I have a couple of key lessons and a couple of stories,
But to be clear,
And I don't know how many of you listen that attentively or consistently to the talks that I give,
But I spoke last Sunday about a specific kind of prayer,
And I predicated the material that I presented on that simple prayer because of something that had taken place earlier that week.
And just to bring everybody up to date,
And it's of no,
In one respect,
No consequence at this point in time.
It has done its work in one respect.
My older brother,
My beloved older brother passed away in his sleep,
And I was commenting on how there come times in our life,
And far too few,
Honestly,
Where it becomes entirely evident that all that we have taken ourselves to be,
Everything that we have ascribed to this world that we walk through,
And that we are constantly trying to take something from in order to create a kingdom of our own where we can feel safe and secure,
That all of that is a kind of grand illusion that belongs to a very distinct and yet completely unconscious sense of self that one has.
In a way,
It's like,
And I pray you don't go into some kind of imagination and start ascribing other teachings to what I'm talking about.
It's very much like what Plato spoke of in the Allegory of the Caves.
We look at shadows and take them to be the reality,
And we take the shadow of self,
Of who and what we are,
We take the shadow of it to be the truth of ourselves,
Failing to notice how many times when a brief moment of light dispels the shadow when we're standing there and who and what we've taken ourselves to be simply isn't there,
It's gone.
And then the mistakes that we make following those moments that are not to be wasted where we have revelations as to the truth of ourselves,
But because they are unwanted or don't fit what we expect,
They are cast away,
They are denied,
Deflected.
And so we don't make use of those moments.
Katie,
Let's bring up the first key lesson.
The light of love never makes a mistake,
But in fact never fails to remake the heart of whoever not only agrees to embrace the truth that reveals about him or her,
But who will then allow that revelation to lead him wherever it will.
The light of love never makes a mistake,
But in fact never fails to remake the heart of whoever not only agrees to embrace the truth that reveals about him or her,
But who will then allow that revelation to lead him wherever it will.
This is what we're going to look at together this morning,
And again tomorrow I'll go more deeply into this material if you care to join me.
It's free.
Never think to join.
So I want to start with this idea that there are these moments in our lives,
And they always are unexpected,
Where we are struck down,
It seems,
By an event over which we have zero power to change.
Not only the fact that it turned upside down whatever the kingdom it is that we were living in prior to that moment when that event came,
But that proves upon its appearance that we are unendingly subjected to events that when they come we just go,
No,
No,
No,
And we drift off into dreams.
Let's bring up the second key lesson so I can make this point,
Get into the first story and then the second.
Here's the second key lesson.
Freedom from what is unwanted by us begins by awakening to what is unknown within us.
Freedom from what is unwanted by us begins with awakening to what is unknown within us.
What is it that is unknown within us?
And really you could just stop the whole thread of thought and we could just start to understand.
What's unknown is what appears in any,
Oh my God,
Moment where suddenly I'm overtaken by the appearance of some strong conflict of fear or a worry,
And I'm standing there in the grip of a character in my own consciousness that I blame on those conditions outside of me.
And it is inescapable almost that the reason the moment is unwanted is because it has brought about a revelation that challenges who and what I think I am prior to that moment.
You don't have an unwanted moment that isn't born out of a split second where something takes place,
Some piece of news,
You look in the mirror,
There's a health issue,
Someone you love falls stricken or dies,
The world turns left instead of right or right instead of left,
You name whatever it is.
And in that moment,
A person realizes,
You know what,
I'm only as real as the ideas and beliefs that I have about this world and myself relative to it are unchallenged.
Because the moment anything in this world challenges the images,
The ideas,
The identity of myself,
In that moment,
Everything falls apart.
Only I don't know so much that it falls apart because in that split second,
This humpty-dumpty character begins the laborious project of reassembling everything so that once again,
I can look into the world and see the image of myself as the one maintaining whatever it is I believe it's supposed to be like,
Or you're supposed to be like,
Or I'm supposed to have,
Or what I'm not supposed to go through.
God,
I don't know how I can express this any more strongly.
You and I are convinced when we are suffering,
It's because life has brought something to us that we are not supposed to have to go through.
What an idiot idea has been sown into this consciousness by an unconscious nature that would have you,
Would have me believe that anytime life seems to be rough and tough and throwing us around,
That it's the proof that life doesn't care and that we know exactly how the world is supposed to be when the truth is quite the opposite.
The truth is that we live in a world,
And I only can offer you to see this,
Where we are to use words stalked by the mouth of time,
Always looking over our shoulder,
Looking to see if whatever it is that we fear may be catching up to us or has caught up to us is about to consume us.
