I want to open our time together,
Which has a very specific purpose as always,
Which is to help illuminate areas in our life that we don't know are in the dark,
And that because of them in the dark,
Meaning these aspects of ourselves,
We often stumble and fall and don't know why.
So I'll ask a question,
And I always appreciate when I ask questions if I direct them out to you,
That you could just fire off a little bit of a message in this chat box here.
Who do you know,
Including yourself,
That doesn't feel in one way or another basically two things at once?
First,
The feeling that,
And it's almost always just beneath the surface,
Sometimes much more prevalent than others,
That something is missing from my life,
And very much connected to that idea that something is missing from my life is another feeling that sort of simmers underneath all that we are and do,
And that is I feel like I'm in this life for a purpose,
As if there's something that I know I'm meant to do with my life that I might add no one else is meant to do.
So something is missing from my life,
And I know that I'm in this life for a purpose,
And the reason to put those two together,
That it feels like something is missing from my life,
Is because I have yet to actually come upon that purpose.
That isn't to say that I haven't accomplished things.
Maybe I'm a mother or a father,
I have a business,
Maybe I've been successful,
Maybe my friends respect me,
Or at the very least my dog will sit when I ask it to.
Some achievements,
We've all had them.
But if we're honest,
And this is key to what we're gonna look at,
Even if we've had a few moments,
They're as fleeting as the conditions that create them.
Someone toasts you at a dinner party,
People tell you they love you,
You're recognized for something that you've done that has helped others,
God willing.
But when the party's over,
So is that pleasure.
So whatever it is that's missing,
Goes missing.
And is there something that you and I can be doing with our life that not only answers what that missing part is,
But that in discovering it,
We actually begin to realize why we are in this world,
In these bodies,
And in doing so,
We complete a circuit,
Which is a key to our study together.
So nice deep breath,
And let's get started here.
I'm sure that you've heard,
Or at least in one way or another,
Come across this idea from the New Testament.
There is no fear in love,
But perfect love casts out fear,
Because fear hath torment.
He that feareth,
She that feareth,
Is not made perfect in love.
Those who have fear are not made perfect in love.
What an interesting idea.
And is it more than an idea?
Is it something that we as men and women in this world are intended to not just understand with our mind,
But to become the actual instrument of that understanding,
So that in that understanding,
We begin to have another kind of life,
Where even if there is the momentary visitation of some fear,
It is immediately brought into another order of understanding that transforms that consciousness and what it is projecting negatively into something that acts for the benefit of you and I,
And for the purpose of fulfilling our life in that very moment.
I tell you that that is not just a possibility,
But it is meant to be how we live.
One could spend an entire lifetime just looking into the subtlety of that idea.
There's no fear in love.
Well,
If that's true,
You and I both know,
When we have the things that we love,
That it's loaded with fear.
At some point or another,
Something transpires,
And then that fear has torment,
And in that torment,
We're cut off completely from any of the identity we had a moment before in what we loved or who we love or whatever it is,
And that love is replaced with fear.
And I tell you that love cannot be replaced by fear if it is real love,
Agape,
Christ called it.
It's another order of love far beyond this idea of familial love or brotherly love or sexual desire love.
None of those,
Those are all aspects sort of further down the ray of creation from that which gives rise to them.
So I wanna look at this with you because this week,
And I don't know if you've been joining me online or not,
Which you can do for free.
Look and follow,
Go to the profile and you can do it.
I've been giving a series of talks and intend to continue them today,
I think at 11 a.
M.
And tomorrow at nine,
Nine or 9.
30 a.
M.
Tomorrow morning on a series of talks called The Faith to be Free,
Freedom to be Faithful,
Because this freedom that we all look for,
That we can't seem to get our hands on in any lasting form is something that we can begin to understand what it is that's keeping us from that.
So let me get into the material.
I wanna tell a story.
I often use stories,
Parables to set the stage to bring us in intellectually and emotionally into a specific topic,
An idea of way of looking at something that doesn't just hit us on the head,
But that we can be brought into,
Because in all stories,
Which is why they're used,
Parables,
Whether we know it or not,
We are all the characters in those stories.
