How To Stop Falling Into Painful Patterns GF Live 10-31-26

Key Lesson: Wait, for you do not know when, let alone how, you will be lifted out of one order of being into another.Summary Key Lesson: We rise above (the experience of) limitation by seeing that there is nothing to escape, because there is no longer anyone there, by our name, who feels trapped. Our vessel is the moment. Attention is the witness. The destination is revelation.

Transcript

The title of the talk is which way is up or how to stop falling into painful patterns. And as I animated in the few moments that we had when inside timer was running, I asked if you've ever noticed how many times it seems like you've booked a flight. You know, Something that's going to lift you above your life, Whatever that might be, A new job, A new relationship. And there you are up in the air and you're thinking, You know, This is sweet. I've got it made. And then we wind up landing at the same airport from which we took off. In other words, Our life didn't change. We had an experience of liftoff only to find out that what felt like rising was really just a round trip to where we were to begin with. So we discover, In quotes, That this excitement of going up is no assurance that we actually know the way to do that. Let alone how to arrive there. So if we suspect this is true, And I can't have the feedback with you that I would ordinarily on inside timer, But trusting you can see that maybe what we have to question is whether or not. We want to keep attempting, Getting on that same plane, That same train, Promising to take us to a new world, To a better self, However we describe that, Including what we call awakening. Maybe what we need to ask is, Is this plan that we have for liftoff that keeps returning us basically to the same dissatisfaction of not succeeding according to our idea of being liberated. What's behind this experience that keeps repeating itself and repeating itself? That's what I want to look at with you today. And I have three stories. Each and every one is a facet. Of a gem of a different level of understanding. And you need to hear all three stories and allow yourself to assimilate them. Like you would putting certain foods together because you know that when they're blended, The experience of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So let's get started, Shall we? First story. **cough** Here's a magician. And the magician also owns a butcher shop. And the magician that owns the butcher shop. Has a flock of sheep. And the sheep are out to pasture. Fenced in between two hills. Seven times a day, The magician rings a bell that all of the sheep can hear. And when they hear the bell, They look up and suddenly they remember, Oh, The grass is greener. On the other side. Of the hill. And so collectively. As a flock of sheep, They wander over. Walking several miles to get to the other side of the hill where they are conditioned to believe and sometimes find the grass is greener. So back and forth and back and forth they go. Seven times a day making this journey. One day. An old ram, We'll call him Michael. He hears the bell and he gets ready to wander off with the flock again. And he thinks to himself, You know, This feels so old and familiar and I'm tired of it. Always moving from one side to another. Part of that memory of his is he realizes faintly that the other side of the hill isn't really greener than the side he's on. And then he starts to kind of think this through. Why are we moving seven times a day? To what end? Back and forth and back and forth, Each and every one of us as a flock, Thinking that the other side is the same as being raised into a new world where the food is going to be better, Where our freedom will be more complete. So one day, The old Ram, Michael. He's sitting there and it starts to get clear to him. And you have to kind of put this together with your own experience. I can't do it for you. He starts to notice something that he's never really thought about before. And that is maybe every other day, One of the sheep in the flock goes missing. No explanation for it. No one in particular wants to know where it's gone. They might ask, Well, Where did it happen to so far? Have you ever wondered what happened to a friend of yours? Who kind of falls off the radar, Who falls into a world of addiction or ambition or anger or hatred, Or can't shake off a regret. They kind of fall off the world. The flock goes on. I feel bad. If I could help, I would. And maybe you do, But it doesn't change anything. So from that point. With this in mind, The old ram, Michael, He doesn't move with the flock. He stays right there on the hill that he was. And what no one notices in the flock is that one day when they come back, Michael's not there. And what they don't know and can't see is that the magician frustrated with Michael because he's not exercising, Which the magician wants him to do. So his meat will be better. The magician frustrated with the old ram decides he's going to give Michael to a kindly old lady who lives down the lane who starts to