Break Out Of The Box Of Painful Negative Reactions

The agility of the “thinker” to explain and justify its mistakes – AFTER it makes them – is not insight; such “cleverness” is nothing more than its capacity to deceive itself, something it applauds each time it finds yet another way to navigate around the wreckage it tends to leave in its wake.

Transcript

This is kind of a true story.

And after I tell it,

I'm going to have Leah this morning bring in the key lesson.

So when she's posting it,

If you'll just hold your comments,

There'll be ample time.

I'll try to leave time at the end of our meeting to have a conversation with you.

So here's a young man and he's very much taken with this young lady.

And so he invites her over to his somewhat modest ranch style home,

But he has horses and he wants to impress her,

As you can imagine,

If you like somebody you're trying to do.

And she comes and she's a little bit nervous about going on a horseback ride.

But he assures her that he is a bit of a master on a horse and that she's been given one that is no problem.

Whereas he gets on a horse and she can see immediately,

This is quite the stallion,

Talking about the horse.

So off they go on their ride and everything's copacetic until about,

Oh,

An hour and a half into the ride.

Then they turn a corner and he says to her,

Well,

I guess it's time to go back.

And no more do those words come out of his mouth.

Then all of a sudden his horse rears up,

Almost throws him off and goes galloping back to the barn.

She tries to keep up and she notices right at the end,

He almost gets thrown off.

Finally,

They get off their horses and she says,

I don't understand.

I thought you said that you had control of the horse.

He says,

Well,

He said that the fact is that as a rule,

I have complete control of my horse.

That is until certain moments,

Something unexpected happens or I hate to say it,

The horse knows when I say it's time to go back and off he goes.

Now,

The story is meant to imply a certain experience that we all have with what we can call the horse of our reactions.

How many of you have complete control over your reactions until something unexpected happens,

Until somebody says something that causes it to rear up and run off with you?

And I'd like to see if you understand where we're going before I bring up the key lesson.

Does your horse run away with you?

No.

That anxiety,

That fear,

That rushing,

That regret,

That resentment,

These reactions that essentially turn into our reality for the extent of that ride.

And I wanna help you look at this in such a rival stable.

Yeah,

We all do.

Our horses all under the head of legion.

Let's get looking at it now.

Leon,

Let's bring up the key lesson and set the stage and we can get going.

Read along with me,

Everybody.

The agility of the thinker to explain and justify its mistakes after it makes them is not in sight.

Such cleverness is nothing more than its capacity to deceive itself.

Something that it applauds each time it finds yet another way to navigate around the wreckage it tends to leave in its wake.

The wreckage it tends to leave in its wake.

What would you say,

And I think I've given you a pretty good hint,

Is the one thing that always comes just before we do any kind of damage to ourselves,

Someone else,

Some kind of pain that we find ourselves suffering,

Even causing loss.

Again,

Not just to those that we're in relationship to,

But ourselves.

What is that one thing that always comes before what we wish we hadn't done?

Anybody?

Resistance is close,

But the answer is a negative reaction.

You say something,

I'm happy until you've said it.

You intimate something's wrong with me.

I hear something on the news.

I look in the mirror,

Reaction,

And a negative reaction.

So there's a summary resistance that produces this instantaneous reaction,

And the moment that that reaction rolls in,

Out we roll with it,

Playing whatever role it has given us to play,

So that what?

If you can see that we never act against ourselves or anyone else until something has reacted inside of us,

Capturing us in whatever that momentary sense of fear,

Worry,

Or doubt may be,

And then giving us instructions something to do in order to do what?

And this is one of the big questions here.

What is it that most of us try to do in the moment that we have one of these negative reactions?

What is our relationship to our negative reaction?

And I look,

I know for some of us,

This is like,

Man,

It's too early,

I haven't had my coffee.

Well,

Get over it.

How long do you have in this body to understand the complexity of an unconscious nature that presently is pharaoh to you,

That presently dictates to you,

Anytime it runs away with you,

What it is that you can and can't do,

Where you're going and where you won't be able to go,

And regardless,

Our ability to explain to ourselves these reactions,

Nevertheless,

They continue to come and grab us and turn us into people that we don't wanna be.

