Awakening The Heart Of Perfect Compassion GF Live 3-16-24

Spiritually speaking, all relationships serve one purpose: self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, in turn, serves a single purpose: discovering the truth of oneself: an inner awakening that serves still a higher purpose: rebirth...the reconciliation, and fulfillment of all relationships.

Please note: This track may include some explicit/strong language.

Transcript

I'm going to look at some very important ideas with you today and I think we'll get started by asking Kate to post the key lesson that was drafted, Written for this very purpose. Read along with me please and if you would don't post while I'm doing it so that everybody can have the benefit of an uninterrupted lesson. Spiritually speaking, All relationships serve one purpose, Self-knowledge. And self-knowledge in turn serves a single purpose, That is discovering the truth of oneself. An inner awakening that serves still a higher purpose, Which is rebirth. Rebirth, The reconciliation and the fulfillment of all our relationships. All relationships, One purpose, Self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, One purpose, Discovering the truth of ourselves. And in discovering the truth of ourselves through that relationship, Realizing what real rebirth is, Which is ultimately the reconciliation of ourselves to that which has given us this life. And in that reconciliation, The fulfillment of all relationships. Too much? I don't know. But let's get busy looking at it. This time we're sharing this morning is actually more or less part one of two parts. The second part will be tomorrow on Sunday when I stream live and you can find out about that anywhere. Nothing to join, It's all free. I'm going to be giving some talks on impressions. Now this session this morning will be complete in and of itself as is every talk, But the more that we can share the waters of higher understanding, Enter into this place where we are looking at the real nature of self-knowledge, The better off we are. Not just because of what we learn, But honestly for the fact that we're giving our time to that which serves it best, Which is discovering why we have this time at all on this earth, In these bodies, Undergoing what we undergo, Our journey. So let's get into it. I'm going to use a phrase several times today. I've used it before, But I think it's one of the more important catch-alls, Big picture, Understanding that a person can gain. I'm going to ask Kate to post it. You can write it down if you want to. We're going to explore it today and tomorrow. And that idea is our infinite capacity for realizing perfect similarity. You want to know what real higher knowledge is? What true self-understanding is? It is our infinite capacity for realizing perfect similarity. What does that mean? Let's get started. So many things are lost on us and not accidentally, Meaning the world would just be as comfortable with us never understanding certain truths. Or it's lost on us because, God help us, We actually think we understand the lesson and it's always connected to some ridiculous conclusion. But in this instance, I want to talk to you about a very simple passage that at its heart is not religious, Meaning it's not religious in the terms of the body of the text. And this is since Christianity. It's religious in the fact that when we understand something, It reconnects us to a part of us that has been waiting to understand that. There's a quick story in the New Testament where a woman is about to be stoned in the marketplace for being a harlot, A whore, Cheating on her husband. Makes no difference. The harsh Jewish laws in the day were that if someone sinned, They were to be stoned to death like that. And right as that's about to happen, Christ steps in. The story is Christ steps in. This is a story that's meant to happen every moment in our lives, A realization, A discovery, As I'm going to describe. And he says, Hold on. If any of you are without sin, Go ahead and throw the stone. Meaning, If any of you aren't in some way, Don't have some similarity, Maybe you're not a whore. Maybe you didn't cheat on your husband or your wife. But if you're saying that you have no understanding that something in you isn't the way you take yourself, If you really believe you don't make mistakes, Throw the stone. And everybody drops the stone and leaves. The real lesson in that moment is that Christ was exemplifying, As all of us are intended to live, This infinite capacity for perfect similarity. He understood not only the nature of the person that was about to be persecuted for her misstep, For her ignorance, But because he himself had that in him, He knew that every man and woman standing there also has that in them, That every last one of them has sold their soul for something. Maybe not for money, But how about for approval? How about to escape something that would seem too big? And so you do what you have to do when you avoid something, You sell your soul, You don't know it. So there is, And he says, Look, If you don't have anything in you like this, Go ahead. And everybody in that moment was awakened to the fact that while they aren't that woman, Having done what she did within them, There is a nature that is almost always doing something like that. And so it is that they had compassion. But it wasn't because compassion because they had some religious platitude, Some false sentimental morality. It wasn't because of the law, As our world today tries to get people to behave. It was because they saw in that moment that they were no different than the person they were judging. And they saw it not through some intellectual concept, And not through the worship of some icon that said you should see it. But they saw it because in that moment, They experienced that part of themselves. And so it was that compassion was present. It is exactly the same for all of us, We are in an equal position in every moment of our life, With everyone and everything we meet, If and only if we are willing to be awake enough in the moment to that