treat Michael as a friend. Now what did Michael realize? That the other sheep didn't. He began to see that every time the bell rang, Make the connection. Every time a thought says, Oh yeah. Every time a thought says, Well, That'll work. Every time says, Thought says, Let's go there. Every time a thought says, This is what you need to do, Get over to the other side of the hill. It'll be greener there. That's the bell. That the bell promises better grazing. And no more does the bell promise better grazing that our attention follows the temptation to make the move back again to a place where we're going to have better food. So each bell promises a better side. And yet that enchantment, This constant vacillation between left and right, Good and bad, Yes and no, That constant vacillation the enchantment that governs that movement. Belongs to a journey that is described by the magician that we are serving, That the sheep are serving in their endless movement. I hope you can follow this story for a story. Consider, If you can't, Anything else. The other side of the hill. What's the other side of a thought where you think you've lost something? Somebody disrespects you. You hear some news, You get a note from a doctor. On the other side of that thought of loss is what? Get to a better place. Fix the relationship, Get a little more of what you don't have, Whatever you need to do to return to this sense of being whole. What about the other side of a fear? We don't think to ourselves that the promised action, That this reaction promises us, This is what you need to do. Get this done, You won't feel threatened again. Get a little more, Get a little further away, Get better control. We don't think to ourselves that the solution of fear offers is the other side of the fear. We think the solution is the way we successfully transcend or rise above the fear, But we don't rise above the fear. We don't rise above the thought of a loss. But what we are is sheep. That who are conditioned to imagine the other side when the bell rings and then spend our life struggling back and forth and back and forth and never really getting anywhere except more and more conditioned to make that circle of self. So if you can see this with me, I ask, Where are we going? Where are you going? Every day, Where are you going? And the answer is, I'm going from a condition. That I was identified with coming into the moment. But suddenly circumstances change and suddenly the grass isn't so good here. My family isn't quite the way they're supposed to be. The ones I hope would love me for me giving them what I give them. It's just not there. What's going on? And the exact same thing happens, A reaction, The promise of a relief on the other side of the hill and the pasture that we were in doesn't look so good, But by God, The one we're headed to will be perfect. Can you see this? And I'm not denying that we don't experience some kind of relief. Sometimes just going out to dinner. You know, It's real enough. I was kind of frustrated and then, Well, Let's go to your favorite place. Oh yeah, That's good. So as a passing experience, There is some relief. Moaning some competition, Acquiring some more money, Whatever it might be. Yeah, There's relief in that, But the passage from one side of the hill to the other reveals what we have failed to understand the whole time. Which is that this temporary change that we keep mistaking for being a new circumstance in life and that we're identified with. That lower nature keeps demanding, Keeps ringing the bell. Mammon! Love one side, Despise the other. But now I despise this side. I'm going to get back to the other. And off we go to where the grass is greener, Except that it never is. The only thing that is greener is in the eyes of the magician, So to speak, This old nature that keeps us shuffling and moving along. So we spend a lifetime obeying a bell. Without seeing the nature that keeps ringing it. The old ram sees what moves the flock. He refuses to follow that seeming wisdom of making that move. Because he has another order of wisdom. He has seen the movement created by that nature. And it's not as if the ram found a better pasture. But rather he has ceased to believe in the promises that are constantly made. But that never worked out. And when that happened, He remained where he was and something that he couldn't have imagined lifted him up. Which way is up? Second story. A senior angel. You know, For those of you, Most of you, I'm assuming, Know I like to tell a tale where a senior angel brings an apprentice along for a certain journey. We call the apprentice Appie. And in this instance, The senior angel takes Appie to Earth for a very specific lesson. And somehow the senior angel, And I'm not going to explain this now. Knows before something happens that it's going to happen. He doesn't necessarily know the outcome other than the outcome is determined by where the attention of the person thrown into that condition, Where that person's attention goes. That much he knows because that's what angels know. So down to earth they go. Where