We'll just take a moment like we always do,
And I trust that you will always try to do whenever you can come back to yourself.
To look as clearly and deeply as you can,
Which really doesn't take effort at all.
It just takes a wish to remember that when you don't have your own attention,
Something else does,
And it probably has it in a place it shouldn't be.
Much of what we're going to look at today,
So we'll just wait another moment or two and then I'll get started with the talk.
So let's get into it,
So to speak.
I'll ask Kate to please put up the talk title for me.
It reads,
How to Walk Straight Through the Dragons of Fear,
Anger,
Sorrow and Worry.
I don't think the talk title needs that much explanation,
But I will set the stage for the special material we'll examine together today.
How many different ways have you heard a similar expression?
Know the truth,
The truth will set you free.
An unexamined life isn't worth living.
And I paraphrase this from St.
Paul,
For now we see through as a glass darkly,
And then he went on to say,
But when at last we do see,
Then we will be not just looking through the eyes of who and what we've been,
But through the eyes,
In that instance,
Of an awakened nature of the indwelling Christ,
Of a light that is not affected by whatever enters into it,
And passes through it,
And yet a light that shines on good and evil alike,
All of that.
How is that to be understood?
Because obviously all of these men,
These women were saying essentially the same thing.
And what must we do to understand it?
Because I believe,
And you'll see as we go through this,
That if we ever hope to be a free human being to know something of the divine,
It is going to be incumbent upon us to know something of this truth that sets men and women free.
And by the word truth,
As it was actually implied in all Testaments,
East and West,
The light that shows humanity,
Not just the content of its consciousness,
But humanity's relationship to the consciousness that it presently lives in and from.
So with that little introduction,
We'll get started.
I'll tell you a story to set the stage.
I'll ask from time to time,
As I always do,
If you're following me,
If you're getting the nuance,
The gist behind these things,
And I trust that you will correspond in the comment field so that I can know we're still on the same page.
So here's a young squire,
And if you don't know what a squire is back in the day,
They would be assigned,
Or they would ask to be assigned to certain knights,
K-N-I-G-H-T-S,
So that they might train,
They might be an apprentice,
They might learn all that's involved in the nature of a good knight.
And so this young squire that's traveling with a reputed great knight,
Like all squires,
Wants to emulate,
Wants to be something like the knight that he travels with,
Because,
In this instance,
No matter where this great knight travels to deal with the dragons that plague the country that the king is always sending him out to deal with,
He doesn't seem to fear what happens when he faces these fiery dragons down.
And the squire knows,
As does the knight,
As does the king,
That none of these dragons appear that aren't conjured up by some kind of evil wizard that is trying to sew into the kingdom what will be fearful to all of the inhabitants,
So that he,
The wizard,
Can sell,
Through his dark cohorts,
Amulets,
Promises of power,
Special weapons,
Whatever it is that the citizens can be deceived into believing they need in order to slay these dark,
Fearsome dragons.
So that what the squire admires most about this good knight is that somehow or other,
When they meet in this field of combat,
The knight just seems to walk right up to and through the flames,
And not just into and through the flames,
But seems,
Because it's hard to tell at that distance for all the smoke and dust,
That the knight just disappears into the dragon itself.
And when that happens,
Somehow or other,
The dragon just kind of disappears,
Having become slightly translucent first,
And the knight is there on the other side.
And not only is the knight on the other side,
But the wizard that was responsible for casting the spell has been dispatched.
So if you get the gist of the opening,
The longest time this squire thinks the knight just possesses some kind of supernatural courage,
And wanting to emulate this supernatural courage,
And imagining what it is and where it comes from,
From time to time,
The good squire would sort of slip off to the side the morning or the day prior to the engagement with the dragon,
And try as best as he could to imitate the knight.
So he would gather all of his strength and clench his teeth,
Lower his head,
Pick up his sword and his shield,
And march straight towards the dragon,
Imagining that if he did what he saw the knight do,
Everything would be fine.