That we are the hero,
We are the anti-hero,
We are the condition,
All of that is all part of our consciousness.
That's why we like these stories so much,
Because we look at them from all the different angles of all the different parts that we as human beings play and bring together into what we call our life.
So here's the story.
There's twin sons of a king and a queen who are about to come of age.
And to come of age in this kingdom,
Actually in any kingdom,
Means that there is coming a point where they will be,
One of them anyway,
Will be given the keys to the kingdom.
They will be placed in a position of responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of not just the kingdom,
But all that dwells within it.
Again,
This is not some fairy tale.
This is our life.
Now,
The two sons are actually twins.
And the firstborn of the two,
We're gonna call Saul,
And the one born immediately after Saul is Peter.
Now,
As a rule in the kingdom,
It's always the firstborn that becomes the next ruler of that kingdom.
But,
And maybe you understand some of this scripturally,
In this instance,
The king,
When he brings the two boys in front of him to tell them,
And anoint one as being the receiver of the crown,
It isn't the firstborn Saul who is given the mantle,
But rather it's Peter.
They're told that Peter will be the one to inherit the kingdom.
Well,
When Saul hears this,
Especially since he's the firstborn,
He goes ballistic.
All right,
What's going on?
That's not,
That's nuts.
That's not fair.
Besides which he tries to plead his case to his mom and dad.
You know,
There's nothing I can't do better than Peter.
I have more skill,
More talent.
We know this.
I'm not trying to denigrate my brother here,
But everybody in the kingdom knows that I was given these gifts.
So why choose him when I am the far greater of your sons?
The king looks at Saul and looks at Peter,
Redirects his attention back to Saul.
He said,
Son,
It's true.
At birth,
You were given gifts far greater than your brother,
Peter.
And yet Saul,
I've watched you squander them.
I've watched you do nothing to develop them.
While on the other hand,
Your brother,
Peter,
While he has less gifts,
Has worked very hard to develop what he was given,
Testing himself constantly,
Placing himself in conditions where he would be brought to a limitation so that he might understand it and transcend it.
You,
On the other hand,
Because of your gifts,
Did none of that.
You just thought it was all given to you.
Nothing is given to you without you giving something back,
Saul.
That's the lesson Peter knows,
And that's why he will be king.
Now that's a simple story,
And I hope I didn't take too long telling it because I have quite a bit of material to cover with you.
But let's bring ourselves into it.
And by the way,
For those of you who know the New Testament,
There is a story that's directly related to this tale I told,
The story of the 10 talents.
You might look it up if you want to.
So can you think of any great artist,
Some master that you admire,
Past or present,
All of us can think of that.
It doesn't have to be something profound.
The voice of a Pavarotti,
The intuitive nature of an Einstein,
Michelangelo,
Archimedes,
Buddha,
Lao Tse.
When you bring this to mind,
I want you to ask yourself a question,
So I'll give you a second.
Please don't just sit and think you're looking at a movie and like eat popcorn.
Work with me.
Was that man or woman that you have thought of,
What did they have that you weren't given?
We all,
If we've ever admired anyone,
See them as being someone who was given something that we weren't.
And I want you to know from the very beginning that no human being is given anything that you're not.
Every human being who comes into this world,
Comes into this world,
Quite literally,
Comes into this world with three gifts.
It's intertwined into their essence.
It is actually the source of their essence.
And the three gifts are these.
First and foremost,
Along the theme of what we're looking at together,
We all come into this world with the capacity to love.
It isn't ours,
We are given the capacity to love.
And in attendance with those other two gifts,
With the capacity to love,
Is the will to attend to that love and the time to develop the relationship that love intends to bring you into so that you might develop the love you're given when you come into this life.
The capacity to love.
I just pause for a second because there's so much in one respect,
But because it's an illusion,
It can be overcome.
We come into this world and we are brainwashed,
Conditioned from the outset to believe because that's all we've seen,
All we knew,
All we grew up experiencing,
People saying,
And you can see it all the time.
