GF Live 4-1-23 Cultivate The Garden Of Faith

Here’s proof that all moments of life - including those most unwanted - offer unlimited, Divine possibilities: One soul perishes for its fear of having to face any unexpected challenge, while another (soul) flourishes in the same situation, having learned how to use its fear, and win its liberation.

Recorded Live on 4-1-23

Transcript

While we wait.

You know,

There's a whole talk just on that,

That little idea of while we wait.

So I'll just speak to it for a second before I start the material I intend to present.

For us,

The way we are now waiting,

As it were,

Is for something to begin that we anticipate or that we fear.

I'm waiting for my trip to go someplace I'm excited to see,

I'm waiting for a phone call from someone I love,

Or I'm waiting for a meeting that I don't want because of what it foretells or I imagine it does.

I'm waiting to hear back from the doctor on a test.

But it's a mistake to wait for something,

Because we're meant to wait within something.

And if we're actually present within ourselves,

Then we understand there's no moment in which something isn't beginning and something isn't ending,

In which by our willingness to be aware of ourselves in that moment.

It could be said in one respect that we are waiting on the divine,

Because we are waiting within the relationship that we have with what is taking place within and around us at the same time.

So,

Just for the sake of the introductory comments,

As I wait everyone to get logged on that's going to join us.

Never just sit and wait for something.

Always remember that the proper interior understanding places you waiting within that unfolding constant awareness of yourself,

Where you're not hoping that something will be complete,

Or that you can avoid something,

But you're watching the consciousness be completed through its relationship with that moment and everything that's being given to you in it.

So,

Let's get started.

I've asked Kate to put up the special writing as it were,

But before I start it,

I'm going to,

Before I read it to you,

Because it's going to set the stage.

I just want to make mention that for the last,

Actually,

I would say,

Gosh,

Probably going on five or six talks now in a row,

I've been talking about this idea that there is a,

Not just a faith that sets us free,

But that we require a certain amount of freedom to enter into that kind of faith.

And I would just mention if you haven't seen or heard any of these talks,

They're all free,

They're online.

Find me,

Go to my profile,

Search me on the web and drink from this cup that we have been sharing.

So,

Let's get going.

I'll read the key lesson to you and Kate will put it up.

Don't post for a moment while she's doing it,

If you would,

Please.

The proof that every moment,

Including the most painful of them,

Is unlimited in its divine possibility,

Is that one soul perishes for the fear of them,

While another soul is perfected and liberated by the same.

The proof that every moment,

Including the most painful of them,

Is unlimited in its divine possibility,

Is that one soul perishes for the fear of them,

While another soul is perfected and liberated by them.

Simply put,

That means that every single moment of our life holds within it,

If you will,

A kind of a,

How is that put,

I came upon a fork in the road and I took the one that was least traveled.

Every moment of our life offers what we could call the possibility of further realizing the fulfillment of the purpose of our life on this planet or deepening the sense of futility that most of us have all the time that we are not fulfilling the purpose of our existence.

This talk,

Which is basically intended to help us cultivate this garden of the soul,

This garden of faith,

Is all based in these ideas that we know in our heart of hearts were meant to be,

To live a more,

Call it what you will,

A more complete life,

Or let's say it the other way around,

As it most likely is experienced by us.

A life that isn't so full of conflict.

I don't know how well you are,

Adept you are at being able to see it.

Most of what we call waiting for moments to take place,

Waiting for this chat to start,

Waiting for the meeting we need,

Waiting for the announcement about our finances or about our family.

Most of those moments,

If they're not filled with some form of expectation of a fearful kind,

Then there's a tension in them because we're hoping that what we want to take place will go down the way we want it to go down.

And there's stress in that.

It's almost incomprehensible to us that there is the possibility of a life where our familiar stress and fear or anxiety or frustration,

Where all of those familiar states no longer serve as they've always served,

Which is to provide the feeling that we're stuck in another situation that we have to struggle our way through.

And instead of that constant stress,

A completely different relationship with it.

No moment in life,

And I don't care whatever its nature,

No moment in life isn't designed to be part of our preparation for discovering in ourselves this divine ability to take whatever the moment brings to transcend it.