similarity. And if you want to use ask, Why would I want to be awake to that similarity? It would be for the sake of a greater holiness, For a true compassion, For what I hope our individual conscience asks us to do. How do we access this? How do we begin to understand it? This perfect similarity? I have a whole story to tell you, But just let me set the stage for it. I don't know about you, I love the ocean. I love wide open fields, The grass is moving, Nature in general. You look at the magnificent mountains, Whether you're up close or at a distance to them. Like the ocean, You are, I trust, Drawn. Something in us is drawn to that oceanscape, Light dancing on it. Why? We're drawn because there is something in us that wants to enter into what is drawing us and our attention to it. We're drawn to what our attention is asking us to give our attention to. Why? Because we are trying in that moment without knowing, Where we're not just doing something, But we are answering a call. It isn't a doing that we initiate, It isn't an activity that we seek ourselves. We are trying to lend ourselves in that moment to realize, To answer as best we are capable, Our relationship with the invisible immensity that's laid out before our eyes, Where here's this depth and breadth of these waters. And I want to know them. I can walk into the water, Sure. When I was a boy, You can go and you can splash yourself with it, Trying to get some feeling of why. Why is it that I'm so drawn to this? Because that ocean, Those mountains, That field, Those flowers, That grass waving, All of it is trying to introduce you to the invisible immensity of what and who you really are. And that's why in the end, When, In quotes, Scientists, Or for that matter, Mystics and poets, As they discover the nature of these things, They're not discovering the nature of an ocean or a mountain or a field outside of themselves. They're discovering what they're discovering because they find all of the laws and the appropriate discoveries within themselves as they come into and bring into themselves that infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity. Put it up there again, Will you, Kate? Our infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity. These are the moments where we are given by our relationship to the moment, A way in which we can be in relationship, Not just with the form, But with the creative nature responsible for that form, Something that is timeless, Can only understand what is timeless, And we must enter into that. Now, Let me tell you a story to set this further into clarity, God willing, And then we'll cover it in a more meaningful, Personal way. I wrote about this, I don't know in which book. It might have been the immortal, The book on immortal self. Anyway, This was a long time ago. I was living down in California, Probably 50 years ago now, More than that. And I was living in a beachside community, And they had an open market there. It's a bit of an upscale area where men and women would come and they would have booths. So you'd walk down maybe two 30-yard streets, Short streets, And on both sides there would be these booths. And they were filled with the works of artisans. There were people who were selling their artisan food, The organics, And all the rest of that. It was a lovely place, And there was always, Because it was near the ocean, A nice breeze there. And I'd been there a couple times and knew most of the stores, But in this instance, On that particular day, As I was walking down one of the two paths or alleyways, Whatever you want to call it, There was off to the left a completely new store. And I can still see it in my mind's eye as if I was there today, Which is the strength of that impression. Oh, The strength of impressions. Real impressions have the authority they do, They carry with them the gravitas that they do, Because they are a moment where something in us corresponds directly, Inwardly, With what we see outwardly. There is a relationship. Anyway, In my mind's eye, I can still see it. In this booth, Maybe it was, What am I going to say, Maybe 20 yards long, 10 yards deep, Were all of these benches, These wood benches. And on these small wood benches sat something that I had never seen before. And what I had never seen before, Up until that point, Was these small trees, Some of them only that big, Some of them a little bit bigger, But nothing taller than two or three feet. And what I was looking at now, I know, Were the bonsai trees. And if you don't know what a bonsai tree is, It's these miniature trees. In the Far East, Particularly in Japan, There's no room. I mean, You know, There's beautiful natural areas. But if you have a house amongst all of these people, You admire and love nature. And so bonsai trees were a way in which, The word actually means nature in a pot. Men and women over time would take, And they would take these trees and they would dwarf them. They would take specific species and cut down the top and trim the roots so that they were condensed relationships of nature, All that could sit in a pot in front of you. And I'd never seen anything like this before. Because what these trees represented in each of their individual unique style was some form of a tree that you would see in nature. I remember some of them, These windswept versions, Gnarled trunks, Just like you would see if you were at the ocean someplace, Where you see some kind of pine, And it's been sitting up on this bluff, The wind blowing it, Being beaten by the waters that would crack, All of that in that trunk, In that little tree, In a pot so shallow that no deeper than that. And as I stood and looked at these trees, I was overwhelmed. And I was overwhelmed because these trees, Some of them over 100 years old, These little bonsai trees, They exhibited, They manifested all of the suffering, All of the forces that had acted on them. They were all there in a tree this big. All of them weathered. And you could see it. Somehow there was a corresponding relationship. There was an infinite capacity for perfect similarity. Something