The material we're going to look at today is in one respect very simple to understand,
Straightforward,
But There are a few analogies.
Metaphors that we're going to look at as we go through this material that if you can be attentive enough and see how it is true in the outer world so it is true in the inner world,
As above so below,
As within so without.
It can't be measured how important it is to understand this.
Kind of relativity.
And its relationship to your growth as an individual.
Let me get started here.
Before I give you the talk title and first key lesson,
And there are four of them today,
And we post them always.
I would tell you that my intention is to spend a little time after I present the material so that you and I can have some conversation.
Maybe I can answer a question or two in the limited time and space allowed.
But as I was sitting here thinking about what I wanted to share with you,
Which is always about.
Our inner discoveries.
But the fact that there are no inner discoveries without exploration,
Exploration requires a journey,
That's our theme.
So imagine.
A man,
He works for someone.
Whoever it may be,
He's fairly well to do,
Not necessarily rich,
But There in his little office,
There is a kind of a gemstone that sits on the windowsill.
And the man that works,
Maybe an assistant of some kind for the individual that owns the home,
Notices that this man always spends an hour or two looking out the window And he finally says,
You know,
If you don't mind,
I'm just curious.
I know it's contemplative.
What are you doing?
And the man says,
Well,
It's not what it seems.
He says,
Actually,
What I'm doing is I'm looking at this gemstone that I have on that little perch on the windowsill.
And the man says,
You can look at that for that long and what,
Not lose interest in that?
To which our hero simply responds,
Well,
I don't think you fully understand what I'm saying,
He says,
What I'm actually saying is that I like to look at that because As the sun moves.
And with each and every one of its movements,
Indetectable,
Undetectable as they are,
It changes what I see inside of that gemstone.
So I'm always seeing something new and beautiful as the sun moves.
This is exactly what is true when it comes to our spiritual life.
We don't understand the nature of what we are looking at,
Let alone the nature that is doing the looking.
And so we're always in one way or another trying to establish a position by which we can be assured that whoever and whatever we are,
Think ourselves to be in that moment,
It'll be there.
But that has nothing to do with what it is that we are interested in as aspirants.
So I set the stage with this little.
.
.
Story about how the movement of light,
The movement of life,
Is forever producing a new angle by which to see something ever more beautiful,
Inclusive in that moment,
As hard as that is to understand for most of us.
Because I want to go over a certain.
Passage of Rumi's that I have mentioned before.
It's something that I find beautiful,
But that I always find some new beauty in it that I'm going to share with you today.
So you will allow me to take the pains to share this one little passage with you.
Rumi wrote a long time ago.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in the grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas,
Language,
Even the phrase each other.
Doesn't make sense.
Now it's important.
To have some context for what he has written.
Because when he writes these things,
These fields,
The field beyond this right doing and wrong doing.
He's referring here to something that most of us have no real understanding of.
Because he's not talking about some meadow beyond the next hill.
He's describing not just another order of consciousness,
But something about our present consciousness we don't see.
Because what he's describing here is the field that is,
If you want to use these words,
Beyond,
In their language that day,
Imen,
Beyond faith.
And beyond the I don't know how to pronounce it,
Beyond faith and beyond disbelief.
Beyond trust and beyond heresy.
There is a field that is neither one of these opposites,
Not faith,
It's not heresy,
It's something more than that.
And this is what we are describing in this passage and this gem that we're going to look at together,
Because this is about another order of consciousness where the soul,
Where you and I are no longer driven as we are.
By these endless waves of judgment,
Fear,
Ambition,
Doubt,
What have you.
So let's,
Kate,
Bring up,
If you will please,
The talk title.
And then we will get into this together having set the stage.
The talk title is New self-knowledge to take you beyond any negative reaction.
New self-knowledge to take you beyond any negative reaction.
Well,
Isn't that sort of what this field is that Rumi's talking about?
It's beyond our resistance to a moment.
And we understand there can't be resistance to a moment without having gone into that moment affirming how that moment should be,
And therefore we resist anything that doesn't affirm the sense of self that's identified with whatever they believe that field is and should be so that we can,
In quotes,
Be free within it.
So who doesn't like the idea of a field like that?
