How to break out of the box of painful thoughts.
So let's make sure we are all starting in the same place.
How many of you understand that?
At least from time to time,
You are indeed seemingly caught in a box of painful thoughts and feelings.
I always want to be sure I'm talking to the same.
Or the right people.
And yet.
Under certain circumstances,
If you sit down and talk with you or you sit down and talk with others,
It seems as if we know everything that's going on and we know what the problem is and we know what's true and so forth and so on.
And to some extent,
There's no doubt that that may be.
But I want to start by reading to you the key lesson for today's talk that I'll ask Kate to put up.
And we'll just spend a moment looking at it together.
Even if I am told what is true,
It is not yet the truth.
Even if I am shown what it is true.
Even if I am shown what is true,
It is not yet the truth.
Only as I see what is true for myself does revelation begin,
And with it the work of resting from my labors.
For having glimpsed a peace that passes understanding.
I just want to spend a moment on that one phrase.
Only as I see what is true does revelation begin,
And with it the work of resting from my labors for having glimpsed a peace that passes understanding.
Christ said,
My yoke is easy.
My burden is light.
When you begin to see what it is that you need to see.
With that revelation comes a responsibility,
But fulfilling that responsibility,
If you're willing to go through what is required,
Is the beginning of your work of resting from your labors.
Labors that you don't know you are caught up in.
As what you believe is the way to free yourself from your labors,
But they are not,
And we're going to look at this together.
So that speaking of labors,
Laboring with what?
I have a short story to share with you.
Take a deep breath.
I hope that you'll get the subtlety of it,
But no worries if you don't.
We're going to go on and look at this deeply,
Including a visit from Christine to the doctor,
One of my favorite of storylines.
So once upon a time there was a great king.
Poo over it!
Many,
Many years and generations.
Ensured that all of the people living in his kingdom were safe from any marauders.
But from time to time,
He could be heard in a great lament up there on that parapet,
Looking over his kingdom,
Protected as it was by all of the walls.
And one day,
One of the knights that was up there said,
I'm wondering what's wrong?
That you have this lament as you do.
When nobody is more safe and secure than you are,
Than we are.
And the king looks at the knight and says,
I don't know if you fully understand,
" he said,
But given how over the centuries myself and my predecessors have built the most elaborate enemy-proof castle set of walls ever made.
I don't know if you understand the implication of that.
What implications can you be talking about?
You have built walls that ensure nothing gets in.
And the king says,
I know.
And that's my sorrow.
The night confuses,
How so?
The king said,
I have created so many protective layers.
I forgot how to get out.
And no one else knows the way either.
I've created so many protective walls.
I forgot how to get out.
Of them.
Beyond them.
And no one else knows the way.
Can you see the relationship between this little story?
I'm trusting you can catch the subtlety of it and the key lesson.
You can think to yourself all day long about how you know this and how you are that.
And with each thought and subsequent identification another wall.
Another set of boxes.
In which,
As you Identify with what you think you know,
Your opinion,
Each and every one of them creates without understanding on our part that it does so.
Something that seems to protect us when in truth it's imprisoning us.
This is the great mystery,
Spiritually speaking.
How can I be busy figuring out how to protect myself?
And we'll go through this in a minute.
And with every action to protect myself,
I'm imprisoning myself.
And I would deny until the cows come home,
That's not true.
But if I look at it closely.
If I'm honest with myself,
Am I actually freer?
Or are there just longer periods of time in which it seems I'm free only to suddenly find out I can't get out of this thought?
I can't get out of this feeling.
So that if we look honestly.
.
.
So often,
And I'm asking you,
Are we not struggling with some feeling of being,
What,
Cornered by a familiar gang of worried,
Anxious thoughts and feelings?
Cornered by them.
You know what that means?
Almost as if we were boxed in by them,
And they are having their way with us.
Can you see that in your life?
Everything's great until suddenly it's not.
Everything is free until suddenly I feel pinned by my own thoughts and feelings.
And then once that happens,
I start pushing back.
And the more I push back,
The more plans elaborate they become for me to escape.
And then I think I escape,
Failing to see that all I have entered into is the nature of that thought system,
That by my identification with it ensures I remain its prisoner.
Can you see this with me?
To some extent,
That's what the little story was meant to help you understand.
We're going to look at the dynamic of this deeply.
Where it is that the more we feel trapped,
The more we push back against the walls.
The more we push back,
The more frustration,
Desperation appears.
