GF Live 4-8-23 Enter The Place Of Perfect Security

The one who awakens is no more troubled over what others may think of him or her than is the sun concerned by people who complain it rises too early or sets too late! Success and security are big ideas. But there are bigger ideas that stand behind them, powers that make such achievements possible to attain. These bigger ideas represent the brightest, most empowering forces in our universe: Peace, Wisdom, Kindness, and Freedom ... just to name a few.

Transcript

We're going to look at something pretty important this morning,

Because if we're honest about it,

We're all looking for,

As the topic of this particular session is entitled,

A security that doesn't turn into its opposite.

And most importantly,

I assume because you're joining me on this site and perhaps have been interested in the work I do,

We're looking for this security within ourselves,

Because it can't be found anywhere else.

So if we'll just given ourselves another split second here,

I'll get started.

I decided just before I logged on to try to encapsulate everything that I wanted to cover with you in a single key lesson,

Apart from the one that was posted to announce this particular topic.

So I'm going to ask Kate in a moment to post it so that you can see it,

Ideally copy it,

Because once I read it,

I'll explain it in great depth in the 40 minutes or so that we have anyway.

And then we'll return to this special key lesson near the end of the talk,

Because it'll help constitute for us an understanding of how to apply the insights that we're going to gain together in the course of our study.

So if you would just don't post for just a moment while I read this key lesson,

And Kate will post it in two parts.

Here it is.

The only reason our journey through life so often feels like it's one step forward and two steps backwards is because we're on the wrong path,

Looking for the wrong thing,

And always at the wrong time.

The only reason our journey through life so often feels like it's one step forward and two steps backward is because we're on the wrong path,

Looking for the wrong thing,

And always at the wrong time.

What if that's true?

What if there is a,

I'm using the words somewhat in quotations,

What if there is a path,

One that we don't walk upon with our feet that our mind can't imagine,

And that can only be entered into with a certain order of awareness and attention,

That if we are fortunate over time has been awakened by the realization of how often it is,

And I ask you now,

How is it possible that we can,

At the drop of a hat,

Find ourselves reduced,

If you will,

To a state of some fearful,

Angry,

Anxious identification with a reaction to where our sense of security,

Whatever it was based upon,

That sense of wholeness was just shattered and replaced by some compulsive,

Stressful,

Debilitating,

Demanding reaction that we do something to regain what we feel was just stolen from us by the unwanted moment that just took place?

You know,

At some point,

We have to ask ourselves that question and not be deterred from looking at the fact of it.

How can somebody say something so small,

10 words,

Whatever they may be,

And we find ourselves caught up in some storm,

Revisiting the past,

Regretting some moment,

Suddenly feeling compelled to try to control that person or that condition,

Because if it spins a little faster or goes a little more left or right,

We're going to lose our life.

This is the way we are now.

This is what has happened to us as a human being.

So I'm going to bring in to this talk some ideas that may,

If we listen carefully,

Help us explain how that's possible.

And in a nutshell,

Actually,

Not a bad term,

In a nutshell,

Here's why that happens to us.

Here's why we can be summarily reduced into someone who believes that our only choice is to suffer through the condition we don't want and hope that if we just can control or change enough things,

We'll escape on the other side.

We don't know who we are.

You don't know who you are.

But the problem is,

Is that to whatever extent it's true,

We've all been conditioned quite thoroughly to believe that we do know who we are.

And we actually rely upon these moments where our sense of well-being,

Our security is shattered.

We actually rely on those moments to confirm in the strangest way possible that the reason we're in so much pain or fear or doubt or worry is because we do know who we are,

Failing to see that if we actually knew who we were,

Then we would understand that our true nature is not condition dependent.

It is not dependent upon conditions.

And yet,

That is exactly where we stand at our present level of consciousness.

So I thought the simplest way to help us grasp this idea,

Because it's not easy.

It really isn't.

Our mind does not lend itself to wanting to discover where it is that it is deceived within itself.

It's just not interested in that.

So there are stories,

Parables.

I tell them all the time.

It's one of my principal teaching tools.

And this particular one is from an actually a very old story.

But it summarizes it captures something so important.

So let me tell it to you ever so quickly.

Imagine that,

Well,

You don't have to imagine World War One,

World War Two,

You know,

Every war we've ever had.

