Your Invitation To Enter Into Effortless Meditation

In this talk, Guy explains how meditation is the interior art of quietly watching your whole life unfold, moment-to-moment, for "better or for worse"... Without trying to change, explain, or otherwise control whatever you see.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

Here is our key lesson.

Meditation is the interior art of quietly watching your whole life unfold,

Moment to moment,

For better or for worse,

Without trying to change,

Explain,

Or otherwise control whatever you see.

Welcome to those of you who are joining us,

If perhaps for the first time,

On our Friday meditations.

I always speak for 20 or 25 minutes about some aspect of meditation,

Not some visualization and certainly not some way to imagine anything about meditation,

Or for that matter,

Not even a practice,

But just so that we might all share in some true self-knowledge,

Which in the end is what meditation is all about.

Most people don't know really much of anything,

But for instance,

How yoga began,

The root of meditation,

How it came to pass.

There was at some point in time individuals who,

No doubt through some form of preparation,

Beyond the immediate time of their temporary existence,

However that was spanned out in this world,

That as a result of being an instrument of certain forces,

Celestial forces,

That manifest themselves in the physical body,

They were naturally thrown into certain asanas,

Positions,

That you see when people practice yoga.

And over time,

Those individuals realized that they were moved into a position so that energies could move in a specific path through them,

For reasons that by and large mostly only they knew,

But it had to do with purification.

They realized that if they could assume those postures and show other people those postures,

That if they were prepared at all,

That that posture might help them align themselves with those forces that originally gave rise to the postures called yoga,

The asanas,

The various positions.

But like all things over time,

All that gets lost.

And it's the same thing with meditation.

Meditation is the natural expression of a human being who is present.

It isn't something that one strives to do.

It isn't one that a person practices as a means to somehow or other bring about something in their life.

Although,

As I said,

With yoga,

Becoming as quiet as an individual can become,

At least places them where they might have some sense of another order of themselves.

In fact,

That's what meditation is all about.

It is the alignment of our bodies with our own bodies.

We don't know much about meditation because at its root it's intended to be a spontaneous relationship with the environment.

Not something that one practices in order to appear or have that relationship,

But an indwelling,

Upwelling,

Natural,

Energetic state that by its activity in the body produces in the human being an effortless relationship with the world around them.

In which,

Unlike the way that we are now presently constituted,

Awareness is the person's eye.

Awareness is the eye.

Not,

I am aware of this or that and therefore I know what this and that are and what to do,

But awareness itself is the eye.

That is how we are meant to live.

In a naturally quiet state of mind.

Not one that's running here and there and trying to work this out,

Trying to get free of this and get hold of that so they can shake themselves out of whatever it is that has happened to them because they are living from,

As all men and women do,

One eye after another eye after another eye.

And each and every one of these eyes,

Meaning temporary identities,

Is always the byproduct of a reaction to a passing condition.

To be a sleeping human being is to be a human being who all the time finds themselves living from a particular eye that was produced by a reaction to some event,

And the reaction to the event is what determines who and what they are for that moment.

And we all have enough experience with that.

We should know it well enough.

I do this,

I see that,

I don't want this,

I have a reaction to my own estimation,

My own comparison of a situation.

And as that eye comes up inside of me,

It looks out and it sees what it needs to see to justify the consciousness that was first caused to have that reaction.

And then that eye gets busy doing what that eye does.

Start talking to this person,

Start looking for some way to justify itself,

Get busy blaming somebody,

Buying something,

Doing whatever is the basis of its momentary appearance through that reaction.

Try to understand this.

It's not complicated.

When you're walking along and you're having a fine time and somebody says something to you,

You get set off.

In that moment,

The eye that was walking along and fine just disappears and in its place appears another eye,

An identity that now fully understands why it feels the way it does.

And why does it feel the way it does?

Because it looks out and it sees what it reacts to.

