Learning To Live Mindfully (Part 2)

In part two of this insightful look at how we can learn to live mindfully through meditation and stillness, Guy Finley shows us that our "true and eternal destination is revelation itself; our vessel is stillness."

Transcript

I'm going to give some comments on meditation.

Again,

Not how to meditate,

But something that covers what the real nature of meditation is.

When I'm done with the comments,

Then we will have our quiet time,

We will meditate.

When we reach the end of that meditation,

You'll hear me say,

When you're ready,

Open your eyes.

And at that point,

The task is to remain meditating,

But now your eyes will be open so that you can experience what it's like to have something of that quiet,

To be brought into the world,

The riot of what happens when the eyes start seeing what they do and begin their natural association with the rest of the organism.

Everything starts moving,

And we want to remain the observer of the movement,

Not the participant in it,

So that we're moved left or right by those thoughts and feelings.

What exactly is meditation?

What does it mean for a man or a woman to be mindful,

Watchful,

And It has long been said that a person who lacks self-knowledge is essentially disconnected from the world through which they walk.

And why would the absence of self-knowledge be the same as being disconnected through to the world that we walk through?

And the answer is because while we walk through a world that is in time and physical,

Our experience of the world through which we walk cannot be separated from our understanding of it.

Self-knowledge is not about one's self.

It is about true self.

It is about the nature that we have been given that is not only flesh,

But that is spirit,

And that because it is that unique combination of heaven and earth,

Walks through a world where heaven and earth also meet and where heaven is never-endingly speaking to the human being who is aware of him or herself,

Of the nature of heaven.

Sometimes it may seem too much,

But the fact of the matter is those experiences that we have where suddenly life seems like it's no good or it's broken.

Life can't be broken.

Go break life.

Life isn't broken,

But what is going on is in those moments when we feel that way,

We are disconnected from life.

And when I say disconnected from life,

I mean we are disconnected from the moment to moment streaming of meaning that is never-endingly pouring down into this world and into you and I as human beings.

I know it's rough.

I get it.

There's nothing worse than hearing about meaning and inspiration and what is good and true when you're full of negativity.

But for your good fortune,

There's something in you that understands you're not supposed to walk through this world angry or frightened,

Frustrated,

That there's something that is obviously missing from your life but that you don't understand that you can't supply what's missing.

You can only be aware of what's interfering with your essential spiritual connection to life because it is through this essential spiritual connection to life.

You're a living antenna.

You're the connection between the heavens and the earth.

But before you can understand that,

You have to understand a little bit about the fact that there's something that lives inside of all of us that isn't interested in this connection where meaning is never-endingly pouring into oneself because in order for there to be that relationship between ourselves and what's higher,

The meaning of my life can't be what you didn't do for me yesterday.

The meaning of my life can't be what happened three years ago when he or she did this.

The meaning of my life can't be predicated on what I put in my pocket that profited me because for us that's mostly the meaning of life.

The revisitation of something in the past or the creation of a future to escape the past that we ourselves created through a misunderstanding of its meaning.

Now how do we look at something like that?

How do we begin to understand something of that?

So I made a few notes early this morning that might help us understand a little bit about it.

Take a nice deep breath everybody.

Now don't breathe again.

Can you do that?

Can you not breathe again?

If I take a nice deep breath I have to breathe out,

Don't I?

Why?

See,

When you take an in-breath you're bringing in new oxygen into the system.

The body has to be replenished.

But when you breathe out you're cleansing the lungs of oxygen that's been turned into carbon dioxide.

So that each cycle of each breath is the refreshing,

The filling,

And then the emptying.

Emptying of what is no longer useful so that it can be filled with something that is.

Can you make your heart stop beating?

Why does the heart beat?

What's going on inside of that chest where this marvelous organ supplies the blood,

Moving it through the system,

Carrying the oxygen that the lungs just took in?

And the answer is the heart beats the way it does because one side of it is filling with fresh oxygenated blood,

And the other side is pumping out the blood that no longer is oxygenated.

So the lungs fill and empty,

The heart fills and empties.

And there's nothing in life that isn't like that.

We don't see the great lungs of God.

We can't see it,

But we are the lungs of God in this form.

We don't see the heart beating,

But there's a pulsation as surely as I'm sitting here that never stops moving through this universe.

But we're not connected.

For us,

When things get empty,

Oh it's horrible,

It's terrible.

This is no good.

When the storms come and blow off the parts of ourselves that are no longer useful,

We don't think to ourselves,

Thank you for showing me what no longer is alive and that something might take its place in this endless cycle of emptying,

Filling.

No,

We cling to things,

Including our grief,

Including our anger.

You may have never thought of it before,

But you know a stream empties itself 24 seven.

Doesn't it?

Isn't a stream ceaselessly emptying itself,

Please,

But you never see that it's empty.

Why?

Because it's ceaselessly filling itself.