Imagine there's a war.

And for the sake of the story,

There is a man who is working with the resistance to overcome whatever it is that is threatening to destroy their culture.

And it turns out by a twist,

Unwanted that he finds himself cornered in a port city that has been almost taken over by the gathering enemy troops.

And so his only choice is to just to jump in the water and swim to one of the ships that wait out in the ocean there,

Hoping that everything will be copacetic and that he can find his passage on that ship as it inevitably will find a port someplace not ideally in the war torn area.

So he swims to one of these boats.

It's all pitch dark.

And because he doesn't know exactly where he is,

He jumps into a lifeboat.

You know,

You've seen them along the lines of these ships,

Along the line of a ship and it's covered with a tarp.

And he gets into that lifeboat and he pulls himself in,

It's cold,

He's freezing,

And he's going to wait till the light of day so he can see where he is.

Anyway,

There he is under that tarp and suddenly he's awakened by a huge jolt of some kind and he realizes something has happened.

He's not sure,

But he thinks to himself,

He's got to get out of that lifeboat in case somebody comes to lower it.

And so he sneaks his way in,

Still in the dark,

Into one of the cabins near the top of the vessel.

And when he gets into the cabin that he's gone into,

There's another large jolt.

Now he doesn't know what's going on,

That the ship is taking shells or maybe it's been torpedoed,

But there's these giant jolts.

And he falls down and he hits his head.

And when he comes up a little bit,

He's dazzled,

He's dazed,

He's not hardly doesn't know even where he is.

He's lost.

And he thinks to himself,

I got to get out of these wet clothes.

I'm freezing.

And he looks and here in this series of closets are all of these various uniforms.

And he doesn't know that he's stepped into the room that holds all of the various wardrobe for the various roles on the ship.

And he pulls out one of these outfits and he puts it on and he looks in the mirror and he's looking in the mirror.

He sees,

It looks like he's put on the outfit of a gunner,

Of somebody that sits there and,

You know,

He does,

I don't want to,

This isn't who I want to be.

And so he takes that off and he pulls out another one.

And just to go quickly through the story,

He keeps going through these various costumes,

These various disguises as they were.

And each one that he puts on brings with it a certain sense of life he doesn't really want,

Something he's not interested in being.

And then at last,

He pulls out the last of them and it's the captain's uniform.

And I,

You know,

I look pretty good in this captain's uniform.

It's better than being one of the mechanics or a gunner or one of the ship's cooks.

The captain,

This kind of suits me,

He's thinking to himself,

When all of a sudden there's a huge explosion.

And it's quite evident because all of a sudden the red lights go on.

You've seen this in movies,

The emergency lights and they start flashing and the clacks and going,

And he's terrified because he realizes the ship has been hit.

He can feel it start to tilt and he looks into the mirror.

And at the moment he looks into the mirror,

He thinks to himself,

God,

If I'm the captain of this ship and I must be,

Because I have on this outfit,

Still doesn't know who he is,

That means I'm going to have to go down with the ship.

I don't want to go down with the ship.

What a terrible responsibility being the captain of the ship is that I have to go down with it.

And that that last moment,

You could say by the grace of God,

That man awakens and he realizes he's not the captain of that ship.

He's a man who actually is trying to escape the very onslaught of these ships that have come to take over the country.

And as he looks,

He realizes this is not who I am.

And he immediately takes that outfit off.

He puts on his clothes and he does the only thing left for him to do,

Knowing his situation,

That the ship is going down and he jumps off the ship and he swims for a certain distance and he's rescued by his friends.

Now,

This is a simple way of trying to explain that we are forever and always without knowing it,

Putting on a certain character,

A certain quality,

A certain sense of self.

Please try to see it with me.

Every moment that comes,

Particularly the ones that we don't want,

But sometimes ones that we do,

It doesn't matter.

And all of a sudden there's an opportunity and on overcoming us is this very distinct sense of self,

A character,

Quite literally,

That we didn't even know was living down in the darkness of this consciousness.

And the next thing we know,

That reaction produces a corresponding role.

And every reaction we have comes with a corresponding role.

We're not aware of the fact that the role matches the reaction,

Because when we have the reaction,

We become identified with the role that it gives us to play in that moment so that we know who we are and what to do.

