look at the nightmare in that.

Look at how much you spend on clothing and all the accoutrements to make an impression on other people.

Why?

Because we believe that if we can make the right impression,

Somehow we'll gain powers and some kind of authority when really what we're struggling with in those moments is the fact that our whole sense of self doesn't exist apart from a mind that has divided us up into the world we see and experience and the experience of that world.

And if I want the experience of feeling secure and confident in my relationships,

I'm going to have to control the conditions and all of the horror that comes with it.

Can you not see what a nightmare belief that is?

That who I am depends upon being loved by others the way I want to be loved by them.

Can you not see what a nightmare that is?

And all of the compromise it causes you to go through,

The way in which you enable people in order to get them to see you the way you want to be seen.

So we believe in something that's destructive,

But when they're amidst of that reaction,

We don't think this is a destructive feeling,

Me not believing that you're doing this and now I'm going to have to come find a way around it and compromise myself to get you back into my camp.

That doesn't dawn on us.

All we're interested in is getting rid of the unwanted experience born of this moment in which suddenly everything that we believe in is threatened and now we have to change everyone to get them to line up with our beliefs again.

Do you see it with me?

It's stunning because it means I live with a nature that believes,

Let's go to the second one,

Katie.

We believe that we are responsible for the happiness or unhappiness of others.

We actually believe that we're responsible for how others feel.

And the reason that we believe we're responsible for how others feel is because when others don't feel the way we believe they should toward us,

Then we suffer their negative states.

And then we believe it's our responsibility to change their negative state so that they're not bothering us anymore.

I believe that somehow or other I'm responsible for your negative state.

I am not responsible for your negative state.

Even by the way,

If I have done something untoward toward you,

Even if I've made a mistake,

I'm not responsible for your state.

Your state is because of what you identify with based on your beliefs.

You can see the circle here,

I'm hoping.

Can you see what you do in order to smooth out the,

You call this,

I have some students,

They say,

Yes,

I have to make sure that the boat isn't rocking,

That nothing's upset at home with family and friends,

Constantly trying to make sure everything is in the right place.

Where do you think this whole insanity idea of don't trigger me comes from?

Let's go on to the next one.

Number three,

Please,

Kate.

We believe that whatever anger,

Resentment,

Or bitterness someone brings up and out of us is their fault.

This is one of my favorites.

We believe that whatever anger I'm suddenly seized by,

Resentment that I'm reliving,

Or bitterness towards someone who did this,

We believe that those negative states is their fault.

How is me being inflamed with hateful thoughts and feelings and my identification with them that causes me to try to change you because I see you as being at fault?

How is my inner nature your fault?

How is the character and quality of what I am,

What I do,

Of what I express?

How is the quality of my nature your fault?

It's not your fault.

In the higher world,

A person begins to understand instead of misunderstand.

If I didn't have the belief that you should be the way I imagined myself to be,

I would never problem with you at all.

But I imagine I believe myself to be a person of deep moral character,

Strong qualities,

Infallible decision-making.

And it never dawns on me that when life proves just the opposite of that,

That all of the thinking that I do have to go into,

All of the explanation about why I did this and why they're like that,

And this cruel set of thoughts,

Crunching numbers psychologically to come up with a right quotient,

That all of that belongs to a nature simply trying to reconcile what it believes is true with what has shown it's not,

Or trying to make what is true more aligned with what it believes about itself.

All useless.

Useless.

What if you really just understood that one thing?

I believe that my impatience with you is your fault.

Could I ever identify with that impatience again?

It doesn't mean I won't feel it.

It doesn't mean there won't be a voice saying,

I can't believe this person is actually this way.

I mean,

Why can't they be like I am?

Perfect in every way.

Can I judge you for being imperfect without my belief that I know what perfection is?

And can I see that the fact that I'm judging you and that I'm in pain,

That pain is making the judgment?

Is there any perfect?

Is that kind of pain perfect?

I'll tell you who it's perfect for.

It's perfect for the nature that comes into that moment,

Filled with the false beliefs that it has,

So that it can continue to create the sense of self that it derives from those moments.

Everybody still following?

Why do we do this before I get to the next of the fifth of these insights?

In a manner of speaking,

I've been talking for thousands of years.

You've been,

If you're a true aspirant,

Been considering and working and wanting to know,

Why did I just become that cruel person?

Why is it that my pain goes to a certain point,

And when it gets past a point,

Whatever that threshold may be,

Then all hell breaks loose,

And I forget altogether what it is that I'm at,

What I want to understand,

And instead become the understanding of an unconscious nature that is in an unending conflict with anything that challenges what it is identified with and believes in as true about itself.

If I didn't think that the moment shouldn't be going the way that it's going,

If I didn't believe the moment should be other than it is,

Which,

By the way,

Is an act of insanity,

But I don't see it as an act of insanity when I'm rushing to get through the moment,

Because what am I rushing through?

I'm rushing to get past the pain that I believe is because of what the moment's producing.

The moment's not producing the pain.

The pain is inherent in some strange unseen belief that went before me to make everything crooked,

That I shouldn't have to suffer these kind of moments,

And all I have to do is just change everything about them,

And then I can get back to where and what I am,

Where I'm this wonderful,

Sweet person again,

Except there's no such self as this wonderful,

Sweet person,

Is there?

Kate,

Let's bring up the fifth of these insights,

Please.

We believe it's better to enable some weakness or dependency in others than to run the risk of displeasing them that they might stop caring for us.