So I ask again,

In the midst of any of these negative reactions,

What is the one thing our relationship with it is defined by?

Can any of you guess quickly?

What is it that defines my reaction,

My relationship to a reaction?

John writes a resistance.

Again,

Look,

Yes,

There's resistance,

But that's not enough.

I don't want words,

I want to see.

I want to see,

Close,

Saving face.

We are always struggling to gain control over our own reactions.

Can you see it?

Here comes this anger.

I can't just,

I have to direct this anger.

I have to control this state.

Otherwise,

I'm gonna say something,

Do something I don't wanna do.

Here comes this anxiety.

Oh my God,

Now what?

So I want to somehow or other get this reaction,

And if I can,

Control it.

Somehow,

Take that reaction and mitigate the usual thing that I don't like about that reaction,

Which is that I lose my life to it.

I become identified with it.

That's correct,

Patrick.

And the moment this identification takes place,

There's no longer me and the reaction.

There is the unconscious nature that has given rise to that reaction,

And that I am defined by accordingly,

Relative to the extent of my identification with it.

We are always trying to gain control over our own reactions,

Finding somehow,

Wishing to change or avoid the condition blamed for it,

Or escape it if we can.

And here's the main question now,

If you're following me.

And please,

Am I in control of that reaction?

When you're anxious,

Afraid,

Are you in control of that reaction?

And if you understand the answer is unequivocally no,

That the horse has run away with you,

And that you're on the saddle,

Hanging on for dear life,

Trying to figure out how to explain to yourself and trying to figure out how to explain to your girlfriend or your boyfriend,

Meaning the other part of yourself,

How that happened.

How is it possible?

This is why people,

On one hand,

Love truth conversations,

And others despise them.

Because they ask questions that are uncomfortable.

The truth asks us to ask ourselves questions that bring up reactions we don't want.

And I say,

Hang the reaction you don't want,

And let's find out the reality of it.

How is it possible that I can be run by,

Controlled by my own reaction?

This is an important question,

And one that you one day will have to answer if you ever want to be at peace with yourself.

If you ever want to know a way in which it's possible to not become the vegetable somebody's suppressing,

Repressing these reactions,

But in a different kind of relationship with them.

Of course,

Easy to stay asleep.

How is it that I have this relationship?

So let's make a transition.

I've got to pick up the pace.

There are some reactions,

We all know them,

That are physical in origin.

So we don't necessarily become identified with them,

Because as an example,

I don't know if you've ever been in the shower in your home,

You have family or friends or whatever,

And you're in the shower,

Somebody in the next bathroom or downstairs turns on the cold water,

The hot water,

And someone flushes the toilet,

And in an instant,

Depending on the water pressure,

Suddenly the temperature of your water becomes scalding or ice cold,

And usually a shriek that follows.

I hope you've had one of these experiences.

It's important.

So in that moment,

There is a definitive physical reaction.

We're aware of the pain,

The shock,

And in that moment,

We're not identified with that reaction itself.

That's just a natural reaction.

Step out of the hot,

Turn off the cold,

Make the adjustment.

A natural reaction and a natural response to it.

But we can also see that following this physical reaction comes the psychological reaction,

Because as soon as that moment takes place and some relative control is regained over the physical circumstances,

What happens up here?

Now psychologically,

We begin to look for someone or something to blame for what happened to us.

So now we've gone from a natural reaction that has no identity into it,

To something that says,

You know,

I've told them a thousand times,

Don't do that when I'm like this.

Just follow it as best you can.

These psychological reactions,

They begin when something takes place.

Somebody says something that's unkind.

What happens in you when somebody intimates there's something wrong with you?

You've missed the mark in some way.

And the answer is there's always a heated reaction,

Some kind of stress that collects itself,

Picks us up literally,

And carries us off into thinking about that person or the condition responsible for the pain of that reaction,

As if that person or condition created our identification and the pain inherent in that moment of reaction.

So here we are,

And the first reaction,

Psychological,

Takes place.

And as it does,

Then it begins to talk to itself about all the events surrounding it,

And we get carried off in a chain reaction of some kind.

