GF Live 4-29-23 Rise Above & Transcend Any Troubling Moment

The light of true self-knowledge grows out of our willingness to see and then enter into whatever we’ve yet to understand about ourselves; it’s a grand mystery comparable to the way in which the sun rises from out of the darkness, illuminating and revealing all that was unseen only moments before.

Transcript

The topic is how to rise above and transcend any troubling moment.

And what would you give as a human being to be able not just to rise above unwanted moments,

But to discover their actual purpose?

Because regardless what it is that appears in front of our eyes,

It serves a more secret purpose that is,

If you will,

Behind our eyes.

Something designed to not just illuminate this consciousness,

But bring us into an illumined relationship with it.

That's what I wanna talk with you about today.

Just prior to me pushing the start button here,

I was looking out,

Again,

At nature,

Sun when it rises here.

It first has these long shadows.

And then I thought to myself,

You know,

Aren't our troubles a lot like shadows?

And please don't get ahead of me.

You can't know where I'm going.

And by that I mean,

If you will,

In the onset of a moment,

The shadows seem pretty long.

The shadow of the moment I don't want seems bigger than my ability to deal with it.

And then we go through all of the stuff we go through,

The trials,

The tribulations,

The struggles to control and change.

And then,

And it's pretty much like this.

And then as the sun rises,

The shadows get shorter.

So when the sun's directly over your head,

If you will,

The shadow disappears and you think to yourself,

That's beautiful.

I got it licked.

I solved that trouble.

I solved that problem.

And then much to our unwanted amazement,

As the natural conditions move through their natural flow and everything that is intended to be reconciled is brought into revelation,

Then all of a sudden those shadows,

They appear again.

And we pretty much spend our life trying to escape those shadows,

Those moments we don't want.

And we've never been able to do it because they belong to a level of consciousness.

They literally belong to a world of time that cannot be separated from what we have created from these desires that we take to be our own,

From the world we wanna make in our own image.

And we have to constantly be reintroduced to what it is that we have made reality out of.

There's a great purpose behind that,

Which we're gonna get into as we go through this material.

So the question is that I wanna look at you,

With you,

Is there a way to have a completely different relationship with these shadows,

With these problems,

With these unwanted moments,

With these difficult relationships?

And the answer is yes.

So I'm gonna ask Kate to post the key lesson that I write for every talk on the board here as I read it.

That way you can post it,

Copy it later.

So don't post for a moment while she's doing this,

Please.

Here's the key lesson for this talk today.

The light of true self-knowledge grows out of our willingness to see and then enter into whatever we've yet to understand about ourselves.

It is a grand mystery comparable to the way in which the sun rises from out of the darkness,

Illuminating and revealing all that was unseen before.

The light of true self-knowledge grows out of our willingness to see and then enter into whatever we've yet to understand about ourselves.

It is a grand mystery comparable to the way in which the sun rises from out of the darkness,

Illuminating and revealing all that was unseen moments before.

I wonder if you could hear that.

Can you hear the turkeys going crazy in the background?

Let me bring you into this idea by bringing in the ideas of four completely different human beings in four different periods of time,

All of which underline what we're looking at together.

Saint Isaac the Syrian,

He writes,

"'When a man knows himself,

"'the knowledge of all things is granted to him.

"'For to know oneself is the fullness "'of the knowledge of all things.

"'For to know oneself is the fullness "'of the knowledge of all things.

'" Spinoza,

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only aim of life.

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only aim of life,

Spinoza.

Whitman,

"'I exist as I am,

And that is enough.

"'If no other in the world be aware,

I sit content.

"'I exist as I am,

That is enough.

"'If no other in the world be aware,

I sit content.

'" And lastly,

Eliot,

T.

S.

Eliot,

Says,

"'The question is what is it to know myself?

"'To know myself,

' he writes,

"'requires being myself.

"'And in the end,

That's the whole journey.

"'The question is what is it to know myself?

"'To know myself requires being myself.

"'And in the end,

That's the whole journey.

'" And it really is the whole journey.

Knowing ourselves is the whole journey.

The whole of the questions that we have about our life,

Every trouble that we have yet to be able to resolve is because we do not understand that we are currently living from a consciousness that creates the very problems that then are handed off to us to solve.

