GF Live 5-13-23 Enter The Indescribable Life

Inner freedom is as endless as is our wish to explore and realize its infinite possibilities. We are meant to be moment-to-moment observers all day long which allows us to participate in the greatest story ever told, our own life. Remember... awareness doesn't struggle to fix anything. It is the silent witness to all experience.

Transcript

There was a story that I wrote some time ago that I'm going to use to help set the stage for our study this morning. And it was a very simple one, But it was always so to the point that when people heard it they could recognize immediately what the point was of it. Here it is. Here's two friends. We'll make it two ladies. They go for walks in the morning. They get up and they put on their walking gear and they head out. And they always talk about family, Friends, Their business if they have one, Health issues, Whatever it is that's on the menu for that particular day, And they never have a problem chatting it up. So on this particular morning as they're walking along, One of the gals, We'll say her name is Linda, Notices that her friend Chris isn't very talkative. And she throws out a few things that are of usual interest to the two of them and then starts throwing out some provocative thoughts and still nothing's going on. They walk a little further in silence and then finally Chris turns to Linda and says, I'm sorry. What's going on? Chris says, I'm not exactly sure how to ask you this, But are the voices in my head bothering you? How many days and nights do we spend sleepless, Anxious, Worried, Trying to figure out what to do with something that has gone wrong in our life that we see it that way? So just to be clear, How many of you, Please, If you will, Know that there is an almost incessant dialogue going on? Obviously not when you're distracted and doing practical work, But laying in bed at night, Waking up in the morning, Driving in your car, Seated at the table with your friends at a restaurant and they're chatting it up and you can hear all of this conversation going on and you trying to decide whether you should add this or say that clever thing. Yes, Good. Yes, Always incessant. Yes, Constantly. What do you think the drug industry thrives on? They should just put a, They should just license some over-the-counter drug called Stop the Voices. They'd make a million or a billion. What's going on? So that's what I want to look at with you today. Because it should be evident to us that as the topic of our time together was entitled, How am I ever going to change my life, Really change my life, If I keep the same company? And I'm not just talking about the people around you. I'm talking about the interior company. This incessant conversation that goes on even when you would give anything in the world just to tell it to shut up and go away. And I know you've done so. So let's have our first story and then we'll get into some ideas to help us change our life and enter into what would be an indescribable life because we would no longer be listening to something tell us, Describe to us all the time what the meaning of the moment is in our life. So here we go. If you've joined me at all, You know that I like to tell stories. I find them as convenient, Good vehicles by which to be able to impart not just intellectual ideas but give us something tangible, Physical, Emotional to wrap our minds around. So I use one of the vehicles as a story about a detective. Our detective represents the part of us that really does want to understand what's going on, That wants to investigate and finally gather the facts that when the truth is finally revealed sets him free. And he is an aspirant and has been so for thousands of years, Looking for all of the information, The new self-knowledge necessary to bring about moksha, For liberation, For a quiet mind. So one day as he's reading all of the news clippings from all around the world, He hears about a mysterious phenomena going on where there is a beautiful place, A nice bar, A tropical setting and people are sitting there in this beautiful bar and they just disappear from plain sight. He's been to other bars like that before but this sounds a little more strange to him so he decides to investigate and I must go through the story rather quickly so we can get into the details behind it. So there he is, He's sitting in a barstool and at the other end of the bar he looks over and he can see what looks to be a young man, Maybe in his late 20s, Early 30s and he's tipping it pretty good, You know, Double, Double, Double. And as he's sitting there, All of a sudden he notices the young man looks up and if you've been to these bars, You know, They got three, Four, Five televisions going on at the same time. Young man looks up at the television and the minute he does, Our detective can see he's a little bit taken back and in that exact same moment that he's taken back, Appears next to him on the barstool a sort of what I like to call an amorphous shape. Something starts to form out of the ether right on the stool next to the young man and as the detective is watching in amazement, He can't believe nobody else sees this, All of that starts to take shape