And therefore it becomes literally,

I almost coined a phrase for it,

But I don't particularly like it.

But it has to do with the fact that I and my reaction are one thing,

Which is why I can never see what I do when I am reacting.

Completely unconscious to the choices and decisions that are made for me in that moment by something that isn't me at all,

But that appears in me and then makes up its mind,

It makes these choices,

Makes these decisions.

And then because it's made them and has a vested identity in that movement,

Then it will follow it,

Even though it may know that it's not the right thing to do.

It will defend itself,

For instance.

Have you ever defended yourself,

Even when you knew you were wrong?

Keeping in mind,

Please,

If you will,

That I'm trying to bring you into a full circle of understanding.

Because I said that in real life,

God willing for all of us,

That one day we shall sit in a room like this or wherever we are,

And our I,

Who we are in that moment,

Will be nothing other than our awareness of the room and ourselves simultaneously.

No,

You having the experience of liking or not liking,

But rather who you are seeing,

Each and every I come up as a result of the reaction to where you are and what you're going through.

Then you are like the sky through which the clouds pass and the clouds come and go,

But it makes no difference to the sky because it always sees and treats everything alike.

And that alikeness is from a level of consciousness that doesn't have in it condemnation,

That doesn't have a past in it,

That isn't looking to produce something by some decision that was made,

By something that wasn't even itself to begin with.

It's only as a man or a woman begins in their spiritual work to reach the point where at least they suspect that whatever it is that they've just come to a conclusion about,

Whatever it is that they're justifying themselves with or getting ready to go do,

To have some inkling because another part of them is present enough to realize,

You know what,

I have been in this I before.

I have seen this in myself before.

I have felt this in myself before.

And I have acted from this before and not just before,

But maybe a hundred thousand times.

And because of that small tiny bit of light,

That person,

He or she,

God willing,

Blessed that way,

Is suddenly aware of the fact that they are about to act in a blind manner again.

And that as long as they are looking at their life through that particular I that has reached a conclusion,

That's made this decision,

That knows what's wrong with everybody else,

That in that split second to suddenly know,

You know what,

I can see my own blindness.

I see the source of my own blindness.

It's an amazing thing because I can see something is trying to convince me to be depressed.

I can see that something is trying to convince me to have an enemy,

To make a change,

To do this.

I can see it and I've never seen it before until today.

And then suddenly here I am and I can see by another kind of light that what I've always called the light in my life,

That which shows me what I have to do and where I have to go,

Wasn't light at all.

And that's when meditation begins.

That's when meditation begins.

Because for that split second,

A person's I,

Their essence,

Their essential nature isn't locked into a little room that was born out of a reaction to something that was unwanted by them.

I was thinking about this today,

Not really for the meditation,

But just in general about this whole notion of how unbelievably demanding it is to live with this consciousness of ours that just never lets up.

It's just always talking about something,

It's always got an enemy or a plan,

It's got something it needs to do to get somewhere and be something.

It just never,

Never lets up.

But we're blind to the fact that it never lets up.

Because we're too busy taking the side of whatever the substance is that's coursing through us,

Telling us that if we just escape or change the situation,

Then we won't have this pain anymore.

Which is the subject for this coming Sunday's talk.

How come I always wind up right back where I began?

Right back with the same animosity,

The same disappointments,

The same grief,

The same anger,

The same frustration,

The same anxiety,

The same feeling of being inadequate,

Whatever it may be.

Why am I returned there again and again and again?

Oh,

I don't have a thousand reasons why,

But it doesn't change the fact that I always get back to where I was.

And it has to do with what I'm explaining to you and hoping to introduce to you as an idea about meditation.

And I was considering this,

My mind said that I should go look at the passage from Matthew that says,

The light of the body is the eye,

If therefore thine eye be single,

Thy whole body shall be full of light.

And if a person understands they're blind,

But they think they see,

Then the light by which they see the things they do isn't light at all.

Because if it was light,

I'd see.