But much to his dismay,
Every time he did this,
The good squire simply became a,
What do they call them,
A pop tart,
An instant piece of toast,
Just flame on,
Toasted,
Smoking.
You can see the caricature,
I hope.
It's funny,
It is.
And so that you should know,
No matter how many times,
Which was six times he tried this,
Six times toasted,
Six times would awake somewhere,
Realizing,
Thinking to himself,
I'd just been in a dream,
Where he was in fact shaken to the core,
But unharmed by his experience.
And this is a kind of a parallel that has to take place in your spiritual life,
I might add,
Where time and time again,
However you do,
We must go into these battles,
We try to win,
And then we find ourselves,
Whether it's that moment or 10 days later,
Toast,
Meaning everything that we thought we'd acquired and become suddenly meaningless,
Not apparent,
Only to feel like,
Well,
I've got to start again.
So six times,
Six defeats.
On the seventh time,
The young squire swallows his pride,
Because he knows he doesn't know.
I can't tell you how important that simple idea is.
And he goes to the knight and he confesses his pride and the punishment that's been incurred because of it,
Because of what he thought he knew.
And when he finishes his little confession,
The good knight says to him,
I've been waiting for you to come and tell me this.
The squire says,
What do you mean?
I don't understand.
I go out just like I say you do,
But when I approach the dragon,
It seems to get bigger.
It seems to get more fearsome.
There's more heat.
But when you approach the dragon,
It seems as if while you approach the dragon's diminishing,
Almost becoming transparent.
I don't get it.
And then when you walk into it,
I don't see what happens after that.
And then boom,
It's gone,
Whatever the wizard was,
It's gone.
And I don't get it.
What am I doing wrong?
Now,
Let me start to stop right here.
Have you ever wondered what in the name of heaven,
Am I doing wrong when I go into combat?
As conscious as I can be of what it is that I must do to overcome what has overcome me?
Yes or no?
What am I doing wrong?
How many years have you been judging yourself?
Believing that when all that you have managed to assemble in the name of so-called spirituality becomes instantaneously squandered.
What else to do?
We think,
But maybe try to emulate something else.
Please listen to me.
What is it that we try to emulate when we do spiritual battle?
We try to emulate what the thought is we have about how we failed last time,
But now here's the new plan and its power.
And so I try to emulate,
I try to incarnate what it is that I believe will be better than it was the last time.
Can you see this with me as an interior process,
Please?
So the knight says to the young squire,
He says,
Look,
Son,
When you go to battle,
Your eyes are in the wrong place and they're on the wrong thing.
When you go to battle,
Your eyes are in the wrong place and they're on the wrong thing.
And the squire says,
What?
Because how can you understand that?
Eyes are in the wrong place on the wrong thing.
And the knight says to him,
You're looking at the dragon that you want to overcome.
That's exactly what the wizard wants you to do.
Now the squire,
Much like yourself,
I imagine is struggling.
What are you,
What's he talking about?
What else do I look at instead of what's in front of me and what I have the fear of and hope to free myself from?
And he says to the knight,
I don't understand,
What else is there to look at in a moment of this kind of battle?
To which the knight responds,
Son,
There's only one way to overcome any such dragon.
And it begins as you stop looking at them and choose instead to look through them to see the wizard that is behind them and responsible for the reality and the fear you feel in their appearance.
The way to overcome these dragons is to stop looking at them and choose instead to look through them to see the wizard projecting them as real.
Now I'm going to explain this story if you don't get it yet,
Because within the story is held almost everything that you and I need to understand about our daily suffering.
And yes or no,
As most of us spend our day trying to defeat dragons that are essentially,
As we will see,
Only as real as this unconscious nature imagines,
Creates,
And then resists its own creations.
Think of the innumerable dragons you face every day.
Why did she say that?
What does this mean?
What's going to happen if?
How will I deal with that?
Oh my God,
Do you have any suspicion what the consequences this would be if you don't do what you're supposed to do?
Do you understand that these thoughts and our reactions to them constitute the dragons that we face?
And every one of these dragons comes with the fear that comes from us seeing the consequence of its appearance and what it may mean to our life and our contentment.
