Solutions To Dissolve Any Negative Reaction GF Live 11-25-23

Most of us fear (our own) painful, negative reactions, when the right relationship we’re created to have with them is to see their appearance as both a revelation and invitation...to help us awaken, and remember a Divine spiritual strength yet realized.

Transcript

I think I want to start, As I often do, With the key lesson that I wrote to set the tone for the material we're going to cover today. And so if you would, While Kate posts this down in the comment area, Desist from posting for just a moment until it gets there and then we can we can start looking into it as deeply as we can. Ready when you are, Kate. There it is. Most of us fear our own painful negative reactions when the right relationship we are created to have with them is to see their appearance as both a revelation and an invitation to help us awaken and remember a divine spiritual stress yet realized. I called this talk, I don't know how important the titles are, That I craft each week prior to the actual talk. It was something along the lines of this idea that there was a two-step solution to bringing an end to this relationship we have with negative reactions and that's what we're going to look at. And just to start at the beginning, We begin the end. And that two-step, And then we'll explain it, Is to awaken and remember ourselves. Awaken and remember ourselves. Now there's a lot more to it than those words, As we'll see, Because if we examine the idea, And we ought to, There isn't any spiritual, True spiritual teaching, Or for that matter, At its root some true religious idea that isn't connected to the idea that before we can begin to have a relationship with what is true and good, What is divine, If you will, We have to wake up. Now unfortunately, Most of us think we've achieved awakening. But I can assure you that if you think that you haven't, Awakening isn't an achievement, Not by the furthest stretch of an imagination. Awakening is what happens, A kind of mandatory experience. A person starts to realize how much time they spend in dreams. Quite a few of the notes I want to cover with you today, I dictated actually in my car as I was going someplace just yesterday, And I don't know how astute you are when you pull up in traffic and there's cars on both sides of you. I could look over every time I came to a stoplight, And I could see the person, The man or the woman, In the truck or the car, And it was evident that that man or woman was in a dream. Now it isn't an assumption on my part, It is the understanding that this is what we do with most of our time, Is that we spend most of our time trying to sort out in thought whatever it is that is stirred in us in any given moment, And that's the opportune word, Any given moment, Because you drive down the street and you see somebody in a nice car, You have a reaction, I wish I had a car like that. You see somebody cut another person off, You're filled with a reaction about that person. The traffic is outrageous, And it's not the traffic hour. Any one of a thousand things, You see a store that you didn't know was there, Or a restaurant, Any one of these things, And if we're honest, In that moment we have a kind of reaction to what we see. We're not aware of the reaction. The truth is, We're not aware of what the reaction delivers us into, And what the reaction delivers us into is something wants to settle, Something is seeking to figure out a way to put whatever was disturbed in us the moment before, Or ten moments before, Or twenty years ago, If you're driving down the street and suddenly you hear a song and it reminds you of somebody, Or a thought comes to you about your mother or father, What they did or didn't do to you. But the point is, At the outset of this talk, Every one of these dreams, These scenarios, Begin with a reaction of some kind, Whether it's a want or not want, And then what we don't get yet, And I'm asking you to see it with me, Is that that scene then just kind of runs by itself. One has to be awake enough to see they're sitting in their car. It's a miracle that their car is being driven, Because we're everywhere except in the car. Our mind is on every consideration that is keyed in that unconscious nature by some stimulus or influence that brings up, Out of the content of that mind, Something that as it comes up, Now that mind wants to figure out what to do. How do I deal with this person who cut me off, Or this job that I've got to go get an interview for, Whatever it might be? And the thing here that's important to point out here is that these dreams, These daydreams, These scenes that run through our mind when we're sitting at our breakfast table or wherever we may be, If you ever wondered why do they just keep going on? The answer is they keep going on because they keep re-stimulating a sense of ourselves as someone who needs to do or understand something about that dream. There is an event, There is a reaction, And that reaction is a disturbance in consciousness, And then that disturbed mind wants to know, What do I do? How do I handle this situation? And this can be something from 25 years ago or 25 seconds ago. The key though is that the attraction of those daydreams, What makes them so compelling, Is that every last one of them is accompanied by a very familiar sense of self. It sits in the background, And that identity, That sense of myself, This is pivotal, Believes that it is other than the dream it is in. In other words, That event took place, This condition, It saw something, And the mind is in it running a movie, A scene, And that dream that the mind is running continues to move along because there is a sense of ourself that feels as if it needs to know what to do with what happened or what might take place. That identity, That sense of self, The reason it's caught up trying to figure out what to do with these reactions is because it believes that it is separate from the