And then we call on the same consciousness that creates the problem to help us get past its pain.

It makes no sense at all,

But when you start to realize it and see the truth of it,

Then things begin to change for you,

Including all of the ways in which we meet these moments.

So as I said,

Or more accurately as Eliot said,

To know myself requires being myself.

And in the end,

That's the whole story.

What is myself?

There's really no end to the answer,

But there is the capability that we've been given to be conscious of the fact that who and what we are is forever and ever and ever.

And that sounds like a stream of time,

But it's not.

That who and what we are was made in the beginning,

And it is always being made in what we see in this time,

But it belongs to something that is timeless.

And it's difficult for us to understand how do I enter into something that in my heart of hearts I want to know when it seems like I'm forever on the bank of a river watching all of these things go by,

And some I want,

Some I don't,

Or at other times I'm in the river having gotten my hands on what I want or trying to get away from what I don't want.

And life just moves by in this rush.

And it's important to understand that life isn't moving by in a rush.

The rush is our unconscious identification with a stream,

A virtually unending stream of thoughts and feelings that without knowing we have become so dependent on the content for our identity.

When we,

Our true nature belongs to something of a completely different order.

Let me help us see this.

I've got a couple stories to tell,

So I better not wax too long on any one idea.

I've covered some of this before,

So I won't be as lengthy as usual.

What is my relationship to the morning sun,

To the shadows that I see starting to cross the field,

Or for that matter,

My relationship to this sort of brilliant lime green leaf,

The leaves that come out on these trees and the drones and the oaks when they first begin to open up?

What is my relationship to that?

Or if you've ever been to the ocean,

There you are,

And maybe it's a stormy sea,

Or if it's flat and quiet,

You can watch the diamonds dancing on the waters.

What is my relationship to that?

To every leaf that blows by in the wind,

To the turkeys outside the window,

To the little goldfinch,

The tiny little goldfinch that feed on the niger seed at the feeder.

What is my relationship to that?

We know that we're drawn to it.

Why?

We don't understand.

All of these things and everything is a reflection of a condition that exists before the creature in our consciousness.

There is nothing that you will ever see that isn't already in your consciousness.

I don't care where you go.

I don't care what you do.

I don't care what you taste.

I don't care whatever pain or joy it may be.

It is already an aspect of our consciousness,

Much as the mirror,

The shiny side of a mirror that reflects the object is there before the object is reflected,

So is there something in us that goes,

If you will,

With us everywhere and into and through which all of these things are revealed.

And it is in the revelation of these things,

Their qualities,

Their character,

That this consciousness is given a way to know itself.

It becomes,

In some respect,

Aware of the content of itself as these things in life seem to move into and through it.

And so our consciousness,

If you will,

Is stirred by every impression it takes in to realize something it didn't know about itself the moment before.

Again,

I've talked about this at length.

Now,

The danger with talks,

And there is a danger to them,

Is that a person wants to jump ahead to the end without doing the work it requires to understand because they hear an idea like,

Everything that I see is part of my consciousness,

Which means that the light that I see,

The balance,

The shadow,

The relationship between the creatures,

That all of those things are already a part of what I am.

And so getting a hold of that idea because it resonates and it feels right,

Then when things come that I don't want,

Then I summarily reject it because I say,

No,

That's not what I am.

But that's not the truth.

Because in one respect,

You are not those things that are reflected in your consciousness because those things come and go,

But the awareness in that consciousness stays.

It remains.

It isn't changed by what comes into and through it.

And that includes what comes into and through it that we love and that we feel enriched by and what comes into it that when we see it causes trouble.

The problem is we love what we think is us and want to be us and we despise everything that we think is not who and what we are.

And that's where the problem is because we are forever in a kind of a rotating set of eyes,

I dot,

You know,

Not eyes,

But eyes as well,

Where every last one of these moments,

Whatever the feeling is in that moment,

According to what I give my attention to and then identify with that,

That becomes who I am.

And then when I'm identified with that,

If something changes it because I like it,

Then I'm in trouble again.

This is what we're talking about.