Do you see that with me?
Important before I go on.
It doesn't mean that the fear we feel is unreal.
That's stupid.
People go,
I don't,
This fear is not real.
You might as well say,
I'm going to tear myself up with conflict.
If you have to say something's not real,
Then you have made it real by your assertion and resistance to it.
Doesn't mean the fear is unreal,
Nor does it mean the suffering that we feel is unreal,
But yet the fear and the suffering are the product of something imagined that we're going to go into.
And why is it imagined?
Because we are looking at the wrong thing.
Now,
I'm going to use a little phrase here.
I hope that you'll write it down and at least consider it.
All psychological fear and pain is born of circumstantial evidence.
All psychological pain,
Fear,
Worry,
Doubt,
Resentment,
All of those dragons are the effect of circumstantial evidence.
Now,
What is circumstantial evidence?
Work with me.
You have to use your mind.
We see,
Do we not?
I'm asking you,
Do you ever encounter problem people?
Some event that is troubling from the very moment that it appears in the mind.
And when the troubling event appears,
The troublesome person,
The problem person involved in that unfolds,
Becomes the future that is uncertain.
And when future is uncertain,
We must have and deal with the fear of that uncertainty.
And then out of the fear of that uncertainty,
Do what?
Try to control the consequences that we imagine are coming.
And what I'm saying to you is that everything that we are reacting to in these moments is essentially circumstantial evidence.
Here's the proof of it.
The real problem is we don't understand yet this unconscious nature,
This mammon within us that creates our daily dragons.
Can you think of a few daily dragons of your own?
It wouldn't hurt for you to do it.
I have to talk to my brother.
I got to go to work and there's a problem there because the supervisor or this person that sits next to me,
Oh God,
I don't want to go through the drudgery of another day,
Another dollar.
What's the point?
These dragons appear as quickly as the thoughts rise up inside of us because something triggers that impression.
But the minute that the dragon appears,
Then what happens?
The minute the dragon appears,
If we understand it,
Part of its appearance can't be separated from a certain reaction that we have to its appearance.
And what is the reaction we have to the appearance of any of these daily dragons other than,
Oh no,
There it is again.
Oh no.
And immediately there is inside of us rising up a resistance to what our mind has pictured and projected as being in our path that day that will be a problem if we don't overcome it.
Can you see this with me?
I'm trying to describe it as simply as I can.
Can you see it with me?
That no dragon exists independent of the mind that conjures it up of the wizard,
The dark unconscious nature that conjures it up.
And even as that mind conjures up the dragons that it then fears,
Now it has to spend its life trying how to be free of them.
Please,
I'm trying to make this picture whole.
So what happens?
We become a prisoner of a creation of an unconscious nature that we don't know is busy conjuring these things up so it can have something to go to battle with and one day finally slay the dragon of that regret of that fear or that doubt.
Because I'm going to make an important transition here and Kate kind of get ready for this one part.
There is something extraordinarily important that's going on in these moments that we rarely,
If ever,
Stop to actually examine.
Take a nice deep breath,
Simple question,
Then we'll examine it.
How does this particular sense of self,
Whether it's anxious self,
Worried self,
Angry self,
Hurt self,
How does that particular sense of self that we call I,
How does it appear?
We know the conditions that we blame for that sense of self and all that we suffer as a result of what we blame,
But what do we know about that actual sense of self?
And the answer is virtually nothing.
And the reason it's virtually nothing is because most of us,
Without knowing so,
Think of ourselves as a kind of a continuous entity moving through time carefully,
Trying not to step on toes or have our toes trounced,
Who basically,
As we go through this life,
Moving through this continuation of today into tomorrow,
Tomorrow into the next day,
Looking back for guidance,
We think this is just the experience of life.
But if we observe more carefully,
Which we must,
Something startling becomes apparent that I'm going to help you see now.
The event,
Whatever it may be,
The problem person,
The fearful consequence of something that I'd heard about my finance or health or someone I love,
Whatever it might be,
The event seems to draw our attention to it.