and what's forming there next to the young man, It looks like a young man, Somewhat similar to the young man he's sitting next to, Kind of almost a double ganger and in the hands of the double ganger, This amorphous shape that's taking more and more distinct form is a book and this double ganger opens this book, Flips through it, Turns to a certain page and starts to read from the book. Now the detective can't hear what is being read, All the noise that's going on and again, Nobody notices this is going on but the young man to whom next to this double ganger has appeared, He starts to turn and listen to what is being read to him out of this book and the more the young man becomes absorbed in whatever this double ganger is reading from the book, The more the young man who was formed, You know, Obviously physical, He begins to become amorphous and he starts to become wispy and at a certain point, The young man literally is just sucked into this book that was being read by the double ganger and when that happens, The double ganger slams the book shut, When he does the clap of the sound, The book disappears, The double ganger disappears and that's it. And you'll have to come back, I can't repeat that Nellie, What happened, You can listen to it again but the bottom line was that Chris asked her friend if all the voices in her head were bothering Chris while they were walking, Meaning that it was so loud in her head, She thought maybe people walking by would notice. Back to the story, Book slammed, Shape disappears, Young man disappears. Well, Our detective stunned, He can't believe it and fast story now, He sees this happen over a period of three or four days to about five people and he can't believe his eyes that no one else can see this. Now to the telling part of the story, So he returns there one evening, Roughly 6. 30, 7 o'clock, Most of the people who are on their way from home from work, Who stopped there to have a drink are lined up there and there's this young woman and you know who the young woman is, It's Chris from the story with Linda and she's sitting there and she's throwing a, What do we throw back, I don't know, Something and all of a sudden Linda looks down and she pulls something out of her purse and it looks like a little diary of some kind, She starts to write in it and the minute that happens, Exact same thing, Detective knows what's going to happen, Here comes this amorphous shape on the barstool next to her, As it takes shape it begins to look kind of like Chris and as it all happens, The book is there again and the detective knows exactly what's going to happen. What's going to happen is that whoever, Whatever this thing is, This creature, This demon, Is reading, Linda, So he starts reading, Linda start, Chris starts turning and paying attention and getting, Starts to kind of dissolve and all of a sudden something unexpected entirely happens and what happens is that all of a sudden Linda, Chris kind of regains her form because she was about to be whispering into that book and she leans over and whispers something into the ear of her double ganger and whatever it is that Chris whispers into the ear of the double ganger, All of a sudden the double ganger itself, All of a sudden it becomes from solid to wispy, It disappears into the book, The book slam shuts and it flies over and sits on the barstool next to Chris. Well what has happened because whatever it is, The detective knows that this woman, Whoever she is, Has somehow gained control over what was controlling everyone that it appeared next to. So he walks over and he says, I don't want to interfere, Please, I'm not a, I'm not some, I'm not a kook, I'm a detective and I just saw something, It's extraordinary, It's from my own work, I want to know what in the name of God did you say to whatever that thing is that was reading to you that sucks people into it and disappears, What did you, Finally, What did you say that made it disappear? And she looks at him and she says, Well, First I have to tell you that what you saw has happened to me more times than I can possibly describe. And I, I got to a point in my life where I, I could actually start realizing that something was going on and that my life was about to literally disappear again. And I just, I, I myself, Like you, Wanted to know what it was. He says, Well, What then, What did you say that made all of that go away, That made that little thing in the book, What did you say? And she said, It's really simple. She said, All I said to it was, I'm no longer interested in hearing your stories. I'm no longer interested in hearing your stories. And the detective says, What do you mean hearing your stories? And she said, Let me show you. And she reaches over and she picks up the book and on the cover of the book is the title of the book. And the title of the book is The Story of Me. I'm no longer interested in being told the story of myself by something that as soon as it starts to tell me the story of myself, I'm absorbed in it. I disappear into it. And I don't know what happens to me until I'm someplace else where yet another story takes place. I'm no longer interested in hearing your stories. God, I don't know. You know, I've been talking