Realize True Spiritual Safety GF Live 12-13-25

Two Simple Questions:
Is this thought helpful or hurtful?
Is this feeling healing or punishing?

Key Lesson: If we ever hope to know the nature of true spiritual peace, we must do the best we can to meet each moment - as fully as possible - from the whole of ourselves, and then witness the results...in silence. And, whether or not we hit the mark - still strive to be patient and kind to others, as well as with ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less; keep it simple. So that, unlikely as it may seem - in this way we are awakened to a great paradox: in our agreement to work along these lines we realize a new and higher order of self-understanding born of seeing just how painful it is to act unnaturally.

Transcript

The talk title is,

Realize True Spiritual Safety with Two Simple Questions.

Realize true spiritual safety with two simple questions.

Now most of us,

Honestly,

It doesn't occur that there's a big difference between the sense of physical security that we all seek and that we want to a certain extent,

Given our responsibilities if we have family.

But then there's this idea of being spiritually safe.

Physically secure means,

Even if we don't understand it,

That we are incredibly dependent upon the conditions that provide that security.

Financial,

Social,

Political,

Whatever that standing may be,

We are only as secure as human beings as the conditions we've created or entered into allow it.

And the minute something goes south,

We all know what happens,

Boom,

Security out the door.

So much for that security.

And it's very painful.

You know,

You think you have security in a relationship with somebody,

And then that somebody suddenly turns out to be something nothing like what you thought they were,

Boom,

Out the door goes that sense of security that you didn't know you were so dependent on.

But we're not talking about physical security here.

We're talking about spiritual security,

Spiritual safety.

And to be spiritually safe,

As you'll see,

Means that you have an unconditional relationship with the circumstances in your life.

So whether it seems to turn right or left,

Go up or down,

Good or bad,

Your life remains intact.

Your sense of self is not shattered or any way whatsoever diminished by any seemingly dark moment that seems to visit you,

As all moments do,

According to our conditioned idea of what security is.

So with those notes past us,

I wanna get into these two questions and complete explanation for it.

Some of this is gonna be remarkably simple to follow.

Some of it,

You're going to have to use your mind,

And I pray to God that you put down whatever else that you may be distracted with so that you can really listen.

Isn't it curious,

Or at least I think it is,

And you can tell me whether you think it's or not,

That we,

I watch on television,

They've got these commercials now,

You can buy this little heart monitor.

You can buy a ring that tells you whether you're sleeping or not.

And whether you're on the naughty list or the good list,

I don't know.

So we track our calories,

Our heart rate.

We keep count of our steps.

We monitor our sleep.

But nothing that we do on a daily basis is to monitor the mental and emotional system that determines not only what we think and feel moment to moment,

But how those same thoughts and feelings shape the very experience we have of life moment to moment.

So that we're trying to shape and control the physical aspect so that psychologically we have some sense of well-being,

But we know nothing at all about our own psychology,

Let alone the spiritual implications to that psychology and how it impacts our life on a daily basis that we have no idea of.

So let's ask Kate to bring up the first key lesson.

And I would just hasten to add,

While we're waiting for it to appear here,

That I will explain to the best extent I can the meaning of this using as little time as possible.

It will be posted and I would strongly recommend that you print it out when this talk is over.

Here's the key lesson.

If we ever hope to know the nature of true spiritual peace,

We must do the best we can to meet each moment as fully as possible from the whole of ourselves and then witness the results in silence.

And whether or not we hit the mark,

Still strive to be patient and kind to others as well as with ourselves.

Nothing more,

Nothing less.

Keep it simple so that unlikely as it may seem,

In this way,

We are awakened to a great paradox.

In our agreement to work along these lines,

We realize a new and higher order of self-understanding that is born of seeing just how painful it is to act unnaturally.

So we're looking at a kind of contrast here.

A natural man,

A natural woman growing in their spiritual life does not suffer unnatural,

Useless suffering.

A natural man,

A natural woman beginning to understand what is actually natural to this life,

Unlike what our mind tells us that it's actually natural to suffer over the most inane things.

We begin through this work to realize that if I'm really attending to the whole moment,

That there's really nothing else for me to do or be other than to be the witness of what comes out of that moment.