And frankly,
It's disgusting.
People reveling in themselves,
Adorning themselves,
Desperate,
Desperate to be approved.
And what they want approved is the images that they have of themselves,
That they spend all of their time,
All of their money,
All of their energy trying to acquire so that when people look at them,
People will see them as they imagine themselves being,
And it's an impossible life.
It's hell on earth.
We were given the capacity to love,
And we were given the capacity to love and the will to be able to attend to that gift and the time to develop that gift for a specific purpose.
Now,
I have another question for you.
Do you think that these masters,
These men and women,
If there is anyone that you could think of,
Do you think that they somehow or other didn't have or don't have the same doubts and fears that you do,
That they don't hear the same voices?
You know what they're like,
Leonardo da Vinci.
You know,
I guarantee you that each and every one of these men and women here or heard,
I can't,
I'm not good enough,
I don't know how,
Because that's part of the process of this development of ourselves is to recognize that we are creatures at once of many kingdoms.
One of the kingdoms is that which we are,
Is this world and our relationship to it,
The past,
All that has been created,
But inside of that world,
And that world lives inside of the capacity to outgrow it and to grow into another kingdom,
And that's what these men and women understood.
The difference between them and us,
As it may be true,
Is that not only did they recognize that they were given these gifts,
But they had faith in them.
They had faith,
If you wanna use these words,
In love,
But not faith in love like some sentimental,
Idiotic,
Self-consoling,
Self-pleasing image,
But faith in the idea that they have come into this world for a specific purpose that as a creation of love,
They were given to do that no one else on this planet could do in the way they would do it.
So not only did they have faith in that love,
But this is also key,
They didn't want anything from it.
Their wish was to serve what was being awakened in them that was drawing them to the things in which they became masterful,
So that through the relationship of what love was drawing them to do or to understand,
That through that very relationship,
They gained self-understanding,
Which was the purpose of why they were drawn to those things.
Think about it.
Why are we drawn to anything?
We're drawn to it because there is something in us that corresponds to what draws us to it,
And in that correspondence,
Which is a form of love,
That attention brings about through connecting us to that object of whatever it may be we desire,
That we want to know,
That we want to learn.
In that connection,
There is an exchange,
And the exchange ultimately proves to be that the thing I'm drawn to already lives in my heart,
Already lives in my mind.
I'm just learning about these characters or qualities through what I love,
Because that's the only way in this present time,
In this body,
Entombed as it were within it,
That's the only way this kind of communication can take place.
And then we begin to make the most incredible discoveries,
That there's actually no moment where we aren't,
If willing,
To be able to take what we've been given and to be given more of it.
Those that have shall get,
Those that have little shall lose.
So the Bible tells us,
And it still is news.
Do you remember that first time that you had the love of something?
I can remember.
For me,
It started at a pretty early age,
And maybe it hasn't yet flowered in you.
But when that energy was there,
When that relationship,
The onset of it,
There was no thought,
What am I gonna do?
What's the plan?
Because in that moment,
And this was much of what I discussed last night in our talk together,
Again,
Online free,
You can find out about these,
That love,
The experience of love,
Is when there is no longer separation between the one who loves and the thing that is loved,
When the observer and the observed,
And the lover and the beloved are united as they are intended to be.
In that moment,
There's no distance to travel.
There's no time it takes to experience the fullness of the purpose that you are given in that moment,
Which is the exploration and the realization of that relationship as it is given to you.
And because there's no distance,
No time,
Because everything is in a unity,
There's no thought.
What do I need to do?
How am I going to go about this?
Because you are immersed in a relationship that is fulfilling itself through you,
And in the fulfillment of that relationship,
Every step that needs to be taken is provided by the love that brought you through those steps to that point.
I hope this isn't too confusing.
I'm gonna give,
I decided to give this material this morning because I thought maybe we could touch on something that was practical,
Really down to earth,
That we might work.
So what is it about those moments I was describing then that makes it feel so good,
So right,
To love someone or someone,
But as with the masters,
To love something and give oneself completely to it?