are they? They're at a bus stop. And waiting there at the bus stop, Suddenly on one of those things alighted above, It says, Bus canceled. And a man sitting there, Tired, Exhausted from work, Perhaps necessarily so. Loses it. Why does this happen to me? All those things. And as that's going on, People on the other benches, You know, They can see this, But no one can see what the app he sees happen in that same moment. Is that right while that man's going through this familiar explosion, That always has words like, Well, I'm going to get my own car. I'm going to use an Uber or whatever, Anything but this. In other words, I'm going to rise above this by imagining a solution to it. Suddenly there are two rivers that appear before the feet of the man that's upset. Two rivers! No one can see it. Even the man himself doesn't see it. But what the Appian senior angel can see is that a kind of body steps out of the man that's upset. And standing there at these two rivers, And out of nowhere, A ferry appears. And this body that came out of the upset man, The man's still standing there. But this other body. Gets into the ferry and is carried across these two rivers. Excuse me, Is carried across this river. And when it gets there, It drinks from the waters. Of a tributary river on the other side of the first river. And after that, He just kind of wanders around in shadows. Appi can see this all at once. The senior angel. Looks at him to see if he's, What are these rivers? What's happening? What happened to this person? The Appy asks. And the senior angel replies, Well, Said, I want you to see this for a number of reasons. First, These rivers that you see here, They have many names and through ancient times. They were often referred to as the River Styx. And the River Leyte. S-T-Y-X-L-E-T-H-E, River Styx and Leyte. And before the. Apprentice Angel can ask another question. There's a disturbance in the force, So to speak. And in a heartbeat, Their attention is drawn to where the senior angel has suddenly carried them off. And they're drawn to a cafe where a waitress is sitting there mumbling to herself, And of course, Appy and Senior can see into her mind, And she's resenting the fact that her manager just corrected something about her behavior with a customer. And as the waitress is sitting there going through this familiar resentment, This iteration of anger, Same thing happens with the man. Same river appears in front of her, Two rivers. She crosses the one, The river sticks. And walks past the river Styx to a second river. And when she gets to the second river. Literally, She just disappears. Appy can't quite see what's going on. I hope you're following the story. But no more does she walk past the second river, And it looks like she It looks like she lifts some water from a pool or a pond on the other side. Then she's gone. And in a heartbeat, Literally, Appie and the senior angel see her soul, This other body I mentioned in the man, Sees her soul walk through the cafe door. And step back into her body, All in a heartbeat, Literally. In what we would describe and would take. Days, Months, Years, Like that. Walks back through the cafe door, Steps into the waitress's body. And when it does, When it steps into her body, Suddenly the resentment, The anger falls off of her face. And she smiles. A very. A very deliberate. Thank God kind of smile. Now, Appy's confused. He says, I don't get it. What's going on? The man, This woman? To he he just kept wandering She's back. Please help me and senior angels is look. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk. To her by taking on bodies ourselves so that we can engage in a conversation. And then you can ask her what happened to her. Because you could see it was very different than the first story where the man never came back. Wandered off into the shadows. So Apis is okay and they take on bodies. They sit on the counter next to the waitress. Appy's is. . . He said, I want to understand what you just went through. It seems to me that you, You, You. We're not on a journey. Can you help me understand? And the woman, The waitress. If you want to use these words. At least momentarily awakened. She said, Yeah, As best I can describe it to you. The manager insulted me. And I can feel myself falling into this. Old resentment thinking, Not just how he is always like this, And he's more like that than I am. And then thinking, Well, What does this correction mean? Am I going to get fired? Does this mean I'm on whatever's going on? And she said, I felt the temptation to identify with this thought I've had a hundred times is promising. This terrible disturbance will never happen again. If I just do what my mind is telling me to do, Which is to lift myself above this terrible circumstance I'm in, I deserve a better job. I deserve people that don't treat me this way. All those thoughts and feelings, She said, I could see that they were nothing but part of this strange circle I've been making my whole life. But then she said, More than wanting to believe in the image of transcending my own life, More