And then instead of willing to be this person or trying to be that person,

Understanding because I can see the content of the whole of that moment,

Who and what it is I can no longer be,

What it is to act unnaturally.

Are we tracking just so I know we're kind of on the same page here?

Are you following some of this idea?

I trust,

I hope.

So let's make a transition.

True or not,

Most of us find ourselves really on a daily basis,

If not hour to hour,

Caught in the grip of some resentful,

Impatient,

Anxious,

Or otherwise negative state so consistently like dark pearls on a string,

One by one,

Like some kind of dark mala that instead of a real prayer,

What you're doing is participating in a punishing nature so that we almost never stop in those moments to realize,

First of all,

I've been having these moments my entire existence.

I may have every rationale in the world why I'm impatient or resentful or angry or anxious.

I'm loaded with them and we'll see why.

So much so that the minute one of these states comes on and the reaction that produces it,

I never ask the most important questions of all.

Instead,

My mind is busy asking questions about what to do with the pain or that person or that problem so that it doesn't dawn on me there are simple questions that if I would ask myself,

Really ask myself in that moment,

It would bring an end to that conditional sense of security and bring about true spiritual safety.

I'm gonna ask Kate to post these two simple questions and then read along with me.

To ask myself,

Is this thought helpful or hurtful?

Is this feeling healing or punishing?

Is this thought helpful or hurtful?

Is this feeling healing or punishing?

Example,

Anxious thought.

Oh God,

What does that mean?

And of course,

The thought brings up the reaction,

The feeling comes along,

And suddenly I'm resentful or angry or worried,

Anxious.

So is that feeling healing me or is it punishing me?

And if I don't know the difference,

Which honestly we don't at this point,

Why in the name of God are we not asking ourselves this question?

Here I am and you've walked into the room and you've asked me to do something.

I get an email or a text or suddenly my boss drops on my desk more work than I think,

Whatever it may be.

In a heartbeat,

I'm involved in a thinking process that I cannot see is not helpful,

But hurtful.

I don't know it's hurting me.

How do I not know a feeling is hurting me?

How do I not know that that thought is denigrating,

Is destructive?

So the question arises,

As I'm pointing it out here,

How can a thought or feeling that wounds us ever seem necessary,

Reasonable,

Or for that matter,

Even protective?

Do you understand the question?

How can a thought that is hurting me,

Not healing me,

That is punishing me,

Not bringing about some kind of healing,

How can I mistake that thought for something that's necessary,

Reasonable,

Or protecting me?

You understand the question now?

Please post,

Let me know.

We're all on the same board because we have a lot of work to do.

We're gonna dig into this deeply.

And I can only hope it's meaningful to you.

Sweet God,

How many times in your life do you find yourself on the whip side end of that thought or feeling,

And you're so stung by whatever the situation is that doesn't line up with how you imagine it should be,

That just like that,

Man,

Just like that,

Thoughts,

Habitual thoughts,

Habitual reactions roll in and roll us away with them,

Promising to bring an end to the condition and blinding us entirely to the fact that the consciousness is responsible for the experience,

Not the conditions that consciousness,

That unconsciousness blames on the moment.

So again,

How can we agree to be the instrument of any thought or feeling that hurts us?

How can it convince us that it's helping us to have an enemy?

If you're interested in this,

We'll go on.

The only way,

The only way a hurtful thought or a punishing feeling can appear helpful is when it arises from an unconscious nature that in the same moment provides a reason for why it is helpful or healing.

Say it again.

The only way a hurtful thought or feeling can appear as helpful or productive or promising,

The only way that dark state is it arises from a nature that first produced it,

And having produced it,

It then provides a reason,

A justification for why that thought is mandatory,

Why it's necessary for you to hold that grudge,

Why it's critical that you punish that cruel person in your life,

Because the minute you have that reaction,

It enrolls an entire story unraveling by a mind that is already unraveled by its own reaction,

And you are then literally the instrument of that thought or that feeling and its choices and actions.

Still following me,

Everybody?

And so if you can see this,

When we're hurting ourselves or another,

The only reason that it goes on is that we feel justified for that negative thought or feeling.

Imagine,

I feel justified hurting myself.

