I don't think that it's ever been more evident,
At least it seems to the speaker,
That this world is in a very disturbed place.
And it is as a consequence of this massive global disturbance in human consciousness with all of the expressions of its unsettled state in the form of violence,
Hatred,
Intolerance,
The great division,
That out of that chaos there seems to rise a distinct and seemingly separate cry from individuals and groups that there should be a certain kind of healing that takes place.
As it is evident that without that everything will continue to go to hell in a handbasket for humanity,
And indeed it is.
And it's doing so because without understanding it,
The notion of healing for us doesn't just travel on the heels of something that is hurting us,
But is actually suggested to us by the consciousness experiencing that pain.
So that what we call the healing of our pain is really the extension of an unconscious nature responsible for our pain.
I don't want that to be too difficult.
We're going to look at this in a number of different ways through a couple simple stories.
Let's bring up the first key lesson so we can get into this a little bit,
Kate.
Read along with me,
Everybody,
If you will.
No unwanted experience of life will ever be over for us until we are inwardly awake enough to get over wishing that it was.
No unwanted experience of life is ever going to be over for us until we are awake,
Present enough to get over wishing that it was.
Now,
Built into that key lesson is a conundrum.
I hope you can hear it.
Well,
What do you mean?
I'm in pain.
I'm disturbed by my neighbor,
By my friend,
By the world,
By my own actions,
By my addictions.
I'm disturbed.
What else can I do but wish that it was over?
Because out of my wishing that it was over always comes whatever seems to be the path to take in the form of some image.
And then I simply follow that wish and that image to its logical conclusion,
Which is to try to manifest what I believe will produce the healing I need.
And if we're even remotely astute enough,
We can see without taking thought that every healing that we've imagined into this world,
Including all of the so-called religious healing that we hope will somehow release us from this misery,
Doesn't do one thing to change the pattern producing the disturbances in this world and our experience of them,
Which is always the same.
I want it to be over.
But you're thinking,
I hope if you're following me,
Well,
What else can there do?
What else can I do?
What else is there?
Well,
When we fail to see that the first impression that we have,
As it is true,
Of an unwanted moment is that we don't want it.
That's really all we know.
If we could just stop at that moment and not go on to all the psychological extrapolation,
I wake up,
I don't want to get out of bed.
I get out of bed,
I don't particularly want to get dressed.
I don't want to go to work.
I don't want to have this conversation.
I don't want anything that disturbs me.
And that's all we know in moments of disturbance is to not want them.
And from not wanting comes what we want.
From not wanting comes all of the things that we want that we believe will rescue us from what we don't want.
What we don't want has to be brought into the light of a new understanding so that we realize there can't be this resistance to a moment without a consciousness that we are identified with prior to that moment,
Measuring everything that comes into it and then deciding,
Nope,
That's not the right moment.
That's not the way it's supposed to be.
This is why we need new self-knowledge.
When we have the moment we don't want,
The consciousness that is responsible for the resistance to a condition that can't be other than it is in the moment of its revelation,
It immediately looks outside of itself.
And if there's one thing to get down,
Understand healing takes place from the inside out,
Not outside in.
Yes,
If I have a medical problem,
Thank God there are nature paths or good doctors that can help me understand and prescribe specifics that might help bring the body from the inside out into a natural balance.
It's natural balance but the rest of it is hogwash.
Healing is inside out.
That's why so little healing takes place because for you and I and as instruments of this world,
We're always looking outside of ourselves to others,
To authority,
To spiritual knowledge,
To anything that we can get our hands on that will change the relationship we have with the moment that we don't want.
We must have new self-knowledge.
Katie,
Let's bring up the second key lesson,
Please.
Please listen,
Study,
Contemplate.
It'll remain on this board and if you come back for the replay,
It'll still be there.
And when we post it on my foundation,
On my website,
These key lessons go with it.
Read along with me.
Hoping to change how we experience any unwanted moments without changing our relationship to them is like trying to step out of a shadow and into the warmth of a sun while sitting in the shade of a tree.