in this man, In him, Me, Knew that even though I was in a public place, I'd been transported into a relationship with something that was timeless, That had, If you want, A way in which it was communicating to me, That which had been dormant in me, That could understand something without thought. Of everything that that tree had gone through, Just as when you go into the woods. One time, A long time ago, I went to Bhutan, Near Nepal, And we trekked high into the Himalayas. And there were entire areas. As you ascended, There were different plateaus and different creatures, Trees that grew. There was an entire area where, For whatever reason, Whether it was the winds or the conditions, Where all of the trees were dwarfed and bonsai, And all of them had all of that nature there. I still see that. Here's the point, If I haven't made it. Within our true nature is a kind of a mirror in which everything that is reflected outside of us already exists within us. And that when we know something and truly know it for the first time, It isn't the thing, It isn't the form we know. What we truly know for the first time is ourselves. Because within ourselves is that form, Is that suffering, Is the forces that produced the form and that suffering. All of that in us, All the time, Never not there. Because you can, At any point, Turn the corner if you're open and see something more breathtaking in the moment before. You're looking at the waving grasses and then you see the oak tree with the mustard beneath it. And you sit there in this silent, Rapt attention where something has drawn you to discover, Not a field and not an oak tree, But to discover that within you awaits this endless capacity to realize this similarity with what you're looking at. Why am I drawn, If you are, To look at a newborn child? It's because every single one of us, Within each and every one of us, That child lives its innocence, Its awakening. All of that sits there but forgotten. And so when we are present enough and experiencing what I'm describing to you, We start to realize that we are not the same. That it isn't so much that we go out and touch nature as it is that there is a perfect similarity. Anything that touches us touches its corresponding part. There's no exception. I'll go into this more deeply tomorrow. How can anything make an impression? Here's this bonsai tree in a pot, Or here's this gnarled spine on a cliff. How can it touch me? Unless there's something in me that has a quality that impression can be made within. So suddenly it isn't this or that. It is this and that. It is what I see and the seer as a singularity. No difference other than something appears to be outside of me, But the meaning of it, The beauty of it, The power of that impression isn't sitting out there. It would have no meaning out there unless the meaning of it, Which is not in thought, Were waiting within me to be awakened by that reflection and in the awakening to be realized, To gain true self-knowledge. We're taught about our innermost self in ways that most of us don't know we're being educated because there are parts of us, And I hope that you can see this with me, That have decided long before I see something that I don't want to see it. I'll give you an example. You're with somebody and they start acting out a certain kind of behavior. Now, Prior to that, You were kind of on board with that person. There was a relationship at some level, Enjoyable, I trust, And then something stirs in them, Something that they did not want to see or be going through, And then they become the instrument of that reaction. The minute they do and they begin to emanate that energy, Which is resistance, Maybe even looking at you with blame in their eyes, At that moment, I don't want to see you. I don't want anything to do with you. And so psychologically, We may sit there because we've been taught that we mustn't let blah, Blah, Blah. Maybe psychologically, Maybe physically, I sit there. Psychologically, I'm gone because I don't want to see what I think is you being the way you are. And because I don't want to see you being the way you are, I'm completely cut off from the fact that the only reason I'm experiencing you the way I'm experiencing you in that moment is because there is, In fact, A perfect similarity. I'm not you. I'm not having your thoughts per se. I'm not even involved in the source of the negative reaction, But I am involved in the field in that moment, And it is pressing itself into and upon me, And I don't want to see it. And I didn't want to see it before you expressed it. If you doubt that, How many people do you avoid simply because when you're with them, You know they are going to bring up inside of you something that you don't want to know about? You blame them for what you don't want to know about yourself. You blame others for what we blame others for what we don't want to know about ourselves in that moment. And if you've understood anything that I've said, On the high side, We love this idea of a perfect capacity for infinite similarity. Love it. Love looking at these people dancing. Love the experience of having judged someone on America's Got Talent, And suddenly they're performing at a level that I could only dream I could, But they don't look like they can do that. Then I'm all filled with loving this perfect loving this perfect similarity because, Oh my God, Look, Every human being is unique and each has a capacity for sharing something that no one else can, And I'm all on board. I love that, But God forbid that anybody or anything around me approaches me or I see it coming and something in me, I don't want to see it. I've rejected the revelation before I've realized the gift of it. I've rejected the revelation before I have realized, Let alone received the gift of it. And what's the gift of it? In this instance, The gift is to start understanding there is an invisible immensity to life. And the invisible immensity to life is that I am never not the instrument of revelations, Impressions, That if I'm willing to accept their movement inside of myself, Then