I feel justified punishing you for a feeling that my own consciousness brought up through a negative reaction to something it didn't wanna see or go through,

And then that justification literally becomes the summation of the whole of my experience,

Like that.

Again,

This disturbance creates this initial reaction.

That reaction is followed up with an explanation.

The explanation becomes the summation of the experience,

And it never dawns on me that the whole kit and caboodle belongs to the mind producing it.

And so that disturbance of that initial reaction gets bundled,

Popular word today,

Bundled with our resistance to it.

So I have this reaction.

My mind gives me the meaning of it from its conditioned past,

And all bundled up like that,

It creates this immediate resistance because I don't want the experience of what I believe is the moment when the truth is I can't separate the moment from the consciousness giving it meaning,

And so we have the full explanation for why we feel the way we do.

And once that's decided for us,

The mind,

That same unconscious nature,

Begins considering who or what's to blame and the choices that have to be made in order to quickly resolve it or escape it.

Escape what?

Escape what that nature is telling us is the whole story of that moment.

The whole story of that moment,

Boom.

And once the story is known by the nature going through whatever that iteration of conditioned thoughts and feelings is,

Minute that's done,

Minute knows that,

You're off to the races,

Going absolutely nowhere.

So now,

Major transition.

Trusting you're still getting the drift of this.

We have more to look at,

More deeply still.

Is that the whole story?

Is my intellectual summation of a negative reaction the whole story?

If we take it apart,

Which I'm going to do with you,

We already know,

At least we already know that if we pause and look honestly,

Even for a split second,

No single thought is the whole story.

Can any thought that I have be the whole story?

And the answer is,

Of course not.

A thought isn't even the thing it's considering.

And yet,

Boom,

Thought.

Why,

Where,

When,

What?

But that thought never stands alone,

It can't.

Because without the thinker of that thought,

There's no content to it.

Don't get lost.

Here's this thought,

Filled with some kind of picture,

A meaning.

Now,

Where does that meaning come from?

Is it coming from the thought?

No,

It's coming from the interpreter,

That which gave rise to the thought,

The thinker.

So we know the thought isn't the whole story.

And we know the thinker that doesn't exist without what it's considering,

We know it's not the whole story,

If you're following me.

So neither the thought is the whole story,

Nor is the thinker the whole story,

Because the thinker is inseparable from whatever it is identified with in that moment.

Now,

There's two elements.

Gosh,

My thought,

I seem to know what I'm talking about.

Why do I know the whole story?

Well,

Why do I know the whole story?

Why do I know the whole story in a heartbeat?

Because this marvelous thinker,

What I call me in the moment,

Analyzing the content of that thought,

Has decided what that thought means.

And the thinker cannot know what that thought means in reality,

Because the thinker is providing the meaning of that thought from the content of itself.

God,

I hope this isn't too complex for you.

So here's the thinker and the thought,

Inseparable from this identification,

That can't be the whole story,

And whatever the familiar,

Temporary sense of self that is generated in that moment.

And what is that familiar sense generated in that moment when here's this thought produced by a reaction,

Here's the thinker trying to resolve not just what the thought is worried about,

But the negative reaction it had,

And what is that nature doing in that moment?

It's saying,

You know what?

This is good,

This is bad.

I want this,

I don't want that.

That's the summary of that momentary relationship between thinker and thought that brings up this series of sensations.

This sense of self,

I don't want this.

You think you're saying you don't want the moment,

What's really going on is I don't want this experience,

Or I really want this experience.

Neither side matters.

The point is that whatever we believe is the conclusion of all that consideration cannot be the whole story.

That temporary sense of self produced by this unconscious movement in a sleeping mind cannot be the whole story.

You see it,

It's important.

I know that we're gonna go off this call in a moment,

And you'll get a phone call,

Or somebody will say something to you.

You know how it goes.

And the critical thing is to remember,

What I want to do is I want to be present to another system,

Not this automatic habitual series of reactions and thoughts so filled with suffering that I can't bear the consideration of my own suffering.

My own nature,

So I bail.

I don't want to bail.

I want to understand what it means to break out of that cycle,

As I hope you do too.

So let's keep going.