The more desperation,
The more immediately new desires appear.
New compulsions driving us left and right,
Promising we'll find this new escape system So in those moments identified with the plan,
We imagine that we're actually outside the box.
Only to find out that what we imagined was outside of the box becomes one of the walls in the box when suddenly something challenges it.
Are you able to see that with me?
Both positions,
Whether we think we're outside the box,
Thinking about what's going on inside the problem,
Or we feel trapped inside of it,
We're trying to figure out,
Both positions belong to the same box of thoughts,
Where the sense of ourselves as the one thinking about how to escape the box is just another room inside of it,
Just another construction inside of the system that's creating that box and the self that feels boxed in by its own activity.
Before I go on to the story I have,
I want to make sure we are still.
Tracking this idea.
Because I'm going to share with you something And I will do so deliberately so that as Kate posts what I ask her to,
You will see.
What is invisible.
One day you won't need others to help you see what is invisible.
You will have the eyes to see,
The ears to hear,
The senses to procure.
What is seemingly impossible and prove to yourself that not only is it possible,
But part of your imprisonment is because you don't see it.
So here's Christine.
If you've never studied with me before,
I tell a story about a spiritual warrior.
Her name is Christine.
She's been studying her whole life,
It seems.
Wanting to understand why it is that she goes through the things that she does and she goes to see the good doctor.
Who we could think of as being wisdom.
Who we could think of as being that which knows before we do what it is that we don't know but think we do and helps us to see that we're and how we are trapped by these mistaken thoughts.
So she goes to see the doctor.
And he says,
Hi,
Christine,
What's going on with you?
Well,
As you know,
It's sort of.
The same thing,
I think that I've gained some understanding,
I feel a little freer,
And the next thing I realize that I haven't gained the freedom that I thought I did.
Which one day you will understand.
I'm speaking to you now directly.
You'll understand the.
.
.
The terrible mistake that comes with suddenly feeling like,
Ah,
I'm free.
I've gained freedom.
I've gained understanding.
There is no such I.
You will see and understand this as you go.
He says,
Well,
Tell me what's going on.
She says that.
I'm almost ashamed to say this,
But more and more I'm feeling like I'm trapped.
In my own life.
It makes no sense.
Like I keep reliving the same event only with different people and under completely what I would call new circumstances.
That I planned and imagined as a way to escape the feeling of being trapped.
And then I find myself trapped in new circumstances,
Which is impossible because they're nothing like the old ones I was trying to get away from.
It makes no sense,
He said.
And on top of that,
She said,
I'm more fortunate,
And I know that I am.
Than most others,
There's no doubt of it.
But it's like I'm.
Stuck in a world that's growing.
Smaller.
And I know that's not possible.
And yet that's exactly how it feels to me.
I'm unable,
The more I try.
To change and control these.
Conditions.
The smaller seem things to get,
Things seem to get.
Can you help me?
Because it's with my family,
My friends,
And at work.
And he says to her,
I'm pretty sure that I understand what's going on with you.
He said,
We'll run some natural tests.
Which is very important,
He said,
We want to eliminate what we can discover if there's organic conditions.
But I'm 99% sure I know what the problem is.
Come back in a day or two after we've done the test.
She comes back and he says to her,
I was right.
Your condition is becoming organic because you're in a certain set of conflicts with what is natural to you without knowing it.
He said,
But before I tell you what's going on,
He said,
I want to describe to you something that you need to understand.
So that you will understand the diagnosis.
He said,
Do I have your attention?
And she said,
Yes,
I do.
Read along with me now on the board.
He said.
Cellular mitosis.
Is the process where a single cell duplicates its DNA and divides into two identical daughter cells.
That's cellular mitosis,
The fundamental mechanism the body uses for growth,
Tissue repair,
And replacing old worn out cells.
He says to her,
It's a natural,
Beautiful process.
It's essential to creation,
To life as we know it.
He said,
Do you understand?
She said,
I've heard of that a little bit.
I've heard of cellular mitosis.
I get it.
Everything starts that way.
One cell becomes two,
Two,
Four,
So forth and so on.
The building block He said,
That's exactly right.
He said,
Now,
He said,
Keeping that in mind,
I'm going to give you the diagnosis of what you're suffering from.
And here it is.
You,
Christine,
Are suffering from cellular mitosis.
A self-perpetuating box of thoughts in which you not only feel as if you're trapped,
But whose walls you keep creating.