in that same moment, I'm able, I'm given the right, If you will, To realize, As did Christ. Go back. Here's Christ. Here's Buddha. I don't care. Here's an awakened human being. They walk into a room and unlike you and I, When they walk into that room, They are already impressed, Meaning they already know, They see what is coming as they enter into the atmosphere. They see it because they are it. And because they enter into it, Seeing it, And realizing that they couldn't see and experience what's going on in that room, In that marketplace, Unless there were some corresponding part in them that had similarity to it, Then they understand. I must not act from the usual judgment of this moment of myself, Of others, But rather I have seen this clearly enough to know they don't know what they're doing because for my whole life, I didn't know what I was doing. All I knew to do was to be remanded over to a reaction. And the reaction said, I'm different than this. And to prove that I'm different from this, I will punish anyone or anything in that moment that is apart from myself. And by the way, Then I see as producing the pain, Failing to see that the awareness of the suffering in that moment is the immensity of that moment. The awareness of the suffering in that moment is part of its immensity. Why is it part of its immensity? Because for a split second or God willing longer, So that the full meaning of the impression can unfold. For a split second, I realize, God, That person, They're suffering. Look at them, They're all sitting there, They're negative, They're blaming each other. I can go in there and throw stones and become one of them. Or I can realize this infinite capacity for perfect similarity. And in discovering the similarity in myself, That is the gift of being in that moment, Realizing there is no end to what you and I are. High and low, Light and dark. And that's the immensity of life. That's where compassion is born. In recognizing in that moment exactly what is going on. Not because you have walked in and become the judge, Which is what we do. Believing that the judgment of someone or something somehow proves that we're separate from it. No, The judgment proves similarity because you can only judge in this instance what you've resisted. And you can't resist anything that passes through you that isn't a part of you. You can't judge anything that appears within you that isn't a part of you. So how does judging what appears within me prove that that's not me? Other than it creates and sustains the illusion of separation, Which is the heart of hatred, The heart of fear. How can we put what I'm describing to you into play? Once again, Kate, Please, Our infinite capacity for perfect similarity. How can we work with something like that? How many of you have asked and continue to ask time and time again, Why do I feel this way? Now, Maybe you haven't asked that in some of your relationships with others because God help us. For most of us, Our relationship with others, We know exactly why we feel the way we do. It's because that you're an idiot. They're stupid. They don't understand. Nobody gets it. So I feel the way I do because I'm other than you are. You are not. We are each and every one of us made in the image of God. And the image of God does not mean we're made in the image of some man or woman on a cross or sitting cross-legged someplace. It doesn't mean that we are somehow or other this divinity sitting up in space someplace casting its judgment out. It means that we are at all times, Much as Christ tried to intimate through the Lord's prayer, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let the earth and the heaven reflect each other perfectly because they are intended to reflect each other perfectly. But the problem is on earth, Something is interfering with that reflection. The waters of the mind are totally disturbed by this endless sense of trying to save ourselves from what we think is different than ourselves instead of allowing the reflection of everything that appears within us to help us realize the immensity of what we have been given as human beings, This capacity for perfect similarity. What with the Good Samaritan, Why would the Good Samaritan, Nobody else, All the religious people, The hypocrites, The Pharisees, The Sadducees, Why would they all walk by that wounded man on the street? Because they're other than he is. No, The Good Samaritan, This living light, Perfect capacity for infinite capacity for perfect similarity, Whatever it is, Infinite capacity for realizing perfect similarity. So why do I feel the way I do? Do you know that when you ask that question, Built into the question itself is denial. Built into the question, Why do I feel this way, Is denial, Is resistance. Can I ask why do I feel like this unless there's something in me that doesn't want to feel like that? And for us, This is the insanity of this, How far fallen the human race is. We believe that it's natural to be negative towards ourselves, Let alone towards others. You're the worst, You're stupid, You're never going to get it. Why do I feel this way? How come this happens? Every time you ask, Every time you ask, Why do I feel this way? You are denying the moment of seeing exactly what it is that is transpiring and revealing to you, Not who you are, But a part of what you are. And a part of what you are in that moment, You have been given the opportunity to realize it. How do you think a man or a woman comes upon the actual understanding of what it means to be a witness to life, To have an impersonal relationship with life? It doesn't mean you don't have personal relationships with people. It just means that you stop taking everything personally, Which makes your personal relationships a lot better, By the way, With everyone. Because now you're not flip flopping in this mood and that reaction. No, I feel the way I do because I am being shown something about my emotional capacity, An emotional capacity within which every emotion that will ever exist, Every movement that will ever take place is already part