Now,

Using this same reasoning about the thought and the thinker and the summation of that reaction and all that follows it,

Can we see the same thing has to hold true with our feelings?

No one feeling is the whole story.

You want evidence?

How many times have you felt absolutely anxious and thought the whole story went through,

Oh my God,

What's it gonna cost me?

Where did it go?

What will people think of me?

What's gonna happen?

Can I get?

And then you find your keys or your wallet or whatever it may be.

And then you see,

God,

I was taken over by a feeling.

But wait a minute,

It wasn't just a feeling because I had that sudden surge of fear,

Anxiety,

But then came along this wonderful helpmate called my mind,

This thinker.

And the thinker began to show me all of the things inherent in what may take place.

And as all of these feelings come up that are resistance to my own mind producing these images,

Negative images,

What happens?

Then there's this very strong positive or negative reaction.

And I take that to be the whole story.

So can you see that no feeling in and of itself,

Let alone what it generates through its activity with mind,

That none of that can be the whole story either.

Can you see that with me?

We must pause for a moment.

I want this to sink in more than I have words for,

And not just for you,

For everybody that you know.

So if no one element can be the whole story,

Which I hope that I've shown it cannot be,

Then what is the whole story of any given moment?

I think my reaction is the summation.

And from the summation,

The choices and the actions that do nothing but drive me through a cycle where I never even suspect that the minute I'm handed over to that thought or feeling about a moment without suspecting whether it is indeed healing or helpful,

Hurtful or punishing,

Healing or punishing,

If I don't know it,

What chance do I have?

And the answer is none,

Because I'm literally in a dream,

In the illusion of a life produced by the constant familiar sensation generated by this unconscious nature.

So I wrote a summary key lesson.

I'm gonna ask Kate to post it.

And then we'll get into the next stage.

Read along with me as best you can.

The whole moment is the experience of seeing the thought,

The feelings that attend it,

And the identification with it all at once.

What is holy is realized in being,

Not in wanting or not wanting some temporary manifestation of any conditioned thought about some reaction-borne feeling or the subsequent sense of self formed around it.

The whole moment is the simultaneous appearance,

Impersonal appearance of these movements.

The whole moment is the simultaneous impersonal awareness of all these movements,

Including the appearance of any other psychological states,

Lending support to the sense of self being created in that moment.

Now,

I know that's a mouthful.

But again,

If you'd print it out and go back and look at it in the light of what we're talking about,

You'll see it's true.

I always think what the whole,

I know what the whole moment is.

And somehow or other,

I believe that the whole moment and every moment is God-given.

It is a,

Every moment is a holy moment,

Regardless the way in which this nature perceives it as promising or punishing.

And that this whole moment,

If I'm ever going to actually enter into it,

It's not gonna be entering into it by what I think about the moment.

That's not the whole moment.

It's not gonna be about the reaction I have to my own thoughts.

That's not the whole moment.

And certainly not the summation of that produced by a mind deciding what's happened and what it needs to do to fix itself.

That can't be the whole moment.

These are individual aspects,

Movements of an unconscious nature of whose movements we have literally no awareness because they always unfold so fast,

We never see the way in which they're interconnected.

And that's really what the work is about.

Begins with suspecting,

You know what?

For as long as I've been in this body,

I believe I know the difference between a helpful or a hurtful thought.

Because I can sure determine it with you the minute you say what you do.

I know that's not helpful,

That's hurtful.

I know that about you in a split second,

But I never suspect I may be duped by my own mind.

And it is that being duped by this unconscious nature that is the source of all that is destructive,

Not just interpersonally,

But in the world,

In our planet.

So here's the problem.

Still with me.

The difficulty here,

As I've just outlined,

Is that we don't see the mechanical,

Habitual movement of our own unconscious nature.

We have no awareness of it.

What we are and do experience is the effect of its activity.

We have no awareness of this habitual,

Mechanical movement of this nature.

This reaction that produces this thought,

This thought that decides it's different than the reaction,

It must analyze it,

The analysis of the reaction,

The feelings that come out,

And then the summation of that moment as if somehow I'm there as a genius having figured out what's wrong with my life.

So we only experience the effect of that activity.