What about the moon waxing,

Waning,

Wax on,

Wax off?

Does the moon disappear when it's waned,

When it's new,

Or is it itself in a cycle of being filled with the sun and then empty of the light that it reflects?

There's nothing that you will see in this world that you walk through out there or in here because breathing and the beating of the heart belongs to an involuntary system doesn't it?

I can't stop that.

You know,

We're pretty lucky that God,

That nature ensured that we didn't have to be there to breathe and have our heart beat because the minute you saw that woman or that person who upset you,

You'd die.

You were used to everything you stop.

What?

Wake up,

Man.

Remember,

Beat your heart.

Take a breath.

And that's exactly what happens to us.

Those moments where we're captured by a reaction,

By a judgment of ourselves,

By some thought about what we're going to get or what we might lose,

Disconnected.

But disconnected from what?

This is an involuntary filling and emptying mechanism.

It has no say whatsoever in it.

The body is the instrument of the nature that created it.

And we are in the body and as thus we are in fact powerless over the necessity of the way the system fills and empties,

Cleanses itself.

But as spirit in a body,

We do have a choice whether or not we are participating in this cycle of filling and emptying,

But not the way that we think we do.

And that's the point of this talk.

What is it to be mindful?

What is it to be watchful?

Imagine a wise father.

And would that we could all be wise.

And would that we could understand in some way that everyone we meet,

There's no relationship that we enter into.

That isn't the opportunity for both people,

But if both can't take advantage of it,

Then you can.

To realize that every one of those moments with other people is in fact a moment of filling and emptying,

Of waxing and waning.

And imagine a good father who wants his daughter to understand something of the nature of real life.

Because you see for us the nature of real life is everything is supposed to be full.

Isn't it?

And when it's not full,

What do we do?

Fill it.

Why do you think anyone would accept,

Agree to be filled with negativity?

Why do you think anyone would accept that kind of life that carries over an anger in it,

An enemy?

And the answer is because they don't know what to do with their emptiness.

That's the only answer there is.

And you say,

Well,

That's not true.

And I can say,

Well,

On one part,

You can't stop the involuntary reactions produced by sudden psychological resistance.

You can't do anything about that,

But you can see that that is an involuntary action.

You can see that that takes place at a level of yourself that may be unavoidable relative to your present understanding,

But keeping yourself filled,

Remaining that way is because you are in fact disconnected in that moment from the real meaning of the moment.

And what is that meaning?

Nice deep breath.

See,

Every moment is asking,

Ah,

Ah,

Cleansed.

Well,

At least of carbon dioxide.

Wouldn't it be nice to cleanse yourself of all the weight you've been carrying around for 5,

000 years in this psychological body?

So now we have to understand something of the meaning of this emptiness and fullness,

This cycle of being refreshed and then being refreshed again.

Can you see with me that like this father wants to show his daughter,

He takes her to the summit of a small cliff overlooking the ocean.

She doesn't understand why she's there.

She wants to be playing with her stick horse,

Her dolls,

Probably these days her iPhone.

God help us.

And he says,

I want you to watch with me.

She doesn't know what that means even.

He says,

What do you see?

And she says,

Well,

I see the ocean,

The waves coming in.

She says,

Yes,

That's right.

What do you think?

It's cool.

Can I go back in?

Eight hours later he takes her back.

What do you see?

She looks and,

Well,

Where did the waves go?

What was once full with water is now coral and rocks and there's little creatures flopping around and ponds,

Little puddles.

He said,

That's because the tide came in when we were here and then the tide went out.

Why does the tide go out?

What about those little fish and everything in those puddles?

She said,

The tide will come back.

When?

He said,

Let's come back.

And for the sake of the story,

Let's say that he over three or four days shows her that the ocean isn't always full and the ocean isn't always empty,

But that it moves and that it's participating in a cycle greater than the ocean itself produced by the earth.

The ocean sits upon and its relationship to the moon and the moon itself and the earth in relationship to the sun and the sun in relationship to the system through which it moves.

You see,

All of that is intended to be not something that's intellectual in you,

But something that's experienced.

You say,

Well,

I don't see the ocean filling and emptying.

Yes,

You do.

You're filled with aspirations or you're filled with desperation.

You're filled with emptiness or you're filled with the hope the emptiness will go away.

But what you aren't present to is the fact that those are just tides in the self.

They're just movements.

They're just movements.

And they're just the effect of movements.

That's all.

But when you take the effect of the movement to be the sum of the ocean,

When you take the momentary emptiness to be the evidence of a life that will always be despairing,

When you take the excitement or the moment of grace where something touches you and you're suddenly elated and you take that to be the proof that somehow or other you've done something right.

You've missed the whole thing.

Because the whole thing is in the mindfulness,

In the watchfulness,

In the awareness that in and of itself is full and empty all the time.

Because unlike the ocean that has its distinct tides and to be in one place and see that is to understand it.

You and I are filled with streams.