Where the more you struggle to escape this sense of confinement,
The more real you make it seem.
This,
Christine,
Is an unnatural process creating a false sense of life.
Natural cellular mitosis.
Unnatural cell filler mitosis.
Self-healer mitosis.
What is self-healer mitosis?
What am I describing?
I'm describing how a mind that is divided against itself will take a thought that it generates as a result of a reaction or impression And then as it creates a thought made from the content of itself,
It divides itself up from that thought,
Believing the thought it is looking at is other than the nature that created it.
And when it looks at a thought as an invader,
A problem,
A fear,
That it doesn't know it has literally imagined into existence,
Then it begins to resist the condition it has created.
And that is cellular metosis.
Tell me you were able to follow me and understand self-healer mitosis.
Because if you can start to see this,
That's why I started the material talking about people can tell me what's true.
I can be shown these things,
But if I don't see it for myself,
If I don't see self-healer mitosis,
If I don't see how my mind creates what thinks is an intrusion into what it knows,
And then resists not what is actually taking place,
But something that's challenging what it's identified with,
The box is formed.
And the bigger,
The stronger the walls of that box,
The more certain I am that somehow or other something's holding me down.
Something got a hold of me.
It's terrible.
What do I do?
And I fight,
I struggle against the walls of a box that don't exist without the thinker engaged in its own thoughts and resisting them.
Everybody get it?
Cellular mitosis is taking place in real time.
This isn't some fantasy.
And we're so conditioned to struggle against its negative effect.
That we're actually blind to what's creating it,
Because resistance to these painful thoughts is produced by the same mind that has brought them into your attention and become identified with.
So cellular mitosis is a self-perpetuating psychological process.
Where every painful thought that follows a negative reaction,
Work with me.
Oh,
What?
What?
Boom.
There it is.
I didn't,
What?
Oh.
Here's this negative reaction.
Now something has to know what caused the negative reaction.
And the mind searches the content of itself for something that best resembles whatever the feeling is of that reaction.
And it pulls up that thought.
Now,
Every thought the mind pulls up out of the darkness of the closet itself is already fully conditioned.
It already has experience sitting behind it.
So the mind brings up a thought that is a memory,
A certain experience loaded with emotional content.
And here comes that thought.
And that thought by its nature creates an opposing thought,
An opposing reaction.
And so worries and fears,
These things just go on and on where one becomes two,
Two becomes four,
Four becomes eight.
And if you do the math,
It's not long before you are contained inside of a box of thoughts and feelings that you believe as someone to whom those thoughts and feelings are happening is being done to you when you are doing yourself in by identifying with that first reaction,
That first thought,
Drags you into what it says is the problem,
The consequence.
Everybody still with me?
Because I'm going to make a transition.
So we have to ask ourselves.
Why,
If we're honest,
Am I always more or less finding myself inside this box?
And I'll define the box a little bit for you.
The box is that same feeling that comes over you when people contradict you.
The box is that terrible sense of jeopardy when you see or hear something in the news,
And it seems to have some kind of consequence relative to whatever it is that you're attached to and identified with.
And now this superstructure called myself starts to shake.
Because there was never any structure other than thought and my identification with them and anything that challenges that house of cards causes it to tumble.
So the box is made of cards.
And calling then,
When that happens,
On my most rational thoughts,
Yes or no,
Uh-oh,
Without any problem at all.
I'm handed off to a series of explanations,
Maybe affirmations,
Maybe some religious fallback position where I console myself with whatever it is.
So that I'm forever in one way or another rationalizing.
What is going on around me.
And I don't know if you've seen this in yourself.
The mind will come up with,
Well,
What's the worst that can happen?
And then it kind of wants to get comfortable with whatever.
Then it kind of wants to get comfortable having ascertained what the worst is that can happen to it.
Because now at least it's comfortable with whatever the consequence may be because it's sort of rationalized how it'll be okay if it gets to that.
Have you ever seen that in yourself?
So every fearful explanation produces the need for more explanation.
Every fearful explanation produces the need for more explanation.
That's why it never stops.
Every struggle to escape some painful thought just adds another chamber to that box.
Because we think we're outside the box dealing with what's inside the box.
And there's no one outside the box.
And by the way,
There's no one inside the box.
So there's this mind boxed in by the content of its knowledge,
Its past,
And forever trying to figure out a way to get past its own past,
Which it can't do.