And that activity,

This is crucial,

I'll try to go a little slower,

That activity constantly switches back and forth.

Constantly.

For instance,

I have this thought.

It brings up a feeling.

Now I'm not aware of any relationship between the thought and the feeling.

Now I'm identified with the feeling,

And if wanted or not wanted,

It will bring up a reaction.

Then I'm no longer involved in the reaction,

In the feeling,

I'm involved in the way the reaction feels.

So that now I'm measuring the feeling and trying to decide what do I do about this?

And then thought comes back,

The thinker comes back and says,

Well,

Here's what you have to do.

And then we take that conclusion,

That summation as being the truth of the moment.

Can you see what actually is a form of insanity in that?

Because one day you will.

It doesn't mean it'll stop.

I'll go back to that first key lesson in a moment.

So review,

No thought knows the nature of a feeling,

And no feeling knows the nature of a thought.

No thought knows the nature of a feeling.

No feeling knows the nature of a thought.

It seems to us that we do,

And it does because of the way they vacillate.

But unseen in this identification with this constant vacillation is that by being identified with this side of the polar event,

Or polarized in that opposite,

In that constant vacillation,

We become the incarnation of a divided mind.

A divided mind that projects and promises it understands what's causing its pain,

When the pain of that divided mind is that it's never not in conflict because it's always identified with one side or another that ultimately contradicts itself,

If not separates us from real life.

And that conflict is the substance of fear.

Ask yourself,

When am I afraid?

I'm afraid when,

By and large,

Whatever conditions I have imagined are responsible for my security,

Then I suddenly fear,

Not only that the conditions have changed,

But my identity derived from it is gone.

So suddenly I'm in conflict with the moment and I'm afraid of the moment.

As if I know how the moment should be and every one of us thinks we do because we've created the kingdom of heaven in our own image,

God forbid it should be shaken by something that actually happens in the world.

And the outcome of all that consideration is this fear.

And now,

Is not how,

How do I say,

Is not the drama,

Is that not how this fear is created?

The mind measuring a moment from the conditioned content of its own reduction of that moment,

Then to,

Oh,

Look at that reality.

Now I must do something.

Well,

Wait a minute.

What if what I do doesn't fix it?

Or what if what I get in order to fix it doesn't hold?

So I'm in a constant state without knowing it in a drama,

A conditioned,

Oh my God,

Reaction that always precedes the thoughts about it.

And then the thought interprets the reaction.

I get the false meaning and I'm off and running again nowhere.

So the thinker reacts to its own thought as though that thought were the cause of the experience.

Thinker then reacts to its own interpretation,

Chooses and acts accordingly,

Unable to see what we must,

That it is simply reincarnating some painful reality that it first imagines and then resists.

So the question is,

How do we break that cycle?

How do we break this cycle that's unfolding in the darkness of an unconscious nature?

Well,

We should know by now that it's not gonna be by fighting with our own thoughts.

Isn't that what conflict is?

I shouldn't think like that?

It never dawns on us when we think,

Boy,

I shouldn't have that thought,

That the very nature that says I shouldn't have that thought is the nature that gave you that thought and then resist it because it's not part of how it should feel about itself.

And it's certainly not gonna be analyzing our feelings.

Sweet God,

Men and women spend billions of dollars.

Imagine you can,

And I'm not aggrandizing myself,

You can listen to me for free forever.

Or you can go spend like millions of people do,

Billions of dollars,

Having someone else figure out why they're in the pain they're in.

Sheer insanity,

Dependency,

Authority,

And with authority,

Fear.

So not analyzing,

Not fighting thought,

How?

By simply seeing and directly seeing whether we are feeding is helpful or hurtful.

Is what we are feeding ourselves helping us or hurting us?

Now,

A simple example.

This happened to me a couple times,

So I'm trusting it happened to you.

You ever go out to eat someplace or pull something out of your refrigerator and you prepare it and you start eating it and as you're chewing,

You realize,

Oh my God,

This is bad.

This is bad,

It tastes terrible.

It might be spoiled.

It's certainly nothing that I want to put in my body.

Have you ever had that moment?

Please,

It's imperative.

I put something in my mouth,

I start chewing and I realize this is wrong.

Oh God,

Why?