for so many years now. At some point, And I do the best I can, Everything boils down to a very simple point. And you have to see this with me. We're making a transition now. When you see whether you're sitting at home at a table with friends at a restaurant someplace, Sitting home having coffee by yourself, You get an email, You hear the news and suddenly this unwanted, Unexpected moment comes up. And the minute it appears, You can feel that reaction. You can feel that stress, That anxiety, I call it the contraction. And the next thing you know, Though you don't see it perhaps yet, Is that something then begins to tell you what has caused that reaction. Something begins to talk to you and it says, Uh-oh, Oh my God, Not this, Not that. And the very onset of those voices telling you what has happened, Then go on and tell you what you must do to repair whatever it is that suddenly feels like it's been broken in that moment. But what is it that takes place in those moments that appears like this amorphous double-ganger that appears and then begins to tell us the story of what that moment is and what we need to do about it? So take a deep breath. In essence, And you have to see this if you will, The whole of our life experience in these moments is predicated on our reaction to what we have seen unfolding around us. The whole of our experience predicated on what we see unfolding around us because whatever our reaction is, It is then telling us what it is that has happened. And we're used to this, We're reliant, Honestly, On our own reactions to tell us the nature of reality and what it means in that moment. What we don't understand is that our reaction to the moment has nothing to do with the reality of the moment, But rather is a knee-jerk, Sudden resistance to something that is challenging the reality that we're identified with, That we came into that moment with. So the reaction that seems to be there to explain why we're afraid, Why we're anxious, And what we need to do, The reaction that seems to explain those things is actually the cause of the things it's trying to explain. We're so used to being identified with these reactions as they tell us, As they spill out the storyline, That it never dawns on us for the most part that what we see and experience in these moments isn't the moment itself, But that our experience in that moment is born of our reaction to it. What we see and experience in this moment is not the moment itself. What we are experiencing in that moment is our reaction, And it is telling us what the moment means. And the reaction can't know what the moment means without relying on something from our past to tell us what it is that has just taken place. And Nellie, The voices in your head are not angry at you. They are just angry. They're full of rage. I intend to go into this at a later point, But since Nellie asked, And we want to know, Have you ever heard the expression, Someone is looking for a fight? They have a chip on their shoulder. I tell you that a reaction is looking for a reason. That within us is all this unfinished, Incomplete business, An essential conflict between the observer and the observed. So there's always a tension, A pressure. I'm going to go into this in a later talk, But I think it's important to understand. And that pressure, That conflict, You know what it's like to be tense. It is looking for a reason to express itself. So instead of what we see is here's the reason for the reaction, The reaction is looking for reasons for itself so that that identity can release the tension, So that sense of self can be formulated once again and be carried off by it. That's why all of that is going on inside of us. But let me go on. I want to repeat the main point that I just said. It isn't the moment that's responsible for our experience of it. It is our reaction that tells us the meaning of that moment and from that we derive it. Look, Surely you have to have seen this and if not, Then may God help us so that you can see this. It doesn't matter what's going on. Haven't you noticed how phenomenal it is? The storyteller's already there. And not only is the storyteller already there, But the storyteller knows everything that's happened before we do. It's there before we know it starts talking. That's the reaction. Then it starts talking and it's telling us what's wrong with the moment. Now how can something in us that already knows what's happened and then tells us what's wrong with the moment, Unless that level of consciousness, That conditioned nature comes into that moment looking for what it wants to happen and when it doesn't, Bang, There's that amorphous double ganger forming on the seat next to us and it starts reading to us from the book of me, From the book of who I've been, The book of what I did, The book of how things should be written by the ghostwriter by your name. So it doesn't just tell us. Another example of that, Have you not noticed that when you get around certain people or certain circumstances that the smallest thing that triggers the voices, The smallest thing that triggers that reaction, That negativity, It's already, It's an epic, It's already got all the characters. It knows why everything's going on