So,
Transition.
The walls of this box that I'm describing.
Are not merely,
In quotes,
Surrounding us.
We're just,
We just never stopped rebuilding them.
This is why I said that when we start to see for ourselves the truth,
Then we begin the work of resting from ourselves.
Because as I see that the problem isn't my efficiency,
The problem isn't how good I am or not with what I'm dealing with.
The problem is that that mind never stops doing by compulsion what it feels it has to do to escape the conflict it blames on the world outside of it.
The world outside of us,
Yes,
Is filled with conflict because it is a reflection of this level of consciousness.
So the first conflict is in this consciousness.
It is not out there.
The first conflict with anyone or anything in your life is not out there.
It is in a nature that meets that moment already convinced that it knows how that moment should be,
Or how you should be,
And then finds dissatisfaction and then imagines a way to get through it.
And the way through it just builds another chamber in that box into which we are further boxed in.
Still with me?
Because I want to look at something personal with you.
I've been hinting at this.
What are some of these boxes?
What are some of these boxes from the least to the so-called greatest?
They are essentially the same.
That's the other thing.
They say,
Well,
I'm in a small box.
Well,
That's a big box.
All boxes are the same because none exists without a nature that is boxing itself in,
Believing that it is liberating itself or finding a way to liberate itself.
So as an exercise,
It would be wise.
After we're done with this meeting for you to make a short list.
Of maybe the two or three most common boxes of painful thoughts and feelings that you find yourself caught in,
And by the way,
Usually on a daily basis.
I don't know if you'll do it.
I don't know why you wouldn't do it.
You spend time to come and listen to the speaker.
Who takes time to help you understand these things so that you can investigate,
Explore,
And understand them directly.
And not think you understand them because you heard a talk.
Make your own list.
Here are a few examples.
How often does the thought of someone that you don't like or some condition you fear may happen,
Seem to innocently pop into your mind.
You can't count it.
You're sitting having a cup of coffee.
You look over and you see somebody dressed in a certain way.
Up comes some intolerant state that says people shouldn't be like that.
And in that moment,
You can't see,
Boom,
Box.
You're driving in your car,
You think,
Relive a conversation with somebody.
The minute that that conversation passes through you,
That you did not bring up yourself.
Boom,
That thought,
What they said comes up,
Box.
Why?
Because now you're talking to your own mind to somehow or other get through the pain of what your mind produced.
And you believe that you must answer it and deal with it.
And every answer,
Every way you try to deal with any painful thought or feeling just sucks you into that box that was created the moment you identified with whatever that reaction was.
Perhaps your mind starts looking at the news or,
You know,
You see a funny mark on your body.
By the way,
The older you get,
The more funny marks you find.
And the split second there,
The little pain,
A little pain in my chest.
What?
What's that?
And the moment you have that reaction,
A,
You don't know,
It isn't you that asked,
What's that?
The question,
Uh-oh,
What's that?
Comes out of a mind trying to resolve a disturbance that passed through the entire system that it doesn't recognize.
So the mind goes,
What if?
And then it starts imagining how from the content of the movies and the TV shows and the hospital visits,
It starts imagining what that means.
And the more the mind imagines that negative consequence,
The more it resists its own imagining.
And as it resists its own imagining,
Then it divides itself up again into what about this?
What about that?
Maybe I should do this.
Maybe I ought not do that.
And you can see from 1,
2,
2,
4,
4,
8,
8,
16,
32,
64,
128.
And now all of a sudden you are completely captured by this box of thoughts that you,
Without knowing it,
Stepped into the moment you were tempted by that initial reaction to try to derive what it meant.
How about this for a box?
The box of regrets.
How many of you know the box of regrets?
Talk about a bottomless box.
We're tempted to enter into this tormenting series of regrets.
Which we seemingly are drawn into that in order to escape the pain of a thought that we didn't bring up.
But that came up like some kind of dark gas out of a tar pit.
And now we're tormented by this thought.
And our answer to the tormenting thought is to jump into the tar pit,
Get stuck in all of the movement of that mind as it tries to escape the condition it itself has tempted you to enter into.
Do you see this with me?
How about this for a box?
Have you ever said something you wish you didn't say or did something you wish you hadn't done?
All the time,
If we're honest.
Now,
As a rule,
We don't know that we wish we didn't do it.
But if we find ourselves talking to ourselves,
Explaining to ourselves,
Justifying why we said this or did that and how they made me like this,
And I wouldn't do it.