Kate,
Can we have the first key lesson,
Please?
Read along with me,
Everybody.
Learn to let your love of exploring new and open spaces replace all of the ever-diminishing pleasures found in all the old familiar places.
Simply put.
Why is it that I want to move on from anything in life?
Other than when I finally have expired the experience.
And implied in this idea is that it is possible for us to move past the implied sense of self inherent in all of these negative reactions that we are forever finding alternating pain and then the pleasure of figuring out a way to escape that prison only to find ourselves in prison once again.
In a world where these things are not different,
They simply seem so,
We are not yet beyond that field that we're describing.
So I hope I haven't loaded this too much with explanation before I start.
But are you on the same page with me by and large,
Everybody,
If you would indicate,
Please?
Because who doesn't love that idea?
But the problem is if a field like that exists,
Actually exists,
And I assure you it does,
Why do so few of us discover it?
We profess that we want to go exploring,
That we want to find it.
But perhaps the reason we remain outside of it.
Begins with recognizing that there is something fundamental about us that on one hand ensures our discovery,
But on another keeps us from the very discovery that our heart of hearts longs for.
We as human beings without knowing it,
Although history is filled with various examples at one level,
We're created to be voyagers.
We are created to be explorers.
And again,
You look through history,
You see all of these ages of art,
Renaissance science.
We can see that at some point,
There's this break,
And suddenly something new opens and those who open that field up lead us in and we become explorers as best we're capable of possibilities we didn't even know existed until someone in quotes,
Made that revelation available to us.
This is built into us.
You watch a child.
A baby.
Before it can walk,
What does it do?
Well,
First it's rolling around.
And then it crawls.
And as it crawls,
You can see it begins to experience certain things that it's finding some kind of pleasure in,
Some kind of experience that it wants and that it needs.
Doesn't matter how badly it crawls,
Eventually,
As that child crawls,
It starts to walk.
Gets up on his little feet,
That's a big moment in parents' lives.
And the point is simple,
That each physical stage of development carries within it the promise of the next stage.
And the child doesn't invent the next possibility.
A possibility that's intimately connected to the purpose that child will find at that next level.
The child finds the possibility,
Already lives within it,
And the child is actually answering something inside of it that is asking it to take that crawl,
That step,
And maybe eventually to run.
Can you see this with me?
It's so simple,
But I really want to set the stage so that we're all on the same page together.
Yes,
Please.
Now,
The same thing is true of us.
We unfold physically,
We know that.
God willing,
We mature mentally.
It's not always the case,
But we hope so.
We start to evolve in some respect emotionally.
But there always comes a point,
And you wouldn't be here with me on this site or where I'm talking,
Unless there's another kind of possibility of a growth quietly calling to us.
That is no longer left to simple evolution.
Rather,
Than an automatic movement by which the physical organism develops.
We are asked to go beyond the physical.
We are asked and drawn to explore.
Something that is part of what waits to unfold,
But can't unfold without our willingness to explore what that is asking of us in all these moments.
And one of the strange things that's hard to understand is that what I call divine dissatisfaction is sort of like the first stage of this exploration.
Because we are being asked to explore.
Something that we can't see.
And we wouldn't even know that something exists that we can't see if it weren't for the fact that we can see quite clearly that everything we've been given to perceive and participate in doesn't do it for us.
So if you're following me,
Kate,
Let's bring up the second lesson.
Please read along with me,
Everybody.
We have a divine need for new impressions.
A level of being altogether different from reliving the familiar sensations inherent in our old reactions.
We have a divine need for new impressions.
A level of being altogether different from these familiar sensations inherent in our old reactions and understood properly,
We can see that our old reactions just recirculate.
They are recurring reactions.
And if we can see that our reactions are recurring,
Then we can begin to understand that the sense of self that's derived from them is equally in an unseen stage state of recurrence.
Can you make that connection?
As these reactions roll around and around in the circle they do,
And we identify with them like we do,
Then that means that identity and the reaction are not separate.
But rather they are working together and producing a kind of captivity that we wouldn't even know we were captives of unless there were something in us that was saying,
God,
There has to be something more than this.
How many times have you had that thought or feeling only to have it replaced by something that some reaction comes up and goes,
Yeah,
That's right.