And in transcending what that moment brings up in us,

To realize the possibility of living in a relationship with every moment by which our proper understanding of it lifts us above that moment.

Now,

What is the nature of these moments that disturb us?

Let's be clear,

Because I haven't seen it in any post since then.

How many of you know that life is mostly disturbance,

Not delight?

At least that's our perception of it.

Please,

If you will,

On the board.

How constant is the disturbance?

Even,

I mean,

Even getting ready to go out for a good time.

I don't know if you've noticed it.

Packing to go some places full of anxiety.

So what is it in us that's so readily disturbed?

What is it in us that's so readily disturbed?

Have you ever wondered about it?

Or do we just take the reaction to be the proof that there's something in us that needs things to be other than they are?

What is disturbed in us is the past.

You could call it expectations,

Frida,

But what are expectations other than identification with something we're hoping to happen or hoping doesn't happen?

Moments that we don't want,

We don't want because they disturb the past.

And what is the past?

The past is who and what we have been up until that moment.

And I would add,

Not just who and what we have been,

Not just what we are identified with and have brought forward with us into the present moment.

But when I say the who and what we have been,

I'm talking about human consciousness,

Because you and I do not exist.

We do not have a consciousness outside of human consciousness and consciousness,

That consciousness so rooted in the past,

So identified with the images that has given us and this human nature,

Its identity,

Politically,

Religiously,

Financially,

Environmentally,

Socially,

Across the board.

That this body of thought,

Which has been so crystallized,

And you and I so formally locked into its rigidity,

When something comes along in the present moment and brings into that crystallized consciousness,

Anything that causes it to have a tremor,

Because it's resisting whatever that moment is revealing.

Why?

Because it's not part of how things should be,

Meaning not the way I have been and need things to continue being.

So that in that moment,

We discover that that moment that we ordinarily want to avoid,

That disturbance,

Is actually a moment in which,

As they say,

When the student is ready,

The teacher appears.

Because ideally,

What is the student?

The student is the part of us that aspires to awaken and to become a truer,

More kind human being.

And what is the teacher other than the moment that shows up,

That unfolds the way it does?

And as it does,

It brings to light within us,

The fact that the image we have of ourselves as being someone who is good and kind and loving,

Is just that.

It's not the thing itself.

It's a sensation of self that we delight in when nothing is challenging it.

But the moment that any condition comes along that's contrary to this consciousness past,

This body of thoughts and feelings,

The moment they're triggered,

Everything that lies latent in them,

Which is our identification and our dependency upon these images,

Now suddenly it goes into the protective mode.

It starts to push and pull in one way or another.

So to get through this first part,

To understand that the moment of that revelation of who and what we have been,

The reaction that we have to any moment we don't want,

Is the revelation of the consciousness that doesn't want it.

The reaction we have to any moment we don't want is actually the revelation of the consciousness that doesn't want it.

And any part of our consciousness that doesn't want what is present and acting upon us as part of the fulfillment and movement of life,

Any part of us that resists that obviously lives outside of that movement,

And therefore is in constant conflict with any part of that movement.

And we don't see this because we're so instantly identified with this protective consciousness,

Trying to make sure that what it wants and believes it must have,

Possess,

Is necessary to it.

So as fleeting as that moment may be,

And really it's an awakening that I'm going to get into,

I'm going to give you three particular steps here to help develop this idea of nourishing the soul,

Of what it means to not just use the moment as it's given,

But to use the moment as it's given to give ourselves a new life,

Because it is being given to us in that moment by another order of being.

Sometimes those moments come,

And I hope that you'll agree with me,

Sometimes here comes a moment,

And I can be shocked right to my socks with what I see.

I mean,

Sometimes every once in a while,

Those moments of awakening come and they're so special,

We wish that time would stop.

We see the beauty of that sunrise,

We see the massive cloud formations,

We see the child delighted with joy,

Dancing for no reason whatsoever,

A puppy running in circles,

Some noble creature,

A deer,

A horse running across a field.

Those moments,

That's an awakening,

Isn't it?

And it's awakening to something that was latent within us that suddenly realizes it has some corresponding connection to that,

Which is that beauty,

That strength,

That nobility.