And it is literally a chain reaction of negative associations,

And they pile on,

And they pile on,

And they pile on.

Have you seen that in yourself?

How one reaction will give rise to associations connected to the person or the problem,

As you then react to and resist the associations your own mind is bringing up?

Think about that for a moment with me.

This reaction,

Mechanical,

The identification with it,

Presently unconscious,

And as that begins to formulate itself,

All the associations then begin to justify the pain of the experience I'm in,

And I'm identifying with all of them so thoroughly that there's no longer any difference between myself and those reactions for the duration of that experience.

I have become the dark energy.

I have incarnated the psychological construct,

Creating this conflict with what I say is the condition responsible for the reaction,

When we can begin to understand that the reaction may be inescapable at physical and psychological levels,

But our identification and captivity by those reactions,

That's what we're questioning.

Do I have to be a human being who,

Every time one of these reactions comes up,

Follows by reaction the same steps?

And what are they?

Event,

Reaction,

Reaction to it,

The naming of that reaction,

And as we name the reaction,

Listen to this,

As we name the reaction without understanding it,

We are naming our relationship to it.

When we name the reaction,

We are naming our relationship to it because the consciousness,

The unconscious nature that gives it the name already has a complete relationship with that name.

And the minute that I give that name and myself over to that relationship,

That construct of the past,

Now the path is laid out for me,

And it is not I who chose the path,

And it is not I who walks the path,

But it is indeed myself that is punished by being involved unconsciously in that chain of negative reactions.

I'll pause here for a moment.

Are you following the bouncing ball,

As it were?

Can you see the logic in what I'm describing to you,

The fact of it?

It's a phenomena.

Anytime this mind reacts,

It gives a name to the reaction because it believes this unconscious nature that it knows the nature of that reaction.

It believes it knows the nature of that reaction.

That mind does not know the nature of the reaction.

That mind knows the names that it has always given that reaction.

And every name is,

Again,

Inseparable from the knowledge of one's past so that my mind,

Your mind,

When it's reacting,

Names it and claims it and then tries to explain it.

And claims it and then tries to sort out all the suffering involved in the very naming of that reaction that it gave it.

In other words,

The continuity of that unconscious nature.

This is why if we are ever going to have a new relationship,

And this is what all of these talks are about,

How am I gonna have a new relationship with these reactions when I've spent the last 50,

60,

70 years,

Whatever it is,

Struggling with them?

Struggling to control them?

Struggling to somehow soften them?

Struggling to somehow escape them?

Struggling to bury them through medication and meditation?

Anything and everything to get rid of or otherwise free myself from reactions?

All failing and futile because the mistaken understanding is that somehow I am that reaction.

No,

You are not that reaction.

That reaction is a condition.

It is the response.

And until we understand the conditions that create these reactions,

Meaning inwardly,

We're going to be someone who lives from the old understanding of them.

And until we change that understanding,

Nothing will change for us.

To change our understanding,

We need new self-knowledge.

Because how else can I think towards any moment,

Let alone a reaction,

As long as those thoughts belong to the old nature responsible for the appearance of that reaction?

So this is where we make a transition.

First,

See it with me.

To use words,

Reactions are in real time,

In real time.

That means that their nature,

The nature of any reaction,

Is a confluence,

A meeting of something that is active,

An active force,

Touching something that is passive to it,

Like the sunlight touches the blade of grass.

And in that moment of that relationship,

There's no name to that reaction.

That reaction is inseparable from the creation that is coming forth from it.

And as that reaction unfolds,

It creates new conditions under which those same forces act again.

And every last,

In quotes,

Moment of that is impossible to describe,

To give a name to,

Even though we do it,

You wouldn't name,

If you're standing next to a river,

You wouldn't name one part of it different than the other part of it.

You might see that's flowing faster or slower,

But you understand the river is a flow,

And these reactions are part of a flow connected to a human being,

And if you want to use the words,

Creation.

So here I am,

And I am having these reactions that are part of creation itself,

And as part of creation nameless,

And yet I don't find them nameless,

I always find some name for them so that I can understand what it is that's taking place to me,

And I'm trying to get this one idea across to you,

That the name that we give any of these reactions is an echo.