And then it paints a picture of the next promise,
The next plan,
The next whatever it might be.
And we're right back inside of that circle.
Do you see that?
With me,
Because if you do,
I want to tell you a story.
Imagine A beautiful island.
One that many of us would like to visit.
Some tropical island,
Crystal blue seas,
Clear waters.
And this island,
As most islands are incidentally,
Surrounded by a vast ring of reefs.
Picture in your mind a reef.
We're going to be talking about that word quite a bit.
Now,
If you've ever been on an island surrounded by reefs,
You know that where these reefs are,
There are always waves.
And the people who live on these reefs in this story.
Have always been surrounded.
They've been given a peaceful harbor that's protected by these reefs.
And that's gone on for so long,
The ocean beyond these reefs was verily if not ever spoken of.
Because the bay was big enough,
The fishing abundant enough.
So that only people whispered from time to time,
But outside all there was was dangerous waters,
Towering waves,
Winds,
So that few,
If any,
Ever attempted the journey,
And those that did,
In quote,
Never returned.
So the people who lived on this island,
We're talking about you and I,
You'll understand this.
This island of our culture,
This island of our environment,
Of our traditions,
This island of family.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them.
I'm trying to show you a bigger picture than this.
So everyone lived on that island and they felt secure.
And they felt secure for generations,
Homes,
Families,
New traditions.
And they believed,
As we do,
Try to follow the metaphor here.
That the harbor is the whole world.
I know people who I went to high school with who still live in the same home.
Please,
I'm not denigrating.
I'm not judging.
I'm just saying that our world is intended to be a constant state of exploration and not of expiring that which is no longer feeding the need that the soul has.
And instead,
What happens is everything gets smaller.
And surely you've seen that.
We're much faster to say no.
Why?
Because to say yes to something might put us in jeopardy because here comes a wave of the unknown.
I don't want to get into it.
Are you following the metaphor with me?
Please.
Trying to show you a bigger picture here.
One day.
And we'll say this is an elderly woman.
Who for 20,
30,
40 years has walked to the shoreline and looked out at those waves far,
Far out to sea.
Maybe 10,
000 times she stood by that shore.
Do you know one of the reasons if you like looking out at the ocean?
Do you know why?
Because it answers a promise yet to be fulfilled.
Which is to go beyond what you can see.
Into an ocean that is as vast as our ability to perceive it,
And that that exterior experience is a reflection of an interior longing that all of us have.
So she's drawn just as like you and I are to wonder what.
What's beyond that?
Now,
Don't take this at the simple physical level.
Because have you ever wondered what in the name of God is beyond this fear?
What's beyond these waves of anger?
These waves of feeling inadequate,
These waves of feeling like I have to explain myself.
And just exactly like this elderly woman was told by her family,
Don't think about these things.
It's too dangerous.
Inwardly,
Our culture,
Our tradition tells us,
Look,
It's too dangerous.
Just fit in.
And the strange thing about fitting in.
Is that we never think to ourselves we're trying to fit in.
Because we never see that we're always avoiding the consequences of not fitting in.
What if my family misjudges me because I want to explore something that's not part of their culture?
What if the world around me decides to cancel me because suddenly what I'm concerned with is no longer considered worthwhile exploring?
All of these questions,
They come up 10,
000 times and they're all put away.
But like this elderly woman,
God willing,
She could not find there where she was what she needed.
Of course,
The words of her family or culture sound wise,
And parts of us want to believe it.
Well,
Why risk it?
But something in her refused to settle.
And it wasn't dissatisfaction with the island itself.
In some ways.
As my interior,
My own interior life matures,
I begin to recognize how reckless and foolish it's been to look out at life and find something wrong with it.
We find ourselves in life.
We find ourselves on an island surrounded by reefs that fill an ocean,
And that every last interaction between all of these parts is intended to produce something that fulfills that within us that cannot be filled in any other way other than this inclusive understanding of our entire experience.
This longing that we all have.
Is sacred.
It's not,
There's no sacred book.
There's no sacred place.
There's only one thing that's sacred,
And that which is God put inside of a human being,
The divine instilled in the soul,
For that soul to take a journey to seek that which planted that seed,
That yearning in it.