We love that.

There's no shock in that,

We can't swallow it enough.

But what about those moments when,

Shockingly,

We see,

As life does show us,

That within us there is something that we don't want to see at all?

A split second of a revelation where instantaneously that moment has brought up inside of us is revealing,

Through a reflection,

Something we didn't realize is true about ourselves.

I had no idea that I could be that angry,

That I could be that hostile,

That conflicted,

That I could turn in the drop of a hat,

As I just spoke about last week.

That what I call this love I have for someone can turn in a heartbeat into something that's hideous.

How is that possible?

We're describing it because all of this content lays buried within us,

And all of it,

In order for us to transcend it,

Must be revealed.

And that's what these moments that we don't want do,

Is they bring in a split second of a realization that I would add marks either the beginning of a new kind of faith,

Or the strengthening of a fear.

A certain realization about ourselves that either marks the beginning of a completely different order of faith,

Or crystallizes the fear that we realize in that moment,

One way or the other,

There is no self separate from the consciousness that is stirred,

The sense of self that is brought up in that moment.

That those moments,

And every moment,

Is the sudden revelation of our own consciousness as being inseparable from what is being reflected in it.

No me apart from you,

No self outside of that situation.

That the whole source of our suffering lies in this unconscious duality that this present consciousness is the keeper of.

And then we have these moments,

But don't recognize them as being such of a sudden spiritual realization of a singularity that we are.

Where what the moment brings cannot be separated from what the moment reveals,

And what the moment reveals is the consciousness that came into that moment that was intended to be revealed by the action of that moment.

That moment shows us there is no self that exists apart from the moment to be in fear of it.

Those revelations show us there is no self that lives outside of whatever it is that is being revealed within it.

No self outside of what is being revealed within it.

That is where our true hope lies.

Because in one respect it's unseen,

But suddenly it is given to us to see,

And it is what we do in these moments with what we're given to see that determines everything for us.

What to do when we face the devil in our mind is to understand that whatever in us that fears the devil is the devil feared.

Whatever is in us that fears the devil is the devil feared.

Does the light fear the darkness?

Does the sun go,

Oh I'm not going to rise because look at those early shadows,

There's so many of them.

We must understand that the dawning of this light of every moment which is the dawning of a certain kind of light is a gift,

An opportunity to explore and discover if you will,

The completion,

The fulfillment of a consciousness that doesn't know yet its real role,

Its real place in life.

So let's get going here,

Let me get started.

First step,

And these are descriptions of actions.

And where is that?

I want to share something with you quickly.

I had something,

I don't know what,

Here it is.

We all profess in one way or another that we want to have faith in the divine,

Or that we would like to know if there's such thing as faith in the divine.

And one way or another if there is,

How do we build it?

But you have to understand that this idea of faith is not a noun,

It's not an image,

It's not a pleasing picture of ourselves as being someone who has that,

Just as faith,

As love is not a noun.

Faith,

Like the divine,

Like love,

Faith is not something that we think,

It is something that we are and that we do.

It is a verb.

It is a verb.

It is an action.

There isn't one true teaching across the board that doesn't pronounce that.

There's a piece of writing in scripture,

I think James,

He says,

Even so,

Faith,

If it hath not works,

Is dead,

Being alone.

If faith isn't worked,

It is dead,

It is alone.

And being alone means that it is without teos,

It is without participating in the trinity that reveals it as the path to fulfillment.

A man may say,

He say,

Yeah,

I have faith,

I have works,

Show me the faith without works.

That's what we suffer from.

Because whatever religious path,

Whatever spiritual ideal a person lives from,

They say they have faith,

But the moment something comes along and something tests that faith,

What we're tested with then in that moment is throwing ourselves back into this reliance upon our past,

What our past then professes we have to do,

And our faith becomes caught up in things seen,

In the next plan,

In the next thing I'll prosper from.

So we must understand that there's a first step in all of this,

Kendra,

Why should we have faith is because we don't have faith or said otherwise is because our faith is now in ourselves,

In what our mind,

The past,

What is dead,

A collection of social and cultural themes and beliefs,

Our faith is in what brings up inside of us that which we see and have to do in the moment when suddenly our imagined freedom is taken from us by a condition that challenges us.