How can we begin to understand that this feeling of I in each and every moment is inseparable from what we give our attention to in that same moment?

The feeling of I is inseparable from what we give our attention to in every given moment.

And our problem right now,

Because we don't understand our true nature,

Is that we cannot,

That this consciousness cannot wait to say I to anything and everything that causes in this consciousness a stirring relationship with it.

I have a story to help exemplify this.

This is a,

Actually I'm gonna use a couple of stories that go so well together,

I decided I would marry them ever so quickly.

A long time ago in a kingdom far,

Far away,

There was a young prince who was coming of age.

And in the kingdom,

Coming of age,

His father and mother,

The good queen,

They knew that this young man would soon inherit the mantle of the kingdom and be responsible for all that was there,

Just as you and I are intended to inherit this kingdom and be responsible for all that is here in the truest sense of the word.

At any rate,

They wanted to prepare him and the king himself,

Having gone through a similar kind of initiation,

Knows that his son needs to go through and experience something that will change forever the way he sees life,

His relationship to the moment.

So he lets the young prince know that they're going to have this huge ceremony and he's going to bring the prince out,

Introduce him as the new king,

As the prince and heir to the throne.

And all of the good people of the kingdom are going to come,

They're going to gather in the courtyard outside the castle and they will present to the young prince their gifts,

An acknowledgement of his inheritance.

All of the gifts,

Sorry,

Sometimes there's little phrases and I can't take time to explain them.

Hopefully I'll be able to before I get to this talk.

All of the gifts.

Every moment of our life,

The three wise men appear,

Bringing gifts,

Bringing another kind of wealth,

Bringing that which heals us and that which is intended to keep us immune from the ills,

The slings and arrows of this world.

Every moment is that kind of gift,

But let's get into it.

So here's the young prince.

He starts thinking to himself,

Please,

If you can put yourself in his place.

Oh my God,

Everybody in the kingdom is going to bring me a gift,

That's unbelievable.

I can't wait.

So he starts walking around thinking about all these things he's going to get because he's always been a little envious of his father's treasure room.

He always wanted his own horses to pull a beautiful carriage.

All these things he wants,

He can't believe he's going to get them now.

So here comes the big day.

The king on one side,

The queen on the other,

The prince in the middle and the trumpets,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

Pa,

And the gates open and in come the people of the gifts and the prince is so excited,

He's sitting on the edge of his chair.

So as the ceremony goes,

Little by little,

One by one,

Each of the people in the kingdom come and present their gifts on the stage where the prince and the king and the queen are sitting.

So the first person walks up and they put at the feet of the prince three chickens.

Next person walks up and they put a basket of grain.

Another person walks up and they put a wooden flute that they had carved.

And one by one,

As all these people are walking up to the prince and putting their gifts on the stage,

He's looking and he keeps looking.

He's not seeing gold coins,

He's not seeing fabulous silks.

He's seeing all these strange things,

A bundle of sugar cane,

Nothing that he had imagined at all.

And as he's sitting there,

His father knew this was gonna happen.

He starts to sweat because he's in terrible conflict.

If you can imagine,

You're thinking to yourself,

You're gonna be rich beyond your wildest imaginations.

You won't have to depend on anybody anymore for anything.

And instead of getting everything that you want,

You're getting a lot of stuff you don't want and that you don't understand why it is that you're not getting what you want from that.

So just ever so quickly,

Because I wanna make sure we're still all here.

Can you relate to that moment where what you want and expect,

You get nothing like what you want or expect and you seem to be getting quite the opposite?

Yes,

Thank you,

Claudia.

Yep,

Sure,

Great.

Okay,

Everybody up.

At least I wanna know everybody's still following me.

So the prince,

Like you and me,

What does he wanna do?

He wants to shout,

He wants to scream,

And mostly he wants to run off of the stage because he's sitting there,

He's got flop sweats going on,

And he doesn't know what to do with himself.

He's literally tremendous.

And he's looking around and the king looks down at his son and is waiting for the moment because he's been in the same spot.

There is something that lives within us that has already been everywhere that you and I are ever going to be.

There is an intelligence,

An awareness,

A consciousness that has already been everywhere and gone through everything that we will ever go through.

I tell you,

That's the truth.