The minute that we find ourselves in an explanation,
What am I explaining?
I'm explaining the fact that suddenly I feel boxed in by something that I don't know what to do with because that's out of character for me.
Ordinarily,
I would never be like that.
And so when you find your mind wrestling to rationalize,
Which is what it's doing,
Its reaction and the thought that came up.
You must recognize,
Oh,
You know what?
That's a box!
And I can't get out of a box that I create.
I can't get out of a box that is a creation of an eye that believes it is other than what it's analyzing.
So again,
I have to go on.
Make your own list.
Find those ways and those places where you find yourself in a box of painful questions.
How about that?
Do you ever feel yourself boxed in by questions,
Simple questions?
What am I going to do later today?
As if it's not enough just to be where I am,
Experiencing what I'm being given,
Part of the movement thought,
What am I going to do?
And the next thing you know,
Two gives to four,
Four gives to eight.
And the next thing you know,
You bought a ticket that you can't afford to Spain.
To go watch a bullfight you don't want to be in.
Make your list.
Second key lesson,
Kate,
Please.
Read with me,
It summarizes what we've looked at so far.
Any question rooted in fear can never flower into a fearless answer.
Any question rooted in fear.
Any question that unfolds inside the box can never flower into a fearless answer.
It's impossible.
The more you see that,
The more suspicious you'll become,
Properly so,
Of what happens inside of you when suddenly you find yourself as if as was with Christine,
Feeling trapped.
Trapped in my own life.
Shift.
Transition.
Unlike human beings.
Nature herself and all of the creations in it.
Never stop revealing the promise of another possibility.
Where I live here on the bay in Florida.
There are some ospreys,
They're like small,
They're kind of a hawk.
There are definitely eagles.
And they predate,
They pick fish up out of the water or pick up fish that have floated to the top.
And an eagle.
Like that.
You could think to yourself,
It lives in a wild box.
Meaning that it definitely has boundaries,
But it's not,
It doesn't feel punished by them.
It's not limited.
By the world that it has been created to explore and develop through.
Now you take an eagle,
That same eagle,
And you put it in an aviary,
What happens to that eagle?
No matter how grand the aviary is,
It becomes restless,
If not purely neurotic.
And why does the eagle in the aviary become neurotic?
Because in that box it can't explore its natural gifts.
In order to know its gifts,
It requires space,
It requires a place for those gifts to unfold and be realized according to what it meets inside of that world it has been designed to participate in.
You can see this with me,
I trust.
I rely greatly on nature to help understand.
The celestial is hidden in the common.
And the same holds true of us.
Just as nature has granted the eagle these wings to explore the open skies,
Within which that eagle gets to realize an unprecedented level of freedom.
So does and has the divine endowed us.
With corresponding spiritual possibilities,
Waiting for us to realize the freedom that comes with awakening these possibilities.
Now,
We all know that this that within us there is this kind of little light.
Now we may glorify it and falsely so imagining this and that,
But this little light within us,
Is a presence that reveals by its nature,
Something of this box of this darkness that we experience when we find ourselves boxed in with thoughts and feelings.
That make that confinement all the more obvious.
You know,
No creature in nature feels confined.
On my deck here.
I've made friends with some lizards.
At least I think I've made friends with them.
And pigeons.
Now a pigeon can't fly like an eagle,
But it doesn't think to itself,
Oh god,
I wish I was an eagle.
The lizard that sits there and does its little push-ups,
Trying to attract a female.
Men are the same everywhere.
It doesn't feel limited by the fact that the totality of its area to explore and live in and dine from may be less than a quarter of an acre.
Because it doesn't need more than what it is given to understand its possibilities.
But you and I?
By the grace of God,
We can feel,
I call it,
Divine dissatisfaction.
We can feel limitation.
And not that psychotic sense of limitation when you compare yourself to someone who has more than you do or who do things that you can't do.
That's insanity.
I'm just saying that here is Christine and in this world,
She has more than most.
And yet she feels like she's limited.
She feels as if she's a captive of something.
How could she feel she's a captive of something unless there was something unlimited in her pointing out the fact that this is an unnatural boundary that you are boxed in and you don't know it.
And this pain is not the result of the condition you blame for your captivity,
But it is born of a consciousness that holds you captive that you're still identified with.
I know that was a lot of words in a short time,
But did you get the gist of it before I go on,
Please?