We must have a new kind of faith that involves the constant embodiment of it,

The incarnation of it.

Let me go further.

First step,

This is tough stuff.

We must learn to see the good of being awakened.

We must learn to see the good of being awakened.

Now the problem we have with that is we already think we're awake,

But if we were already awake,

There couldn't be a sudden shock.

We're awakened from a dream when we are actually awake,

We're not in a dream and we're participating in the movement of life.

So,

First of all,

Again,

To see the good of being awakened,

We can't awaken ourselves any more than a rose can open itself to the light that stirs it from its slumber.

Here's a bud,

It's slumbering.

The bud is asleep in its nature.

It can't awaken itself.

Something must act upon it.

Comes the light,

Comes the warmth,

The energy,

And it is awakened and the bud opens into the rose because it has been awakened.

It cannot awaken itself.

We cannot awaken ourselves.

You have had moments,

You wouldn't be here with me,

You wouldn't be studying these ideas.

If you haven't had moments when suddenly,

For the light of it,

You aren't brought into,

Transported into a world that seemingly is timeless.

The beauty,

The depth,

The breadth of something that suddenly you're brought into.

You're awakened and you're awakened not just to the moment,

But you're awakened to what the moment has awakened in you that allows you to participate in that moment in a completely different way from a completely different order of consciousness.

St.

Paul on the road to Damascus was awakened,

Awakened to all that was dwelling in him that was dark,

That he thought was the good of him.

And suddenly he sees,

My God,

It's not good to torment another human being.

It's not good to want to punish those who don't believe the way I do.

And in the shock of that awakening,

He went blind,

Meaning he could no longer see life through the eyes of the past.

He was made a new man.

You and I are made,

Meant to be a new man,

A new woman by learning to allow this awakening to take place.

Here comes a lesson.

Somebody is unpleasant to us,

Unkind.

That's an awakening.

But it isn't an awakening for us when we take the reaction we have to that moment and then let the reaction point our attention back to the past,

To our conditioning that tells us no one's supposed to treat us like that.

So then instead of transcending the awakening of that judge that we're intended to realize lives within us as the content of the past,

Measuring the present,

Instead of awakening to that judge,

We go back to sleep in it.

And instead of that moment being an awakening,

It becomes a crystallization of that consciousness.

It is impossible to describe to another human being what it means to exist.

Thought is not proof of existence.

Reactions do not prove existence.

Quite the opposite.

The more I'm identified with thoughts,

With reactions,

With mechanical emotion,

The more I'm identified with those things,

The less I exist.

Because I,

In that moment,

Exist only as the extension and continuation of a consciousness that is the past itself.

The past is gone.

No,

The truth is,

Kendra,

I think,

Therefore I am not.

It's completely mistaken,

That idea.

It's been absorbed and brought into this world because,

God,

I think I am.

No,

I am when I am.

I am when I am aware of my existence.

And if I'm in thought,

I have no awareness of existence at all.

And the thought that I exist is not existence.

It is a dream.

So we must learn to understand the good of what we don't want to experience.

Because in the moment where suddenly something comes,

Someone says something,

I have to do something,

I'm not prepared.

In that moment that that comes,

And suddenly I feel that,

I'm stirred into an awareness of a consciousness that believes it knows what it means to be ready.

That believes it knows how to be prepared.

What man taking thought can add one cubit to his stature.

Take no thought for tomorrow.

You can go through the Christian scripture,

You can go through the Vedas,

You can go through every last part of the scripture,

You'll all find the same thing.

We learn to see the goodness in the lesson that we don't want by allowing the lesson we don't want to reveal the part of us that doesn't want it.

We think when we don't want something,

It proves we know what's good.

Please see it.

We think that when we don't want something,

We know it's no good.

And yet how many times in our life,

And you must use your own experience,

Have we had moments where we thought,

Jesus,

This is the end of my life.

This is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.

And we meet it full head on resisting and fighting.

And then by the grace of God,

Through the gradual awareness that there was a realization that had been refused in that moment,

That thing comes round full.