But in order to make that journey,
We have to realize I'm still caught in these boundaries.
These boundaries of bitterness,
These boundaries of regret,
These boundaries of thought that come up to explain reactions that they've never explained.
And we take these boundaries to be the final frontier,
Not because we've explored to find out whether there's something beyond the reef of grief.
The Reef of Regret?
But because something always turns us back.
And the big transition here is that the remarkable thing,
And please,
I'm gonna ask you to make sure you follow me.
The Remarkable Thing.
Is that the very reef protecting the island.
Can you see the reef protects the island from the waves and the energy of the ocean that would be approaching it?
Can you see that the reef protects the island?
And can you see the way that the reef protects the island is it creates from the energy of the ocean,
The waves.
So that the harbor exists because it keeps the waves out.
But the very existence of the harbor depends upon the wreath that protects it.
So the protection becomes the prison.
Here's this crashing sea.
And I have a safe harbor.
Here's this world I don't understand.
Here's these people.
Why are they like this?
Here's all of these reactions.
What's this about?
But I can enter into this little harbor called myself,
This old nature,
Where everything,
The waves of thoughts and feelings,
They're all mitigated by justifications and excuses.
All of my little heavens that I can go and collect my coconuts or whatever the bloody heck it is that one acquires and feels like I'm safe.
So that the very reef The very condition that produces the waves is what keeps us a prisoner of the harbor that we find safety in but that we cannot find our fulfillment through.
So the same structure that creates safety creates limitation.
Can you see it with me?
I'll explain it further.
Psychologically.
We all live.
Behind and within these reefs.
We don't think of a habit as a kind of a reef protecting us.
But if I have the habit of instantaneously explaining myself.
.
.
I do it because here comes a wave of your disbelief or you're questioning me.
So this habit,
Boom,
Here it comes.
We have a reef of opinions.
The Reef of Opinions,
Make sure that anything coming at me is mitigated.
It's turned into a wave and kept out there.
I don't have to deal with your opinion.
I know I'm safe.
So our familiar identities are these reefs.
Crystallized structures.
Condition thoughts and feelings so that we are without knowing it.
Comforted because on one hand we're protected by these reactions produced by this nature that doesn't know what to do with anything that comes at it,
That it doesn't want.
And yet,
At the same time,
We're protected,
We're punished.
The same thing that keeps the problems away keeps us a prisoner of a nature that doesn't know it's complicit in creating these problems.
This is this beauty of trying to understand these opposing forces that I'm hoping that you can see.
Because part of our development.
Is growing up and to and through this,
But soon this development begins to define its own limits.
So that I'll go here,
But I won't go there.
You know,
I'll spend 10 minutes meditating,
But my mind gets busy at 15.
I'm not going to go past that reaction.
You,
You fill in the blank.
We're not judging.
We're just looking.
And let's,
Speaking of looking,
Let's look a little more close up.
Here comes unexpected event.
You fill in the blanks.
A disappointment.
Somebody criticizes me.
I went to see a doctor.
And in the report,
It was largely good.
But there was one what I would call a disparaging comment in this report.
And even though I know part of it's true,
What's the reaction?
This is the way a person sees you.
That's how they see you.
That's what medicine says it is.
That's what medicine says it is.
What does that have to do with me getting sick because something isn't pleasing to some image I have of myself?
So here's this active energy.
Life.
Events.
And this life meets what?
This passive reef of a conditioned nature that believes it shouldn't be criticized.
You don't know this is true about yourself.
But by and large,
We all think everybody's supposed to look at us and go,
Oh my God,
What a remarkable specimen of intelligence,
Ingenuity,
Emotional wisdom.
So suddenly,
What happens when this active energy meets this conditioned nature,
These crystallized coral-like conditions that we cling to?
What happens?
There's a wave.
Boom,
Here's the static position.
Here's that person who believes this,
Who has to have that.
Here comes this energy.
Here comes the energy of the ocean.
Boom,
It hits the reef.
And what happens?
A wave.
A wave of what?
A reaction.
Suddenly there's anger.
There's disbelief,
Some kind of resentment.
Can you follow the metaphor with me to see how the reef and the wave analogy works so that we can understand now we're talking about this conditioned nature and how life brings these things to it?