than wanting to believe, I wanted to remember how many times I've been there before. That's what I wanted to remember, Not the relief of some time to come, But I wanted to remember, Including the pain of it, How many times I've been in exactly in that same position. Because over time, I've started to see that if I can stay there, I can see there are other possibilities. That my mind can't come up when it's gripped in this kind of pain or resentment. So hold the story there for a moment with me, Will you? And let me give you a brief. Insight into these two rivers that I described. In this story of the waitress and the journey of the man by the bus at the bus stop and her own. I am using imagery that is largely attributed to Greek accounts. Of the soul's journey. But accounts prior to that. Have long existed. It's often been spoken of that there are these five or seven rivers, Invisible rivers of energies that are in fact at the circulation of all that comes out of the, Into this world and from others. So accounts differ, But here's what doesn't differ, Because even though the descriptions of the experience vary, You'll see what I'm talking about. The river sticks. It marks the boundary of the underworld. The underworld being where when a person drops this body, They have no choice but to enter into it. It is where the departed soul, So to speak, The departed nature must go. And there's no choice but to cross the river Styx. Because the sticks is the boundary between what is physical. What is related to a world around it. Into a world that it no longer has the familiar relationships, But rather after being ferried across the river Styx, That nature, That soul. It starts to feel terrible. I didn't get stuff done. I have unresolved relationships. The one that I love is still there. Where am I going to find a way to make myself whole? All of this visits that soul, That nature, When it has crossed this river Styx into a world where none of the things that it had before, It will have again. And there's immense pain in that. Now, I don't know if you're capable of doing this. I pray that you are. Can you see that in a moment where something comes along that you don't want, There's a very similar sense of self? Oh my God, How am I going to get that back? What's going to happen? How do I make this better? There's this pain of leaving something, Of leaving my life because the conditions that supported it suddenly fell apart. A thousand times it happens. And a thousand times as the story, Ancient stories say, That soul comes to an adjacent river connected to springing from the sticks. And the adjacent river is called Leyte. Or leathate, I don't know how to pronounce it, L-E-T-H-E. And the river Leyte. Is the river of forgetfulness. So that the soul who has crossed and now tormented They understand without having to take thought. If I drink from these waters, I won't have to relive this sorrow. I won't have to relive the things that I didn't do or that I didn't become. I can forget all of it. And that's what the vast, Vast, Vast majority of human beings do, Not in this analogy of the river Styx and Leyte, But in every moment where suddenly something goes south. And we don't see it. We drink from thought that says, Oh, You, This, That's the past. We think from, Well, It'll be better tomorrow. That's the past. It's the forgetfulness. Anything but be where I am. Anything but realize like Michael the ram did is that I'm moving everywhere but going nowhere and now what look look what's in front of me And so in the much the same way. As the man in our story drank from the rivers of forgetfulness. And wandered off. And the story goes that when they wander off, They're waiting on the other side of sticks to be given another body and another chance, But it said they mustn't remember their life before that, Because it'll interrupt with their possibilities of acquiring a will that is essential into the intelligence of the new life they are born into. But there are these ancient gold tablets associated with actually the morphic, The morphic, The old mystery traditions. And these gold tablets from older traditions offer instructions to the few souls that can remember them in the appropriate moment. And here's what the instructions are. The soul is warned. To walk past the temptation of the waters of forgetfulness. And rather than adhere to that immense temptation to escape. What is essentially an actual torment, A pain. Of suddenly seeing what have I, What did I do? What have I become? What am I? Rather than drinking from the waters of forgetfulness, To put all that in quotes in the past, Which it never is, They're instructed to walk past the River Laite and find a pool whose clear waters flow out of the Lake of Memory. Which, By the way, Is called mnemosyne. Mnemosyne And when standing there with the waters from the lake of memory, Standing before the guardians that are assigned to it, That soul is instructed to declare, I am the child of earth and of starry heaven. I am the child of earth and of starry heaven. So can you see the difference? One person