And when you know that,

You will have a different relationship with the way life unfolds.

But back to the story.

King's watching and finally the prince can't take it anymore.

He starts to jump up and the king puts his hand on his shoulder and pushes him down into the chair.

No one really notices it.

It's going on between the king and the prince.

And the prince looks up at the king,

All sweaty.

And the king looks down at him and he says,

A true prince,

And you are a true prince,

My son,

Never measures himself at any moment,

No matter what it is that's placed at his feet,

Whatever that gift may be and however he may feel about it,

He does not measure himself by what is placed at his feet.

He looks beyond the stage of the moment.

He looks beyond the stage of the moment.

And his son looks at him.

What do you mean beyond the stage?

And the king says,

Son,

Lift your eyes.

Look past what's on the stage of the moment.

Look past the people who have put the things on that stage and realize that if you look beyond the stage of this moment you will see the entire kingdom belongs to you.

So why would you worry or be upset about any one aspect of it?

Whether it's what you want or don't want,

It is not the measure of who and what you are,

My son.

Can you see,

God help us,

How any given moment that sets what it does on the stage that we're,

That by the way,

We don't even know we're on,

The event sets the stage and our experience of the event is determined by the part of us that goes into that moment,

Wanting,

Looking,

Desiring for something that's going to augment it so that almost nothing serves that total purpose.

And even when those things are given to us,

They quickly evaporate.

They disappear off the stage of the moment and something else takes its place.

You can't stop that.

So how,

If you're following me,

Do we get past that kind of relationship that we all have with the moment so that wherever I am,

Whatever I'm doing,

Whatever is going on around me,

I cannot be drawn into a moment where,

Because what is unfolding challenges whatever desire it is that I went into that moment,

Not even knowing that I came into the moment with it and drags me down into some troubled or unhappy state because life suddenly has nothing to do,

Is not doing what I want it to do.

How do we get past that?

Next story.

Take a deep breath,

Please.

How do we begin to understand this important idea?

So here's a father and a son,

And the father is a very successful,

Well-known director,

Kind of like a Stephen King character,

An author,

Director,

Producer.

And his son is having some trouble with some people at school,

A young boy feeling ridiculed or humiliated.

And for the last week he's come home and he's sullen and indrawn,

Discouraged.

And his father wants to teach him a lesson that he knows the boy is gonna have to learn.

Again,

The father already lives,

How do I say it?

The son already lives in the father.

It's actually biblical,

Isn't it?

Father lives in the son.

The father knows exactly what the son has to understand because he's been through it himself.

And one day the son,

If he understands,

Will grow into the father and have the father's understanding.

It's so beautiful if you understand it at all.

So here's the father and he realizes he needs a special lesson,

But he can't really describe it because the boy's too young.

He doesn't have the experience yet to comprehend the principles that he wants to provide for him.

So he gathers his boy up on a Sunday and he drives him over to the big studio where he works.

And he's working on a particular film,

A real sci-fi horror film at the moment.

And they walk into this big soundstage.

The boy's wondering why his dad brought him there.

It's kind of cool,

But what's going on?

And when they get inside the stage,

The dad for a moment goes over to one of those big digital cameras on those roly-doly bobbies.

And he does something and then he says,

"'Come on,

I want you to see something.

" And the boy goes,

Okay.

And the father puts him up on that big chair and he says,

Look through the lens.

And the boy leans forward and he looks through the lens.

And when he does,

He jumps back.

Goes,

God,

What is that?

He's nervous,

Excited,

Terrified.

And his father says,

What did you see?

He said,

I saw a monster.

He said,

You saw a monster?

Knowing quite well that what he had focused on was the face of one of the terrifying creatures in this film.

Yeah,

It was unbelievable.

He said,

Oh.

He said,

Well,

Do something for me.

I want you to look again.

No,

I'm not looking again.

The son says,

No,

You have to trust me.

And the father does something to the camera.

And the boy looks in the camera again and there's still a little start,

But this time he doesn't see the creature's face.

He sees a little bit of the area that the creature is in.

So it's not as overwhelming what he sees.

He looks at his father.

He still doesn't understand.

His father says,

Hold on.