Hoping to change how we experience these moments that trouble us with others without changing our relationship to them,
Not trying to change their relationship to us by convincing or otherwise coercing,
But by changing our relationship to them is like trying to step out of the chill of a shadow and into the warmth of the sun as we sit in the shade of a tree.
It can't be done.
Again,
This is why we must have real self-knowledge,
Even the knowledge we don't want,
Such as follows.
Katie,
The third key lesson,
Please.
You can't escape the negative effect of any experience you don't want because your resistance to that experience is the experience you don't want.
You can't escape the negative effect of any experience you don't want because your resistance to that experience is the experience you don't want.
The only way to bring an end to this kind of daily suffering is to realize the unseen role that we play in its continuing appearance.
Quickly,
You get up in the morning,
You sit on the side of your bed,
You go into your living room,
To the coffee in the kitchen,
And the mind,
By and large,
More often than not,
Is caught up in a kind of wave of consequence,
Considering the things that didn't get done,
That need to get done,
That you hope will happen,
Or that you fear won't.
And where is my mind in that moment?
It seems to be outside of me on real events,
Possibilities that took place that I have to deal with,
But in truth,
My attention in that moment is not where it seems to be.
My attention is within myself on a series of images and corresponding associations that I have to deal with.
On a series of images and corresponding associations that as I enter into the imagined relationship with these images,
I experience directly the result of that relationship.
So that what I am not wanting in that moment isn't what my mind is painting as the world around me.
What I don't want in that morning,
In that moment,
Is the experience of myself as it revisits the images that it believes can save it or that might sink it.
This is why we have to understand our role in the continuation of these daily experiences that we don't want.
Now let's get into some lighter material,
If you will.
Here's the apprentice angel and the senior angel.
They're out for another tour.
And if you study with me at all,
You know I use this particular story,
The characters,
The apprentice angel representing you and I,
If you will,
Trying to get our wings,
Trying to rise above whatever the,
What is wrecking the world that we are complicit with,
How we are wrecking ourselves without knowing it,
Because you can't wreck the world without wrecking yourself.
You are the world.
And the senior angel representing the wisdom that awaits within us,
That once illuminated by the right relationship to an understanding,
To a moment,
Lifts us from the apprentice state into something a little more developed.
And so it goes.
The teacher that we are looking for lives within us.
It is in this light of awareness.
And that which will be made aware is within us waiting for that light to bring it into another order of consciousness.
So the two of these,
Appie and the senior angel,
They're out on a tour and they almost always go to the planet earth where things are so upside down.
The lessons are inescapable and senior angel knows that.
So there they are.
And they fly down and they're sitting there.
They're invisible,
Of course.
And the apprentice angel is kind of stunned.
He says to the senior angel,
You know,
Multiple times now we've come down here and more often than not,
I would say the vast majority of human beings,
I don't get it.
Why are they walking around with their beds like backpacks strapped to their shoulders?
I mean,
That's heavy,
Man.
And I don't just mean heavy in terms of weight.
Why would they want to carry around their bed with them?
I can't think of anything more exhausting than that.
And the senior angel said,
Yes,
It is.
Well,
I'd appreciate an insight.
Now,
The senior angel feigns disappointment because he always wants the apprentice angel to struggle a little bit.
Try to figure this out for yourself,
Man.
The answers you need are within you.
He says,
Look,
We know that when unwanted moments come,
By and large,
Most human beings do one thing.
And what is that?
Oh,
I get it,
Said the apprentice angel.
They jump into the bed and pull the covers over their heads.
That's exactly right,
Said the senior angel.
And when they jump into the bed and pull the covers over their head,
They wait there until they go to bed.
They wait there until they go to sleep.
And they dream while they're sleeping that when they open their eyes,
What they have dreamed will have resolved all of the things that disturb them and the pain will be gone.
That's what they do.
But then under law,
They're awakened.
They can't stay in their bed asleep.
But the more and more they spend time in bed asleep,
Dreaming that they can be healed by something they dream,
The more likely they are and quicker they are to jump back in the bed.