For instance,

I think I see you as a problem.

But if I look and I think I see you as a problem,

And I spend my life trying to change you or the circumstances of my relationship with you,

If that's what I do,

And yet all day long for the rest of my life until I drop this body,

I'm in the same pattern,

Then it proves that that light isn't light at all.

It doesn't see what is.

It sees what that eye wants to see in order to keep itself present in me,

In possession of me,

Quite literally.

So I went in and did some deep translation of that passage,

And I want you to hear it.

Because the understanding of it leads to a shift in the way in which we meet our life.

And that shift is the beginning of meditation.

The light of the body is the eye,

If therefore thine eye be single,

Thy whole body shall be full of light.

The first thing to note is the word light in the first sentence,

It has a different meaning than the light in the second sentence.

The translation,

The light of the body.

That light refers to what the old language says is a pure white light,

Basically angelic in nature,

That its purpose is to preserve,

And this gets interesting,

Because it says the light of the body is the eye.

But the word body doesn't refer to this body.

The word body here refers to the eyes of the mind.

So that the light of the body is the eye.

That angelic light is referring to this faculty that it bestows of being able to know without thinking that which it sees.

The angelic light that preserves this sense of understanding,

Of knowing without taking thought,

And here's where it really gets interesting,

That that knowing refers very specifically to being known by something.

It means to allow oneself to be seen.

Think how different that is.

The light of the body is the eye.

That means that there is something that lives in us that preserves this capacity to know without thought,

And that that capacity is connected to allowing oneself to be seen.

Now if you can connect that with the passage that I am the light of this world,

As I've explained to you before,

Christ was saying,

I am that which reveals to mankind,

Womankind,

The content of their consciousness.

Suddenly we're learning,

Seeing,

This idea that the light referred to here and the body is referring to what happens when something takes place,

And by another kind of awareness,

I can see myself.

And that seeing of myself includes seeing that I don't see,

Because how else would I ever know that I don't see unless something can see for me that I'm blind?

And all of that's integral.

That's part of my consciousness.

Then it goes on to say,

If thine eye be single,

The body shall be full of light.

And what that's referring to is that that order of consciousness that takes place when one allows oneself to be seen,

That in that moment of being seen by a light that is impersonal,

That in that same moment,

The translation goes,

Is folded back into the fullness of that integrated moment,

Of that light.

And in that light,

One is incapable of acting against oneself.

Why?

Because one's eye is a completely different eye.

Please understand this.

If I can't see myself at all,

And I don't know I can't see myself,

But I always act as if I can see myself,

And then one day something shows me the self that I thought could see,

And I can see that that self is blind as a bat,

Then suddenly I'm living from another order of awareness that holds within it an awareness of a nature that's unaware of itself.

And suddenly you have the idea of Jacob's ladder,

You have the idea of my father's kingdom as in many mansions,

But not the idea anymore.

The fact of it is your own experience of life.

To actually be conscious that your whole life you have lived from an eye that appears at the drop of each hat and brings up what it does,

And it believes it sees because of the conviction that accompanies the reaction,

And in that reaction one's reality is defined,

So that the seed of my life moment to moment is not being made new and brought forth into something that is altogether new and quiet,

But rather is the repetition,

The recurrence,

Of a specific part of this consciousness that lives to recreate itself.

And to see that is to instantaneously be taken out of the moment as the one to whom it's happening.

Instantaneously to be taken out of the moment that he did this,

I don't want that,

Why is this like that,

Everything that one is for and against ceaselessly,

Because that is the sum of our life whether you admit it or not.

I'm for this,

I'm against that,

I'm against this,

I'm for this,

All day long.

And always trying to make some adjustment in your thinking so that through thinking this through you can come to a place where you won't be troubled.

And that's why I mean by you always come back to where you are,

You always come back to something that you have to change in order to make yourself content and have some form of consolation in this life.

But now I'm talking about a completely different kind of consolation.