And by consume us,
I mean,
Take me into its maw and prove that everything that I thought was real and true that I've acquired,
And that makes me the unique,
Special human being that I believe myself to be,
That every last part of that disappears in those moments.
And then instead of using those moments as the act of grace that they are,
Because in those moments we are shown that we have laid our kingdom up where moth and rust and thieves steal into it,
Where time by its very nature will consume everything that we have characterized as our identity,
That in those moments we simply refuse to understand,
We can't see that all of that is intended to serve a very specific purpose.
And the specific purpose that all of that,
What we would call unwanted life,
Reveals is that it's not so much,
How do I say,
It's not so much that we have to go about our life the way we think we do in those moments and try to change our heart again by coming up with another image,
Another idea,
Another sense of self to be,
But to grasp in that moment that that moment is the revelation that everything we have done to change ourselves has only changed the conditions that will reveal that we remain identified and attached to a world made in our own image.
And the task is that if the heart is ever going to be changed,
It can't change itself.
It can't change itself.
It can only give itself a new identity.
And if it can't change itself,
Then what is it that has to happen that can change it?
And the answer is it has to be emptied of itself so that its true nature is there.
Its true capacity to reflect everything that is poured into it and to see what is being shown to it about itself,
Not as something alien or contrary to its well-being or contentment,
But rather than in being emptied like a lake that becomes still,
Suddenly everything is reflected within it and that heart knows it was never without what it needed.
It was never not being given everything that it could reflect and realize about itself.
And in that same moment,
What a massive mistake it has made all of this time trying to become something,
To become someone,
To make something of oneself that the world would look out and recognize and respect.
And then you would derive a corresponding identity from the insanity of believing that some social value would prove your value as a human being.
How many times,
There's an old story,
I'll use this.
Here's a very wealthy merchant.
We have two stories about caravans.
Here's a very wealthy merchant and he's traveling with his goods,
Not a big caravan,
Maybe him,
Another person,
Three or four camels,
And a massive dust storm,
Sandstorm comes and his camels are scattered.
All of his goods,
They're lost except for one bag that he's able to cling to.
The other person that was in the caravan with him is gone and he's lost in the desert with just a bag of spices.
And he wanders and by the grace of God,
Dragging this bag with him,
He stumbles on an oasis.
And when he stumbles into the oasis,
He's praying that there'd be some food,
Maybe someone there,
But there's nothing there.
And as he's drinking at least the water that the oasis provides,
He looks over to the right and there under some trees,
He can see something's buried.
And he goes over and he can make out some bags of some kind and he's,
Oh please,
Please let someone have buried some food,
Some food.
And when he uncovers the bags and empties them,
He doesn't find food.
He finds gold and pearls and more spices and fine cloth.
And the man who worshiped these things his whole life and was crossing the desert in order to increase his wealth,
Has his wealth increased immeasurably by what he finds there.
And he starts to weep because the conditions have changed,
That the passage of time has proven that what he needs more than anything else,
He can't give himself.
And that the very thing that he thought was most value now is a form of torment to him because it does nothing for him.
Sorry.
So let me tell you the main story.
Everybody still out there?
Give me a high sign.
You know,
When you think about what it is that you're,
And I don't doubt it,
Especially if you've continued to join me over these years and study these things,
You kind of have to have,
It's kind of a chuckle in a way,
Not a very funny one at first.
When you realize how different it is that when a man or a woman says that they want a change of heart,
They want to know something about the life of God,
They want to know about the kingdom,
About a kingdom that cannot be corrupted.
And that the entrance to this kingdom has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that you can acquire,
Otherwise prove,
Or bring to yourself in this world.
Nothing at all.
Not one thing that you can take from this world that makes that,
That can help you make that journey.
In spite of,
In fact,
Instead of that,
You hear these ideas,
Both East and West.
You know,
You can't serve two masters,
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
You hear all these ideas about what sounds like ostensibly something I want nothing to do with.
Blessed are those that mourn.
I mean,
Really?
How does that fit?
Let's see together.
Here's the story.
There was once a distant,
A very distant kingdom,
And no one really knew whether or not this kingdom existed,
But there was some evidence from time to time.
And there was a story that went all throughout the realm within which this kingdom was supposed to be,
That the king,
The good king of this distant kingdom,
Had long ago said that anyone who would bring to him whatever it was that made,
That they can,
Their wealth,
That he would exchange on the spot,
Upon arrival in his kingdom,
He would exchange everything they had for 10,
000 times that amount.
Now you can imagine a lot of people think,
Well,
That sounds like a pretty good deal.
