Good morning.
Welcome everyone.
I'm just going to pause for a few moments as I like to do before I speak.
I invite you to pause with me.
Take a deep breath,
Not just with thought,
But with all of your senses.
Bring yourself back into your body so that you can become aware of the whole of yourself and the whole of the moment that you're being given,
That we're being given together,
Whatever time it is that you can tune into these short talks that I give.
I trust everyone can hear me because I don't see any signs or notes in the chat box that would indicate otherwise.
Let me get over here.
All right.
Looks good.
So I want to read the special key lesson.
I always write a key lesson anytime I speak,
And I do speak three or four times a week,
On not necessarily a new topic,
But always with a new insight into the topic.
And for today,
Which is,
I guess,
New Year's Day,
We're going to talk about how to cultivate the five conditions of complete self-renewal.
So here's the key lesson for the talk.
Nice deep breath.
Wide awake.
Being renewed by life and starting life all over are one in the same superior interior action.
It starts with becoming aware of and then bringing a conscious end to any lingering relationship that we may have with old thoughts and feelings that want to keep us seeing our life through their eyes.
When I was sitting here getting ready to go over this material with you,
I thought it would be interesting just to start in motion a new idea so that it might grow in you.
Because in truth,
We cannot be any newer of a human being than the way in which we see the world around us and within us at the same time through new eyes.
Through eyes that are able to look at the world and recognize that part of what we always see is a world that something in us is always telling us what it means.
I think that if we want to have a new year,
We cannot separate the idea of a new year from a new life.
And we cannot separate the idea of a new life from the new understanding that we meet the days and hours,
Minutes of our life.
So here's a fascinating fact.
In those 365 days,
You and I have 525,
600 minutes.
And breaking it down further,
525,
600 minutes is roughly 32 million seconds.
How long does it take to have an insight?
The truth is that our lives can be changed in a flash,
And they are meant to be changed in a flash.
And of those 32 million seconds,
And I'm deliberately breaking this down for you,
Can we not see that there is no second in life,
No instant in life,
That isn't by its very appearance,
Though we don't see it,
By its very appearance in our life,
Isn't that a new second,
A new moment?
This is what's so hard,
In one respect,
For us to grasp,
Is that we are not the creators of what is new.
We are the instrument of something that ceaselessly renews itself.
But we're cut off from this renewal.
And if you have any question about it,
And I'm not denigrating anything,
I always watch just a few minutes,
I can't take much more than that,
Of people celebrating New Year's on the big news stations.
I don't know if it's ever occurred to you,
Why is there such a sense of desperation in New Year's celebration?
And the reason,
If you'll allow me,
To say that there's desperation in New Year's celebration,
We don't drink or drug ourselves to remember what is good,
We drink or drug ourselves,
We get caught up in waves of sensation to forget ourselves.
And if we're really being renewed moment to moment,
What is there to forget?
What is there that comes forward with us into these seconds that are new themselves?
And because they are new themselves,
Something is entering into our life,
Into our eyes,
Our ears,
Our heart,
And bringing what is the past,
Bringing the heartache,
The worry,
The grief,
The fear,
Then because it fills our eyes,
We look out and try to see a world that won't be like what we're looking at.
And of course it's a contradiction.
Our minds and hearts are filled with what we attend to.
It's that simple.
And if we're attending to what we wish was other than it is,
If we're attending to a worry or a doubt or even a hope that tomorrow will be better than today,
Then we are looking at what we don't want.
And that is what we call our future.
The eyes that look at what they don't want and imagine a new one.
And there is nothing new in that.
So I deliberately,
For this time that we're going to share together today,
Chose five conditions that are required to be cultivated,
That we might enter into what we are already a part of and that never stops entering into us.
Just as the life of the vine never stops flowing into the life of the branch.
And I think the first interesting thing is to explain to you this idea of cultivating the five conditions.
Most of us,
If we think at all about the word cultivate,
Kind of think about a garden or a farm.
But the origin of the word cultivate is actually Latin,
As far as I could track it down,
To cultivatus.
And it's a fascinating word because the regional meaning of it wasn't just to till,
But to till actually is to turn over,
To turn around.
So to cultivate means to turn something that is facing one way so that it faces another way.