I trust you're following me.

And so we put on this character,

This fearless man,

This stressed woman,

This nervous man,

This anxious,

Problematic,

Can't get rid of the past person.

We put it on.

We don't know we put it on and we put it on because we don't know who we are.

So we literally accept in that moment where the torpedo hits the relationship we have with the moment,

We literally are handed something to put on so that we know who we are and what to do to get through that moment.

But the problem is,

And I trust you see this as well,

That everything we put on only has its time and place for that moment because as certain as conditions change,

The next thing will happen.

And now the costume,

The character we put on,

Maybe it's now completely out of place and we have to put on another character.

Have you not seen that in people around you?

How can a person be that psychotic?

I mean,

How can they,

They don't even know they're contradicting their own,

What they said 10 minutes ago.

And if this is true,

Which it is,

And I have to go on,

I can only hope that you see it.

Then where are we going to find this sense of wholeness?

Where is this abiding security?

And please,

For your own sake,

Don't go into imagination because when you do,

When you find that familiar,

Consoling idea of your God or your whatever it is,

When you find that you have put on a character derived from something you desire in that image,

Security doesn't exist in an image,

Which is by the way,

It was written long,

Long ago,

Thou shall have no graven images.

Images are the problem,

Not the solution because images are all connected to character and character betrays us because it can't last or it only lasts as long as the conditions allow that produced it by the way.

Where do we find it?

Let me share something with you.

Take a nice deep breath.

This is a bit of a transition.

We're looking for where are we to find the security that isn't in our imagination,

That isn't some character that was conditioned in us over time by some religious creed or ideology or belief,

But something that is more real than the breath I just took.

Creation itself is whole.

Creation itself is endlessly perfect.

Creation itself.

Don't go away.

One of the reasons that Christ said to his disciples,

If you had the faith of a mustard seed,

You could command blah,

Blah,

Blah.

I'm not going to go into the trans,

But what he was saying is that in the simplest seed,

The smallest of all the seeds,

That its character is that it is a creation in which and through which by its relationship to what has created it,

Will bring forth from that tiny seed,

The greatest of trees so that that mustard seed,

And I know this is kind of anthropomorphic,

It doesn't have to go looking for a character or a quality.

It's built into it.

This is what I'm trying to say to you is that we are ourselves a part of this creation and this creation is endlessly perfect.

And if creation is perfect and it's endless,

Then why is it that we are not participating in that as a key element,

I might add,

In that scheme of things.

And the reason is I've just described in the last 10 minutes is because we have fallen out of it.

We have fallen out of it because we have fallen asleep within it.

We have fallen out of it because we have fallen asleep within it.

And we don't know we've fallen asleep within it because the sense of self we derive from imagination is so powerful and so deeply conditioned in us that when it comes over us,

We don't even question the fact that we are once again identified with some character or reaction produced by a condition and the condition is going to change.

And as sure as that happens,

We know what's going to go on.

We're going to have to go searching again,

Imagining again our security.

Now,

If this is true and you can prove it to yourself,

Nothing I say isn't evidential.

You must never believe a word I say ever.

You're lost if you do.

You're lost if you believe anything anybody tells you.

Corroborate it.

Prove it true for yourself.

But wouldn't what I just explained help explain why it is that,

And literally by an act of grace,

Although it doesn't feel like it at the time,

All of us have some awareness.

It's like a stone in our shoe that we're missing something.

What do we do all day long other than go looking for what's missing and then explain to ourselves why we added to ourselves isn't quite what it needs to be.

And if what I'm saying is true,

That the sense of this,

I call it divine dissatisfaction,

Is because we are outside of asleep within a perfect system of creation,

A perfect creator's life,

Then that would explain why it is that our dreams in our sleep about how to make ourselves whole,

How to be complete,

The dream we have of being this loving,

Intelligent human being,

I might add,

If those were true,

Then why would we suffer the way we do when the conditions that spawn those dreams suddenly go on the down?

And the reason I'm explaining is because those dreams are part of what we put on.

Each of them has a corresponding character and quality.

And again,

I ask the question,

If none of these characters,

If none of these dreams that we put on are who we are,

Then where?

What?

Work with me.

It can't be the feeling that we have when we look into the mirror of what we believe is our own mind.