crosses, Can't help it. The reaction delivers them across this river that once across there are certain things that cannot be changed, But that rather than drinking from the waters of forgetfulness in order to get past the judgment of oneself, Our waitress goes on and she drinks from the lake of memory, From the waters. Because she's instructed to go past this white cypress that's right there and declare, Meaning inwardly, To remember, I'm a child of earth and of starry heaven, Not just a child of earth who wants to remember heaven when things go south on the planet. This teaching is an image. A way in which is conveyed this idea that it's possible for a part of us, A nascent soul, To remember, At the point most important, Its origin. So that in remembering its origin, It might otherwise lose itself. It reclaims its place in that time and moment, And it is momentarily awakened. As Michael finally was the ram. Into a state called an anamnesis. Anamnesis, That's it. Anamnesis. Anamnesis is the word that describes a spiritual state. Of having seen through the illusion of death because that person has been awakened to realize that they are not this particular body. They are not this particular set of experiences, But rather they were intended to be used to get to this point where they can drink from the waters of a memory. That allows them to not just be and return. But rather to use every moment subsequently. This is important for me to say, I'm not describing to you. I listened to some of you students talk. You believe in these things like, Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to go here and I'm going to be a loving person. And I'm going to forgive everybody as if the image that you are, What that you think is lifting you, You've fallen into the identity provided by an unconscious nature for the very sake of seeing that you make a round trip back and forth. That you go to sleep. Every spiritual teaching is about awakening. But awakening isn't this beautiful field of flowers, Although that field follows what I described, This anamnesis, This awakening, Then you do live in a different world where you can see without effort, The other worlds that are trying to pull you out of it. The reason I'm using these images is that we can see this happens moment to moment in our life. Something happens, I feel like I've lost, I feel like I'm dying because you won't say you love me. I feel like I'm dying because you got negative with me. And what does that mean to our life? And in that moment, We crossed that river. But crossing it, Then what? Then, Well, You know what, Here's how I'm going to get through this painful moment. I'm going to forget about it. Listen to this paradox. I'm going to forget about it. By thinking about it over and over again to renew the sense of self, Because out of the renewal of this sense of self will come something that'll say, Here's how to rise above this. Here's the plan. Get rid of them. Get rid of that. Change this. And back to sleep we go. So that's the story that we see in this waitress. She comes to all that in a split seconds. An insult appears, Painful reaction. Following the reaction, A familiar identity floods in and it claims her life. And as it claims it, It says, Here's another condition. Just do this and you'll get rid of this people who hurt you. You'll understand what that injury means. Here's what to do before you can be yourself again. And when we accept that identity, As she saw that she had done. She realizes God, I've incarnated this nature 10, 000 times. 10, 000 times I've had good reasons to be angry. 10, 000 times good reasons to be anxious. Much like what happened when this. Talk on inside timer fell apart because we couldn't get it to work. What's the purpose of that anxiety or impatience when it comes up? I'm telling you what it is. Hidden in it is the promise of getting this resolved or getting away from it. And then in quotes, I will have risen above myself. No, You don't rise above yourself. When you listen to a negative reaction, You fall into the consciousness responsible for the reaction itself. But in this story, Her remembrance of this circle interrupts the moment where she was going to drink from forgetfulness. You will one day see it. You'll have a negative reaction and something will come to rescue you. Even blaming someone is a form of rescue because now you know who did what and what needs to follow so you won't feel that anymore. So she doesn't drink from the forgetfulness. She sees the temptation to repeat herself as it's offered. And let's be very clear, Yes, There is still the pain. That's what you don't understand. I guess something in us just doesn't want to deal with it. We think when I wake up, There's not going to be pain. No, When you wake up, You're going to understand the pain doesn't belong to you. You'll start seeing it as a movement of a certain level of being. Like the bell of the magician. And so rather than surrendering herself to the temptation, Inherent in this promise of the grass is greener. She doesn't move. She goes past the river of