And then even deeper,
To cultivate actually implies to care for,
To worship is actually included in that idea.
And in the Chinese language,
The word cultivate is a Taoist word.
It actually implies the possibility of developing,
Awakening,
Qi,
The qi,
The interior spirit,
The real life,
The energy of life.
So to cultivate requires a completely different understanding.
If we're going to cultivate what we need to cultivate so that what?
So that we can,
In turning around,
Open our eyes and the rest of the things that we're going to talk about,
And begin to see that who and what we are is already new.
We just are outside of this renewal.
The task is not to create newness.
It is to enter into a creation of which we are an integral part,
A bridge,
So that in the union of ourselves with this bridge between what is always new,
Always coming uncorrupted into something that can change you and I.
Now,
I went ahead and I'm just going to run through these quickly.
Then I'm going to come back and cover them.
What are the five conditions that need to be cultivated so that we might enter into,
As I'm describing,
A relationship with these moments?
We said there were 32 million seconds.
Have you ever had a moment in your life?
How about a dream?
Have you ever had a dream where you lived for like a whole lifetime?
Then you realize you had just been asleep for 15 minutes?
See,
There are orders of time that we can't comprehend because we're not connected to the stream of what we are intended to be supernally interrelated with.
In a second,
A lifetime can change.
Can we not understand that thoroughly enough to realize that it's what we must do as human beings to cultivate a relationship with what we are actually in relationship with in the moment?
Here's the first idea,
Cultivating,
To turn around.
This is a little statement by Renier Wilke,
Beautiful German poet.
He says,
If your daily life seems poor,
Do not blame it.
Blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
For the creator,
There is no poverty.
I just love that.
If your daily life seems poor,
Do not blame it.
Blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
For the creator,
There is no poverty.
Now,
Let's be careful because you and I are not going to sit here and judge ourselves.
But this idea,
Blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches,
To call forth this ceaseless renewal of abundance that is related to endlessly being completed moment by moment.
What are the first of these five conditions that need to be cultivated?
First,
To cultivate clear eyes,
To cultivate a quiet mind,
To cultivate a sense of beauty,
To cultivate an open heart,
And then to cultivate the power that we are given to turn it all over again,
To start again.
Those are the five things to be cultivated.
Let's take the first one and apply it to what Renier Wilke was saying.
Don't blame the world,
The life that you're in.
Just blame that you're not a poet enough to realize its riches.
What is he saying,
Not a poet enough?
Every one of us,
I believe,
Or we wouldn't be here together,
Has had a moment where because maybe we were in nature,
There came an instant where the picture that we were looking at,
The beauty that we were beholding,
Was recognized as something that wasn't really a scene that we were holding,
But rather that we were being held in.
So that in this moment where our eyes are clear,
And I'll call forth a little poem,
A little statement from John Ruskin,
This 18th century philosopher.
He said,
To see clearly is poetry.
It is prophecy and religion all in one.
So Wilke says,
Don't blame life if your life seems poor.
Blame yourself that you're not poet enough.
Then Ruskin says,
To see clearly is poetry.
It is prophecy,
Religion all in one.
How do we understand that?
Because in a moment where we are united inwardly,
Meaning that there is no distinction between what we are observing or realizing and the self that is reflecting that understanding,
That in a moment like that,
There is pure poetry.
Because there is pure perception.
Pure perception relative to the first cultivation of clearing our eyes means that we look not just outwardly,
But we look outwardly and inwardly at the same time.
That's what clear eyes are.
See,
When we just look outwardly,
Which is most of us,
That's how we live.
Our eyes are always outside.
They are always on.
And listen,
Please,
This is a little shift.
Not just the world that we walk through,
But as we walk through the world,
We go into town,
We go to a store,
We go out to eat,
We go to a family gathering.
But as we enter into that world outside of us,
We don't even really see the world itself outside of us.
We see our thoughts about the world outside of us.
So that what we're looking at without knowing it and why our eyes are so clouded is that we are seeing the world through a mass of collected thoughts and they're attending associations.
And thoughts are always of the past and thoughts are always outside of us.
They are not within us.
So that we look and our eyes don't see what there is because all we see is what something is telling us we see.
To have clear eyes means that I will see at once the world outside and the world inside.
Because when I can see that my thoughts are talking to me,
Then my eyes are clear.