So here's a reaction,

Here's a problem.

And where do I look?

I look into the mirror of my own mind.

I look into the content of my own mind.

And I,

Apart from what I see as possibilities,

New promises,

New plans,

I look into this mirror.

And I believe the plan,

The new prospect,

The new possibility that I see actually exists outside of me.

And because I believe it's outside of me,

And it's imbued with all the desire I have,

Suddenly I believe that that thing that is a reflection of the content of my own conscience,

I believe that that's what I have to do.

That's why I started the talk at the outset saying that the reason that it's two steps,

One step forward,

Two step back,

Is because we're on the wrong path.

We're in a world of dreams,

Seeing a reflection of ourselves in our own conditioned thought and being temporarily consoled by them.

Because we believe that that mirror that we're looking into,

We believe that what we're looking at too is us.

It's a collection of fragments.

Imagine a mirror that has put together like a mosaic of some kind by eight billion people.

So that this mirror,

Each of these tiny little fragments of their life,

Of their conditioning,

Of their environment,

Of their cultural belief,

All these little mirrors.

And we look into this mirror,

These bits and pieces of cultural,

Social,

Familiar,

Economic fragments of beliefs and their corresponding demands.

And we look into that and we find the piece that we need to see to make us feel whole in that moment.

But the piece of the mirror cannot deliver the peace,

P-E-A-C-E,

That it promises.

Which means if you're following me,

As I said at the outset,

We're looking in the wrong place and we are looking at the wrong time,

In the wrong time.

Because the time we're looking in is literally our own past.

Because where else do we get these images and ideas about how to be secure other than from a consciousness,

Which we have been brought into,

That has been thoroughly conditioned over millennia to believe that what it dreams can make it whole is the same as the wholeness it dreams.

And we know it is not.

It should be clear to us that whatever sense of being whole that is derived from these moments of looking into this world.

See,

That's if I could,

If it was just possible to show it.

I've been talking for so many years and it's so difficult to get somebody to see that when you look out into the world,

Here comes a condition,

You see the condition as responsible for the conflict.

The condition as conflict doesn't exist without something and you resisting it,

Which means they have a mutual dependency.

And then unable to see this dependency that produces that dire,

Straight,

That dire feeling,

Unable to see that,

Then that same mind then looks out into the world thinking,

Where am I going to go?

What am I going to do?

And it believes that what it's looking to outside of itself to save itself,

That it exists outside of it.

It doesn't,

It's inside of us.

So every dream I have has already been spent.

Every dream I will ever have,

Every dream you will ever have of security has already been someone else's dream and it did not deliver them.

Secondhand dreams,

If you knew that,

Would you be,

Would you willingly go back to sleep?

So it should be clear that we can't depend upon the conditions that drive and then hand us over to the desire of these dreams.

So if we can't look to the world outside of us,

To the content of our own conditioned mind,

To bring us the consolation of a security that in our heart of hearts,

We know we're meant to be a part of,

Where are we to look?

So I reiterate what I said near the beginning of the talk.

If I can't look to the conditions themselves as a jumping off place to re-secure my sense of self,

Then where is this sense of self that I have been created literally to not just seek,

But to find.

We find that not in the conditions that pass,

But in the creator of those conditions that never passes.

We find that in our relationship,

Our conscious relationship to the appearance of those conditions,

Using the appearance of those conditions for the sake of waking up and realizing the consciousness that is revealed by them.

This is hard for us to understand.

You can't find scripture,

True scripture,

That doesn't say in one way or another that we are made in the image of the divine.

There is a trinity,

Whether you know it or not,

A basic trinity in every,

Literally in every religion,

A trinity.

We know it in the Western terms,

Father,

Son,

The Holy Ghost,

Brahma,

Vishnu,

Shiva,

In the Hindu tradition.

Every tradition has that idea,

The yin and the yang and the reconciliation that brings them together as a unity.

When I was thinking about this material that I wanted to present to you,

And I hope it's not too challenging,

This idea that there is this living trinity that is responsible for creation,

And that we are made in the image of that trinity,

Of teos,

Of the logos,

Of the living form,

The living forces,

Then wouldn't our natural sense of wholeness already be a part of our relationship to what is endlessly whole and revealing itself in its own holy fashion,

Endlessly?