And a lot of people set out,
But so few people set out and actually continue the journey.
And you'll see why as we go through this.
So here's our hero.
And our hero thinks to himself,
Well,
10,
000 times,
I mean,
You know,
What would be the worst that could happen?
I'm in a long journey.
If I,
Even if I spent 20% of my entire wealth,
Just getting to this place,
It would be worth it because then 80,
I'd have,
And then he makes up all these plans and he decides very cleverly,
I'm only going to take half of my wealth because if this doesn't turn out right,
Then at least I've got the other half waiting back home for me where I can come back and at least still enjoy all of the fruits of all of my labors,
All of the respect that I've earned and all the people that serve me the way they do because of who and what I am.
No clever human being enters the kingdom of heaven,
I can tell you that.
So he sets out thinking to himself,
Half of what I'm taking,
If I get 10,
000 times that,
I have these gold bars.
I have these rare antiques of this fine China.
I've got works of art.
I have these gold keys that are encrusted with jewels,
Things I've acquired over time through great expense to myself,
Not to mention how expensive it's been to protect all of it,
But it'll be worth it.
I'll take that half of it and the king's never going to know the difference.
So he loads everything up that he's got,
Half of it anyway,
Into his caravan.
He hires a squad of human beings to protect the caravan because you have to do that.
He knows the world and off they go.
Now,
As you might imagine,
And you'll see,
And I pray that you stay with me,
Within the first 50 miles,
That caravan is hit by bandits,
Masked evil beings who come and not only take half of the load before they can be repelled,
But half of the crew he was traveling with.
Turns out when the marauders start arriving,
They throw off their garb and they're part of the marauding crew,
And they've actually set his caravan up to be robbed.
And off they go,
And he's left with what he's left with,
We'll say a dozen camels instead of two dozen,
Half of his goods.
And he says to himself,
You know what?
Things could be worse.
I still have a lot of wealth here and 10,
000 times a lot of what I've got is still pretty good.
So he continues his journey and it's another 50 miles before he comes to a small inlet,
A bay that has to be crossed in order to reach the distant shore of the country,
Supposedly attached to the mountain range where this distant kingdom is.
So he gets his crew and his camels onto these ships and the ship is traveling across the bay.
And you know what happens if you're following me,
Here comes this terrible storm out of nowhere.
Isn't it amazing how storms come out of nowhere?
And even more importantly,
Can you see it with me?
What?
There is no storm in my life that doesn't threaten something about who I think I am.
And there is nothing that threatens who I think I am,
That doesn't threaten who and what I think I have.
And who and what I think I have is inseparable from the identity that's derived from it.
So that every storm in the end is something that is threatening my identity as I've imagined it.
Because if my wealth were real,
If my riches were true,
Then there was nothing the world could throw at it because the kingdom is within,
The wealth is within,
Or it is always being swallowed by the time that created it.
That's what these storms are.
So the man goes on,
Half of his stuff is lost again,
And his entire crew is gone,
Terrified of the storm and beginning to think to themselves,
As the man is thinking,
The gods must be angry with us.
Maybe I made a mistake.
Maybe there is no such place as this kingdom.
Maybe I was a fool to even suspect it.
You will go through this.
It is impossible not to.
The question is,
How do I go through these moments?
So now he's got,
He lost half the first time,
Half the second time.
So now he's got like 25% of all that he thought he had,
And he thinks to himself,
Well,
I just,
Really,
I've come too far to go back now.
Maybe I can at least break even.
Maybe I can break even when I get there.
So three nights further in his journey,
And you can imagine the chests that he was traveling with,
The remaining three chests,
On the remaining three camels,
And by himself,
There's the first,
The bandits,
The running,
The camels jostling,
The storm,
The sand,
Everything.
He decides,
You know,
I should probably just check in to see how my stuff is doing.
And as he realizes what's going on,
He can see that his gold bars are shining some other kind of metal,
And it's not gold.
Whatever was the gold on it,
It chipped off.
And now he's thinking,
Please,
He's thinking,
OMG,
These aren't real.
What about all the other stuff back home?
What about all the bars that I've paid dearly for?
Are those real?
This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life.
And so he sorts through the bars and picks the one or two that look the best.
And he leaves the rest there because they're pointless and they're heavy.
And he goes on for another day,
And one of the camels trips,
And the chest that was holding the box of fine china crashes to the desert floor.
And he opens it up,
And there's only one plate and one cup out of all the fine china that's left.
He's thinking,
I've got this bar,
I've got one cup,
One piece of china.