My ears are clear because I'm no longer deceived into believing that the perception of this consciousness that is a creation of the past bringing itself into the present moment.
When I'm no longer deceived into seeing life through its eyes,
Then my eyes are clear.
Like Christ said,
One must have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Clear eyes.
We must remove the objects that we presently think are actually life instead of recognizing that the things that cloud our life.
I'll ask you,
How clearly do you see when you are impatient with someone?
To us,
We see clearly because the problem is the person.
That's what our eyes see.
But if we had eyes that were clear,
If we could cultivate clear eyes,
We would see in the moment of impatience that there is something in the content of our consciousness that is insisting that person be what we want them to be.
That they move at the speed we want them to move at.
That they understand what we're thinking without us having to say so.
And our impatience that we cannot see is what is creating the relationship we're in in that moment,
Not what our eyes blame on that condition.
Cultivate clear eyes.
Second thing to cultivate,
Quiet mind.
And listen to me.
It is a mistake to somehow imagine that if you and I could just make our mind quiet,
Then we wouldn't be disturbed by the thoughts that are always rioting in our mind.
Any effort to create stillness is a form of ambition.
That in that ambition,
We are apart from what we are trying to control.
And when you have a mind that is trying to control itself,
You have a mind at war with itself.
And even if it achieves momentarily some image it has of what it means to be quiet,
That mind is still not a quiet mind.
Lao Tzu said,
Let it be still and it will gradually clear.
Let it be still and it will gradually clear.
That means I'm not making an effort towards clearing the mind.
I'm allowing it to do what it will naturally do if I'm not in there trying to make it do something that I think it should do.
Another quote,
Buddha,
Stop trying to quiet the storm.
Calm yourself and the storm will pass.
Stop trying to quiet the storm.
Calm yourself and the storm will pass.
But how do I calm myself?
Let's go back to the first cultivation of clearing the eyes,
Of turning around.
I calm myself when I see that I am allowing a disturbance produced by a demand and insistence of an old mind that I can't be quiet unless you are,
That I can't be happy unless you're providing me what I want.
So the task is to cultivate clear eyes that can see a mind that isn't quiet.
Because in that relationship between clear eyes and a quiet mind begins the process of something seeing that something is not still.
What sees what is not still can only be stillness.
Then we are in relationship,
Listen please,
In the moment where all of that is being revealed.
And it is in the moment of revelation and only in the moment of revelation that everything is renewed.
Because what is revelation if not a new creation being brought forth?
Can you see this with me?
So that entering into this revelation by turning around inwardly,
Inwardly attentive,
Not captured by the objects,
The thoughts in my eyes,
In my mind.
I enter into the world where all of that is being renewed and I am being renewed along with it.
So the first two things to cultivate,
Clear eyes,
Quiet mind.
Third thing to cultivate,
And again it connects with what Rilke was saying and what Ruskin said,
Cultivate a sense of beauty.
Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.
That's Confucius.
Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.
This is confounding in so many different ways because we look out at a world COVID stricken,
Greed corrupted,
Separatism rampant,
Fanaticism,
The perpetration of fear.
And we see the world and it is,
Let's not kid ourselves,
Literally not just coming apart but showing us inwardly within ourselves why it is coming apart.
So this idea of a sense of beauty to be cultivated that everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.
How can that possibly be?
Look at this with me.
Is it not a beautiful thing?
And see,
You have to be the judge of this.
There's no way I'm going to convince a soul on this planet and I have no interest in being seen as someone trying to teach the world something or other.
Just see it with me.
See,
To see something is to be attentive to it.
To attend to something is to be connected.
And if I see the truth of something,
I am connected to the truth of something and the truth is self-renewing.
That is evergreen.
See this with me.
We're not the most valuable moments,
Are not the most valuable moments of our life,
Though we don't see it at first.
Those moments that come along and in that split second,
One of those 32 million seconds that can be divided up into,
That really can't be divided,
But on which the heels of an epiphany come,
Are not those moments where we suddenly see that,
Yes,
I understand now.
I understand I was blind.
I understand I couldn't see.
I understand I blamed you.
I understand that this fear that's with me every single day is because something is telling me that unless everything is the way I want it to be,
Then I'm in danger.
And I finally get it.