And the answer,

Of course,

It is.

You look at this idea of the Tao,

Again,

Eastern tradition,

But it's not just that.

The Way of the Cross,

All of these things,

The Tao,

Here's what it says.

The Tao is a word,

Incidentally,

That means the Way,

But it doesn't mean,

It could just as much mean the Kingdom of Heaven,

That which is without conflict,

Because it is ceaselessly reconciling itself and creating a new conception out of every movement of itself.

The Tao,

It says,

The Way produces one,

One produces two,

Two produces three,

Three produces everything.

Everything has polar elements in it that interact to achieve harmony.

The Way produces one.

So here is this life,

Love,

Intelligence beyond description,

And from it comes two,

The opposites,

Active and passive.

From it comes these complementary energies that when they become three,

Produce everything.

And in that act of creation,

Bringing those seemingly polar elements of active and passive,

Yin and yang,

Bringing them into a relationship that through that revelation of their pre-existing unity,

Comes forth a new conception,

Which is not just a new creature,

But in our case,

The awareness of being the new creature that experiences that.

We are the new creature.

We are the ground of that creation in our special role in that relationship of the one that becomes two,

That becomes three.

Security isn't an idea.

What is whole is whole because there is nothing outside of it to interfere with its constantly perfected state of harmony,

With an endlessly being completed life,

So that there's nothing outside of it to interfere with its completion and the perfection of it.

This is who,

This is what we are.

This is what we are meant to be.

But as I said,

We've fallen asleep on the wrong path,

Because the path we're on is always born of a reaction telling us what has caused the problem,

And then the path is to solve the problem so we can be whole again.

The problem is we don't know because that we are already whole,

And that everything we do to try to re-establish the wholeness we've imagined further divides us and looking into more of these fragments to find ourselves.

It's impossible for us to imagine as we are,

And we mustn't even try.

That the impression,

Literally the impression of every given moment,

Is intended to reveal to us and help us realize that in that moment,

There is no one and nothing else on this planet that can be and do what we are given to be and to do in that moment.

This is kind of difficult.

We have to kind of stretch it out to see and understand it.

But you've certainly heard there isn't a snowflake that falls from the sky that's the same.

I can tell you there's not a grain of sand that's the same.

There's not a blade of grass.

There's not a leaf on a tree.

There's not one thing in all of creation that is the same as any other thing in creation.

And why?

Why would whatever this divine creator,

Why would that be like that?

Why would everything be similar and yet a fractal,

An extension of that creation?

Why would it be perfectly different and yet in its perfect difference,

Part of the unity and the perfection of creation?

Why would it be like that?

And the answer is because it has a role only it can play in the movement of that life,

In the movement of that light,

And the reconciliation,

The will between what is heavenly,

Divine,

Taoist,

The Dharma,

In the movement of that every last creature is required to play its part in it.

Now the grass,

The blade of grass,

The snowflake,

The tree,

The leaf,

It doesn't know it's playing that role.

It can't,

It's not conscious.

It can't be aware of its perfection and that its perfection is ceaselessly being,

How do I say that?

Because this is where our mind can't grasp the level and scale of this.

How can something that's perfect be made perfect again?

Because part of its perfection is to be reborn and it is the rebirth of itself and in the perfection of that ceaseless rebirth that that creature completes the task it has in the great scheme of that creation.

That's who we are.

We have a very specific role,

But we don't know we have that specific role.

I don't know why specific is difficult to get out of my mouth this morning.

You know how you want to be special and how everything that you do to try to be special turns into a form of suffering.

Every image,

Every belief,

Every opinion is met by something that says,

I don't think so.

And then you have to double down on what you need to be special.

You can't,

As a no human being can be more special than he or she has been made for the purpose of participating in creation,

Which means,

And I have to say this because it's so sick today,

That doesn't mean you are special.

It means that you are a part of a special life and that the security and the wholeness that we all seek is found within that life that we have been given,

But yet do not know how to enter into because we're forever reliving what we believe we have to,

To restore an imagined sense of being special.

Did you know that a really special human being never ever thinks to themselves that they're special?

They never have the opportunity to be special.

They never have to go looking for something that makes them special.

Do you know why?

Because everywhere they are is special to them.