of me, Of my true nature. And to understand that infinite capacity is the beginning of understanding the invisible immensity of who and what you are in truth. But there's a cost because this part of me goes, Why are you this way? Why do I feel this way? This is a constant interference of a certain kind of buffer, Something that wants to keep this mind apart from the revelation and realization of its state. And that's the only way that we grow as human beings. We don't grow into becoming a better person. What a load of hooey you've been sold. You grow into understanding there is no person by your name, But within you and that name is an infinite possibility for discovering the immensity of your true nature. That's what's there. Does not the seed hold within it the vine that gave birth to it? Not a trick question. Does not the seed that fell from the tree hold within the seed the tree it fell from? And if you understand that, Of course, This is why Christ spoke of that idea. If you had the the faith of a mustard seed within the seed is the tree. I am the vine, You are the branches. Within the branches is the vine that gave it life. So that there is a perfect similarity between the seed and the tree, Between the vine and the branch. And the perfect similarity is that they are one another, Only they are one another in different realms at different levels of being. Our work is to discover where those different level of being meet. So that in discovering where they meet through these impressions that I will again go into tomorrow more deeply, Suddenly I realize I'm not being punished by seeing what I'm seeing in myself. I'm being offered the opportunity to stop judging myself, To simply realize this is a moment in which a movement is taking place, Much like in the ocean that I've walked into. I can't understand the ocean unless I enter into it. I can't understand what my true nature is unless I'm willing to enter into it. And I cannot enter into the awareness of my true nature as long as I have any ideas at all about what it is. It's impossible. The idea is the buffer. The idea is the separation. So giving time for you. Next time you, Why do I feel this way? Next time you start to go through that, Understand that there is something inside of you that does not want you to realize you cannot experience something in yourself that is separate from the self experiencing it. You cannot experience anything in yourself that is not a part of the self having that experience. The observer is the observed. That is the immensity because there's no end to that relationship. I got three or four minutes. We have three or four moments. I open it to you if you want to ask a question or make some comment and we can explore it. And again, You can always ask questions tomorrow after the class. Everybody's invited to do so. You can post them. Join me if you wish. And if not, I'll just take a breather for two minutes. Great. So what do we say to ourselves when we hate ourselves? Don't say anything. Stop talking to yourself. Why? Well, Why am I talking to myself? In every judgment, There is who I shouldn't be and connected to that, Inseparable from it is who I should be. All of that, Those opposites are nonsense. If I start to hate myself, What I need to do is realize that I'm identifying with something that's destroying me. I'm refusing to realize that there is something in me that would rather hate the moment than learn about it. There is something in me that would rather hate myself than learn the truth of it. I can't learn the truth of myself by pushing away the revelation of it. I learned the truth of myself by accepting the revelation and letting the revelation do within me what it is intended to do, Which is to show me, Again, This impersonal nature, This endless, Bottomless, Heaven-born divinity. Any input on when this self appears to see what feels like an overwhelming number of revelations. Yeah, Rebecca, You've asked this before. I don't mind answering it again. Try to connect everything we just talked about. Who's being overwhelmed, Rebecca? Who's being overwhelmed? Not just with the revelations born of what I call my spirituality. How about the revelations of how quick I am to flare up? How about the revelation of how I've judged someone before I meet them? How about the revelation of how deeply conditioned I am and that I'm always in conflict with anything that challenges the image I have of myself? No, The whole idea of being overwhelmed doesn't exist without resistance, Rebecca. Stop trying to deal with what's overwhelming you and bring your awareness into this nature that is always overwhelmed by anything it can't put into a comfortable pocket. The idea of no separation between the observer and the observer consistently escapes my understanding. How can I see it more clearly? Boris, You should thank God that the question is bothering you. There is no more valuable work. In fact, The end result of all of our spiritual work is for this little seed in time called myself to discover, In fact, That it is not different than the light, The tree from which it was born, That the branch of the vine, That this little bit of light is not separate from the light that cast it into the darkness that knows nothing about it. I could go on for years and will as long as I can draw a breath. If you understood the story that you see something and suddenly there is no you having the experience, There's just experience of another order of yourself that doesn't take thought. And in the experience of that other order of yourself, There is a completion of the self in that moment because it has realized itself its infinite capacity for perfect similarity through that moment, Boris. Join us anytime you can, Boris. This is the great work, Is bringing an end to the illusion of this separation. And the way the separation comes to an end is by discovering our infinite capacity for perfect similarity that the observer is, In fact, The observed. Gotta go. See you tomorrow, I hope. Do your work.

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Thanks Master