It's an echo of a conditioned mind that calls on its past to explain the suffering or the discomfort,

The disturbance of the present moment,

And again,

As that conditioned mind names what is happening to it,

Then that same mind believes that it can begin to control what has happened to it,

Which is why it's named it,

Because it wants control over the reaction.

The key question is,

How is it possible for a man or a woman to be a captive of the very name given to those reactions?

How can I be,

How can a reaction run away with me unless I agree,

Without understanding why yet,

To derive a very distinct sense of myself from it,

And what is the nature of that self that wants to know itself through that reaction?

Again,

Let's look at this together.

I said that reactions are real time.

I spoke of this moment of creation.

Without getting too far into it,

Creation,

What is this moment of this perpetual reaction?

In the beginning,

God created the heavens and the earth.

This primal,

Initial reaction,

A ceaseless,

Inexhaustible marriage of celestial forces,

Manifesting,

Perfecting natural creatures to express these powers in finite forms.

Say it again.

The creation is this inexhaustible,

Constant marriage union of celestial planetary forces,

Meeting something manifesting from their union,

Perfecting the creatures that come out of these in finite forms.

Now,

What does that mean,

In finite forms?

Look outside,

Look at nature,

Look at anything.

All of these forms that you see are the seed of them,

If you want to use that word,

Is a reaction.

Nothing is revealed to us other than through a subsequent reaction to these forms as they come into creation.

Awareness,

Our awareness of the forms is inseparable from a reaction that we have to that revelation.

That's what awareness is.

It is the revelation of a relationship with a stream of ceaseless reactions.

Now,

This is,

The words themselves aren't so important to understand.

What's important is this big picture so that we can begin to see,

Like some of these revelations,

I love them.

I love to look at the trees when they're burgeoning with their new growth,

When the fields are beginning to turn brown and they move effortlessly in the wind.

We can feel those moments,

We're touched by them.

But what are we touched by?

Are we touched by the field,

By the flower,

By the tree?

Are we touched by the wind that moves them?

Are we touched,

If you will,

By a reaction that takes place in us to the reaction we see unfolding around us?

Oh,

I wish I was better able to say these things.

And if it's true that my awareness of life can't be separated from the reaction and the revelation of it,

And that the revelation is the reaction,

Where does the reaction begin and end?

Or is it just one?

One creation,

One movement?

Because that's what it is,

But not for us.

Because we're all on board.

We welcome all of these beautiful moments where there's balance and kindness and harmony.

We appreciate them.

And by the way,

The appreciation,

The gratitude for the things that we see that are beautiful and harmonious,

That gratitude is born of a reaction as well.

But we know all too well there comes a certain event.

The horse runs away from us,

A reaction and a subsequent revelation of some kind of dark character or quality latent in this consciousness that we don't even know is there.

And honestly,

If it weren't for whatever that condition is that triggers in this consciousness the sudden uprising of some unknown character or quality,

We wouldn't have any idea at all of what lives inside of us.

We would just live in the perpetual justification and explanation of these reactions instead of realizing that instead of being swamped by a negative reaction the way we are now,

Because we don't understand our actual relationship to it,

Instead of being swamped by it,

We can be realized through it.

We can gain new understanding about our own consciousness,

But not when these reactions come up and our first response is some kind of fear of them and the attempt to control them.

What is judging yourself?

What is blaming any other human being other than a reaction to a reaction?

You do something,

I have instantaneous resistance to it because it runs counter to the image I have of myself,

Some idea I brought into the moment.

And the moment I have that negative reaction,

A summary resistance to anything that challenges who and what I think I am,

Just like that,

Following that reaction is the judgment or the blame of the person seen as responsible for the revelation of something that I don't know what to do with.

Because all I've ever known growing up,

All we've ever been given,

Seen through our conditioned culture for millennia is that these reactions shouldn't be there.

Or God help us in the world today,

This is how sick things have gotten.

Today,

These reactions have become glorified.