The only danger that I'm in is that I live from a mind that divides itself up into what it has to have to be free and secure and then what it pursues to protect that.
That's the only danger there is,
Is this consciousness that's asleep to itself.
And that,
By the way,
To be suddenly released from an illusion,
From maya,
From this dream life,
Even though it's painful.
Here I am and I speak cruelty to someone that I love.
When I'm angry or cruel,
I don't know I'm angry or cruel because my eyes are clouded with the reasons for me necessitating what I say and do.
And then suddenly I see what my eyes are clouded with.
They're clouded with the love of God.
They're crowded with the love of ambition and what I'm going to do and be and get.
They're blind,
Quite literally,
Which is the original meaning of darkness in the New Testament.
They're blind.
And then I see.
And it's shocking.
It's humiliating.
But in that humiliation,
Something is turned around.
There is a kind of atonement.
And suddenly the moment that I don't want,
That I've always seen as being ugly and unwanted,
Is as beautiful as a moment can be.
Cultivate a sense of beauty.
But to cultivate a sense of beauty,
To cultivate a quiet mind,
To cultivate clear eyes,
Requires what?
We turn around.
That we begin to have a new sense of value.
But how do we cultivate,
Which is the fourth of these five conditions of self-renewal?
The fourth of the things to cultivate,
And you'll see how it all connects,
Is an open heart.
I found this passage by Rumi.
I'll read it twice.
I think it's that valuable.
Rumi says,
The truth is a form of cross-cultivation.
It uses what the world is busy trying to perpetrate,
Which is an incessant,
Compulsive need to identify who we are with what we have and where we're going and who's against us and who we need to be for.
And all of that is trash.
Why?
Because it clouds the eyes.
It stimulates the mind with ways to escape or pursue what it says it must have to be able to be at peace.
It throws away any sense of beauty.
It destroys it.
Because there's no beauty in separation.
There's no beauty in isolation,
In being isolated from a world that we see as having no poetry in it.
When everything about this world,
At its root,
In its inception,
In its constant upwelling of what is new,
Is pure poetry.
But God help us,
We don't see it.
Cultivate an open heart.
Very little grows on jagged rocks.
Be grounded.
Be crumbled.
Wildflowers will come and grow where you are.
Do you see how antithetical that is to everything we see?
What's he saying?
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Absolutely turned around from what it is that you and I think is valuable in this life.
And we might profess,
And I know we do,
You wouldn't be here.
You and I wouldn't be sitting here and having this time together.
A time of poetry.
A time of seeing.
A time where our mind can see what is going through it.
Maybe feeling something that's a new kind of beauty that isn't connected to something we own.
An open heart.
How do we have an open heart?
It requires a sense of beauty,
A quiet mind,
And clear eyes.
Why?
Because I have to learn what it means to accept everything that doesn't just appear around me.
Because we can't separate what appears around us from what is appearing within us.
They are the same.
And so if I sit and summarily reject the world around me,
Because I,
And let me be quite clear.
The world is full of hatred.
But there's no one there hating.
The world is full of judgment,
But there's no one there judging.
The world that we see is a manifestation of the consciousness that we have yet to realize within ourselves.
And the possibility of a life that is ceaselessly renewed is also a part and a possibility in our consciousness.
To have an open heart means that I allow what is being revealed to move into and through me freely.
Call it what you will.
The watcher,
The witness,
The observer.
There's something in us that does what?
Here I am and I've got a job to do.
I'm worried about this.
I've got a problem.
I didn't get the Christmas presents I wanted.
Boo hoo hoo.
The new year looks dark because it's going to be like the year before.
You see,
When you don't see those thoughts,
You don't see the thinker of them.
And our hope rests in eyes that are clear enough,
A mind that is still enough,
To realize there is no beauty in a mind that is afraid.
And a mind that is afraid will never find anything to protect it because that level of consciousness lives for the purpose of separating itself from what it thinks it has to have to be safe and what it's trying to always get to to ensure it.
An open heart.
The last of the five things to cultivate is to start again.
Begin again.
Begin again.
C.
S.
Lewis,
He says,
You can't go back and change the beginning.
You can't go back and change the beginning,
But you can start where you are and change everything.
Come on.
Come on.
You can't go back and change the beginning.