He said,
Apprentice angel said,
I don't understand this behavior.
I really don't.
I mean,
I can see it,
But how horrible to have to haul a bed around with you.
I just struggle to realize,
Look,
Human beings are unable to deal with unwanted moments.
They think they deal with them by going into thought and letting that dream that thought is draw from the content of their past,
What they need to do to change the present moment.
And you can't change the present moment by drawing on the past because the present moment,
As you know,
Or at least ought to,
Appie,
Is always changing itself.
Apprentice angel is just so mind bending.
How can someone not want a moment that has never taken place before?
We know the great creator is ceaselessly pouring its will into this world of creation and bringing forth new conceptions moment to moment to moment.
Why in the world would anyone not want to participate in that?
And the senior angel says it's pretty simple because at some point they imagined something that they wanted to keep and that they feared losing so that anything that came and changed the conditions that gave them that experience was seen as a threat.
So the only thing that human beings know to do when they feel something is threatening their security,
Which is the same as their dream,
All they know to do is pull the covers over their head and they pull them over their head right in the very moment when their eyes should be wide open and welcoming the light of that moment.
Now,
Let's set out of the story,
Step out of the story and just look at it quickly.
What happens when an unwanted moment comes?
Is my mind,
Is your mind not filled with the sudden,
In quotes,
Search for and eventual discovery of that which we see as responsible for that disturbance?
And the answer is yes,
That's our default mode.
Disturbance,
Reaction,
Thoughts,
Associations,
Conclusions,
Choices,
Actions,
And all of them are the continuation of an unconscious nature that in order to escape a pain,
Escapes into the very consciousness responsible for it,
Only that consciousness can't see it.
And it can't see it to the point of this story is because when we pull the coverings over our eyes,
You know that what that means,
A child pulls the cover over its eyes.
When this consciousness pulls the cover over its eyes,
What are some of these coverings?
They're layers of old unconscious associations,
Instantaneous conclusions that either console or prove to us we're a captive.
So all of this conditioning,
We watch mom and dad do it.
What happens when someone challenged your parents?
What happens when someone challenges you?
We are instantly covered up with some form of resistance and defensiveness,
Covered up with all of the assertions that pour up from within us that tell us no one should talk to us like that.
So that all we are seeing in that moment is the reasons for the trigger that lives inside of us that we continue to cultivate every time we pull the covers over our head in the unwanted moment.
So all we see in that moment,
Which is strange enough,
Imagine pulling the covers over your head.
And now imagine for a split second that when you pull the covers over your head,
You're looking up at the covers over your face and it's like a movie.
You're looking at the mind is moving and presenting all of these images and pictures and possibilities.
So you're watching a film the mind has created in order to free itself from the last scene that it just identified with that says it's causing suffering.
That's what it is.
And the more we look at what we don't want and imagine how to escape it,
The faster that the real seems to go.
And the harder we look for solutions.
And the sooner we want them,
Because that's a big part of what I want to talk to you about.
So let me pause for a moment,
Having set the stage and told you a story to introduce the main theme.
Are you following well enough for me to go on?
Please let me know on the bar.
I hope to leave time at the end of this to clear up anything.
And if not,
You can always talk to me on Sundays or Wednesdays when I speak as I do twice a week for free.
Go online.
You can join.
Nothing to join.
We can talk.
All right.
Great.
Now,
Let's gather some understanding so that we can start to see where it is that we don't see what we're sure we do,
Let alone resolve the matter the way we want to,
Which is rather instantaneously.
Isn't it extraordinary?
Please see this with me.
All of us,
To whatever extent it's true,
It's inescapable in this world.
All of us have pain,
Anger,
Sorrow,
Regrets,
Anxiety,
Doubts.
All of us come into every moment a carrier.
And we are carriers of these past unresolved experiences that didn't just bring up within us these old pains and angers and frustrations,
But as they did,
Meaning as those states came up inside of us,
The consciousness that is responsible for harboring them then resists the revelation of its own content.