Now I'm talking about not consoling myself at all.

But understanding that anything that appears in my mind,

In my heart,

In my thought,

Any movement at all that seeks to find some consolation through a conclusion it reaches,

Belongs to an eye that's blind.

And if I'm present enough,

If I can be there enough sufficiently in that moment,

Then something happens that begins what we can call meditation.

Because in that second,

To whatever extent it's possible,

That awareness takes eye out of the awareness.

It takes eye out of the moment.

It's just as if a person was an addict.

No one who was ever an addict succeeds in escaping their addiction without going through a withdrawal.

Meditation is not the attempt to withdraw oneself from the world,

Although that's what we see.

Meditation is the implicit understanding that I must withdraw eye from this moment.

Because every eye that's inserted into this moment,

Every last conclusion,

Every feeling that's justified with some form of negativity,

Every last part of that is a blind action.

When you see something beautiful in nature,

There's a spontaneous meditation.

And that's because eye has been withdrawn and replaced by the awareness of eye.

Eye becomes my awareness.

My awareness is eye.

Now you can practice meditation and try to get into a state where my awareness is eye,

But you and I both know that that's superficial and bubbles above a level of consciousness that can't wait to break through with some other reaction as soon as some stimulation comes.

But to understand even remotely this idea that we are created in such a way that we're not meant to be vested in this and vested in that,

Worrying about him,

Wondering about her,

Doing all the things that you do all day long,

Where a certain event brings up a certain eye.

Well,

A certain event brings up a certain reaction,

Reaction and eye being the same thing.

And then in that moment to start recognizing the task here isn't to blindly,

Literally blindly follow that identity.

The task is to bring that whole moment into the awareness of its presence.

So that now I'm aware of you and the moment and I,

But I am not you and I and the awareness.

I am something altogether different.

Awareness has no vested interest whatsoever in the continuation of anything from the past.

All we are is the continuation of the past,

Endlessly trying to produce this and fix that and get that done.

So when Christ said the light of the body is the eye and if the eye is single,

Body is full of light,

Basically that alludes to this idea that within us already exists a certain kind of light.

And that it is our agreement to enter into a relationship with that level of awareness that is meditation.

But that we can only enter into that relationship to the extent that we understand,

Wherever I go before me,

Things are a mess and they always will be.

It's inconceivable to human beings that the only thing that's wrong with their life is their habitual self.

And their habitual self,

Because it never sees itself,

Can be seen.

That's the extraordinary thing.

I can see my habitual nature.

I can see all of the eyes that are connected to all of the reactions.

And because I can see,

I cannot be deceived.

Whereas if I cannot see,

I am already deceived.

And to begin to understand the difference is the difference between what I choose to do with my life moment to moment.

Because if I actually start to understand,

I'm not here to suffer over what guy wants to suffer over.

You believe that you are here to suffer over whatever it is that you think you have to suffer over.

You believe that from the,

Its belief is in you from the tip of your toes to the top of your head.

She did this,

He said that,

They went there,

Why isn't this,

This isn't right.

Just an endless barrage of passing identities and each one usurping the possibility that you have to be part of another kind of awareness in which none of that exists as a pain to you.

Where instead you're present to the pain of that consciousness.

I'm going to say it again,

Where instead you are present to the pain of that consciousness.

And then compassion is born.

You actually understand what compassion is because it isn't someone outside of you anymore that's the source of your pain.

Meditation,

A quiet mind has allowed you to see that within you is the one who is suffering.

And it's the same one in everyone that's suffering and always has been the same one in everyone that's suffering.

But no one knows it's just one suffering because everyone believes their suffering is unique because each reaction produces an I that believes it's exclusive in some way.

Learn to take the I out of the moment.

That's what meditation is.

I sit here,

I'm aware of you,

I'm aware of myself and anything that wants to drag me into an identity,

Someone who sees or knows or understands this or who doesn't like that.