Isn't that so?
Oh no,
What about this?
In those moments,
What has happened?
My attention has been drawn to something that has popped up in my mind.
Do you see that?
And when the event pops up in my mind the way it does,
And I have this reaction,
Instantaneously the reaction is telling me that the event is other than the me to whom it has happened.
And the me to whom it has happened doesn't want anything to interfere with the continuity of its life.
And so now it has to stop and deal with something that seems to be discontinuous to its contentment.
I'm trying to be very clear here.
Do you see it?
But I'm telling you that that's not true.
What actually happens and all unseen is that we,
Without knowing it,
Become a creation,
And don't get ahead of me,
We become a creation of AI.
Hold on.
Not AI as in artificial intelligence,
Although there is a lot of that there,
But rather AI as an acronym for automatically identified.
We become a creation of automatic identification.
See it.
Please see it.
If someone would put it up on the,
Oh,
Maybe it is,
And I don't see it.
AI,
Automatically identified.
Isn't that exactly what happens?
Put it together before we go on.
My mind is drawn to an event that I didn't know my mind was drawn to until appears a certain sense of myself that as the reaction and that sense of self appear simultaneously derived from that,
That I believe is my judgment.
My knowledge of the,
What I've named as the event is AI and artificial intelligence and artificial knowing that is born out of automatic identification.
Can you see how that works,
Please?
This AI automatic identification and almost instantly,
And then you go through it for yourself.
How about,
Have you ever been automatically,
Instantly offended by someone?
Have you ever automatically felt fallen into a worry or an anxiety that you didn't even know you were about to fall in until your mind was drawn to some condition that said,
This is the consequence that you didn't even know was there.
Instantaneously drawn into a defensive posture,
Waiting to pounce or punish whatever it is that you feel has attacked you.
How quickly all of this happens.
And isn't it that quick?
Yes.
Wow.
Got it.
And we think that we were taken over by the event when we weren't taken over by the event,
But by an unconscious act of identifying with a reaction that is telling us that shouldn't be there.
They shouldn't be like this.
And before we know it,
There is an eye there and the eye makes everything feel real.
Not just validates the event as making us a victim,
But I,
As a victim of a condition outside of my control.
But now the reaction tells me,
Here's what you do to slay that dragon.
Do you see it with me?
Cause we're going to move on now.
And if this is true,
Then how much of what we suffer on a daily basis,
I might add,
Suffer over for the moments that we blame,
When instead what we need to realize is that all of this suffering is a feature of automatic identification.
If you never considered anything in your life and you could get far enough to realize it,
Because I tell you,
You don't understand it.
I don't mean it in a demeaning way.
You don't know how much that nature loves to suffer because it gives its life meaning.
And without knowing it,
Our identification with that nature gives our life meaning for that moment.
Because now I know what's wrong.
I know what to do.
I know how to defeat that dragon.
And by God tomorrow,
I'll do it.
When I make that call,
When I pick up whatever it is that is going to add something to my substance in that moment,
When I become the good night,
Then I will get past the bad dragon.
And if you should know anything at all,
That good night never comes.
What comes is the identification with the promise of it that becomes the pain and judgment of yourself.
When you get toasted one more time by some,
Not life,
But by your own identification with a reaction filled with heat,
Fury,
And anxiety.
Do you see it?
A conditioned,
Let me make a transition.
A conditioned mind never meets any moment freshly.
It can't.
What it calls the present moment for all intents and purposes is an unconscious experience of its own accumulated past.
That's what we call the present moment,
Which is what?
Our reaction to what has come in as an active impression.
And I call my reaction the present moment when a reaction can't exist without comparison and without the past comparing itself to something it sees that it doesn't want in the present moment.
So the mind,
This is critical now,
Follow me.
The mind sees an object.
Let me define.
I'm sitting at the restaurant table and I look across and I see someone.
I don't even know it registers,
But something about the way they've dressed,
The way they look,
The tone of their voice,
Something instantaneously creates all unseen an object,
Kind of an energetic body that is in the process of being,
Of collapsing into a known field,
A known object.