The experience I don't want isn't the moment I blame.
The experience is the momentary awareness of the content of my own consciousness as it's revealed by that condition.
And then it steps up and whatever it does in that moment,
Meaning whatever actions it takes.
Listen,
Here's what has taken maybe lifetimes and in one respect,
Eons in this human consciousness to become so fully conditioned to be blinded by its relationship with the content of itself as it spits it up when suffering comes and it knows nothing else to do except try to escape it.
That took forever.
Certainly years and years and years.
The first time you got your heart broken,
The first time somebody seemed that they betrayed you.
These things,
They go down into this unconscious nature and then become some kind of dark seed that unless it is brought into the light of understanding grows into a mounting body of resistance to any condition,
Even remotely similar to the one that initiated that first body of energy that then accumulated all of it that it did.
So if you can't understand this,
Look at the body.
The body suffers the effects,
Whatever its addictions,
The mind pained.
It doesn't reveal the effects of what it is,
Of what is being done to it for years.
I'm 75 years old.
I've been paying quite literally for 20 years the effects of a certain,
Not a certain,
A lot of ignorance when I was young.
And so the body forming itself in time requires the passage of time to bring into time the karma that is inevitable in ignorance,
In misunderstanding.
Karma is not a punishment.
It's a revelation of something asking,
Will you go ahead now that you understand?
And balance this out,
Harmonize it.
So that you and I begin to have these moments with people,
With problems,
With places,
And they don't get less,
Do they?
The irritation doesn't become diminished.
I got to keep going.
And when that happens,
What do we do look for?
We look for a magic pill.
And I don't just mean a magic pill.
I mean a magic pill that's going to help you heal.
And I don't just mean a magic pill,
Like a drug or a drink.
That's certainly prevalent.
I mean,
We look for a magic pill that this,
The,
The great prescriber,
This great unconscious prescriber is on the scene with instantaneously.
It's like you have your own doctor.
He goes with you everywhere.
And when suddenly some great pain comes up,
The doctor prescribes in thought,
A choice and an action in order to escape the very condition that that in quotes doctor created the last prescription.
So the idea of becoming rich,
Famous,
Authoritative became the thing I did.
And then when my authority or my wealth is challenged by a condition,
I need another prescription.
It's endless,
Isn't it?
It's a zero sum game.
I've been talking about it.
So if that's true,
That we're looking for some kind of magic pill to restore what we think is lost,
Then is it not true that that magic pill is going to somehow just heal us like that?
And in a strange way,
It seems like that to us.
Gosh,
I wish I had more time because I have a big story to tell you.
We are momentarily,
It seems anyway,
Instantaneously healed from what's hurting us the moment the mind grabs onto a time to come when it will have changed or escaped the condition it blames for the conflict.
That's the magic pill.
And it is poison.
It's poison because in the moment of its prescription,
Being asleep to the fact that what's prescribing the resolution to this unwanted moment is responsible for it.
All I'm doing without knowing is agreeing to have the next moment and the next moment and the next moment like that.
And that's why it's so hard for us to see,
Because that requires understanding not just this consciousness,
Meaning the moment of its revelation,
That particular content,
But I have to understand the system.
I actually have to get in there,
Get out of the shade of the tree and into the light that shows me the relationship between conditions,
Reactions,
Associated thoughts,
All of the things that recreate the very thing we're trying to escape.
It's all inside.
It's all in here.
And it's not even here.
It's all part of this consciousness.
So we have to enter into that in order to understand how it is acting against itself.
And when we see how we act against ourselves,
That is the healing.
You don't need anybody,
Anyone,
Anything.
You don't need a guru.
You don't need a magic pill.
You need nothing other than the light of the awareness that is right there in that moment with that disturbance.
Our task is to understand that and then begin to ask,
Act on this new understanding.
And I understand that,
Samia.
It's one of the most difficult.
What a paradox.
I've been graced in this life to have personal relationships with at least two,
Possibly three awakened men,
Recognized and not socially recognized,
Actually illumined people.