So that the more touchy I am,

The more sensitive I am,

The more easily triggered I am,

Not only am I able to instantaneously find someone or something to blame for it,

But I can belong to a group of power seeking psychopaths who are going to squash or quash anything and anyone that dares to bring up in me this reaction because the problems with you,

Not with this unconscious nature in which lives these creatures that are yet to be completed by the process of our relationship to the awareness of them,

Which is the fact.

These negative reactions are simply indicators,

Leading indicators of our own unfinished business with our consciousness.

That's what these negative reactions are.

They are the appearance in a moment of something that comes up as it does,

That we cannot stop it,

Nor should we,

But that we don't understand at all the relationship that we have to them.

Everything that I'm talking to you about is intended to help broaden that understanding.

So I'm gonna get into the last part of this material.

Are we connecting?

Can you see some truth in what I'm saying?

And not because.

.

.

Yeah.

Who wants to be someone that lashes out at another human being?

Is there compassion of any kind in a negative reaction?

Is there any awareness at all in a negative reaction?

You don't have to be an Einstein.

I'm sitting at home.

The phone rings.

There's a summary reaction.

It's all unseen,

All unconscious.

I look at my clock sitting on my desk and it's 2.

30.

Oh my God,

I'm supposed to be somewhere at 3.

30.

Oh my God,

What happened to the time?

And our mind is picked up and our sense of self is put in a slot.

And once that slot has the name that it's given in an attempt to mitigate the suffering inherent in that initial negative reaction,

Everything else is done for us.

All just happens mechanically.

There's no possibility of anything transpiring within us to change our relationship to that reaction.

This whole talk is about how can I begin to change my habitual reaction,

My habitual relationship to the sudden onset of anxiety,

The sudden grip of fear?

So I've asked in the notes that I've covered with you,

If you can see the fact of this.

And more importantly,

Can you see that if there is indeed something in us that is just like that on the spot,

Like lurch from the Adams family to give a name to that reaction?

And Brian,

I'm talking about this now.

And we understand the name that is given to that reaction cannot be separated from our past experience with similar events so that the name that seems to be present and granting us power to control the condition through the choices associated with the name we give that.

Look,

If I name this moment as being because of something,

That means that I know the cause.

And the subsequent experience of knowing the cause of the reaction can't be separated from the parts of me that then say,

Since I know the cause,

I know what to do about the conflict.

And we have given ourselves the name of the cause and answered that cause through subsequent reactions by trying to control,

Avoid,

Or otherwise change the moment,

None of which have done anything other than leave us constantly in the hands of an unconscious nature that is there like that telling us what happened and what we have to do about it.

It's instantaneous,

But thank God,

It's instantaneous only relative to this dim-witted,

Presently sleeping intellect and heart that's almost hardened.

We have a capacity to be able to see and to allow the seeing to determine for ourselves the nature of our being.

Presently,

The nature of our being is not determined by seeing,

It's determined by naming.

It's determined by this instantaneous identification with the continuity of,

Well,

Now I know what this is.

Yeah,

I don't wanna feel like this.

Since I don't wanna feel like this,

I better find a way not to feel like this.

So short story quickly,

Bringing that to a conclusion,

If you see it,

There is something in us that we are in unconscious relationship with that as soon as it names the reaction,

In the naming of the reaction,

Off we go,

Being carried away by whatever the choices are,

That same unconscious nature offers us to deal with that pain.

So try to see this with me as we get to the end of our time together this morning.

I don't know how many of you know anything about a cuckoo bird,

But as I was sorting through these ideas earlier,

It became so evident to me what a great analogy.

The cuckoo bird is a kind of parasite in that it finds the nest of another bird and it lays its eggs in the nest of another bird.

That's what cuckoos do.

Now,

The reason the cuckoo lays its eggs in the nest of another bird is because it knows,

In quotes,

That the other bird doesn't even know the difference between its eggs and the cuckoo eggs.

And this is extraordinary because cuckoo eggs are much larger than,

Say,

A sparrow or a nuthatch.

But the sparrow,

The nuthatch doesn't know that,

And it tends to the eggs.

Now,

When the cuckoo,

Its eggs hatch in the nest,

It may be before the other eggs have hatched,

Or even if it's afterwards,

The cuckoo is a much larger chick.