We are filled with the ocean.

We are filled with blood.

We are filled with life endlessly coming in and coming out,

Emptying and filling,

Filling and empty.

That's what we are.

And we're not any one of those things.

We are all of those things and more.

Because something lives within us that's capable of being mindful of watching.

Oh,

Look at here.

Suddenly I feel so anxious.

It's just a moment.

It's just a movement.

But for us,

It's not a movement because there's something in us that will look at that and connect it to something in time,

Something that we want to be or don't want to be.

And suddenly that movement becomes the sum of myself.

And then the sum of myself takes action to change whatever it is that it sees as the status,

The static state of myself.

And there is no static state of yourself.

There is no static state of yourself.

And to see the temptation to identify with being full or empty,

Waxing or waning or like the summer in the spring when everything's suddenly full of life and you have someone,

You're having great sex,

You have a new partner,

You're full of hope,

Everything's opening up for you.

Summer and spring.

And then because of this nature instantaneously identifying and deriving itself from that.

Now everything's supposed to remain summer and spring and nothing can and nothing does include your own physical body.

Because that summer and spring belongs to a system.

It belongs to a greater body of wisdom.

A harmonious whole that is always acting to fill itself and empty itself,

Fill itself and empty itself,

Cleanse itself and then refill itself with the next thing that will need to be cleansed.

And when you start looking at your life and you think to yourself,

Oh,

This is what I am or that's not what I am or I don't have what this person does or I want what that person does,

You are caught up in a stream that without knowing it is emptying itself and never being refreshed by the understanding that who and what you are is intended to sit and watch this thing.

Awareness is never full or empty.

Awareness is never full or empty.

Awareness is the awareness of fulling,

Of being filled and being emptied.

You start understanding that you'll know something of the nature of what it means to be mindful,

What it means to be watchful so that you won't have to sit someplace and close your eyes.

Although part of the process of meditation,

The way we're going to do it is so that we can sit and watch thoughts flood in.

You know why thoughts flood in and keep flooding in?

Because you keep going,

My house is open,

Come on in,

I need some,

This consciousness needs something to think about,

Someone to be who you are is so much greater than any thought,

Any movement of any tide,

Any waxing or waning of possibilities.

But in order to be in relationship,

To be connected to the meaning of life,

One must participate in the meaning of life and the meaning of life is not in any one of the individual revelations of life,

But in the full onslaught of seeing that life is itself,

This emptying and this filling.

That's what life is and that's what we are.

That's what we're meant to experience,

Not experience clinging and avoiding,

Rushing and dying,

Meaning collapse because I've spent everything.

Why do you rush?

I've asked this question for more years than I care to know.

I rush because suddenly I feel I have to fill myself with something or I have to get away from something that's full that I don't like.

Every last negative state if you watch,

You will see it is connected to resistance,

To a particular state that you think is forever and if you would watch,

You would see is not forever,

But it's only forever because something in you wants it to stay that way.

It's naturally clearancing itself,

Naturally filling and emptying,

Filling and emptying,

Just like your chest fills with air and empties.

In the East meditation is quite connected to watching one's breathing.

Now I'm explaining to you at least some of the reason why that's part of meditation that way because you're participating in,

You're actually an instrument of a world that is,

Did you know the world breathes?

The world itself breathes.

Do you know that trees breathe?

If trees weren't breathing,

We wouldn't have oxygen.

There's nothing in the ocean breathes.

Everything that moves through the cycle of its currents is refreshing,

Bringing what's up new,

Upwelling,

Bringing food,

Taking the debris down to the bottom for the feeding.

All of this incredible movement and here's us driving here or sitting in our chair.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to say?

What's going to happen?

Open yourself.

Open yourself not to what you want.

Open yourself to what you're being given moment to moment,

Which is an awareness that this fact that I'm telling you that the moment of itself is never full and empty by itself,

But that awareness alone holds these opposites.

And when it lasts as God should have it,

You're tired of being full or empty,

Tired of seeking to be full,

Tired of avoiding what you fear.

Then you'll see that these things have their own natural movement in you and each and every one of them bring with them the appearance in you of a corresponding nature.

And then you start seeing the observer is the observed.

And then you begin to understand that whole cycle is taking place and that what you are is the culmination of the moment on earth as Spirit would have it known.

That's what you and I are.

And Spirit ceaselessly refreshes this world just as surely as the sun ceaselessly gives life and refreshes everything on it.

So do you have a new idea,

Maybe a new feeling about what watchfulness is,

What meditation is?

Stop trying.

Stop trying.

Everything that you want will be given to you,

But it can't be given to you if you're connected to what you're giving yourself.

It's impossible.

The more you see that,

The more you will understand yourself and the world at the same time as a singularity.

And this self in the world as a singularity is itself a singularity relative to the Spirit that gives life to it and that sustains it.

Reviews

Wow. Thank you.

Very powerful. Thank you for this gift.