And once that energy,
That reaction begins to formulate the object,
Then it's recognized.
And it's recognized not in the sense of being this or that,
But as being something I want or don't want,
Something I'm for or against.
And I can't be for or against something in any given moment without some history with something similar to it.
So that name that's given to the object comes with a network of associations,
Reactions,
The history literally of that name.
So the unconscious mind doesn't just name the object,
Which it does.
It experiences a reaction to the name it has come up with.
And when it experiences the reaction to what it has come up with as being responsible for the reaction,
Then you can begin to see why it is.
And I go back to the story of the knight and the squire.
The knight sees one thing,
The squire sees another.
Haven't you ever wondered how you can be with a few people and there's a problem?
And one person saying,
Yeah,
This is what happened.
Another person going,
No,
That's what happened.
And you're looking and you don't see anything other than two people who completely see the situation through their reaction to it.
And you know,
God willing,
That what you see is different than that they say.
Maybe you do feel prone this way or that.
One day you won't.
You'll understand what it means.
The sun shines on good and evil alike.
But you can see,
Well,
This is why there's six and a half,
Whatever it is,
Seven and a half billion human beings.
Every last one of them seeing generally something that no one else sees.
But when we generally see what everyone else sees,
Then we form a political or religious group of some kind.
And we feel consoled by being contained inside of something that makes us feel safe because we all think the same way.
What a curse.
So if you see it with me,
The event is one thing.
The consciousness that interprets it is another.
The event is one thing.
And by the way,
No event has a name.
The only name any event can have is the one that you give to it.
When you are drawn into this analysis,
There's recognition.
And then the realization,
Ah,
That's what that is.
That's what she didn't do.
That's what she,
He should have said.
And in that moment,
Boom,
Another dragon,
Another piece of toast.
Everybody following?
Cause we're going to make a big transition.
Let me know,
Please.
So we're spending basically our entire lifetime trying to solve,
If you want,
Or dissolve externally,
These dragons we meet,
Which are not the events,
But our reactions to them.
Reactions predicated by,
Preceded by a nature that actually creates the thing it tries to slay.
And we never,
Ever come close to understanding the nature that's responsible for creating and projecting them.
So how do we work with this?
Assuming you're following me,
One of the beginning,
If you want to use that words,
The dawn of a certain order of awakening necessary is that we begin to recognize,
For lack of better words,
Recurrence.
How many times have I felt this anger?
How many times have I been consumed with an anxiety that gives me choices that I take,
And instead of free,
I'm binding myself into deeper and deeper relationships with things that don't free me.
I start to notice the same reactions,
The same fears,
And the same reactions and the same fears that give rise basically to the same conclusions.
Now the conclusions have to change.
You understand the definition of sanity,
Keep doing the same thing,
Expect something to change.
We don't think to ourself that our conclusions are the same conclusions because our conclusions are defined differently.
We conclude what to do here,
That didn't work,
The conclusion is to do that.
Oh,
Well,
That's not quite right.
The conclusion is I didn't understand,
But next time I will.
So we go on and on and on,
Believing that the conclusion is different when the consciousness giving us the conclusion remains the same.
Same storms,
Same defensive identities,
Again and again,
Seemingly different circumstances met by a consciousness that ensures the continuity of itself.
Please,
Did you get that transition with me and the significance of it?
It's tremendously important because if these identities,
If AI,
And I use that so that maybe you could have a quick of something,
You have this reaction,
AI,
At least I can consider for a moment that this strong sense of identity derived from this,
That,
Or the other,
That maybe it's artificial intelligence.
What else could it be,
Honest to God,
If you can see it?
Obviously it's artificial intelligence because all it does is bring me into what kind of pain I never didn't escape last time and I get to go through it again.
So this AI,
This automatic identification always reoccurs under the same predictable conditions,
Same condition,
Same response.
Same response,
Not quite,
Because I have to analyze the condition differently so I can come up with,
In quotes,
A different conclusion when it's the same consciousness running the same game.