dream it's in, And it is not. I'm going to show this to you. Please, If you can just pay attention as best you can. All of us know what it's like, I trust, To have a nightmare, A bad dream. Now, For one thing, When we have a nightmare, This is not a daydream, Not a waking dream. When we have a nightmare, Whoever it is in that nightmare, Am I in charge of that dream? Or is that dream, As it is being driven forward, Does not have I as a character in it who is struggling, Fighting, Running, Whatever it is? And the sense of myself in that dream is that that dream is happening to me. But I want you to see that there is no me that anything has happened to apart from the dream that it's in. So the dream and the sense of I that appear to be different because the sense of I is always trying to figure out what to do to change, Control, Or escape the dream, That sense of I is intrinsic. It is not separate from what it is trying to solve. Now, Just look at this with me. What would you think if, For instance, How would you look at somebody who you're asking them, Well, You look kind of caught up and concerned. What are you trying to do? And the person says, Well, I'm trying to figure out what to do with that bad dream that I have because I have it repeatedly. And every time I have that dream, I believe that it is up to me to sort it out so that I can get past the dream. But that sense of I that is trying to get past the dream is actually part of its continuity. That consciousness divides itself up into this dream that I don't want. I don't want to be in my car worrying about something. I don't want to be negative. Now, I know this is somewhat difficult to see, But these reactions that we have, These negative reactions, Are actually a kind of nightmare. They're actually kind of a dream. Because what is it when I am in a bad dream? Let's say I'm awake and I'm at the office and somebody's being rude or crude, Or I look at them, We'll talk about a bad dream. There can't be a negative reaction towards anything that we see that isn't preceded by something that appears in us and goes, No, It resists whatever it is that appears. Surely we can see that. Now, That resistance to the moment, The dream, That resistance comes out of not the sense of myself that seems to be in the present moment who's going to figure out, Get some power to deal with it. But there is no negative daydream. There is no negative reaction that doesn't exist on one hand without some familiar old sense of ourself that is in conflict with whatever the moment has brought. So the reaction cannot be separated from, Listen, My own past. You cannot have a negative reaction that isn't some form of resistance to something that you have dreamed up, That you are identified with, That you believe in, A dream of some kind. And these dreams, They're just incessant. And they're incessant because there is forever a part of us that keeps trying to figure out what to do with the dream. How do I stop having this unwanted experience? And the I, The part of self that doesn't want the experience, Can you see it doesn't exist without the experience it doesn't want? The I, Me, What I call me, I'm in my car, I look over and I see something. I have, We'll be polite, An immediate judgment. Why are they like that? That judgment is born out of an unseen form of resistance to what is that I have looked at. All judgment is born out of resistance. The moment in which I have this judgment and resistance towards what I'm looking at, Can you see that what's really taking place is that somehow other? That moment has brought up in this unconscious nature something that compares what it sees to what it doesn't want to see or hoped it would see. So that there's no resistance, No negative reaction without some form of unconscious comparison in the moment. This is such an important idea. Why would I judge anybody unless they didn't match up with what I have assumed they should be or what they should do? And I can't come to that conclusion, The conflict in it, Without something in this consciousness looking out and comparing, Comparing that person to the image or idea I have about them. Comparison. Now please see this. Can there be this kind of comparison without the past? Without something in me that came into that moment from what was two days ago or 25 years ago? Can there be any form of comparison that produces this resistance and this negative reaction? Can there be any form of that comparison that isn't rooted in some form of an unconscious dream? Something that I'm identified with, Believed to be. And the key here is to start understanding, Well when I have a negative reaction, How about you? When I have a negative reaction, It feels like not only is this new, I've got to do something about this negative reaction. I've got to straighten you out. I've got to fix the world. I've got to fix myself. Fill a blank. And so I set out, To use the word I, To bring about the correction in this condition that I'm sitting here wishing I wasn't a part of. And the actual condition that I'm a part of that I wish I wasn't is a dream. It doesn't exist without past. And a past doesn't exist without an I, A certain part of myself connected to that particular act of comparison. One of a billion different ways in which we've been conditioned over time. Look out at these moments and try to figure out what are you? Here's what I'm trying to say. You can't revisit past and be present. And if you're not present, You can't see. And if you can't see, There will never be any true solution to the suffering born out of what? Out of the sense of oneself, This powerful sense of self in these reactions. And that powerful sense of self, That reaction, It points right out. It points right to what the problem is, Doesn't it? And it never dawns us to even consider, How is it that that reaction that I'm having knows before I do what the problem is? Because isn't that true? That there's resistance, There's this