And those chicks inevitably kick the other nestlings out of the nest.

And then the bird,

Whose nest it was to begin with,

Winds up feeding the very creature that took its chicks out of action.

So it feeds the thing that has destroyed its chicks.

You getting the picture here?

This is,

In much the same way,

This unconscious mind,

It gives birth to a reaction.

That can't be avoided.

But in the birth of that reaction is then that unconscious nature gives birth to a name.

And in giving birth to a name that is always incomplete,

Futile,

False,

To the reaction,

Because it can't know the celestial nature,

The moment of this continual creation intended to perfect the revelation of life itself.

And in the moment that it names that reaction,

Reaction,

So is born the illusion of a self that steps in to control that reaction that doesn't exist without the sense of self that named what it doesn't want.

Just like the cuckoo bird.

This unconscious nature lays into this,

Lays into our mind,

Into our awareness.

This unconscious nature lays the egg of the past,

Lays the eggs of the names.

And then because we don't know that we aren't those names and that we don't need names to be in control of anything at all,

Then just like that little bird nurturing the cuckoo eggs,

We nurture the seeds of our own destruction.

We literally care for the parts of us that are unendingly in conflict with anyone and everything that challenges the image we have of ourselves.

And in the moment that that swap takes place,

Given that name,

And then the false self that named it takes responsibility for raising it,

The false self that names the reaction,

Then literally raises,

Itself and that reaction,

Until by a change in condition,

Some other reaction grabs us and all that residue is left in the background.

But it doesn't go away,

It becomes the seed and the continuation of the next set of reactions.

So what are we to do if we've understood this?

It should be inherent in everything,

Implicit in what we've talked about.

If I can see anything at all about truthful,

About what I've described,

About the unseen workings of this mechanical mind and the great harm that it does,

But that it never accepts responsibility for,

Then in the awareness of the whole of that,

Somehow or other,

God help me,

I have to stop giving these reactions a name.

I have to somehow or other stop giving these reactions a reason to live.

Think about this with me.

If I name the reaction and then become identified with the associations connected to it,

Am I not literally becoming the incarnation of those conflicted energies and in my identification with them,

Giving them a reason to live on at my expense?

This is not,

I'll say it,

I'll affirm it instead of the other way.

To see these things is the beginning of you changing your relationship to the unconscious mechanism that creates the misery.

It's the end of the continuity of fear.

It's the end of the continuity of anxiety.

The end of the continuity of impatience and resistance and cruelty.

Because instead of identifying with the sudden revelation of some unknown character in my own consciousness that does not want the light of God,

That does not want the awareness of itself,

Instead of identifying with the resistance,

I take the place and the part of that new understanding.

And it changes my relationship and with every even minute change in what I see is changed the whole of what I'm looking at.

Because I begin to understand I do not have to try to control these reactions.

I do not have to try to be anything at all.

What I must do if I'm going to use those words,

And I will go into this more deeply tomorrow on Sunday when I speak,

I understand the new relationship that I require with these reactions is to find a completely different way in their appearance to understand not just why they have appeared without using thought.

This isn't about thinking.

This isn't about thinking.

You pick up a hot skillet,

You don't have to think to yourself,

What do I do with it?

You watch this mind name something and then build a chain of associated painful thoughts.

The minute you see the chain maker,

You realize it is you that is being chained.

And in the instant that you see,

I'm about to be chained to this flow of associations that are nothing but heartache and pain,

That's over.

And then you get the opportunity to see that even if you understand it should be over,

There's something in you that doesn't want it to be over.

I can't just let this go on like this.

I can't be someone who lets you or this or them be that way.

I must be something else.

And I tell you that every time that sense of I appears like that,

You have just lost any chance you have of knowing anything real about true I,

About who you are.

I've gone on a little too long.

I trust that we've connected a little bit.

I hope we have.

You can see it.

If you want to open your eyes,

Open your eyes,

Open your eyes.

Reactions are the instantaneous closure of a certain feature you have that can see.

So don't let your eyes be closed.

Choose to see regardless what you're given to see.

And then you will see a change take place.