And if I can see that at all,
Then I have a suspicion at least that that I,
That AI,
That artificial identity can't be who I am.
That's impossible.
And I can even say to myself,
I know that,
But then someone seems to criticize me.
Someone seems to be inconsiderate,
Arrogant,
Self-centered,
Boom,
AI.
And like some giant bass,
We swallow the whole thing,
Hook,
Line,
And sinker,
And then wonder why we get reeled into the pain of a reality we can't escape because we just agreed to play the game of being the one caught by something because something caught us.
Nothing catches us save for our unconscious identification with a nature that principally exists to ensure it continues itself and it must do so at the expense of our struggle with that captivity.
So summary,
Each reaction does what?
Each reaction comes out of a summary resistance and the summary resistance is born out of some corresponding identity,
Something that said,
No,
That can't go like that.
If it goes like that,
That's not the continuity of my vision,
My image of you.
If it goes like that,
How can I believe that I'm this kind of person?
So I have to have a reason why it goes like that because it can't be that something in me is mistaken.
And so we have these reactions that are accompanied by sensation,
Tension,
Pressure,
Excitement,
Heaviness,
Some kind of movement that feels so personal.
But if we can learn,
As I'm describing to you,
That in that moment to look through those dragons,
To look through what is on the other side,
Meaning the opposite we can't see,
The self that's reacting can't see its own reaction.
It creates a creature that dresses the reaction into something it knows.
So to look through the reaction,
To look through the dragon is the beginning of seeing life no longer through the AI,
But rather through a nature,
An understanding that only the truth can help you remember that this moment,
It's the appearance of a fear.
It isn't fear itself.
It's the appearance of anxiety.
It's the appearance of anger.
And when that consciousness casts on the screen,
That image,
That problem,
That pain,
It is an image created by it calling up from the past everything it needs to prove to itself that the image is real,
That the reaction is valid.
Because if we can see it,
It's the appearance of a fear,
I'm not going to be quite as quick to jump into trying to get rid of the dragon I blame for.
If I can see it's the appearance of an anxiety,
It's the projection of an unconscious nature.
If I can even suspect that,
Then in that moment,
I can also suspect maybe,
How can there be an appearance of this fear,
Of this AI without some conditioned sense of self,
This artificial identity that appears with it at the same time.
I mean,
Even to just capture a glimpse of this is to start seeing through the machinery of this unconscious nature,
What Christ called metanoia,
To be able to turn around and bring that light of understanding into a nature that believes it understands everything it imagines is real.
And this is one of the great turning points in your interior work.
In all interior work.
Because the moment we can see,
To whatever extent we can,
How familiar is this sense of self that keeps returning.
You know,
This is why people take their own lives.
They're actually convinced by that mammon,
By that unconscious nature,
There is no hope whatsoever because they have struggled with,
If they've struggled at all,
Over and over again,
This depression,
This fear,
This anger,
This regret.
How many times must I meet the dragon on the field of daily life and be overcome again?
What's the point?
And then it drives that darkness even deeper into itself.
So now all one sees is pointlessness because there is nothing that that nature can even begin to comprehend about itself other than what it wants to capture you with.
But if we can see this a little bit,
That this thing,
This reaction,
It's an unconscious manifestation.
It is an I.
It feels like I,
Because of AI,
Automatically identified,
That's me.
Hi,
My name is Guy.
I'm automatically identified with anything that says you think I'm not.
But when we can see,
Even suspect it,
Then at least to the extent,
The degree of that suspicion is the degree that we are no longer completely identified with AI.
And if we can get that far,
The fear that we have of dragon-induced AI,
Dragon-induced automatic identification,
Automatic identification is the dragon,
And it is the dragon that is feared,
And it is the self that's going to try to slay it,
All wrapped into one insatiable appetite.
Because if we see,
Yeah,
You know what?
At least I'm going to sit here and do the best I can to see through this.
I'm not just going to accept what you do.
I'm not just going to accept this state that's come over me,
And then the subsequent thoughts and feelings that say,
Well,
You should do this.