My body's telling me it's wrong.

Now,

When that happens,

Get ready.

Do you keep chewing?

Do you swallow it?

I hope to God not.

Somebody said yes.

I'm with people that I don't want them to think that I'm having a strange reaction.

No,

I don't keep chewing it.

I certainly don't swallow something that I know tastes bad.

Or do you hold it in your mouth and go,

Hmm.

Let me analyze this a little more closely.

There may be an imbalance between the salt and the sugar.

Too much vinegar.

So that then I justify the bad taste.

Do you have to justify something that tastes like it might be poisoning you?

Is there any justification for swallowing that ever?

No,

What do you do?

Christ even intimated this.

You spit it from your mouth.

You spit it from your mouth and you certainly don't go back for seconds.

That's a fact.

Imagine that.

Boy,

That was so bad.

Let me have another course.

I wanna make a reservation so I come back and have this as often as possible.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

But isn't that exactly what we do when we begin thinking and that having those feelings and it tastes terrible?

When a thought is painful,

Agitating,

Wounding,

Punishing,

Why in the name of God would we keep chewing on it,

Let alone swallow it and then come back for another dose?

We're reaching a conclusion here in our time together.

I hope you're still tracking.

I spit from my mouth what I know doesn't taste good,

But I chew and mull over and justify everything that my thoughts or feelings that are actually hurting me,

Not healing me,

Tell me why I need to keep chewing,

Why it's critical that I follow that particular path.

See it?

Why would I keep doing that?

One day you have to see it clearly enough to actually ask yourself,

Why in the name of God would I continue to chew on that hurtful thought about this person who did that,

Keeping accounts?

Why in the name of God would I do that?

And if I see it clearly,

I start to understand,

As I hope I've explained,

That is an I who's doing that.

It belongs to one of the I's that is part of this legion of thoughts and feelings,

Conditioned as they are,

That as they pop up,

As they always do,

They always come up with,

Well,

Look,

This is necessary.

Look at the pain you're feeling.

You thought about that person and what they did.

Look how painful that is.

And where are you getting the pain that you're experiencing from remembering that person other than from a conditioned nature bringing up the content of its own old pain and telling you that's the reason,

That's the story,

And that's why it's necessary for you to have that hurtful thought or punish them.

Because in that moment,

Literally,

I'm being told,

I'm being given the whole backstory.

It's being unrealed,

Unraveled like some dark film in a terrible production,

Justifying how I'm thinking,

Including being identified as we are with whatever the subsequent reaction,

That negative reaction says,

Okay,

Look,

Given this circumstance,

Oh,

You better do this,

You better say that,

You better go there,

You better pout,

You better shout.

And what I've tried to do in this 38 minutes is to at least give you some reason to begin doubting,

Not resisting,

Doubting the characterization the quality of that thought that you have when there's this negative reaction.

You know,

Negative reactions do not appear with thoughts.

But what turns a negative reaction into a painful experience is the thought about that reaction.

And that thought comes from the nature that generated the reaction on one hand and then tries to ensure the continuation of that sense of self that feels threatened by that reaction.

So if you can see this with me,

Can you?

I trust.

It brings us back to the two simple questions that we began this meeting with.

And I'll ask Kate to post them again to refresh your mind.

The two simple questions that bring you total spiritual safety,

And now you can understand it,

I trust,

Why it's total spiritual safety.

When you're ready,

Katie,

Those two simple questions,

Please.

She may have posted them,

I don't see it,

I'll just read them.

The two simple questions are,

Is this thought helpful or hurtful?

Is this feeling healing or punishing?

Those are the two simple questions.

Is that thought helpful or is it hurtful?

Is that feeling,

That negative feeling,

That anxious feeling,

Even that excited feeling,

Is this feeling healing or punishing?

Because it feels like when I'm mad at you,

That feeling that it will be healing if I just get you to toe the line.

And that's why I continue to have these hurtful,

Hurtful,

Painful feelings.

Because they're justified by a nature that produced them to begin with,

And that wants you to believe in them so that that sense of self can be continued.

Now,

Ask these questions sincerely.

When you ask them,

Listen to me,

That does not mean that you judge or condemn yourself for what you see when you ask that question.