forgetfulness and drinks from the waters of the lake of memory, Of reconnection, Of remembering ourselves. And this level of remembrance includes the lessons of her past. But without requiring her to relive its sorrow. She remembers the other side isn't greener. And the more that she wants this familiar escape, She can feel it trying to draw her down, Falling into it, The more she understands the necessity of remaining present and exploring the truth of the condition that she is starting to see. So ever so quickly. Back to the story where our waitress hero smiles. Remember, She smiled when she. . . Abby, Why? I mean, What's going on? Because he's there, He doesn't understand what she does. The cafe manager didn't take back his words. Certainly the circumstances in the cafe are exactly the way they were. But she returned to the experience of the moment no longer a captive of it. She returned to the same experience, But no longer a captive of it. There is an inexplicable sense of rescue in such a moment. We've not talked ourselves into a better mood or manufactured to replace identity. Rather we find ourselves lifted out of a world whose demands seemed absolute into a relationship with a life that we couldn't have imagined as long as we were a captive of its demands. Katie, Can we bring up that first key lesson now? I'm going to trust that it goes up because I can't actually see it. You might want to write this down. It should sound familiar, But I'm giving you a good explanation of it. Wait! For you know not when, Let alone how, You will be lifted out of one order of being into another. Wait. For you know not when, Let alone how, You will be lifted from one order of being into another. How you will rise. You cannot know how you will rise. You cannot know what lifts you. But if you remain where it's possible for that to take place, So it does. And it's always a mystery. Which brings us to our third story. I hope you're staying with us. You know what a puffer fish is. Puffer fish looks like a little fish, But it can Blow itself up. With kind of thorny sides so nothing else can swallow it. So here's a young puffer fish. And it was just recently captured. In the waters just outside of this massive aquarium. You've seen them. Whose one wall is inside where people can see into the aquarium, But whose other glass wall. Is actually adjacent to the shallow waters. From out of which was captured this puffer fish. So visitors can come. How cool it is. They can look into the aquarium and then they can see through its glass. Into the ocean waters beyond. To catch a glimpse of something they might not ordinarily see, If not just the agitation and the kelpiness. So inside this aquarium. The young puffer fish joins countless other fish, Big aquarium. Swimming from side to side. Enjoying the bubbles that are coming out of the treasure chest. Being lifted by them. Rising as they do to eat the food that seems to fall from the skies above. And at first. The young person, You know, This isn't so bad. There's a mermaid? There's a little, Like a little castle I can swim in. It's cool. After a certain amount of time, The new little puffer fish C's One fish that's not doing what all the other fish are doing. It's an angelfish. And it always stays apart from the rest of the school. It hangs out in a corner. Of the aquarium. Adjacent to the shallow waters of the ocean on the other side of that glass. Just hangs out there. So one day. Time for a fish? Goes up to the angelfish and says, You know, I know it's none of my business. There's so much to see here. So many things to do, Different ways to enter in, Go in the castle, Come out the different way. The bubbles are never quite the same. Why are you here, Remaining here? Angel Fish says, I'm considering the only thing that matters here. Pufferfish shakes his little puffer head considering the only thing that matters here. What are you talking about? What's that? And the angelfish replies. This invisible barrier. That keeps us a captive in these waters when just beyond it. I can see an endless body of water that I remember we came from before finding ourselves here. The puffer fish kind of understands that, But had already kind of decided it wasn't significant. And he says to her, Well, Why not accept the gift? Of being here where we are. It's not always bad. Besides, What has that got to do with you hanging out in this corner instead of joining the rest of us? Socialize! Have a drink. Angelfish. Very seriously, But not punitively, Says to the pufferfish, I would rather imagine, I would rather remember my origin than forget it for the pleasure of being distracted by the food that falls from the sky, Fake treasure chests, And bubbling mermaids. I would rather remember my origin than forget it. Puffer fish, I don't understand. I mean, What's the point? What's the point? We are where we are. Have you not heard that voice in yourself? Why torture yourself? Angelfish, Why go through this? Nice deep breath. And before she can answer. What appears out of nowhere is this giant hand. And it dips down into the tank. Captures