reaction, And then comes an I, Then comes the me. So I'm an afterthought. This I, This level of consciousness produces this sense of self. It's literally an afterthought. But it feels like it's present and real because it's connected to the sensation of the reaction. And it moves. And the reaction hands us off. I shouldn't say hands us off. The reaction, It then finds a body of associated thoughts and feelings to support the conclusion that the reason that I'm having this negative reaction is not just because of what you, They, Them, Or this did, But because it's critical to have this reaction so I know how to release myself from it. That's what I want to say. We believe that when we identify with negative reaction, That sense of I is actually trying to release us from the reaction. It isn't trying to release you from the reaction. It's trying to bring you back into that world where that resistance, That past, That dream sits. And that's what happens. We're shuttled off. It's an immensely strong sense of self. And it's a dream. It would seem, Aaron, That our past is overpowering. But it isn't the past that is overpowering. A man or a woman begins to see some of what I'm describing to you. The task is no longer to seek power. That's what this world tells you to do. Why does the world tell you that you need power? Because everything is overpowering you. Nothing is overpowering you. We have fallen into a place where we agree to be powerless, Aaron. Every time a negative reaction comes up and starts directing us, Telling us what's real, What we have to do, Where we've got to go. Every one of those negative reactions that we identify with, That we identify with, Listen to this, Because it gives us a certain strong sense of self. Our identification with these negative reactions is the very, Is weakness itself. It hides itself in the dream. The dream that I'm different than this moment. This moment needs me to get in there and change and control everything. And when I get in there and do that, Then I'm going to finally be free. And I don't know if I've made this connection for you yet. What would you think of somebody who wakes from a bad dream and you're sitting there and you can see you're occupied with something. You say, What are you doing? I want to go back into that dream. I want to go back into that dream so I can fix it. So I don't have to experience that anymore. I want to go back into that dream. I can't go back into that dream. For one thing, The I that says it wants to go back into the dream is part of the dream and the idea that I can escape that consciousness by this illusion of myself as someone separate than the suffering the dream has produced. But it's not. When we have negative reactions, We go back into them. Surely you've had those moments. Who hasn't? You've had a terrible nightmare, A terrible dream. And it just calls to you. It's so fascinating that my attention wants to go and revisit, Relive the very thing that it wishes hadn't happened to it. And the thought in that unconscious nature is that if I, Meaning me, Who's different than the dream I had, That if I can just go back in there, I'll sort it out. But the very effort to go back into the dream, The nightmare, Means that I am reliving and revisiting the thing that I say I'm trying to sort out. And the I that is the product of the dream cannot bring the dream to an end. It's impossible. Can you see this at all? Can you make a nightmare go away? By reliving it. Or the more I relive the nightmare, Am I not a captive of those sensations and reactions, More resistance to the experience that I'm actually giving myself? And if that's true, I'm saying, Can we make a parallel here? Can we see that when we have a negative reaction, It's because we are in a dream. And when we are in the dream that that negative reaction is part of, Then that negative reaction tells us here's how to release yourself from this negative scene. Here's how. Just relive it. Just think about it. Go back into it. Revisit it. Work it out. As if that I that's going to go in there and straighten out whatever this negative reaction is, As if it's different than the reaction. It is not. To us, It seems as if when we're having a negative reaction, That it is paramount in that moment that we take the action that that negative reaction is telling us to take. And to begin to see, Why would I go back and relive this dream? Can you see, I'm asking you, How many moments in your life, Negative reactions, Problems with people, Is it extraordinary that these negative reactions that sort of just pop up, They know the reason for their appearance before we do. The sense of self follows the reaction. It is inseparable from it. I analyzes the reaction that I is having. So in its analysis of the negative reaction, It believes that it is separate from the reaction it's analyzing. And understood properly, You don't analyze a bad dream. Understood properly, You understand that you can't have this sudden resistance and the negative reaction without something that was triggered in moment by whatever the influence is. And that our attempt to change the influence in order to get rid of the triggered mechanism in us is ludicrous. We have to enter into the condition that is responsible for creating dream after dream after dream. Okay, So we re-experience the dream and then, No, Tony, Everybody, If you see you're in a dream, You're no longer in the dream. When I'm in a dream, I don't know I'm in a dream. I'm worried about tomorrow. I'm anxious about what they did. When I'm caught up in some kind of negative reaction, There's no me that knows it's in a dream. There's just the dream. No, We don't smile at it, Tony. I didn't have time to write it out, But I'll touch on it quickly. Imagine a Ponzi scheme. For instance, You go to a doctor, A specialist, Because you've had a problem and he gives you a terrible diagnosis. And you need incredibly expensive medicine. And he can see your