We're going to come to a key lesson and exercise.
Be patient.
The key lesson in exercise is in two parts.
I'll ask Kate to put up part one first.
We'll explore it and then we'll put up part two.
Here's part one.
The best way.
To avoid being trapped in any box of painful thoughts and feelings.
Is to catch yourself in the act of constructing it.
Then the solution is simple.
Stop enabling an unconscious nature.
That can't stop creating the conflict it says it doesn't want to feel.
People,
What do I do?
How do I do this?
Catch yourself constructing.
This sense of being captive.
That is exacerbated and validated with every wish you have subsequently to escape a box that you just made the walls of.
If you see you're constructing it,
If you see that the solution is simple,
Stop enabling the part of you that is participating in this tat,
Tit for tat,
This domino series of dark thoughts and feelings promising to come out in the light someplace where all they do is go deeper into the darkness that creates them.
That's part one of the exercise.
Part two.
Important.
Read along with me.
You're halfway.
Out of the box of thoughts the moment you know you've stepped into one.
You're halfway out of the box of thoughts the moment you've stepped into one.
The other half of the journey is to stay out.
By watching the parts of yourself that are tempting you to walk back in.
Do you see it?
If I suddenly realize.
.
.
I'm in a box of thoughts.
Am I in the box if I realize it?
Or is something,
Is there an observer that is now outside of the box realizing,
Oh,
Wow,
I can actually see,
I've stepped into a box.
The beginning of that seeing of stepping into the box is the first part of the journey.
It's actually a first shock.
The second part of the journey is to watch how the moment that takes place,
Something in you is saying,
Come back.
Don't leave me here.
Says the devil.
And then it'll cry out in all of its plaintive ways why it feels this and how you can have this power if you just agree to come back into the box where it will endow you with everything you need to finally transcend the captivity of a lower consciousness that lives to keep you a captive of itself.
You able to see the exercise with me?
To understand it.
You can do it right now.
If only you understood this.
You know why you're so drawn to this endless relationship that humanity has now with whatever it's watching on its cell phone?
I'm not saying don't enjoy a reel from time to time.
But reels and all of the things that captivate your attention without you knowing it puts you inside of a box where it's just like being in Las Vegas.
This little picture,
This comment,
This post,
This memory.
Which isn't by accident that your machines bring up these things for you to look at,
Because the minute it comes up,
It triggers the memory.
The minute the memory is triggered,
So is the identity connected to it.
And the minute the identity is connected to a memory,
Now it requires that that memory,
That sense of self remains stimulated.
So real,
Whatever it may be,
The image,
The picture,
It brings this reaction.
This reaction needs to continue itself.
It builds the box and you step into it.
And having no idea that what you call this pleasure of whatever it is that you're pursuing is a way in which this nature is distracting you and dragging you deeper and deeper and deeper into a world where eventually there will be no outside of the box at all.
Which is what Christ called the outer darkness.
The weeping and wailing,
Gnashing of teeth,
That's not a metaphor.
It's what happens when without knowing it,
The unwitting potential soul.
Sabotages itself,
Or more accurately,
Agrees to be taken into a series of experiences that as the attachment and dependency grows on a false sense of self,
That that experience produces,
Lo and behold,
My eyes leave altogether the possibility of even knowing what it means to look up,
Because all I can do is look into that box and find some sense of myself by which to be comforted,
Or in other words,
To escape the fact that I'm in a box.
Kate,
Let's bring up the summary key lesson.
If we persist.
Far enough along the path.
Comes a glimpse of a liberating revelation.
It's the only thing that can be caught in a box of painful thoughts.
Is the tormented thinker that creates it.
Soon after,
As part of the ripple effect of this shocking illumination,
Dawns the truth that sets us free.
Nothing can capture awareness.
Let alone our divine right to attend to the new creation always being reborn within it.
If we persist far enough along the path.
If we stop.
Doing the work.
Of trying to save ourselves from this increasingly crushing sense of self,
These thoughts and feelings,
The weight of them adds to us.
A thought and a feeling has no weight save for our resistance to their appearance.
The weight of a painful thought is the extent of our resistance to its appearance.
And the more you see that the resistance to a painful thought is inseparable from the box in which both appear,
The more you start to have an understanding,
A glimpse of a revelation that no mind will ever grasp,
But can only be seen.
I have been contributing to my own captivity.
And I haven't known that it's been so.