What is it that's so enticing about that?
Yeah,
Ava,
I want you to understand something.
Somewhere along the line,
Somebody came up with the idea of I need to love myself.
And in that moment,
Without understanding it at all,
That man or woman could not see that the idea of I need to love myself is the refusal,
Is the resistance to the fact that I have nothing in me that I love.
I don't want to be me.
Why else would I try to figure out how to love myself unless I didn't?
And the consciousness that has no love in it because it's primarily a machine,
A thought generating emotion pumping entity with no consciousness of its own,
It being alone and separate starts looking around for things to love,
To complete itself,
And when it can't find it,
It has to turn on itself.
First,
It judges everyone and everything else for not being right,
Then it attacks itself.
And then it wants to,
In the very heat of despising itself,
Tries to figure out how to love itself.
And what despises itself knows nothing of love.
So I'm right at the outset,
And if it means you go away,
Goodbye.
The idea of self-love is an abomination.
Love is unto itself,
Completes itself,
Finishes itself,
And then starts again.
The love of oneself always excludes anyone who doesn't love us as we want to be loved.
Real love has no exclusion in it at all.
It is without judgment,
Whereas what we love is always based on the judgment,
Based of comparison.
We're talking about love with a capital L.
And I'm asking,
Why does it feel so good when we have those moments?
And why doesn't it last?
Here's the answer,
I must keep going.
And I alluded to this at the beginning of the talk.
We are made by love.
By whatever name you wish to give it,
We are made by love in order to complete a certain kind of divine circuit.
Think of the word circuit,
Something that completes and is completing itself.
We are made to receive every moment of our life,
And we do,
Or we would be dead.
We are made to receive what is making us moment to moment.
It may not dawn on us,
Because most of us are not interested sufficiently to even investigate it.
I'm being given at this very moment,
Every thought,
Every feeling,
Every impulse,
Every sensation,
Every tone of my voice,
The whole of me who was put together at 74 years old has been made for a specific purpose that is fulfilled every moment,
Or it is not.
And thank God,
When we don't actually fulfill the purpose that love has made us for,
We are still made by nature in a physical form,
And nature ensures to the fact that we are renewed cellularly,
Moment to moment.
Because if nature wasn't taking care of us,
And we had to do it for ourselves,
We're done.
What has made us never stops pouring itself into us.
And we can see this at the simplest level.
Can you,
Imagine if you and I had to take the air we breathe,
The water we drink,
The foods that we ingest,
And the impressions that come in.
Imagine if you and I had to find some way to combine all of those things,
So that we could be in this body and be sharing this moment.
I can tell you what would happen.
We'd be piles of,
We'd be a dung pile,
Because of ourselves,
We can do nothing.
Even Christ said it,
We are an instrument,
But an instrument with a specific purpose.
A physical creation intended not just to be the incarnation of what it is that nature intends for our use,
But an incarnation of that love.
So that much like the branch is the extension to the vine,
You've heard that,
I am the vine,
You are the branches.
Well,
The branch is renewed moment to moment by the vine,
And when it's disconnected from the vine,
The branch passes instantly.
So that we are intended to be consistently connected to the source of what has made us new and continues to do so.
And it is in doing that,
That we're no longer missing anything,
Because we are being completed from the inside out,
Moment to moment to moment.
Our mistake,
And deeply so,
Because of how conditioned we are,
Is we look to the outer world to complete us.
Did you know it's impossible for any man or woman to be true to any other man or woman,
Let alone to love,
If that man or woman wants something from some other man or woman,
Let alone that that man or woman wants something from love?
It's impossible,
Because by the very idea that I am imagining and desiring something I need to make me whole,
I am manifesting that consciousness that is already apart and trying to figure out how to love itself.
By giving itself something in the world that it has no control over,
By the way,
Conditions that will pass,
And when they pass,
With them will go the consciousness that had found that temporary identity as it did.
The question is,
If you're following me,
I hope you are,
And let's be very careful,
Because I'm about to say,
Well,
How do I get started?