and not only does it know why everything's going on, But then it starts to tell you what you need to do to fix all of that so that you can be free. That's what I was alluding to in the beginning. That level of consciousness, It even tells us stories that we don't, When we don't want to hear them. You know, The song that won't go away, Laying in bed, You, You, You have to see this all day long. We rely upon this storyteller, Something explaining to us why we feel the way we do, What's the nature of the experience and where we have to go, What we must fix to get rid of it. So all day we're reliant on those voices. And then when we get into bed and we want the voices to stop, They don't stop. Why? Because they're not us. They don't belong to us. There are some residue from unresolved moments in our life. And because we never understood that, They just keep talking. They just keep talking. Runaway storytellers. That's why you can't sleep. That's why when you wake up in the morning or for that matter, And this is true, It just goes on in our dreams. What do you think of the makeup of all those bizarre dreams you have? A quiet mind doesn't dream. All of its business is resolved. When we have all of these upsetting dreams, All these strange characters, People are moving in and out of our life. It's because the story hasn't been resolved. It's just going on and on and on. And until we understand the nature of this, The nature of that consciousness goes on unchallenged, Unrecognized, Because we've challenged it a thousand times. At some point, That's what drugs and drink, That's what all the things, A lot of people look for God, Not because they have an innate desire to know something divine, But because they want to get rid of all this conversation in their head and they hope something can intervene. Resistance to the storyteller strengthens the storyteller. So let's go on. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to dismiss the storyteller? I'm telling you that you can. And it begins with inviting a new kind of higher self-understanding. And if you will, Born of new self-knowledge, Some of what we're going to look at today. So at least I have a chance. What chance do I have when my mind starts telling me what's true? If all I've ever known is what it says is true, And I have nothing else to look to for the truth of the moment. Looking to thought to tell you the truth of the moment is like looking to a shark to take you out of the ocean once you're in its jaws. It can't happen. And the storyteller, That part of our consciousness has no interest in us hearing the truth. You have to validate this. I'm here to show you something. Don't believe me. You go and look. So now I ask a question. Is it the moment itself that we resist? Is it the moment itself that we're so quick to reject? To us, It seems like that because here's what she said. Here's what they didn't do. Here's what I see on TV and bam, Just like that, Book is open. Something's reading to me, Telling me why they are, Why this must be. But you must understand this newly. It cannot be the moment itself that we resist. You know why? Because no moment struggles with itself. No moment struggles with anything it's connected to. Any more than a drop of water struggles with the others in the flow of a river. Every moment is part of a stream. Actually the revelation of something timeless as perceived by a sensory mind. No moment fights with any other moment. And you and I, If we're aware of anything, We realize we are in this life as part of its movement. Our journey is the expression of being shown through these movements, The character and quality of our consciousness. So when we're struggling with the moment, It isn't the moment we're struggling with. What we're struggling is with what our mind has made of that moment. And you must understand this if you will. My mind tells me, It tells me the story of the moment. Now see it with me. My mind tells me why he said that. Now where did my mind get its story about why he's like that other than from some existing story? What do you think racism is? What do you think all of this conflict between religions is? All of the conflict in the world is because this consciousness believes that the story that it's been born into, And we are born into a story in this world. We're born into a consciousness that is a captive of all the stories that have been told since the beginning of time. All the things that explain and justify the actions in order to bring the story we don't want to an end. It's all imbued into this consciousness and we imbued into it without any awareness that it doesn't need anything at all just to start talking to us. And it's never talking to us about love. It's never talking to us about compassion unless God help us. We become so fallen asleep that we believe talking to ourselves about compassion and love is the same thing as its experience. No anything that's talking to you is talking to you in order to get you through something that caused this reaction. Now the reaction appears. Now I want to know what's happened. And there is the storyteller. Sort of the dark lurch of the unconscious Adams family. They're like that to tell us how come things