Last year was so terrible,
But this year is going to be better because I have a new plan.
You can't go back.
The year that you don't want are the tears that you have over the moment because the moment isn't reflecting what you've imagined the new year should be.
You can't imagine new.
You can't.
What we call setting a new year's resolutions.
You want a lot of psychological contusions,
Make a lot of resolutions.
You can't imagine new.
Now,
I get it.
I smoke.
I don't want to smoke.
I eat crud.
I don't want to eat crud.
I'm angry.
I don't want to be angry.
I don't have enough money.
I want more.
In those moments,
Yes,
It is true.
We recognize that something in us is interfering with our right to be a whole,
Happy human being.
But we blame the object.
We imbue what thoughts tell us stands between us and the freedom we seek instead of recognizing that what really stands between us and the freedom that we seek is a consciousness that believes it is a captive of the world,
Of the conditions it's in.
So,
To begin with,
We must begin again.
You cannot go back and change the beginning,
But you can start where you are and change the ending.
How do I change the ending?
By refusing to start,
As I presently do,
With some thought,
With something that has clouded my eyes,
That has disturbed my mind,
That has stolen the sense of real beauty and replaced it with the beautiful life I imagine is coming.
The best way to get started on this royal road,
To cultivate these conditions of actual renewal,
Begins with a simple idea.
You might want to write it down.
Don't try to be good.
Just prefer the good.
And then do the best you can to act out what it is that you hold as a wish.
Not the good of money,
Not the good of popularity,
Not even the good of health.
Why do I have to wish for myself good health?
If my health isn't good,
Then I need to see the consciousness that is contributing to its deterioration.
To separate myself is to lose the poetry in life.
To be isolated with an idea and an ambition is to have no beauty whatsoever in my life,
Because to me the beauty in that moment will be the fulfillment of something that has never fulfilled me or any person in this world throughout all of time.
What is true is what is required to be preferred.
What is true cannot be thought.
It can only be seen.
So,
Summary.
Cultivation.
Turn around.
Turn around.
What does it mean?
What was the first thing that needed to be cultivated?
Clear eyes.
Why clear eyes?
Because if I see clearly,
My mind will be quiet.
Please?
I see something beautiful.
My mind is still.
I see where it is that I'm wrong.
If I actually see it,
There's no justifying,
There's no explaining,
There's no judging.
If I actually see something in that seeing,
The observer and the observed are united,
And there is instantaneously a stillness that cannot be separated from the clarity of that new kind of seeing that begins with turning around.
And sense of beauty.
What is more beautiful than realizing I have always been connected to something that has forever been trying to instill in me a way to recognize the innate stillness,
The innate unity of life.
Where though regardless how it seems in the moment,
Nothing is acting against itself.
Because in the divine,
Nothing can act against itself that isn't for the good of itself in another time to come.
And that other time to come is not in the future,
It's right in the moment of that revelation.
And if I do all of that,
Which isn't really a doing,
Is it?
It isn't trying to create the good,
It's preferring the good.
It's preferring to see the truth.
In that moment,
My heart opens wide.
Who wouldn't want to have more of what is true and good,
Empowering,
Beautiful pour through them?
We all would like that.
And when we can begin to understand these things,
Then we recognize one of the most difficult things in the world is there is no end to what is new.
Which means if I'm in the right place,
With eyes that are clear,
With a mind that is quiet,
Embracing the beauty of seeing what is true,
Even when it doesn't look so pretty,
Then all of that,
My heart opens.
And when my heart opens like that,
Without imagining,
Not getting emotional or sentimental,
Suddenly I am in the place where I am intended to be.
To be what?
To be the instrument of what is always being renewed so that everyone and everything around me can at least have the opportunity to be part of that renewal.
And even as I speak,
The sun comes out.
We've only seen the sun,
I think,
Three times in the last 10 days here in Southern Oregon.
It's a nice place to bring our time together to an end.
Don't look for a happy new year.
Find the happiness inherent in being present by turning around and allowing the outer world and the inner world to reveal the poetry that the Creator is forever writing in you,
In me,
In our hearts,
In our minds.
Be safe.
Do your work.
Cultivate,
Cultivate,
Cultivate.
Work,
Work,
Work inwardly.
I'll see you next Saturday.