Everywhere they are,

Everything that happens to them is special to them.

Wouldn't that be the perfect security?

I only have a few minutes left and Lynn,

I see your question that you're grieving the death of your husband.

I find it hard to difficult that what I'm saying is not bypassing my sadness.

You're not hearing me say bypass your sadness.

I'm saying that Lynn,

Only Lynn can be sad in the way that Lynn is sad.

Everyone grieves,

But no one grieves in the same way.

Everyone sees a spectacular sunlight,

But no one sees the same sunlight or sunset in the same way because no one is made in the way that you are made.

And if no one is made in the way that you are made and you have a grief that is overwhelming,

Allow that grief to be everything that it is and understand that within that grief,

There are tremendous lessons,

Lynn.

The lessons are stolen from us because there's something about us that wants to make us special in our grief.

There's something that steals where we are truly special creations because something in us will tell us that we are created not to have to go through this.

Why me?

Why does it have to be like that?

And in that,

There's a sense of obligation,

Like something was just taken from me.

And yes,

I have a wife I love.

We've been together for a billion years.

I never want her to die,

But I know she's going to.

And I promise you that in the moment when my wife passes,

Although I promised I'll go before she does,

In that moment and every moment of one's life,

If they are present,

They can understand and experience the tidal forces of something that is so unspeakable that it is dredging up from this consciousness,

Everything that is hidden within it and inviting it to take part in something that if we will take part in that moment of creation,

That whole creation will be changed again.

Because part of Lynn,

The pain that you're in,

Everybody,

It's not just Lynn.

She's got a specific moment.

We have non-specific moments,

Soon to become specific ones,

That that moment's coming.

It's built into the cake.

But if I believe that I'm supposed to have my cake and eat it too,

Sorry,

Then I'm going to suffer that kind of terrible indigestion of believing that somehow life is not,

Shouldn't do this to me.

Instead of understanding life is giving me something unendingly to discover about myself,

Some new depth of myself that I cannot believe is there.

When you really grieve,

You can't believe the depth of that grief,

But you are being introduced to a possibility,

Not a punishment.

The grief isn't a prison unless I reject and resist it because I shouldn't have to go through it.

These are all lessons built into every moment we have.

And the only reason that our journey through life feels the way it does,

As I wrote at the beginning,

One step forward,

Two steps backward.

I just lost all my money.

I just got news.

I've got cancer.

My wife just passed.

But the earth,

The earth,

Hell,

Hell is broken loose on the planet.

Imagine we are in a perfect creation.

And for our participation in this perfect creation,

It is so corrupted that the planet itself is threatened.

Why?

Not because it isn't perfect and healing itself,

But because concealed in this consciousness is something that is so desperate to prove to itself that it's special and to restore a sense of security it dreamed into existence to begin with,

It'll destroy everything.

And it is.

It feels one step forward,

Two back because we're on the wrong path,

Looking at the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I got to bring the talk to an end.

Here's an idea,

An exercise to work with.

Whenever you find yourself scrambling to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,

Whatever that condition may be that has dredged up these unspeakable in literally in every meaning of the word,

Unspeakable also means beyond belief.

And it can also mean corrupted and wrong for us.

Unspeakable brings up these unspeakable states of ourself.

Instead of trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,

Remember the story?

You don't have to go down with that ship.

Wake up,

Wake up,

Step into the moment,

Step into what it is giving you.

How is it possible that I will ever understand I'm being given something to discover about the depth and breadth of myself as a unique creation,

If when the uniqueness of this creation is thrown into conflict by a condition it has decided it doesn't want?

So then instead of receiving the lesson in the moment,

I reject it summarily because an unconscious resistance comes over me and throws the moment away.

So instead of understanding how special every moment is,

The worst of them,

I become someone special in his or her suffering because of how much I refuse to accept what I'm being given,

My role in this greater life that we have been given.

This is where wholeness,

This is where security is.

And Lynn,

This is where you will find,

God willing,

At some point that you have to go through what you go through.

But when you go through what you do,

Let you come out of that moment.

Let all of us come out of that moment recognizing that nothing has been taken from us,

But rather something has been given to us,

An opportunity to step into our actual role in that in creation,

In God's life,

In what is good and true and loving and never anything but that.

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