are the way we are. And what is that story telling us? If you examine it with me, What is every story in one way or another telling us outside of what's happened? It's telling us what's happened and now what we need to struggle with in order to make what's happened go away so we can get on with our life story. So it's always talking to us in terms of what to do or what we can't do because every sense of inadequacy, Every sense of I can't, It won't, All begins with being identified with a reaction. Every last one of those things. So the meaning of the story that we tell ourselves, We've been told a thousand times. Can you not see that? Doesn't matter how many people you have in your life that upset you. Whether it's one or ten or a hundred or a whole nation. You can't be said against anyone without something in you telling you why you have to feel that way. But I'm trying to get you to see that the reaction that appears is born out of this built in misunderstanding. And the misunderstanding goes before us to screw everything up and to see what it needs to see to justify the reaction that follows it. So we're remanded over into a consciousness whose content is already constructed and that content that's already constructed already is identified with everything it needs to continue itself. So that anything that challenges the continuity of this identity, There's a reaction to, A resistance to it. And then the very thing that has created the resistance tells us how to release ourselves from it by getting rid of the problem, By finding a new story. And that's what the mind does, Isn't it? It just starts to build another story. One day, God willing, You'll hear, You'll see this amorphous, You'll see the book of me, You'll see it open up and it'll start reading to you. It'll start telling you, Well, I'm about to have this, I got to go, Got to run. It'll start reading to you and you will not want to read from it anymore. You won't want it read to you. Yes, Isabella, A consciousness set against itself. That's exactly what it is. A divided mind, Duality as it said. So now we have to ask the question because I'm going to run out of time. And you will ask this, What other story is there? You've had moments where there has been another story and I'll help you see it so we can create the contrast and out of this new self-knowledge at least start to become a little bit suspicious when we start, When the book of me, The book of misery is being read back to me. Here in Southern Oregon, Like this morning, Wish you were here. Perfect spring day. Perfect spring day. All of the leaves have opened on the oaks, The deciduous trees. And I don't know, The new leaves and the new grasses all have this very beautiful green tint to them. There's, It, I don't want to make it sound too dramatic, But these colors sing. One day you'll actually hear color, It's singing. It is a vibration and it creates a corresponding movement in ourselves. And all of this bright new green basking in this sunlight, So welcome. When you see something as beautiful as that, Do you need to tell yourself a story? Or is the story already being told? Is the story, Do you need to tell yourself what you see? Or as you are brought into that beauty and that beauty brought into you, Is the story not already been told? It's already been told. That's the other story, The greatest story ever told. It's already been told and it never stops being told. Can you see that? You've had moments, You go to the beach, You look up at the mountains. Could be seeing a mother hold the baby, The fawns when they come, The deer. Last night at this time of the year, We start getting these breezes, These winds that come up from thermals, From the change in the temperature and everything's just moving like that and it's so refreshing. The story is there and I'm a part of it. In fact, The story that's there doesn't exist without my awareness of it. So that my awareness is part of the story. It's inseparable from the story that's already been told and it's being told every moment of our life. If you want to write something down to help you, Write this down. Higher self-awareness doesn't have a storyteller. It is the story. Higher self-awareness doesn't have a storyteller. It is the story. It never talks. Awareness never describes. Why would I have to describe to myself something that is a part of my consciousness the moment that I'm aware of it? That awareness never analyzes the moment. It doesn't have to analyze the moment. Do you know why you analyze your relationships with people? Because something in you is trying to figure out what to do in order to maximize whatever it is that you're taking from that or what you need to do to get away. How to fix that person. All of that description, All of that analysis that seems to be in place supposedly to liberate me from the conflict of the story I'm in and why else would I be listening to something tell me what's happened unless I want to change the story? And the very thing that's telling me how to change the story is writing the next page of the book of me as I'm listening to it. Yes, I control. That's what all analysis is, Is an effort to control something that you have relinquished your life