We believe it's better to enable some weakness or dependency in others than to run the risk of displeasing them that they might stop caring for us.

Please see this in its entirety.

How,

If I was present at all,

Can I believe that out of my fear of you not loving me,

I should act loving towards you by causing in you a dependency upon me,

Failing to see that where I create any form of dependency in another human being,

I create not just fear in that human being that I will stop giving them what they have become dependent on,

But the fear in myself that has produced that dependency because I required in order to validate who and what I believe myself to be.

Please,

God,

That this sinks in,

That the next time you start to talk sweet nothings to someone because they're negative,

Or the next time you start to extend something to someone that they in no way deserve,

But that you want to give them,

Whether it's your intelligence,

Your emotional content,

Some support,

Makes no difference.

You give it to them,

Not because you love them.

You give it to them because you want them to love you the way you imagine yourself to be and believe that they must treat you.

And the proof of that belief is that when anyone stops treating you the way you expect them to,

Because you believe they should when you gave them all that you gave them,

The minute that they act contrary to that belief,

What happens inside of you?

And you and I both know what happens inside.

Then this so-called kindness turns to resentment,

To regret,

To self-incrimination,

Or judging them for an absence of character,

When it was the absence of character in that consciousness that created that relationship to begin with.

Let it sink in.

Let it sink in.

What I'm describing isn't a license to be cruel.

What I'm describing is a way in which we can begin to bring an end to an unseen cruelty set upon others and that we set upon ourselves by living from these moments in which suddenly there's some form of suffering and in the onset of that suffering,

This unconscious knee-jerk reaction that is the product of disbelief.

A long time ago,

I don't know,

You know,

I'm so old now,

Most of you don't even know who Stevie Wonder was or is.

He's still alive.

I think he's still alive.

Stevie Wonder wrote this beautiful,

Beautiful song.

He said,

When you believe in things that you don't understand,

You suffer.

When you believe in things that you don't understand,

You suffer.

Then he goes on to say,

Superstition.

We believe in things that we don't understand,

And because we believe in things we don't understand,

We suffer.

We believe as we've been conditioned to believe that we're only as valuable as other people see us as being.

We believe because we were conditioned to believe it that we're responsible for the way others feel.

We believe that it's possible to change some moment.

And I don't know if I got to this one.

Kate,

Did I ever bring up number three?

I don't know if I did.

Please.

Yes,

I skipped this one.

I didn't want to skip this.

We believe it's possible to change or escape some unwanted moment in our past by reliving it over and over.

Think with me.

I believe that what happened 10 minutes ago with you or 20 years ago with him or 50 years ago with those people,

I believe that if I just relive it,

Think it through one more time.

If I just go back into that past with that pain in it,

That somehow or other,

By reliving it,

I'm going to finally get everything reconciled and I'll be free.

But the nature that drags you back into that belief fails to tell you that you've had that belief and followed it a hundred million times.

And you're not only not free of that past,

But you're more and more conditioned by your wish to escape it so that you spend more time and more bitterness and more upset as you revisit the very thing that's victimizing you.

And listen to me,

You are not revisiting the past.

You are revisiting the consciousness that has created and sustains that past.

But that consciousness in its blindness and in its belief that it can escape the content of itself says,

Just believe with me that if we go through this one more time,

You'll finally be free.

And we should know beyond a shadow of a doubt what a lie that is.

So when we believe in things that we don't understand,

We suffer.

We believe that this negative experience is your fault.

No,

If anything,

The right way to understand any moment is that whatever it is that we're going through in any given moment,

Whatever that anger,

That resentment,

That bitterness,

We should be saying to that person,

To that moment,

Thank you.

I didn't know that about myself.

I didn't know that I believe that unless you are the way I want you to be,

There's something wrong with you.

I didn't know that.

Now I know it.

And now I can begin to do the interior work of meeting these moments where,

Because simply I've been conditioned to believe that anything that challenges my belief is to be suspect.

Now I can suspect the nature that has that reaction,

Not judge that nature.

You can't judge someone without believing that they should be other than they are.

And certainly not judge yourself because you would never judge yourself unless you believe yourself to be other than you are acting out that moment.

So we have to come to this immense,

Extraordinary conclusion,

As it were,

It's not really a conclusion,

It's the grounds of investigation.

It's not what happened.

Because we can't change what just happened.

The pain is because we're identified with the summary resistance that is born out of a nature that can't believe anything would be any other way than what it requires in order to keep its sense of self in place.

The pain in the moment is born of the disbelief.

And it's that disbelief,

It's that resistance,

That refusal to allow the moment to reveal what it has come to reveal,

That conceals from us the way in which this pain that belongs to this unconscious nature clings and clings and clings to what it believes must be,

And then tells us to engage in a struggle to free ourselves from the conditions it has blamed and explained as source of our pain.

Metanoia.

Repent.

Turn around.

Don't struggle with something you can't believe is true.

Struggle to see the nature that's sitting there telling you it knows,

It believes how it should be,

And how it knows what things should be.

Because in the awakening,

In the revelation of that immense contradiction in this divided mind of ours,

Is the freedom.

Because then instead of trying to change things,

You're allowing this new understanding to change your relationship to the moment itself.

And it's the change in this relationship produced by these kind of revelations that I've described to you that ultimately releases us from this bondage,

And it is bondage,

To a nature that will never see itself,

Not interested in seeing itself,

But that makes itself evident to us all the time and then hides its actions behind these beliefs and disbeliefs in the moment.