And every last one of them would say,
You don't need me.
I say the same thing.
You don't need me.
And yet,
We're here to do what?
To look at something that when we are reminded of the truth of it,
Then we share a common spiritual memory that has,
In its own nature,
A certain magnetic quality that draws to it all that is required for that experience of new understanding to produce a new relationship as it can only do,
As only it can do,
That we might then have a new relationship with the moment based relationship with the moment based on that understanding.
Here's the story.
Imagine a small town.
How many minutes have I got?
Small town,
Village someplace,
Maybe in the remote mountains.
And there is a healer.
And the people know about this healer and come to the healer because he is able from time to time to help them as physically needed with certain things that they can do and begin to take into themselves that will at least begin the healing process.
But one of the things about this healer is that from time to time,
He will give certain individuals a compound made from,
For all intents and purposes,
As best it's been seen,
The petals of a flower that as they're crushed,
Emit a certain kind of light.
And some people understand that there is way up in the upper valley,
A rocky region,
Subject to tremendous storms,
Where it is known that this healer goes and it is assumed that he collects whatever these strange,
Small little flowers of light are,
And that he uses them,
Not just for himself,
But for anybody who comes with a sincere request.
But for anybody who comes with a sincere request to understand what their pain is.
So this healer,
As would be natural and actually required by certain laws,
Attracts an apprentice.
And the apprentice wants to understand how it is because he has gone and watched from time to time the healer go into these rocky areas that are difficult,
If not impossible,
To get to,
And when he gets there,
Somehow or other,
He's not there for terribly long,
Sometimes maybe a whole day,
Maybe sometimes as long as a week.
But inevitably,
Without being able to see it,
Because it's shrouded in,
Like I say,
Bad weather,
The healer comes home with these petals.
So one day,
The apprentice,
Frustrated,
Says to the healer,
Look,
I've gone up there,
I know you know I've gone up there,
I've gone up to collect what you go to collect,
But for the life of me,
I can't find them.
Why can you find them and I can't find them?
And the healer says,
Well,
They only grow under certain conditions.
What do you mean they only grow under certain conditions?
What's different?
Why do they grow for you when you're there,
But not for me or anyone else that's gone up there?
Doesn't it ever bother you?
It used to bother me.
I would understand that somebody knew something that I didn't understand.
I could see it.
I could see that their understanding was at a completely different level than my own.
I could have the thought,
But the thought always proved empty when the conditions challenged the thinking nature.
Frustrated.
What is it?
How do they know?
And I don't mean how do they know,
Meaning why are they able to express ideas?
How can they be what they know?
How is that possible?
Their character,
The quality of them.
I'm explaining this now.
Apprentice,
Impatient.
Why do they grow when you're there,
But not anyone else?
Healer says,
Well,
You've reached a point in your development.
I'll go ahead and explain this to you.
There's two reasons.
First,
Almost no one is willing to remain up there in that rocky region,
That stormy place for too long.
It's just too uncomfortable to stay.
And one of the requirements that these flowers have,
Because they are aware of who visits that place,
Is that someone,
Whoever goes there,
Is willing to remain there long enough for them to grow.
Well,
I've been up there,
He said.
I'm no fool.
Getting kind of irritated with the healer,
With the teacher.
Nothing happened.
The teacher said,
Well,
The healer said,
Well,
Maybe that's because,
Well,
Let me put it this way.
You see,
The second reason,
Besides staying there long enough,
Is that these flowers rise and bloom in one place and one place only that virtually no one looks,
Let alone even thinks to look.
What do you mean,
Blooms in only one place where no one thinks to look?
All I did was look around and look around.
Teacher said,
Exactly.
Well,
Then where is it that they bloom?
And the healer said,
Right where you're sitting.
Right where you're sitting.
The last place we think to look for a healing is in the place we want to get out of.
Bring up the third key lesson,
Will you,
Kate?
The last key lesson.
The light of life can't show you the truth that sets you free as long as you refuse to see it.