reaction, And it's all part of the game. He says, Well, Look, There's other experts, Get a second opinion. And he gives you a list of two other experts. You go see the other experts, And both of them confirm the opinion of the first doctor. And both confirm that you need to buy that medicine. And then they tell you where you can get the best bed and that medicine. And then you go to that website, That place, And what you are is you're participating in a loop that you can't see. But if you actually became aware of the fact that you are being handed off, Then in the moment you were aware of being handed off, Tony, You wouldn't think to yourself, Smile. You wouldn't think to yourself, What I do. It's done. It's run its gamut. It's clear. It's done. That's what has to happen when a person has this negative reaction. We have to use the negative reaction to wake up and realize the only reason we're having this negative reaction is because some part of the past, Something in a dream nature, Has been brought up. And now it's trying to figure out what to do to get rid of the condition, Tony, That it blames. And in that moment, You're handed off that reaction to go run around and try to sort stuff out when the actual answer is to awaken the fact that it's the consciousness itself that is in the dream, Creating more of the dream and the sense of self running through it. And in that moment, It stops. Because we won't compromise ourselves unconsciously. The identification comes to an end. See that it's I know it's difficult. I've had bad dream. Maybe I was in my bed. Maybe I went to a party. Something happened. My mind wants to relive it. My mind wants to relive the bad dream. My mind wants to relive the negative reaction. Why? Because that sense of myself that I in there, It believes that it is innocent in this situation and has nothing whatsoever to do with why that dream was the way it was, Or why that negative reaction took place. And what I'm trying to get you to see is that whatever the I is, Whatever that sense of self and it's dominant in each and every one of these reactions, It isn't trying to bring an end to that beam. It is ensuring its perpetuation. Because the more that I resist the content of my own experience, Which is what, In this instance, I said that something in me is comparing the moment to what it should be, How you should be. In the comparison, I can't see there is the past. So the reaction is the past resurrected. The negative reaction is the past resurrected. But when the past is resurrected, It doesn't say, Look, I'm resurrected. It says you need to do something about me. And that's where we need to start realizing that this constant state where we are ever listening to running, You just have to see it. That's all I can tell you. You have to see your mind never stops running scenarios. The reason most people don't like meditation is because when we try to quiet this mind, We're suddenly aware of running scenarios, Judging ourselves, Talking to ourselves, Trying to figure out how to have a better meditation. What do I need to do? Where do I need to go? What do I need to eat? Endless scenarios. And the illusion in the endless running of these psychological scenarios is that the I that's sitting there and wishes that they weren't running these scenarios, The I is not separate from the scenario. It is part of the process of its appearance. And it's seeing that, That begins to bring an end to this unconscious identification, And the participation in it. Awaken and remember those are the two steps. Here's the shock. Here's the reaction. I know if I don't come back to myself and become as present as I can, That I am going to be caught up inside of this dream of resistance. The dream that resistance can somehow release me from what I don't want. Talk about a dream. Resistance doesn't release us from what we don't want. Resistance cements us to the condition that we don't want. Awaken, Come back, Watch, Don't try to power through, Figure stuff out. Just, You know, My mind just wants to be in a dream. And it has so much material. But I understand now that pain in this life is because I am without knowing it participating in a world where dreams and the self that has them seems real, Until of course, Something challenges it, Then we're right back to resistance and reaction again. Awaken and remember, Use the shock as it meant to be used. Come back present to yourself. And then as best you're able, Remember yourself, Which means what? Well, It begins with realizing in those moments where I have a reaction, What do I know to do other than what I'm given to remember? See it with me. I had a negative reaction. What do I know to do other than what that negative reaction gives me to remember about why it is the way it is and what I need to do about it. So in that moment, I'm actually looking to a memory to save me from a memory. If I can see that much that in the moment where suddenly something something here, Here do this, What is it telling me to do? It's telling me to do what it remembers to do. That's all it can to me. It can only speak to me from the content of this conscious that is responsible for the resistance of the moment. That's all it can do. It's like, I remember years ago, It's like, Did you know that every word in every book that was ever written is in a dictionary, It's just the order of the words that determine the story. And if that's true, Which it is, All this mind does is keeps reordering the content of memory. It keeps reordering the content of the past. And it calls the activity of reordering trying to figure out what do I do with this onus situation. It calls that being active. There is no active I in a reaction. There is no active I in any reaction. Because the reaction by its nature is the passive response to some influence or condition acted on the content of this conscious. And by the way, For the purpose of bringing it into the light of awareness, Not so that we hand