Every last one of those reactions to see the thing come up and let it just roll off like a wave.

So that my identity remains in the awareness of an identity making machine.

My awareness remains present to an identity making machine.

And with every donut that it pops up,

Every dumb nut that it pops up,

Every identity,

Every feeling,

Every thought,

Every last part of it,

Each time it produces it,

The awareness that is this light,

It sits there and it sees it and it doesn't touch it.

It doesn't want to touch it.

It's not interested in touching it because it's touched it so many times it knows it's touch.

It knows that it promises to soothe and quiet and heal.

It knows all of that about that nature and it knows that all of that is a lie.

And that every I connected to that machine,

To that nature is part of the operation of the machine.

Then meditation starts by itself.

I don't know if you can see it with me.

Meditation starts by itself.

Because I'm in a natural alignment with an awareness from out of which comes consciousness.

But now my consciousness isn't connected to things and reactions to them.

My consciousness is itself unified with an awareness that cannot be brought down by anything that passes through it any more than the sky is brought down by a bird that flies through it.

Withdraw I.

Withdraw I.

But not like I don't want to be this or I don't want that.

Withdraw I means I withdraw this tendency on my part to instantaneously identify with that thought or that feeling.

With this thing that's saying go here and do that.

I won't do it.

Why?

Because I know if I do it I'll get to do it again and I'll do it again and I'll do it again until I die.

And I don't want to do that until I die.

Do you?

Then meditation is natural.

It's spontaneous.

It's spontaneous.

You're just sitting there and every time that this reaction begins to produce this I and this I comes replete with all of its conditioned emotions,

All of the content of itself.

You sit there and you see the whole thing comes up and you naturally enter into a meditative state.

But the meditative state includes understanding I have to let this come up and I cannot go with it.

I withdraw from it.

I take the I out of it.

Then my I is the whole of the room.

The I is everything that's transpiring.

All that's in me,

Everything that it can see.

And there's no stake in that.

There's no stake in that.

Then meditation develops itself.

It comes for you,

Not you go to it.

And every time it comes for you,

As it comes in whatever form or strength that it may come,

It always leaves you aware of the fact of how absolutely blind you've been,

Dependent you've been on formulating some plan,

Some project,

Something to do predicated on trying to escape the actual outcome of following an I that's blind.

So for a meditation if you want,

See how many times as you sit there quietly you can see some I being formed and just take the I out of it.

Do you understand what that means?

Take the I out of it.

I can feel it.

It wants to start thinking about later what's going to happen.

What did they do?

What about this?

It just wants to think about something.

Ah,

I can bring myself into an order of awareness that is aware of how out of order that whole process is and then stay with the awareness of the disorder instead of entering into it and trying to create order with thought that produces the disorder to begin with.

Hmm?

It's a practice for the rest of your life.

It's just like the word meditation every practice I give.

It isn't the thing.

It certainly isn't the end of something.

It's not even really a means.

But it is an invitation to see within yourself something that you presently aren't aware of or that if you are that you need to double down on that awareness.

Understand,

You know what?

I'm getting ready to kind of judge somebody,

Be resentful about something.

I'm kind of anxious about tomorrow.

And right there in that split second to see that whatever it is that's going through those iterations is blind and always has been and it will lead you into a pit as it's always done and then to invite into your life the awareness of that whole mechanism.

And to sit there quietly and instead of investing yourself in each subsequent I,

You withdraw yourself from each subsequent I by being the witness of each subsequent I.

Let's meditate.

As always when we're done with the meditation in about 30 or 35 minutes you will hear me say when you're ready open your eyes and then we will practice some of what we just talked about.

How the minute I open my eyes for some reason my thoughts engaged.

Even more than that.

One day you'll see how intimately connected the breath is with thought.

Thought always begins on the in-breath.

But let's not go there now.

Let's meditate.

Reviews

Guy is the best

Thank you so much.