But for the light now that reveals to me my complicity in the creation of this box and my participation in it.
For that light that shows me that,
For that awareness that alone reveals this unaware sleeping nature,
In that rests my safety.
And in that is my right as a human being,
God-given,
To experience what is continually being reborn in that light,
In that new life.
There is no new life inside the box of thoughts and feelings,
Regardless how promising are the sensations that appear within it.
When a human being starts laying plans to escape that box.
So.
.
.
I always say now I've got five minutes if you are interested,
If you want to bring up some kind of consideration,
Something that you are interested in exploring with me,
I'm happy to go ahead and talk to you about that.
As you wish.
You can post in this box.
And we'll see what comes up.
And if not,
Any of you want to look at a box?
Any of you suspect?
I know why they did it.
Or said that,
Yeah,
Of course that's a box.
Seeing loved ones trapped is so painful.
Archer.
Of course it's painful to see people that you love trapped.
But first,
Attend to the pain of the trap that you find yourself in as you identify with being someone unlike them,
Who is in fact just as trapped as they are.
Identification with reaction is a trap.
Pure and simple.
How to discern between.
Between insight and thought.
Nikki asks,
How do I discern between insight and thought?
Very simple.
Insights are always pure.
They don't have anything added to them,
Nikki.
When you have a true insight,
It is full and complete.
Now you may,
After an insight,
Want to explore it with thought,
Which is your prerogative.
And sometimes valuable to do,
But an insight is complete.
Thoughts are always incomplete.
If you have a thought that calls itself an insight,
And then it wants to just kind of go on and on and on,
That is not an insight,
But now you can have an insight into that.
What to do about seeing your friends and family trapped.
Be as present as you can,
Archer.
Watch without judgment.
The sadness that you feel when you see someone trapped in a state.
Is actually a continuation without you knowing it of that state that they're in because they pick that up from you.
They pick up your resistance and your resistance to their state is part of the box that holds both of you in that moment.
Debbie says,
You've said when we have a feeling we should.
We should.
Let it pass through.
When we see it,
It's a boxing thought,
We can just drop it.
Yes,
Of course.
I joined at the end,
But it sounds like your message applied to the rabbit hole and terrible algorithm.
Yeah,
Don't join at the end next time.
What's being offered here,
I'm not going to,
I'm saying nothing about the speaker,
But I'm saying quite a bit about the nature of what is being shared here.
Don't miss it.
How to stop the automatic thoughts,
Begin with awareness.
Beatrice,
Don't try to stop the automatic thoughts.
See how automatically you are identified with them.
Don't try to stop the automatic thought.
That's a reaction.
Don't try to control the automatic thought.
That's a reaction.
Instead,
Become aware of those automatic thoughts and recognize them as the continuation of the problem,
Not the way to solve it.
Sarah,
The unconscious nature tries to build a new box when you discover the next trap.
What to do then?
William Blake says the fox condemns the trap.
The fox condemns the trap.
Anytime you find yourself condemning someone or something outside of you,
You should know that something has laid a snare.
Something has put a trap out there for you to step into.
And the minute that you start thinking along the lines of that,
You are instantaneously inside that box.
And once it's there,
Everything,
All the struggle to escape it.
Try to see that as best you can,
Sarah,
Laura,
My box,
Daydreaming to escape and get the pleasure of freedom.
Yeah,
Of course.
Of course daydreaming is a box.
All dreams are boxes,
No matter how luxurious they are.
I'm trapped in a box of seeing them in a box as Archer.
No,
Archer,
You're not trapped in a box.
Everybody,
As best you can.
Ordinarily,
I never do this.
Repeat after me.
I am not a box.
I am not a box.
I am not what's trapped inside the box.
My true nature is what recognizes the appearance of the box and the temptation to step into it.
That's what Satan was doing in the desert with Christ.
He was saying,
Step into this box.
If you do,
Everything in the box will be yours.
But Christ understood,
What you must understand is that the box promised is the pain.
That promises it.
What else we got?
Chrissy,
We always say we don't want to live in the box,
But we don't want to be without it.
That is so true.
And one day when you realize that everything that's troubling you,
Everything that we do to enable others,
We do to enable the nature stuck in that box.
And everything we do like that ensures that box grows another room.
It's like having a mansion of cardboard boxes.
Subject to fire,
Rain,
And everything else that might shake that box apart,
Which it's always being shaked apart.
And then the explanation is just to add another room that's not so shaky.