So these reactions feel Don't they?
Like kind of a cresting wave.
Ever been on a raft,
You know,
At the shore,
Wading in,
You see a wave.
And you know,
As the wave approaches the shore,
Very much under the same principle.
The reason a wave rises is because the shore is above that body of water.
And so as the water comes up the shore,
It rises because the energy now has to go someplace it goes into the crest of the wave.
Reactions are like cresting waves for us.
And the reaction is filled with consequences.
I'm looking at the wave,
Oh no.
And as the wave rises,
Because of the reef beneath the water,
Because of that conditioned nature responsible for resisting the action,
Suddenly my fear is rising as well.
And as my fear rises,
I have no idea of anything other than what my fear is pointing to as being the problem.
Do you see it with me?
I don't want to go too fast,
But I also want you to follow me as best you're able to do so.
Can you see that?
So then.
.
.
What are these waves?
If you're honest,
And I trust you will be,
You're dead in the water.
If you're not.
What are these waves?
That we've never explored.
We know the wave isn't the ocean itself.
Rather,
The wave is what the ocean becomes.
When the energy in it meets that which resists the movement.
We know nothing of the relationship between The self.
And the waves of reactions.
That exist only because of the nature of the reef,
Of that unconscious nature,
That causes that resistance.
What the ocean becomes.
The movement.
That we see is because of resistance.
The waves are an effect of resistance,
And we know nothing of the nature of that resistance.
Now,
If you're following me,
We make a leap here.
What we call negative reactions.
That we take to be the essence of life when we're busy trying to figure out how to escape their consequences.
These waves are not life itself,
Let alone our life.
They are,
Just like the ocean,
Visible movements.
A reaction is a visible movement that is produced when the existence of something that is active some event,
Something someone says,
When it collides with this fixed reef-like structure of our conditioned self,
With its hardened images,
With its beliefs and opinions,
Only unlike a real reef that is beautiful,
Filled with colors and magnificent movement.
This hardened structure is more like dead coral.
Serves nothing.
Now most of us spend our lives doing what?
Please,
I'll ask you,
Will most of us spend our lives,
Do we not,
Trying to calm these waves?
Isn't that what most of us do?
What are we thinking about all the time?
We never question whether or not there's something that is actually creating these waves more than what our thoughts point to as the subject of those reactions,
Saying,
Well,
There's the reason for this wave.
You're an idiot.
What's wrong with this world,
This stupid world?
You look at it.
I can't look at it for you.
You see it or you don't.
I'm asking you to see that there can't be this wave without some unseen reef within us.
That actually creates the experience of the wave.
Whereas we look at the experience as a product of the world or something outside of us responsible for these reactions that we have.
And when we have these reactions,
What do we do?
I've been hinting at it.
We analyze our fear.
That's what thought does.
Like somehow or other,
The thought about my fear belongs to some part of me that isn't afraid.
Because why do I know that?
Because I'm analyzing it.
I'm retrospective.
I'm thinking about this anger that I've got.
Clearly,
I can't be the anger.
Because I'm the one trying to get to the end of it.
We explain our sorrows.
We become experts in describing the storm.
While we remain strangers,
Not just to its source,
But to the possibility of exploring the very nature of that suffering that we don't understand.
So each time we approach,
If you will,
The reef,
The edge of ourselves,
And a wave rises up and sends us back into a familiar harbor,
What do we conclude?
What do you think codependency is?
I reach a certain point where if I mess with this relationship,
Even though I know somehow or other I'm complicit in this pain and conflict,
I can't go past that.
Why?
Because my reaction says,
Guy,
There's a consequence here.
And you must obey the fear of that consequence.
And I'm saying to you that something higher than your nature says,
No,
You must explore the fear of consequence by looking into the reaction that's cresting there and saying,
You're about to be crushed by this moment if you go any further into it.
Do you remember when you?
Were any of you ever kids?
Do you remember being a kid?
At the beach or maybe a lake.
I do.
I remember being on a raft and you go to the ocean.
And if you were a little reckless,
Maybe on a.
.
.
Scooby-Doo or whatever,
You go out,
You go out,
And at a certain point,
And all quite dependent on the individual,
Suddenly you realize,
Whoa,
I'm kind of far away from the shore.