the angelfish. And tosses her from the waters of the aquarium into the shallow ocean waters on the other side. The stunned pufferfish sitting there blown up. To protect itself. It he can hear two human voices, But he can't understand what they say. Or why they're saying it, But we can. Here's what we can hear the pufferfish can't. The assistant head of the aquarium says to the main oceanographer, Why did you throw that beautiful angelfish back into the water? And he looked at her. And he said, She stopped swimming back and forth and was just staying in the corner of the tank. Assistant says, Well, I don't get it. What's the big deal? To which the man says, Why keep feeding something that adds nothing to the entertainment value of the tank? When you stop serving the master that you presently serve. You are released. The master you serve has no power over you save for the way it convinces you by the sound of a bell that there's something better on the other side of where you are. And all you have to do is get to what you love and get away from what you despise until what you despise by the sound of a bell becomes the next thing that you love. The Angelfish could have not planned that release. The angelfish could have not planned that release. Do you remember the key lesson? Wait for you know not when, Let alone how, You will be lifted out of one order of being into another. There was no way the angelfish could know. She could see the glass. She could remember the waters beyond it. But she refused to let the attractions in the tank erase that remembrance. Even though it meant not living what seemed to be the only alternative. So each of these three stories brings us to the same threshold. Can you see it? Can you put it together? The old ram sees through the promise that the grass is greener on the other side. He sees through it. And he's what? He's given to a kindly old woman down the lane who treats him as a friend. The waitress remembers herself before the reaction repeats itself. And when she does not drink from the river of forgetfulness, She's transported into the waters of an evergreen remembrance, Self-remembering that allows her to return to the same moment, A different order of being. When she didn't do any of that herself, But it was all presented to her, If she would have stayed with remembering instead of forgetting. And the angelfish, Chooses to attend to the boundary. That her companions have learned to ignore. Oh, Think of it! I'm gonna remain attentive to the boundary of my captivity? Instead of forget about it and enjoy what I have inside the tank. That's exactly what I'm saying. The boundary, The reaction. You can't stop the reaction. The boundary appears when something in you wants you to forget that you've had it a thousand times and are simply going to reincarnate that same nature at the cost of the possibility of your development of a soul. So that in each story, Freedom comes in a way. That the one who was captive at the beginning of it could not arrange. The magician gives the ram away, Doesn't serve his interest. The waitress returns to the same place, But in a wholly new relationship with it. And the angelfish is lifted by a hand into waters that the angelfish itself could have never done. Because the waters were beyond her efforts, And yet she was placed in them. This doesn't mean. And I have to say this, That you should imitate the behavior of these creatures. You know, I'm going to sit in the corner. Sitting in a corner doesn't awaken you any more than changing pastures liberates the sheep. The work is inward. Seeing what commands our attention and remembering in that moment that there is another kind of world whose command we can be in and under if we refuse to forget. What got us into that corner to begin with. Nor as what, This is what forgetfulness is. Forgetfulness is bargaining with the image of a higher possibility. Believing that what we imagine as we think of that higher possibility is the same as being rescued from the prison that we're in. We remain present. In our body. Where we are with what we are in that moment. Because we've begun, If we have at all, To see the cost of forgetting ourselves. We recognize the old journey before we agree to go on it again. And this is where the rubber meets the spiritual road. I'm afraid not to go on it again. I'm afraid not to have an excuse. Excuses are forgetfulness. I'm afraid not to come up with some way in which I can pretend like that didn't bother me. Why? Because when I can pretend it didn't bother me, I'm identified with that slippery self, That self that can't be captured. And I've forgotten again that I was captured. So each disturbance. Is an opportunity to remember the truth of ourselves. This doesn't mean that we go, We don't welcome an insult or pretend that some fear that comes over us, Some impatience that's pounding on us, We don't pretend it's pleasant. Nor do we escape into this idea of an image of ourselves who, Yeah, I know how to use that. No, When you use something, You don't have to think about whether you used it. You are no