Makes an adjustment.

He says,

Now look again.

And the boy looks and now he can see not just the monster and the setting the monster's in,

But now he can see that the setting and the monster are themselves on a set in a movie studio.

He says,

What's going on?

One more time.

And the father makes an adjustment.

He looks through and the boy looks through and he can see not just this monster and the set the monster's on,

But the set that the whole set's on,

Including the walls of the studio.

You see the whole thing.

And his father says,

I want you to understand something very important.

You'll need to understand this.

Why was your first reaction so fearful?

What was so scary?

So because all I saw was the monster,

But you're not as scared now and you look,

Are you?

No.

Why?

Because I can see there is something not just more than the monster,

But that the monster is part of a story.

It's part of a stage.

Father says,

That's exactly right.

Says,

Here's the lesson.

Some of you know this,

But now we're applying it a new way.

As goes your attention,

My son,

So comes your experience.

As goes your attention,

So comes your experience.

When you give your attention,

Son,

Much like the first story,

To everything that is on the stage of that moment and what you're seeing on the stage of that moment isn't what you don't,

Isn't what you want to see,

Or in this instance,

Is something that scares you.

You have to understand that that's just one element.

That's just one thing.

And when we give our attention to that one thing,

It is given because something in us wants to derive an identity from that one thing.

Why else would I give my attention to a worry?

You have to do some work here.

I can't do it all for you.

Why would I give my attention to a fear?

I'll tell you why.

Because fear tells me that unless I give all of my attention to it,

Something terrible is gonna happen.

And then fear winds up giving me some way to protect myself from that fear,

When fear can't protect me from itself.

So that in that moment,

In a manner of speaking,

We are capable,

We have been given a gift that as far as I know,

No other creature on the planet,

Perhaps dolphins and whales,

I don't know.

But as far as we're concerned,

We have a gift that a kind of free will,

But not our free will the way that we think of free will.

Our free will is to be able to choose in any given moment what it is that we give our attention to.

That's what free will is,

What we give our attention to.

Because whatever we give ourselves to,

Meaning the same thing as giving our attention,

Whatever we give our attention to is what we get in that moment from the consciousness that is moved and awakened and stirred by what it attends to.

Go back to what I opened the talk with.

This happens all the time,

I might add.

I'm looking out the window here at a beautiful Oregon morning.

And if I'm not attentive,

My eye will fall on one thing outside the window.

Now,

In some respects,

That's not a problem.

I look at the,

There's a bird called a gross beak,

The beautiful songbirds.

They came back about three days ago in their migration.

I do look at the little goldfinches.

And each and every one of these little creatures has a very specific character to it.

So that the feeling,

The awareness in my consciousness that produces the feeling when I look at a goldfinch is very different than when I look at one of these gross beaks.

Or if I look at one of the stellar jays,

A completely different feeling.

That's a dinosaur in a bird body.

Or I look out at these turkeys,

Especially this time of the year.

They're all puffed up and blown out.

They're called gobblers for good reason because there's 15 of them following two of the little hens.

And their relationship is remarkably experienced differently.

And then you watch these gobblers get into a fight.

It's unbelievable if you've never seen it.

And that,

And the conflict in that is unbelievable.

So everything that one gives their attention to produces through that attention a corresponding reflection in the consciousness.

And the reflection is the realization in that consciousness of the content of itself.

So that every last one of these things is revealing the content in that consciousness that was there prior to the moment that revealed it.

So if that's true,

And it is,

Why would any of us give our attention to one problem,

To one worry,

To one fear,

To one anxiety?

When,

As we learned in the story of Stephen and his father,

It's possible for us to realize that my attention is producing this experience,

But my attention belongs to me.

It doesn't belong to some part of me that wants to punish itself and then protect itself at the same time.

I can pull back.

I can use my attention to bring myself back into a completely different relationship with the moment.

If you wanna be new,

You have to widen the view.

I'm gonna give you an exercise in a moment.

Kate'll put it up,

But I'm not quite ready to get to it.

I hope that you can,

I hope that I can reach you,

And I hope you will reach for what I am trying to show.

There is in scripture,

East and West,

This idea of a kingdom of heaven.