I don't know if I intended to get this far from the store.
Yeah,
There you are.
And certain things start to disappear,
You know,
Where your blanket was your whatever,
And it's frightening.
You've had the experience,
I trust.
The old landmarks are kind of going away.
So that nothing is familiar.
And becomes less familiar the further out you go on your journey into these waters.
I'm asking you to see this as a parallel because spiritually the moment feels exactly the same.
There comes a point where we can absolutely no longer rely on the landmarks.
That once told us who we were.
We don't see the relation.
Look,
A reaction doesn't exist without a landmark,
Just as the wave doesn't exist without a fear.
The reaction doesn't exist without the landmark.
Someplace I have a stake in who and what I am through whatever is going on.
And so up come these reactions.
And when these reactions,
They say,
You're too far.
This is dangerous.
Turn back.
But I'm saying to you that the moment of this uncertainty is not a failure if understood properly,
It is the beginning of a certain new process of discovery.
Let me tell you a story to help exemplify this.
Here's a young boy.
His father goes,
He's kind of a scientific explorer.
Once he was famous in the kind of got caught up came back now he'll just.
The kid asked his dad,
You know,
Dad,
I.
For a long time,
You belonged to the Ocean Explorers Club.
I loved going there,
" he said.
But you don't go there anymore,
Dad.
Why don't you go there anymore?
Dad smiles as well,
Son.
It came to a point where I finally realized that All we did was sit there by the shore.
We never got out of our cushioned chairs.
And I couldn't see it from morning to night.
We'd gather under these brightly colored sunshade umbrellas.
We'd pass maps back and forth between each other.
We'd talk about the latest gadgets and experiments for measuring waves and the depth of the ocean.
Talking about what was probably there at the bottom,
If only we had the materials to get there.
But we'd never actually go in,
We'd never actually look.
And what kind of explorer doesn't go into the ocean?
What kind of aspirant doesn't examine and explore their own reactions and the waters and the reefs that produce them?
The father said they loved the idea of exploration as long as they didn't have to get wet.
They love the idea of exploration,
Of finding that field out behind right doing and wrong doing.
But let me stay in my chair.
Let me not risk anything because I don't want to get wet.
I don't want to look at a wave that I don't know anything about or what to do.
How different is that story from the way thought itself behaves?
Reaction comes what appears immediately,
Not just the thought,
But the thinker,
The one who's going to figure out what does it mean.
So the mind,
Without knowing it,
Is examining itself,
Believing that the self it's examining is separate from the wave that produced that wish to understand.
It imagines discoveries to come,
Or it goes back and reviews its own past writings,
Its scientific papers.
But the fact is,
It remains seated inside that same familiar circle,
Doesn't it?
That's what no is always about.
No new country can be discovered by endlessly walking around the same old room,
And neither will we.
Ever realize a new order of consciousness as long as we live in the fear of what we might find just beyond our level of being.
We have to go beyond ourselves.
This is why every unwanted state.
Is secretly a doorway.
You know that idea.
When did you walk through it last?
What lies beyond the wave of anger?
We don't know.
Because it identifies the problem,
The person,
The pain,
And then we go into fixing that.
What's beyond the wave of fear that we've met a thousand times,
A wave of anxiety?
How many times have you felt a wave of anxiety?
And simply turned your raft around.
And headed back home into familiar thoughts and excuses and justifications.
And there's no such thing as a good one for a human being who wants to go beyond this place that we know to find that new field.
Without knowing it,
We have become conditioned to believe,
And I would add very mistakenly so,
That there's no getting past these waves.
And for some of us,
Well,
No,
That's not true,
Guy.
I get past these waves.
And what do we call past these waves?
Trying to change the circumstances?
Find a different part,
Avoid them,
Gain control over the condition for their appearance.
And that's fine.
Look,
This is what we have to go through.
How many times have I gained control of myself in the middle of bout to losing,
And here's this wave of anger,
Here's a wave of impatience,
Of intolerance,
And suddenly comes a wave without me seeing it says,
You know,
You're supposed to be this kind of person.
This is what culture says it makes you.