longer being used by the nature that creates it. And that's the freedom. So we're learning here, If we are, To recognize a moment in which another relationship already present within us becomes possible, And it becomes possible precisely because, And the same moment as the old one is revealed. So bringing this talk to an end, Can you see how greener pastures appear in thought? The next plans to go do something, To become someone. The next hope you have that some problem is going to resolve itself if you can just struggle enough through it. And I'm going to say this again, I'm not saying that there aren't moments where practical thought needs to be applied. I'm not saying that suffering comes to an end. When suddenly you can see for yourself it's the same suffering, Quite the opposite. For the first time in your life, You see that suffering can't come to an end when you serve it. Can we remain aware of that suffering without handing our entire sense of self over to its instructions, Which always feels like it's going to lift us out of the problem when all it does is pull us down to the nature responsible for its creation. We do not have to invent what lies beyond this moment of awareness. That's important. Please, St. Paul, Our hopes are not in things seen, But in unseen. What does that mean? The angelfish didn't create the ocean by remembering it. And it certainly didn't create the hand that came in and lifted it out of the waters. Hoping that some God was going to save it. Nor does our ability to imagine another order of life. Prove that we know of its existence. What is real is present. What is imagined is the past. So perhaps if we're following, This begins to answer a new question for us that I started the talk with. Do you remember what it was? Which way is up? I'm gonna go into this deeply tomorrow, Which way is up? Sweet Jesus, I think I know the way up and out. But I'm still an anxious wreck. I want to believe that if I can just stay immersed in the mud long enough that somehow the mud will come off of me. No, What you want to do is escape the mud. You resist the mud life experience and the resistance to the unwanted moment is in fact falling deeper into the consciousness that has produced it. Which way is up? We've mistaken the excitement of some new promise, Some new hope. We've mistaken that destination for a higher direction. It's not. Remembrance, On the other hand, Reveals and produces a completely different possibility to awaken within the moment that we are being carried away by something tempting us that isn't lifting us, But pulling us back down into a gravity we don't understand. That I will discuss in depth tomorrow. We rise above the experience of limitation. By seeing there is nothing to escape. Kate, Let's bring this up. This is the. The summary key lesson. I'll wait for Katie to mark it there. We rise above the experience of limitation by seeing there is nothing to escape. Because there is no longer anyone there by our name that feels trapped. Our vessel. Is the moment. Attention. Is the witness. The destination is revelation. And it all begins with remembering. The truth of ourselves. With refusing the temptation of forgetting ourselves, Even though it's so seamless to do so. So familiar, So comfortable, So consoling. Everything you do to console some psychological suffering. Is in fact you being deceived into falling deeper into that unconscious nature that first produces the suffering and then says, Here's how to escape it. Just rise with me into this revelation of a time to come when you won't feel this way, Into some affirmation, Into some nonsense that it doesn't call nonsense, But that we can begin to see as being nonsense. Our work is to be here. Right where we are. If nothing else, Remembering that I know what I heard in that talk is true. There's a bell. Oh, No. Ah, Yes. That's a bell. And when the bell comes to understand that what we are drawn into in that moment and in essence drawn across is this barrier between the living and the dead. Barrier between the living and the dead the river sticks not as a greek metaphor or myth but the river sticks as an actual psychological place in which when we go into thought to escape the We cross that river and we go from a place where we're alive and have a new possibility. Into a death we don't understand. But even when we have gone through that and find ourselves, If we do, Which we always will, At least at the start, We can remember, I'm not going to drink from the river of forgetfulness. Judging yourself is drinking from the river of forgetfulness. Remembering an enemy and why they need to be resented. That's the river of forgetfulness. I'm going to go past the forgetfulness into remembering myself, The pool of memory. Then when we do that, We will begin, As did our waitress, Michael the Ram, And this. . . Michael the Ram. The waitress and the angelfish. We can begin to see all along what remembering does when it comes to these moments of forgetting ourselves and in remembering ourselves remain available to a freedom whose arrival we cannot foresee.