over to so that it can give you a familiar sense of self. This awareness I'm describing has no need to talk to itself. It's too busy being itself. It's already at one with every relationship that is being revealed within it. Now I've described something that for most of us on any given day if we're lucky, We're brought back sufficiently into the awareness of ourselves in the moment at the same time. And for a split second, The voices go still. The storyteller is put into its proper place, Which is not to be telling us who we are, But to be there as a form of practical memory so that when I need to do what is practical, I have the facility to do so. So that instead of a storyteller run amok, Something in us has understood it sufficiently enough to allow us to call upon it when we want to tell a story. You know, You want to tell somebody something that happened to you that's funny. You want to recount something, You're sharing something, That's fine. Those are memories, You're sharing memories. But the true experience of yourself is not a memory. It's not a story. It's a part of this greatest story that was ever told. And here's the most important point because I'm kind of coming to a close here. This higher self-awareness, Let's do it. Let me help you remember yourself. I imagine you're watching me on some kind of screen or listening on some device. Be aware of yourself at the same time that you're aware of looking at me or listening. Double attention. Aware of myself and aware of what's in front of me, Aware of what I'm feeling, Aware of what I'm seeing, Aware of what's moving through me, Awareness of myself and awareness of my reaction at the same time. Awareness of myself and awareness of some confusion if it's there. Awareness of myself and awareness of whatever it is that I'm feeling. That's what it means to be aware of oneself. And that kind of awareness never has to struggle to fix anything, Ever. And you know why that order of awareness of attention never needs to fix anything? Because it sees what we don't yet. And that is that there's no such thing as a moment that's broken. Sometimes when I'm speaking, I have a prayer pass through my lips, Through my heart. What if the next time somebody comes and you see their face when they're walking up to you and suddenly what resistance? You turn on the news, You watch this insane asylum. The world itself is not crazy. Humanity has lost its mind. And the more it tries to repair what has been damaged, The worse it gets. Because the storyteller can't fix the suffering, The storyteller is the source of it. This consciousness cannot repair everything that's been shattered because every move that it makes to repair what is broken, It shatters it further. The hope of humanity lies within a few men and women who, Like yourself, God willing, Are willing to understand that I've had every moment, Every moment, It never stops. That's not right. This isn't it. You shouldn't be this way. Why are they like that? And every last one of those reactions tells us without knowing a story that says this is broken, He's broken, This shouldn't be. But you can understand if you're willing to that there's no such thing as a moment that is broken. Every moment is part of a beautiful reflection of the consciousness in which it's revealed so that the moment not only isn't broken, But it's trying to bring us into the revelation of the fact that if anything seems like it's shattered, It's because this self is so fragmented and broken up that it can't help but look at all of these moments through disparate eyes that never see anything in its unity, But look at something that seems broken. And then the story tells you, How do you make it whole? The story teller can't make anything whole. It's what breaks everything. That's what we must learn to do if we want to change our life story. We have to have a new story. Not one that we tell ourselves, But one in and through which we can be aware of the old story, The old self, The old nature, The old man, And start listening to it and instead of being absorbed in the story, Become interested in understanding the nature that's talking to you so that your attention is brought back and brought back and brought back and you are always in a place where you can begin little by little to enter into that world where it's already done, Where you don't need to talk to yourself. You don't need to explain to yourself why he or she is the way they are. You don't need to think about tomorrow. Only the story teller thinks about tomorrow for fear that it won't line up with what it says is the past at once. You have to fill in the blanks. I've run out of time. Join me tomorrow. I speak Wednesdays and Sundays for free online. Go to my profile. Find me. I'm going to talk at great depth tomorrow about this new kind of seeing. I hope you'll join me. If not, I'll see you when I see you. Be safe. Remember, The moment isn't broken. You're a part of it. It is a part of you. Find that place in which all of this is already unified and you will be free of the story teller because you won't need anything or anybody anymore to tell you your true nature, Who you are.

Reviews

Awesome Insight, & so well deliered

Thank you 🙏🏻 🙌