And so,
So suddenly,
Instead of a transition,
I become caught up in a turmoil of waters,
Each and every one trying to settle themselves and they can't.
But understood properly,
Which is what we're trying to do here,
Which we're going to get into these waves.
Where these reefs bring up these forces.
They're not the end of our journey.
They mark the beginning of the next leg of it.
Can you see with me so that we can keep going?
That a negative state,
A wave,
What we fear.
Is not the condition we blame it on.
But the wave is a revelation.
Part of a revelation of some unseen crystallized self-thought or feeling,
An image if you will,
A reef.
Buried in the unconscious nature.
That sitting there by its very nature in its passive static form,
Any energy that enters into that field produces a wave.
And we never connect the wave to the consciousness responsible for its sudden cresting.
So that what frightens us most is not some wave.
The truth is that that fear comes out of this unconscious nature.
That would rather have us believe that It's you,
It's them,
It's this.
Why?
Because in the harbor of safe thoughts and feelings of safe relationships,
It's all resolved.
All I have to do is just paddle back.
Like Lot's wife,
Don't look back.
So the reef.
Keeps the truth of itself hidden and unexplored beneath the waters.
The resistance,
The waves,
Are created by that nature that can't imagine what's on the other side of any wave-like reaction.
Because it's so full of fear of leaving the harbor of the known.
It can't see,
And this is a fascinating idea.
We talk about it all the time.
We can't see that that nature.
That consciousness is a prisoner of its own nature.
Imagine being a prisoner of your own nature and not knowing that that's not your own nature.
Not knowing that's not your only nature.
We've been taught to fight with our reactions.
Haven't we?
Overcome them,
Suppress them,
Justify them.
And if we fail,
Then we're going to face a culture that's going to repress any reaction that doesn't fit whatever it calls the accepted norm.
I'm describing a prison.
A cultural circle of self-created conflict.
How's that for a mouthful?
A cultural circle of self-created conflict,
And seeing it,
If we can,
All the relationships that hides within it,
And the suffering inherent in those relationships,
The shocks that are received and deflected.
And by the way,
That's very much tomorrow's talk.
That wave.
Is the experience of a certain shock when this energy runs into a fixed sense of self.
Shark!
And rather than allowing the shock to be as it's intended.
A revelation of the relationship between what is active and passive,
Between this conditioned nature and the energies that have come to help reveal it and transform it.
Instead,
What do we do?
Turntail!
The task is not to conquer these waves.
It is not to redirect these reactions.
That's so big today.
Redirect the energy of the reaction.
Turn it into something positive.
And it's certainly not to identify with them.
But if you will,
It is to not be carried away by them.
And hold on,
I know how that sounds.
Well,
How can I not be carried away by them?
By being interested on what's on the other side of it.
So that my attention is not on the wave and its cresting consequence.
But I go into that moment knowing that when these waves come,
Something is want to make me turn around.
I want to know what's on the other side of this familiar sense of self that rises and falls with each wave of some reaction,
A wave of impatience,
Fear,
Any form of negativity.
So let's look at it together.
We know the waves are coming,
Don't we?
A wave rises and passes.
I might look in the mirror and experience a wave of fear.
So as we are now,
We are defined and confined in one way or another to whatever body of thoughts that correspond to this reaction.
And the thoughts conveniently always have a good explanation for the reaction.
And in the explanation,
What we need to do to protect ourselves from it.
And look at how we go back to the beginning.
So as I protect myself from this reaction,
How do I do it?
More thoughts.
I build the reef.
More familiar opinions validated,
More reef.
And if you can see it with me,
The more the reef grows,
The more the waves appear.
And the more the waves appear,
The more I seek the harbor and I build more onto the reef.
And you can see how this goes if you can.
It's intended to blow your mind.
So my God.
Every time I return to an old answer,
An old habit,
An old justification,
Revisit an old regret,
I'm actually building the very thing that's going to bring the next wave that I'm going to be captured by again.
So there's only one thing that most of us.
Have ever tried.
I should say have never tried.
Because the same body of thoughts and memories,
They're incapable of considering this.
And here's where we're going.
This if you want to use the words as a kind of exercise.
Let the wave the reaction.
Whatever its nature.
Let it rise.
While you watch.