How do I actually begin to make such a transition that is inseparable from the transformation it will bring about in me when I enter into this circuit,
When I enter into this ceaseless reconciliation of all the constituent elements that create and make what we call this life,
This world,
And the possibility of knowing the love that has brought it into existence?
How do I get started?
What is it when you pick up something,
You have some assembly required?
Thank God it isn't we who have to do the assembly,
Because if you're anything like me,
And we have to do the assembly,
There's always a few screws left over,
Couple screws missing in the assembly.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You ever built something like that,
And you get done,
And there's like this,
That,
And the other delay there,
And you think to yourself,
Well,
They're not important.
It'll work anyway.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Oh,
God.
So let me put up on the board here,
And Kate's going to do it as I go through it,
So you can have it to read a special lesson.
It'll show up in the chat box here.
So if you would just hold off for a moment on posting,
So that Kate can put this up.
This is how we get started.
The love of any possibility that by its nature is true,
Creative,
Good,
Or otherwise noble is complete before that journey begins.
The love of any possibility that by nature is true,
Creative,
Good,
Or otherwise noble is complete before that journey begins,
Requiring only the passage of time to reveal that love itself as the divine author of all such plans.
What if you knew,
Which we are working diligently to bring about that understanding,
That when you have a real love for something,
You didn't put that love in you for it,
But rather love put you in a place where you could be drawn to and meet something that through the completion of the observer and the observed,
The completion of what it is that I want to know,
And that which sits there as the object of that knowledge,
When they come together,
They are irretrievably connected,
And in that connection,
There is the completion of the purpose of my existence in that moment,
And in every subsequent moment like that,
Which I don't know and would lie if I said I know the full possibility of such.
But I can tell you that that circuit never disappears.
It is we who become disconnected from it because in the moment required,
Where it is placed in front of us to be able to start giving ourselves to something,
Something in us will place our faith in something else and tell us,
This is what you have to do.
This is where you need to go.
So few of us love life itself.
What we have is the love of the temporary sensation of life,
And of that we make a god by trying to collect and quantify or otherwise bring to ourselves the objects that produce that sensation in us.
But we are made to love life itself.
Every jot and tittle,
Every movement,
Every part of it,
Every last part.
There isn't a true teacher that hasn't graced this planet,
That hasn't said in one way or another,
He prepares a feast in the presence of my enemies,
That I must learn to love my enemies.
And my enemies aren't just the people God help us that we believe are antithetical to our political,
Religious,
Or philosophical beliefs.
Our enemies,
As we are now,
Are made moment to moment by a consciousness that measures what's unfolding and then interprets that moment and then sets itself against that moment because it doesn't match what we believe love is meant to do for us.
Yes,
In a way,
Anjali,
An interconnection.
But not an interconnection made by the mind,
Not some law,
Not some enforced morality,
But something that we are meant to be and to do.
We've been deceived into believing that the freedom,
The peace,
For that matter,
The love that we seek,
We've been deceived to believe that it can be found in some form of unconscious servitude to whatever social,
Financial,
Or political pursuit it is that captures our attention and that draws us into it because of the strength of the sense of self.
And then we try to muscle that,
Control it,
Change it,
Absorb it,
So that somehow we'll find a peace of mind when the very activity of trying to acquire something proves that I'm apart from what I'm trying to acquire.
And there can be never peace in division.
There can never be unity in that kind of fragmentation.
So if we want to love life,
Which is to realize a perfectly creative and fearless existence,
Then that must include the faith to live that kind of life,
The faith to live that kind of life.
In other words,
Back to the opening story,
We must do something with the love that we're given.
We must do something with the love that we're given.
Now,
I don't know,
And please understand,
I do not consider myself a teacher.
I am an explorer.
And when I see something because of the love of what I see and that love that is seen that wants to be shared,
I bring to the table what it is that I can see and ask,
Do you see it too?
Because I don't know what happened to most men and women.
I talk to men and women around the world that have been doing so for over 40 years.
And I can tell you that every last one of them lives with this regret that has become the seed of their sorrow,
Because at some point or another,
And I don't know when it was,
I know when it was for me,
It was very young,
There was something that I loved.