Is this thought helpful or hurtful?

Wow,

I'm a little bit present to it now.

I can see that the thought of you that I don't like,

That I don't want,

That I need to fix,

Or that moment that's not right,

There's something hiding.

I can see that thought is not in the smallest way helpful.

Because it's full of fear,

And fear is full of limitation,

And there's no chance of any change in my nature.

But if I see it as a fact and it's hurtful,

Then there will come a reaction.

It's built into it.

It'll say,

Oh,

You should have had that thought.

You should be beyond that.

And in that moment,

What's happened?

The same process.

You see a thought that you know is unnatural,

Spiritually unnatural,

Meaning it cannot lead to anything healing or helpful.

And you see the fact of it,

And the next thing you know,

I'm a heel.

I'm a terrible person for having that thought.

No,

That is the mind that generated that reaction,

Then protecting itself by just simply saying,

You're right,

You belong to a better reality.

You shouldn't be like that.

Anytime you have a feeling,

You shouldn't be like that.

You shouldn't think like that.

Following a thought or a feeling,

You can be sure you've been remanded back to that unconscious nature.

So these questions have no judgment and no condemnation in them.

What are these questions intended to do?

Intended to help you reveal and become aware of the consciousness that is creating those thoughts and those feelings for the continuation of itself.

And in that revelation,

In being able to see,

You know what,

This thought,

It's telling me I gotta hurry up.

Now,

When I have a thought,

I gotta rush.

I've got a reason to be anxious.

What can happen?

I'm dead in the water.

But now I see that thought is there being bolstered by this feeling of I'm gonna miss out on something.

I've gotta do this,

Get this.

Now I start,

Wait a minute.

That thought is not just a thought of I gotta go.

It's connected to a disassociated nature promising me that if I answer the fear of that thought,

I'll be free of the condition I fear.

So these questions are intended to bring about the revelation of another kind of safety that doesn't depend on circumstances,

Outcome,

Or control,

But on awareness itself.

Is this thought helpful or hurtful?

Please,

Let me be interested enough in my own life as it is being unfolded than I am in trying to free myself from what my mind is telling me is taking place.

Because if I'm attentive to it,

I don't have to go through any of those absolute inane interactions with life,

Let alone hurting other people.

Is this thought helpful or is it hurtful?

And leave it there.

Is it healing or is it healing?

Is it hurting or is it punishing?

Nothing more.

Nothing more.

You could if you want,

When you catch that thought,

You catch that feeling,

And you know that it is hurtful,

You know that it's punishing,

And you can feel all of this movement as that mind starts to gear up and try to push you through what it believes is responsible for the pain.

You must inwardly say,

End of story.

End of story.

Why?

Because that story is the source of suffering,

Not the solution to it.

And I see it.

It isn't intellectual,

It's not emotional,

It's not physical,

It's all three revealing the content of the whole of the moment.

And when you are in the whole of the moment,

Then you no longer have to think about what do I do,

Where do I go,

What are my choices?

Everything is built right into the revelation of the reality of that nature.

And we'll finish with this.

Katie,

Let's bring up that first key lesson,

Please.

The summary.

Just to read one more time so you'll understand it better.

Yes.

It's just,

If we ever hope to know the nature of true spiritual peace,

We must do the best we can to meet each moment as fully as possible from the whole of ourselves and then witness the results in silence.

And whether or not we hit the mark,

Still strive to be patient and kind to others as well as with ourselves.

Nothing more,

Nothing less.

Keep it simple.

So that unlikely as it may seem,

In this way as we are awakened to a great paradox,

In this way we are awakened to a great paradox,

In our agreement to work along these lines,

We realize a new and higher order of self-understanding that we don't have to go looking for,

But rather it is born of seeing just how painful it is to act unnaturally.

When we see what is unnatural,

We will no longer continue it and the discontinuation of that unnatural nature pursuing its own so-called necessary outcome,

We are liberated.

And then we know total spiritual safety because we're living from a consciousness that is safety itself.

I trust you'll come back and review these notes,

Work at it,

Work at it,

Work at it,

Work at it,

Work at it.

Don't be lazy.

Laziness is death when it comes to spirituality.

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