The fear,
The resistance,
The anxiety,
While you watch it rise up,
Because it's going to crash on you.
You have to watch it rise.
It's going to crash on you.
It's going to carry you.
It's going to bury you.
It's going to drag you across some desolate reef.
Let it do that.
You remain there.
Determined to explore the nature of that wave.
And you will see it doesn't crash over you,
But it will pass through you.
And as it does,
You will see how and what it is made out of.
Because as it's passing through you,
You'll see the top and the bottom at the same time.
You'll see the wave and you'll see the reef.
You'll see the conditioned nature,
This false self.
That is the floor as it produces this sudden wave.
And if you see this at once,
How and what this wave is made of,
You will see it can't harm you.
And not only can it harm you,
But the clearer you see the relationship you have to the reef and the wave,
The more healing you have.
Bring up the third key lesson,
Kate,
Please.
Beyond every familiar negative reaction waits a field of revelations filled with the promise of new possibilities yet to be explored.
Beyond every familiar negative reaction waits a field of revelations filled with the promise of new possibilities yet to be explored.
Each revelation of what has yet to be realized.
Within the field of possibilities of spirit,
Of soul.
Is the same as answering the need that soul has to explore that field.
And to understand that difference changes everything because gradually we realize we are intended to discover another order of being.
Not tomorrow,
Not later.
Here and now.
And in the here and now,
The waves appear,
But now the waves aren't to be feared.
The waves are part of the process of freeing ourselves from the fear of a world that we believe is set against us,
When really it's determined to help us succeed in exploring it.
Kate,
Bring up the summary key lesson.
I've got to bring the talk to an end.
I do want to have a few minutes to talk to people if they wish.
Read along with me.
Summary Key Lesson.
Right back to the opening of the talk,
Somewhere beyond the familiar reactions and their attending sense of self that we've mistaken for the edge of our lives.
There is a boundless field where at last resistance and revelation are seen for what they are,
Secret lovers.
A boundless field where at last resistance and revelation are seen for what they are,
Secret lovers.
You can find this out and you must find it out by yourself.
Because if you don't dare to get out of your chair,
Psychologically speaking.
If you don't dare to find out what it is that's making you feel like they did this and that,
You blame the person instead of seeing the deposits of old crystallized self.
See all of this and that changes everything.
So that'll be the end of the talk and now I will.
If you want to,
I will go ahead and invite you.
To please post your questions or your comments,
Whatever you want to ask,
Whatever we can talk about together.
I'm happy to do it with you for a few minutes.
Yes,
Claudia,
That's right.
Who would ever imagine that the opposites.
Are secretly a unity.
Resistance and revelation belong together.
And the more clearly we see that,
The less afraid we are of these waves.
You know,
The idea of waiting for the shoe to drop.
What is waiting for the shoe to drop other than you anticipating a moment that you won't know what to do with?
And what is the moment that you won't know what to do with?
Well,
Here comes this wave,
Here comes this problem.
No,
Here comes this opportunity to discover the relationship between this encased consciousness,
This hardened heart,
This stiff mind.
Let all of that reveal to you what it is intended to reveal to you instead of concealing from you your opportunity to be free.
Hi,
Gino.
Yesterday I was clever,
So I wanted to change the world.
Today I'm wise,
So I'm changing myself.
Yeah,
That sounds like something Rumi might say.
Whoever it was,
It was wise.
That's the point.
And the beauty of this,
If you will,
Is that we don't change ourselves.
That's the biggest mistake an aspirant makes.
You do not change yourself.
The child that learns how to walk after crawling did not invent walking.
Child who learns to run after walking did not invent running.
It's part of the natural development of the physicality.
There is an intended natural development of our spirituality.
But it belongs to another world and must be explored in that world and thought can't explore it.
You won't find anything sitting under your sun,
Your umbrella,
Keeping the shade off of you.
Well,
If there are no comments or questions,
I'll be happy to say farewell and remind you to join me tomorrow if you can.
And to do your work.
Watch.
Watch,
Watch,
Let the wave crest.
Dare it to crash over you.
And it will not crash over you.
It will,
As it must do,
Concede the content of itself to the awareness through which it passes.
Then you're on to something beyond measure.