You need to do that.
Here's how this works.
Here's what's wrong.
No,
Instead,
You start to understand to some extent that this isn't about finding some path,
Some plan,
Some purpose that later on will allow you to slay these dragons.
All of the so-called religious icons,
The spiritual practices,
All intended to do what?
Protect me,
Bring me peace.
From what?
From the dragons that keep coming back.
But if I understand the task isn't to acquire some momentary new spiritual identity,
But rather to see clearly enough that anything in me that's looking for an identity to deal with the dragons is a manifestation of the dragon-making nature.
Because if that happens,
At least I have some material with which to step into and through that AI dragon.
I don't know what's going to happen,
But I do know what happens when AI takes over,
When automatic identification,
When my resistance to the reaction produces the reaction.
I know I also know,
I know enough to at least do what the good squire who became a good knight understood.
Well,
Now I know the task,
Not to slay,
Not to destroy those daily dragons,
But to walk into them,
Meaning don't interfere with their appearance,
And walk through them,
Meaning let them do what they do so I can learn about the mechanism producing this misery,
And do that long enough,
Strong enough,
Willingly enough to recognize this machine that makes these dark dragons that it lives to try to defeat.
So getting to the end.
We return to the knight and the dragon.
What did the knight tell him?
Your attention's on the wrong thing.
Look past it.
Look past it.
Keep this simple,
At least as much as possible.
Learning to look past the dragon is the same as learning to look into and through the heat of that reaction.
Not letting the reaction drag you into this identity-making machinery that it is a part of,
But to understand your task is to be aware of the machinery,
Aware of the reaction instead of being formulated into something that's trying to deal with it in order to overcome it.
And you do this by reclaiming in that moment,
What?
Here comes the moment,
Boom,
My attention goes to the object.
My attention goes immediately to what my mind says,
Ah,
It doesn't know yet,
But it knows there's something.
And when my attention goes to that something,
It isn't terribly long before the suffering that I'm told,
The suffering for this something is because of X,
Y,
And Z.
In that moment,
If I don't see it,
I'm already captured.
But if I can start to see that,
To some extent and understand where my attention goes,
My experience follows.
And if I don't want the same experience,
My attention has to go past.
It has to look through what ordinarily claims it and makes me a captive of that reaction.
This doesn't mean that there isn't,
How do I say?
You know what?
Let's bring up the second key lesson,
Kate.
I'm going to run out of time.
Please follow with me,
Everybody.
The second key lesson reads,
The life we experience is inseparable from our consciousness of it.
And until that consciousness is understood,
Suffering repeats itself endlessly in different forms.
Yes,
The dragon changes shape,
But the fear remains the same.
Different people,
Different situations,
Different years,
Different stories,
Same recurring unconscious nature,
Same AI.
And this is why if you're following me,
No external solution will ever permanently resolve inward suffering because the root of the suffering is in AI.
And until we understand and can start to see through how quickly we are willing to identify with that conditioned reaction,
We're going to keep reliving the self that appears out of it.
But there's another possibility,
And that's what this whole talk is about.
There is,
For lack of better words,
An awareness,
A living light,
I don't care what you call it,
Capable of seeing through all of these dragons,
Regardless how real and solid they have been named.
And the real freedom that we seek begins with the moment that we stop trying to conquer these dragons and instead begin working to understand the consciousness that's responsible for creating them.
Because the moment we see that we have been looking all along at the wrong thing is the minute that we begin to see past the consciousness responsible for that image,
For that dragon.
And that is what it means to start awakening from this dream,
From this dragon making machinery,
From this AI,
This artificial intelligence that we are so quick to say I to because of the extent and depth of our identification with it.
I will go more deeply into this tomorrow,
Special material tomorrow.
I hope you'll join me.
And for now,
Remember AI,
Automatically identified,
Artificial intelligence.
Okay,
I will no longer look solely at the object of my pain.
I want to see through the machinery creating that suffering so that I can begin not to overcome it,
But to see through it so thoroughly,
I'm no longer interested in what it does.