And one day we don't refuse the teacher when it appears the lesson is there and we get it.

Oh,

Wow.

Why did it take 10 years for me to understand that anger isn't strength?

Why did it take 40 years for me to realize that fear knows nothing about security?

How could I have been so stupid to believe that of myself,

I was going to lift myself above my own addictions when myself is the addiction?

How could I have been that stupid?

And then you see it.

It's a shock.

But boy,

Are you grateful because you realize way back then,

Whether that was 10 seconds ago or 10,

000 years ago,

You were given a glimpse that within you was everything that you needed to know in order to rise above what you didn't know,

Who you were the moment before is replaced by a new order of consciousness.

And that's called rebirth,

By the way.

Second step,

We must agree to see the good of what we're being awakened to.

First step was to learn to see the good of being awakened.

Something suddenly brings me into the awareness of myself,

The good of being awakened.

Wow,

I'm aware of myself.

Wait a minute.

What am I aware of?

Now,

That's another story.

The high side,

I'm aware of the beauty.

I'm aware of the theater and the open play.

High side,

I'm aware of what's beautiful and good.

I'm aware of this music.

It's moving me.

I'm aware of the movement in me that can't be separated from the music that's causing that.

That's high side.

But what we call low side isn't the low side.

There is,

Write this down.

There is no low side to being awakened and there's no low side to what you're awakened to.

We must learn to see the good of what we're being awakened to.

We said,

I hope you understood it,

That we cannot awaken ourselves.

Nothing can.

And if we can't awaken ourselves,

Then we obviously are also unable to reveal ourselves to ourselves.

We cannot reveal ourselves to ourselves.

And what remains concealed cannot be healed by the light that reveals our need for that healing.

I can't awaken myself,

But I can be present enough to the moment in which I am awakened.

And by the way,

One day you'll understand there is never any moment in life where creation is not awakening itself to itself and its relationship with the creator.

That's who and what we are.

I can't awaken myself.

If I can't awaken myself,

Then I certainly can't help myself see what lies in the sleep of myself,

What I'm asleep to in myself.

Again,

I was blind and now I see.

How does an addict,

How does anybody addicted to whatever it may be we're addicted to?

How do we finally outgrow that?

We outgrow it by finally seeing a revelation that I thought this was good for me.

I thought this was what I needed to do.

So many of us,

For instance,

Are addicted to thinking about what's wrong with other people.

So many of us are addicted to judging our culture and our society.

Not that our culture and society isn't sick and corrupt,

Because it is.

But it's sick and corrupt because the part of us that sits in judgment of it,

That believes it's better than it,

Can't bring about any change in it.

And no change can take place in our culture,

Let alone in our consciousness,

Until it is awakened and it begins to realize what is within it.

That's true responsibility.

We must see the good of being acted on means that we must see the good of what is revealed in us in that moment that we would rather not see.

Most difficult.

There's no question about it.

We spend our lives defending what we call good and do terrible things in the name of goodness.

Lie,

Cheat,

Steal,

Place ourselves above others while pretending that we're not doing that so that we can keep the image of ourselves.

We call all of that good.

Get in mind,

That's not good.

What is good is that which reveals that that isn't good.

What is good is that which reveals what has been concealed and in the revelation of what isn't good.

At last,

The possibility of a new relationship with our own consciousness that this sleeping consciousness cannot bring about.

A new relationship with our own consciousness.

A consciousness that was awakened by the living word,

By that which comes into life,

By that which is eternally active,

Coming from the invisible celestial realms,

The supernal realms,

Sliding into what is in time,

What is created.

And as it acts upon what is passive,

It brings about in that relationship a sudden awakening,

An awareness.

It brings into what was asleep to itself,

The awareness of itself.

And in the awareness of itself,

A new relationship with that which is acting on it and that which is being acted upon.

A marriage,

A union.

No longer the endless division produced by me trying to derive from the moment what I must that I might get on with my life as it's been.

But instead,

A new directive that I can't create for myself.

And by the way,

That I can't follow.

Even if I,

You know,

Mechanical religion is just resplendent with dogmatic directives.

Be this,

Do that,

You should this,

Have faith no matter what.