The light of life can't show you the truth that sets you free as long as you refuse to see it.
And the problem with the material such as I'm presenting to you this morning is that when we gather together in this light,
In this field of new understanding and the relationship that it produces,
Is that in that momentary relationship,
We all feel this great willingness,
Don't we?
I don't want to refuse to see it.
I want to see it.
I want to see it.
I want to see it.
Well,
If you want to really see it,
Then you have to stop looking around for it and use the moment that you don't want to be in to see what is making that moment the way it is.
And that means getting rid of the magic pill that this unconscious nature fabricates on the spot that points to someone or something outside of you,
A moment that has left you alone or that's coming and will take from you what you need,
To look at that moment and realize that whatever your mind is fabricating in that moment is a falsehood.
Whatever the mind fabricates to heal itself is false.
Because the real healing is in recognizing that we are in a relationship with a machine,
An unconscious nature that never stops fabricating tomorrow so that it can have some place where it will be safe and free from what it doesn't want to be experiencing today.
When the healer said,
You're looking everywhere except where the flower blooms,
He said,
Well,
Where is that?
Right where you're sitting.
The relationship between who and what I am,
The world that I am in,
And everything that is being revealed to me about that relationship never stops unfolding.
And if it never stops unfolding,
That means that our relationship to the moment,
Instead of trying to unfold some time and place that will bring us freedom through this magic pill,
Through whatever thought this mind conjures up,
We begin to recognize the real solution is to start understanding if we can.
Katie,
Can we go back to the first key lesson?
Is that a possibility?
The opening key lesson?
Because I'll close with this now that we've made the full circle.
Stand by.
No unwanted experience of life will ever be over for us until we're inwardly awake enough to get over wishing that it was.
Isn't it amazing that we believe that wishes born out of resistance can release us from the consciousness that has created that condition,
Continues it,
And then believes it can escape it by imagining a time to come.
The flowers are growing right where you are,
Right within you.
Learn to harvest them by participating in the moment of their appearance.
You do that and you will start to understand two things at once.
One,
You know what?
It's true.
I never saw it before.
The minute I don't want a moment,
I'm looking everywhere but into the creator of that moment.
I believe he,
They,
This,
And them is the creator.
No,
It is not.
The creation is unfolding.
We can change our relationship to it as we realize that we can no longer be a participant in the continuation of this reality that is a dream that can never dream itself into freedom.
You have your work.
Look within and then can you give an example of that,
Please?
All right,
One more minute.
I'll give it again.
You're in your car,
You turn on the radio,
You're sitting at the dinner table,
You're at work,
You're fanning through your social sites,
Whatever you do.
You have to be present enough to start realizing that the sudden onset of the pain of some unwanted moment is not really the onset of that moment produced by the problem.
It is the sudden appearance of something within you that was waiting to be perturbed.
So that in that split second,
You actually realize,
You know what?
I have felt this resistance my entire life.
Only it doesn't seem like I have lived with this unwanting my entire life because it always has 10,
000 different things it blames for that negativity.
One resistance,
10,
000 things to be resisted.
The resistance hides in the things it names.
Because when it names the things it doesn't want,
It gives to itself what it does want to escape that resistance.
And resistance can't escape itself.
It can only reincarnate itself.
So just become aware of the moment where you have this feeling of,
I don't want to do this,
I don't want to go through this,
Not that again.
And realize that when you say not that again,
It's not the condition that is repeating itself.
It is a consciousness that carried forward the demands on life that produce immediate resistance to anything that challenges its assumption and its identity.
You see this,
You see this,
You see this,
You sit,
You sit,
You sit.
Stay in the moment.
Stay in the moment.
Not think about the moment.
Not wish it were other than it is.
Not hope some God,
Some Christ-like character is going to come and lift you into some seventh heaven.
All of that's nonsense.
Heaven is within.
Find it there.
Sit there.
Wait for the light that will show you the darkness that has called itself the light,
And you'll be done with that darkness to whatever degree you see that truth.