Well,
At least I have these keys,
Because he had traded over time for these keys that had jewels encrusted on them.
And that night,
He begins to see at some distance what looks like the kingdom.
And he goes to sleep.
And when he wakes up,
There's somebody rustling through his stuff.
And when he rushes over,
He finds out that someone had taken the jewels out of the keys.
So all he has,
His entire possession,
All that's left on the journey,
Is a saucer,
A cup,
A bar,
And a key with no gems in it at all.
And he's hoping,
Thinking to himself,
God,
Maybe the king will take pity on me.
I'll tell him how much I have back home.
And then maybe we can make a deal like that.
And as he's sitting there and thinking about all this as he's walking on,
Because he doesn't even have a chest anymore,
What do you think happens to him when he trips?
And when he trips,
The plate cracks a little bit,
The cup gets a chip in the rim,
And the key that doesn't even have jewels on it anymore breaks at the top.
With God as my witness,
This is a true story.
And he realizes he has nothing.
Or more accurately,
He realizes all he ever had were these very precious ideas that he was able to confirm to himself and that others would confirm for him through the things that he had come to possess in a world where the possessions he took from that world were as empty and pointless as the treasures that he took from it.
Because when conditions change,
As they always do,
Given the story I told you about the man who wept when he found the bag of pearls and precious stones,
Because it wasn't what he needed.
The conditions had changed so completely that his needs had changed completely,
And now he was powerless to give himself what he needed.
So he sees the truth of his situation,
And he doesn't know what else to do.
He's come this far,
He has no possessions,
And worse than that,
His pride,
Everything that he thought about himself has been chipped away,
The jewels have come off.
And he thinks to himself,
Dear God,
The way I've treated others in my whole life,
The arrogance,
Based on what?
Breaking into the talk for a second.
We have no idea,
You'll excuse me,
You have no idea the things that this unconscious nature has not only collected from the unconsciousness of this world and its culture,
But that has polished and identified with them,
So that one walks around without knowing it with an entire caravan of the content of his character,
All predicated on the prizes and the possessions he's taken from the world.
And he has no idea that every time the world moves and the mouth of time comes,
That suddenly all of that gets chipped or broken or stolen or sinks beneath the waves.
And he doesn't realize that what's been lost wasn't real to begin with.
Because he feels the pain,
The denial of it.
He doesn't want anything to take away his precious sense of self.
This is why we can go someplace and something can happen,
The smallest thing can happen,
And it becomes the biggest thing in the world.
You've heard the expression,
Make a mountain out of a molehill.
I'm describing to you what makes mountains out of molehills,
And it is this maw of time that has found an image of itself in the things that it looks to itself to confirm.
And when that mouth closes down,
As it must,
What did my brother possess?
His good name?
What good is it to live one's life knowing but never admitting that there's always a fear approaching?
Because something that I have taken a sense of freedom from is suddenly going to be swept away in a sandstorm or a tempest at sea.
So this is where our man is.
He is you and he is I.
He is the prodigal son.
This is a story,
Isn't it,
In similarity to the prodigal son.
So he's sitting there and he thinks to himself,
I have nothing.
I have to throw myself at the mercy of the king.
And he's terrified of the idea,
Just as was the prodigal son,
Terrified of returning home because he took and squandered all that his father had given him.
But our hero has no choice.
So he goes to the king.
And I don't know if you can see this.
I'm laughing at certain points of time in my own life,
Back in the day when I was producing records and all the rest of that.
Sometimes you would make a record,
You'd produce a record,
And you're presenting it to the executives at the label.
And you knew,
Even as a demo,
It had a glaring error in it.
There was something that wasn't quite right,
But it was too expensive to go back and fix it.
You were just trying to.
.
.
And so when you'd get to the point where that part of the song was being played,
You and I had a partner,
We would agree,
I would sneeze and he would say,
God bless you,
Or I'd cough out loud right at that point,
Hoping to cover up the glaring,
The missing part of that business.
So anyway,
He goes to the king and he's holding his thumb on the chip in the cup so the king can't see that and holding his hand over the crack in the plate.
And only part of the key is sticking out of his pocket.
And he says to the king,
This is what I've brought to you,
Hoping that the king won't ask for it.
I mean,
Even a little something better than nothing.
And the king says,
Well,
Let me see it.
King is always going to say,
Let's see what you've got.
Let's see what you are.
Not as you imagine yourself,
Let's see what you are.
And with that,
The man just falls to his knees and he breaks down crying because he knows the unthinkable.
10,
000 times nothing is still nothing.
Hands the king the broken plate,
The chipped cup,
Not knowing what's going to happen.