I didn't know what it was.
How can a newborn,
A child,
Know what it is that they're drawn to,
Let alone why we haven't the experience,
Our mind hasn't formulated enough content to be able to compose an understanding out of our experience.
But what was it?
When was it?
And important to this talk,
Because I'm gonna run out of time,
Is that if we have the wish to understand what's missing from our life and to realize that purpose that we sense is missing,
You and I,
Well,
I can't say you and I,
Because for me,
This is true.
Find something that you love.
I don't care what it is.
Find something that you love.
Not that you want from something,
But that by the very appearance of it in your mind and heart,
Maybe it was you had this wish to sing,
Maybe you wanted to paint,
Maybe you wanted to be a writer,
Maybe you wanted to work with dogs at the shelter.
I don't know what it would be.
And no more do we come into this life and love has laid for us a very distinct path by which we would come into the perfection of the relationship that love has placed us in in order to fulfill that possibility.
And it's stolen from us.
We're overwhelmed with mom and dad and brothers and sisters and social values and internet issues and crud of all kind that so compromises that little fledgling bit of light,
Seeking that which gave birth to it,
That it just disappears and it goes away.
And we must,
If we want to have an understanding of this kind of love and the faith that casts out fear,
Then we have to find out something that we can love and give ourselves to it.
And I wanna be clear,
Because I'm coming to the end of this talk.
It doesn't matter how feeble that love is,
How inadequate we may be able to start in this relationship with it.
It doesn't matter.
I'm a mother,
I've got children,
I can barely make ends meet.
I'm a man,
I'm obsessed with an ambition.
I've placed myself under an eight ball that was intended to liberate me instead of being bombarded by thoughts and feelings telling me I'm nothing if I don't complete whatever it is that's supposed to complete me.
All of that trash talk,
All of those thoughts and feelings pouring into a mind,
Punishing it.
Love never punishes.
Find that one thing,
Some skill,
Some wish,
Some artistic development.
I don't care what it is.
The only thing that matters is you start.
And don't think to yourself,
I don't have the time or energy to start.
That's a lie,
Because we can always take one moment.
And I swear to God,
That's all it takes.
One moment,
Not a moment of hating ourselves because we won't start,
But one moment where we remember with every fiber of our being what it is that we want more than anything else to know,
To do,
To be.
This is the heart of the divine life.
This is what any true aspirant at any level goes through,
Is that that little bit of ember,
That little spark is fed,
It's fanned,
And it's fanned how?
By our attention.
If you want the love that you have for something and you want the love that has given you that to grow,
You must attend to it.
And in attending to it,
We fan it.
We bring that ember into a brighter light.
And that light further reveals what has been concealed in us,
Mostly what has been keeping us from that task,
But all the possibilities that remain as that light enlarges itself.
What love draws us to will ensure that we succeed in developing our relationship with love.
And when you know that,
Because you actualize it,
You're busy working all day,
All night,
You go to bed,
Lay in bed and remember what you love.
Ask God to help you develop that love.
Ask God to show you,
Give you the way to do it.
And I tell you,
The next day,
There'll be two minutes that you can do that.
And then there'll be five,
And then there'll be 10 minutes,
And then there'll be a part of you that says,
No,
This isn't working,
We're not getting anywhere.
And instead of listening to something tell you you're not getting anywhere,
Because your faith in that love is growing,
You'll be able to dismiss that voice as the negative nilly that it is.
You'll see it instead of being it.
There is nothing in the world that can compare,
Let alone give you what it is that you need and want.
Love lends her force to the entire universe.
Do you not think if you ask it to help you complete the relationship that it wants you to so that you might know love,
Do you not think it's not going to take care of you along the way?
Give you gradually what you need so that you become further and further involved as an instrument of it?
I promise you it does.
I promise you it does.
And as you complete its purpose,
You are completed as the witness of that relationship.
And that relationship is ongoing.
It is as ceaseless as creation itself,
And you are made new every time you participate in it.