ourselves back over to it, And then read of another memory telling us what to do in order to be free. It doesn't know. The more you see that, The more his mind becomes quiet. And the quieter it becomes, The more you can see. We have five minutes or so we can have a little chat if you like anybody, You're welcome to post or ask. Becca says reordering is bondage that keeps us from moving forward. Yeah. But but again, We mustn't look at ourselves and say to ourselves, Well, I'm I'm reordering. It is the way this mind works. This consciousness only knows to call upon the content of itself to escape the conflict inherent in itself when it meets unwanted moments. That's all it has. So the process of negation is the recognition that I can't go back into this dream and escape the experience of it. Because the more I relive the dream, The more I have the experience I don't want. The more I relive this reaction, The more I am mandatorily serving that consciousness. That's the key. And it's not it's not overnight. You just you learn to see. And why do I learn to see? Because I'm sitting in my car and instead of being in one of these scenarios, I'm aware of the scenario that's being run. The mind never stops talking about what stimulates it. And each stimulation has a specific eye for the past connected to the stimulation. So the ceaseless sensation of I is inherent in the constant reactions this mind has to environment. But none of the eyes that are brought up from the stimulation from the sensation of the environment acting on this conscious, Not one of them is real. It's absolutely powerless. It's just a kind of constant sense of self like drip, Only not a pleasant one. How do we stop the recurring dream, Please? How do I solve the problem that is bothering me? How many times have you been bothered? Can you even count them? He bothers me, They bother me. I woke up bothered. I went to bed bothered. I had a bothering dream. You can't count the number of times that you're bothered. Now, Every time I'm bothered, I have a reaction. Every time I have a reaction, It is telling me not only what has happened, But who and what I have to be and do in order to get rid of what's bothering me. And yet miracle of miracles. I'm bothered all the time. Why? Because it's a game. It's a trap. The fox blames the trap, Blake said. One day I have to realize I'm bothered again. But instead of letting my reaction tell me why I'm bothered, What I have to do, And how am I going to get in here and straighten all this out? Instead of all that, I simply come to a stop. That's called I wake up and become aware of the movement of the mind instead of caught up in its currents as it's trying to figure out how to escape the conflict that it is in complicit in creating. This is this is a real work. Rebecca says life feels like a near infinitely nested set of dolls. May I have the patience of Joe to watch all of these dolls take its turn. Let truth be revealed. Given this deeply embedded programming, What hope do we have to awaken when each day we create more and more karma? Raju, Only a fool hopes in himself. Isn't that what every reaction brings up is a new hope? Because I figured it out. Now I have a new hope. I'm going to get past this. We profess in one way or another to be children of God, That we love the divine, That Christ is important. That's how the Buddha nature, The Dharma, We talk all the time about this, How critical this is to us. And yet every single time that we have, We find ourselves in one of these dreams. Instead of realizing that dreams do not belong to the world, An awakened human being, Awakened human beings don't need to dream. They are forever and constantly being made whole through the process of being present to the moment itself. So we have to see there's something in us. It says it doesn't want it. I just I just I just hand myself over. Nikki says if I understand what you are sharing, Where where I'm driving all the reactions and judging do the other drivers is aspects of my consciousness to be clear. If I understand what you are sharing, Wherein I am driving all the reactions and judging I do of the other drivers is an aspect of my consciousness to clear. It's all about me. In one respect, Nikki, It's all about discovering. And again, I have to say this. There's no you that drives you through this. There is a consciousness that divided up into a dream and the one who believes he is dreamer. That's an illusion. There is no dream without a dreamer. There is no negative action without something that is identified with the past. They are a singularity. It is the recognition of the singularity that begins to bring an end to this divided action of trying to save ourselves from the condition this nightmare or this reaction is telling us is responsible for our pain. Currently, My mother's surgeons are communicating conflicting information to the family. All we can do is accept in this moment what we can't control. Yeah, This world is a mess, Becca. It is a mess. We're not trying to bring an end to the dream. We're not trying to bring an end to the negative reaction. That's a fool's game. What we want to struggle with is working to realize and see the whole nature of this dreamer, The whole nature of this reaction. And we are given the capacity to do so. And it will become increasingly effortless. The more we stop wasting our effort trying to bring an end to our negative reactions by letting those reactions tell us how to free ourselves from them. Got to go. 45 minutes. Hope I see you tomorrow. I talk three times a week. You're always welcome to join me. Be safe. Awaken. Remember, Here's the shock. Here's the reaction. Wake up, Bring myself back into my body. Let me be aware completely of myself. All of the the watch how the mind wants to race and start analyzing and just quietly watch. Remember the truth. That you know, Is fact, Instead of letting a false nature tell you, Here's the facts. Here's what to do.