And when the man looks up,
The king is smiling at him.
And the king hands our hero back the plate,
Hands him back the cup and the key.
And he says to him,
Good man,
This plate will always have food on it.
This cup will always have wine in it.
And this key will open any room in my kingdom as long as you stay and you may stay for as long as you wish.
And in that moment,
That man had a change of heart.
He understood something that could something that could not be understood in any other way.
What happens if I see,
And not because I want to,
That nothing I have called my own is in fact my own?
And I'll tell you what happens to the extent that I'm capable of telling you this.
Fear begins to disappear because the unseen correlation between the unconscious nature and the way in which,
Not just as an individual,
But as a collective mind,
The way in which this unconscious nature has conditioned itself over time,
Constantly adjusting and readjusting,
Adjusting and readjusting,
Making amends to alternating what it says is value according to the time that comes along,
So that what one values is always in accordance with what the culture says in that time is valuable.
If one finally begins to realize that they have another relationship with another kingdom in which they are not measured by.
I think,
Just think for a second.
They're not measured by what they're afraid they're measured by.
Are you not afraid that someone will measure you incorrectly?
Are you not worried or filled with some form of self-doubt,
Some inadequacy?
Do you not measure yourself according to how you should be in this world,
According to what this world says you should be?
And the answer is yes,
That's all we know.
And then the very thing that a person has avoided their whole life.
I'm going to be 75 in a couple weeks.
How in the name of God does it take so long to even suspect,
Let alone realize some of the depth and breadth of what has always been presented as inescapably true?
Christ himself said,
Of myself I can do nothing.
Why do you call me good?
The father do with it.
You think this is me making this stuff up?
Speaking as Christ,
I don't heal even in the temptations by the word,
By what is,
By what is established and forever re-established and born and reborn unendingly inside of a human being made in the image of the divine.
That's the wealth.
But we don't know the wealth because we're too busy putting things into storerooms,
Putting things into thought,
Images,
And ideals so that we can go back and measure who and what we are anytime the world seems to threaten what we've stashed in this surreptitious sense of self.
How curious the thing that we're the most afraid of going through in this world is the very doorway to a world without fear.
The thing we're the most afraid of going through,
Which by the way in the end is death,
But what are all of these moments where storms come along and there is the death of some form of my identity because of something that's been taken from me that I thought was me and mine.
And that's why,
And I've come to the end,
I'm sorry I won't have much time to share comments and things with you about this,
But that's what's so,
That's why I guess it's my labor,
It's your labor.
How are you ever going to make,
How are you ever going to explain to someone,
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
And who are the poor in spirit?
Those who have discovered that their former wealth in a form of spiritual identification,
In a form of identification wasn't wealth at all.
It belonged to the world that created it and the world that creates what it does will consume what it creates,
Including this body and this face and this eye or all of it.
It's a far better to understand,
To use the moments where we are given these shocks,
So that instead of struggling to hang on to these things that we believe make us unique,
We begin to recognize that the real treasure is in what we are given to see and if we will accept what we are given to see and not fight with it,
Then we are liberated from a heart that keeps adding and adding and adding to itself.
You may not suspect it,
But one of the ways the heart,
The sleeping heart adds to itself is every time something seems to take something from it,
It just adds a grief or a worry or a fear or a doubt to itself to confirm that what was taken from it was real and what is real can't be taken from you.
That's why I say it's a bit of a labor because how are you going to.
.
.
You can't encourage human beings to empty their heart because if you encourage human beings to empty their heart,
Then they will find some desire by which to attempt to do it and instead of emptying their heart,
They will be filled with yet another image of some spiritual identity,
More garbage,
More plates that are cracked,
But if you can help someone understand,
As is the task that we have,
That the heart is meant to be emptied and it can be emptied any point in time where we feel the pull of the world or the pain of some problem pushing or trying to drag us,
That instead of trying to change that moment to let it change you by revealing to you what the man in our story found out,
That there is a good king and that the plate that you fear will be emptied will always be filled,
The cup will always have the wine in it and the key will always open the door,
Always,
Because you are now in relationship with a different order of being that has a completely different understanding of the nature of true treasure.
I'll see you tomorrow,
I hope,
And if not tomorrow,
Oh,
I won't be here next Saturday.
I'm traveling down to Southern California for some private meetings and to give a couple little talks,
So I will not be here next Saturday.
Please make a note.
I'll be back the following Saturday,
But I won't be here next Saturday.
I will be here tomorrow and I will be here Wednesday next week and,
Of course,
Sunday the following.
Just an insight timer.
No insight timer a week from today.
Bye.