In the East,

It's not called the kingdom of heaven,

But it amounts to the same,

A full freedom born out of being in a full relationship with what is unnameable,

What is eternal,

Completely loving,

Kind,

And free.

The prayer when Christ was speaking,

He said,

"'Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

'" But hallowed,

By the way,

Means silent and unspeakable.

"'Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done "'on earth as it is in heaven.

'" The words,

Thy kingdom come,

Doesn't mean that at some point in time,

The kingdom of heaven,

Moksha,

Freedom,

Liberation,

Relationship with the divine,

However you wanna call it,

Doesn't mean that it's coming in time.

Thy kingdom come means that thy kingdom is being revealed always and forever.

The kingdom of heaven is never not being revealed.

One day you'll understand that,

That this life of ours with what seems to be all of these events moving through time is playing itself out and being reflected in a consciousness that has within it a capacity to look past what is on the stage of the moment and to experience itself as the totality of the stage,

The gifts and the lands and all that bestows that upon a human being.

So this idea of thy kingdom come,

Meaning let it be revealed,

Let me constantly understand as best I can that my role in this life is to be a participant in a ceaseless revelation of the kingdom,

The ceaseless revelation of love,

The ceaseless revelation of all that is possible.

That is what you and I are.

And that ceaseless revelation is not limited to anything because everything that is revealed is revealed for the purpose of it being reconciled in a far greater whole than this little mind can grasp.

And so that you and I as elements,

Creatures in this world,

Bringing into this world with us not just what has come,

But that which has been formulated by a misunderstanding,

The absence of self-knowledge,

All of that is forever being brought into the stream and being revealed.

Thy kingdom come.

Now,

What that means to us,

If you're following me,

And I hope you'll make the leap,

If we understand the kingdom is forever being revealed,

Then so am I.

Let me be revealed.

Let me participate in being part of that revelation because that's what we are.

There's no separate self by your name.

That's a form of mass insanity perpetrated on this world by a consciousness dedicated to separating itself out from everything else that it names and then wants or doesn't want.

There's another order of intelligence.

The masters that I spoke of at the beginning,

Every man or woman who's ever awakened on this planet has come to understand this idea that our awareness of the moment is there before the experience in which it unfolds.

The awareness of any moment is there before the particular experience,

Which means that within that awareness in our true being,

There is this absolute endless capacity for watching all that is going on on the stage and past it and for that part,

Being able to feel,

Well,

I got caught here,

I got stuck.

That's what fear is.

Fear is getting stuck in our unconscious nature in something that it's stuck on.

That's what fear is.

All negative states are a reaction to a sudden sense of being stuck.

And then what happens is we give our attention to the reaction that tells us how to get unstuck.

A reaction can't tell you how to get unstuck.

We're stuck in a reaction.

But we can pull back.

Let me give you the exercise because I'm gonna run out of time.

Kate's gonna put it up on the board here.

So please don't type while she's doing it.

Here's the exercise.

If you want to be renewed,

Widen the view.

Be quietly aware of all that you see,

Including each and every moment that you're being given to feel and experience within you as a result of what you see in that moment.

If you want to be renewed,

Widen the view.

That's what the father told the son.

Son,

Look past what's on the stage.

Look past this reaction.

It isn't the totality of yourself.

Don't let it become it.

If you want to be renewed,

Widen the view.

Bring all that's going on quietly into your capacity to see all that you are given to see and to be in that moment.

So really what happens,

If you're following me,

Is that that order of being never gets stuck anyplace because the revelation in this consciousness never ceases.

And so you begin to understand that your true nature,

Your relationship to the divine,

To God,

The actuality of nirvana is a condition in which a person is no longer captured by any thought or feeling.

No moment determines for that person their experience of it.

Rather,

Every moment reaction moves through that consciousness,

And that awareness watches it come and go,

And the awareness,

The existence of being,

It remains in place as everything moves through and brings out of that consciousness the awareness of itself,

Of all that it is,

And at the same time,

All that it isn't.

That's how we change our relationship to the things that trouble us.

We change our relationship not by trying to change the things that trouble us,

But by changing our relationship to these things,

The way we see them,

And how we respond as we're given this new understanding that sets us free.