No,

The new directive is the issuance of a sudden revelation that there's no separation between what is taking place and what it is taking place within.

And in the revelation of that consciousness,

In that light,

Something that cannot act against itself.

Something that cannot act against another human being.

And don't think to yourself,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't.

How do I say this?

We have something in us that immediately takes what we're looking at as something that is evidential if we can see it.

And then exalts it,

Puts it on a throne of some kind.

Puts a crown on it.

And then now I know I've got to be this,

I should be like that.

No,

You shouldn't be like anything.

You should be what you are as you're given to be it.

And not ask one thing more than that.

Not ask one thing more than to be alive.

And to be alive means to be present to what has come into creation and what is acting upon it to perfect it.

That's what it means to be alive.

Because it's always completing itself.

And if you're alive,

You're aware of that constant sense of being completed,

Of being made whole,

Of being reborn.

If you're alive.

But we're not.

Yet.

But we can understand it.

So the third step.

First step,

Agree to see the good of being awakened.

Second step,

Agree to see the good of what I'm being awakened to.

I had no idea that I was that selfish.

I had no idea that all I can think about is myself.

It never dawned on me.

And yet,

When I don't like you or I don't want this or the world isn't the way it is,

From what am I looking at the world through?

The eyes of something that knows how everyone and everything should be.

And if it's not by God,

I will destroy you.

And then you put half of the world on one side of that and the other half on the other side for and against,

Against and for,

And you have our world today.

And the destruction it's going through.

Because it isn't love,

It isn't goodness,

It isn't morality,

It's misery and hatred.

But it's all born out of a consciousness that's asleep to itself,

In conflict with itself,

And no awareness of what it's doing to itself.

That's why the true hope that this world has rests in human beings who are willing to see the good of being awakened and what they're awakened to.

And lastly,

The last step,

To see the good of allowing whatever you see to be just as it is.

See the good of allowing whatever you are given to see to be just as it is.

Don't take anything from it,

Don't add anything to it,

Don't judge it.

Just let it be as it is.

Why?

Because that is the light that has come to reveal.

It is what is revealed by that light and it is the union of those two forms of those active and passive forces that bring forth a new conception.

And that's you,

That's me in this moment,

If we can understand it.

We all want the same thing in the deepest part of us.

You can call whatever word you want.

Peace,

Love,

God,

The divine.

And it is possible for you and I to be completely at rest in the ceaseless movement of creation,

Completely at rest in the ceaseless birth of creation.

In the world,

None of it.

But in order to find that,

So many of these questions are coming up.

People,

I can't explain it to you.

Why should we not judge war in Ukraine?

Why should we not judge crime?

Who is the judge?

I don't have to know whether or not war is good or bad.

I can see war is evil.

There's no good in war.

It's death,

Waging death to create a sensation of life in the hapless human beings that believe that somehow or other they can change the conditions that they blame for the war when the condition is our consciousness.

I don't have to think to myself,

What's with this crime?

Do I have to think to myself,

It's criminal that human beings act against each other for the sake of themselves,

Regardless the condition.

I don't have to think about whether that's good or bad.

I know it's not right.

I see it's not good.

Why do I have to judge that?

I don't have to be an Einstein to see that the more laws we make to try to rein in the insanity,

The more insane things become.

Because it's conflict judging and creating rules for conflict.

And the more conflict interacts with conflict,

The more conflict there is.

I don't need to think about that at all.

I can see it.

And if I see it,

I'm free of it.

And in that freedom,

Then I can judge and act according to the intelligence that shows me what needs to be done as I am given to do it in that moment.

Not as part of some idiotic movement.

A wall,

A wave of judgment is the wave of hatred.

What is good will have nothing to do with it,

But what is good will show you that you should have nothing to do with it and show you a world where you can be present and act accordingly and not be punished by your own actions,

Let alone by the actions of others.

And I've gone on a little longer than I should.

See the good of allowing what awakens you to do its work.

See the good of what you're awakened to and then allow whatever you see to be just as it is.

Stay there in that union,

In that marriage,

And you will see yourself beginning to look at this world through new eyes.

And you will be a new man or a new woman.