The One True Answer To Any Painful Question GF Live 5-31-25

The possibility of realizing our highest Good is hidden in every unwanted moment of life where -- if we wish to realize the grace that awaits us there -- we are asked for what amounts to an act of Divine obedience: and that is to yield ourselves to whatever we’re given to see as true (about us)…without resisting the nature of what we’re being shown, let alone to ask the question “why?”

Transcript

We have a fascinating subject to look at today.

And before I ask Kate to bring up the title of the material and the key lesson,

I would ask you to do one thing,

And that is to turn off your cell phone.

Or whatever it is that you might do to distract yourself and interfere with what I hope will be a turning point in your spiritual development,

Because we're going to learn where it is that we keep making the wrong turns in the throes of our negative reactions or other problems that we have with life.

So,

Kate,

Let's bring up the title of the talk,

If we can,

Please.

I trust that you will all see it with me.

There it is.

The One True Answer to Any Painful Question You Have About Life.

What if there was one true answer to any painful question that you have about life?

What if that was true?

If we were to write down all of the painful questions that we've had about life,

It would be quite the long list,

And yet they would all have one thing in common,

And that is that every painful question that we ask about life appears on the heels,

Virtually simultaneously,

With the negative reaction we have to life in that moment.

The reaction that's telling us something is threatening us,

There's a problem,

And now we must do something,

But ah,

What to do?

And then,

As we'll see,

Like a miracle,

A question appears that gives us direction.

We're going to look at this so deeply as to find a new direction in these moments.

So let's bring up the key lesson,

Key lesson number one.

Please don't post while I'm going over it with you.

Wait until I'm done,

And then we can have our dialogue.

It reads,

The possibility of realizing our highest good is hidden in every unwanted moment of life,

Where if we wish to realize the grace that awaits us there,

We are asked for what amounts to an act of divine obedience,

And that is to yield ourselves to whatever we are given to see is true about us,

Without resisting the nature of what we're being shown,

Let alone to ask the question,

Why?

If we wish to realize the grace that awaits us in these unwanted moments,

Would that we have the capacity,

And God willing,

One day we will,

To remember a simple truth that is so evasive in the time it's needed to be remembered,

And that is that the most important moments of our life,

The truly life-changing moments have come in those instances when,

If we had a magic wand,

We would have waved it,

And we would have waved off what that person was doing,

What they said.

We would have waved off whatever seemed to be landing in that moment in the path of our direction and interfering with it.

And then,

By some miracle,

To find out that if that hadn't happened,

If we hadn't been subjected to something that we would have never agreed to subject ourselves to,

We never would have seen the things that we needed to see that led to an understanding that eventually took the shape of a truth that helped to set us free.

And if we want those moments,

Then we are asked for a moment of divine obedience,

And that is to yield ourselves to whatever we're given to see is true about us without resisting the nature of what we're being shown,

Let alone,

As we always do,

To ask the question,

Why?

Are we pretty much all on the same page?

Can we understand the tone that we're setting here?

Good.

So let's get going.

Here's very close friends for years,

20,

30 years.

They're sharing a glass of wine,

And one of them has that long look on their face.

The person says,

What's going on?

I've got trouble.

I've got trouble.

I can't begin to tell you,

And I can't find the answer no matter what I do.

I'm confused.

One friend says,

You can't find the answer to what?

Well,

You know.

We've been talking about it,

And then you fill in the blanks.

I can't find the answer about what to do with this heartache.

I can't find the answer how to get over this grief,

What to do with this regret about the way I treated someone or this anger about the way I was treated by someone.

I don't know how to deal with this,

That,

Or the other.

And the friend says,

You know,

Excuse me,

But I thought,

What was it,

Just last week?

You were sitting here.

You were all pumped up.

You'd resolved it.

You'd laid plans,

And you were setting out that very next day to what you were sure would be a successful resolution of whatever it was that had ruined your life.

Is that not true?

Yes,

It's true.

Well,

I don't understand.

What happened?

Oh,

Well,

Sure,

It's all well and good.

And things were great for like four days.

And then out of the clear blue sky,

Something shifted.

And when it shifted,

This huge negative reaction came up in me.

And the next thing I knew,

Things were worse than they were before because I had set in motion things that now I didn't want to be in motion.

And it just gets worse from there.

And the friend says,

Oh,

Stop,

Please,

Stop.

You don't get it,

Do you?

And the person in misery said,

Don't get what?

Well,

Let me ask you,

How many times have you decided that you knew exactly what to do in the moment when life seemed to run counter to your wishes?

How many times?

Well,

Stupid question.

Of course,

All the time.

The person says,

You know what?

The real trouble is that you,

It isn't that you can't find the answer.

That's not the problem.

You think that's the problem.

It's not the problem.

What do you mean it's not the problem?

If I can't find the answer,

What am I supposed to do?

And the person says,

The problem is you don't suspect the questions that you ask yourself about how to free yourself from these moments.

You don't suspect that the very questions you ask are given to you by the parts of you that create the problem and that the questions are part of the continuation of whatever it is that seems to be ruining your life in these moments that come around again,

Again,

And again.

And of course,

The person says,

That's not true.

That's just not true.

Incomplete denial.

And the friend,

A good one,

Says,

Don't you always return to the same place?

Maybe not physically,

But don't you always return to a time when another negative reaction brings up another kind of pain that is inseparable from the reaction?

And then as you have the reaction,

Don't you look for answers to the thing that you blame?

And then you set out to solve it again,

Following the answers you've given to yourself.

And have these answers ever saved you?

Or are they temporary solutions that lead you back to the same consciousness and its suffering again and again and again?

Now I leave it to you,

Everyone joining me.

If that's not true,

Sign off.

Because there's nothing here for you.

But if it's true,

And if you can suspect that it's true,

Then we can do some very valuable work here together.

Because is it not true that on the heel of every negative reaction,

Something in us,

We may even say it out loud,

Why?

How come?

Why me?

Is there not always a question?

And does not the question itself point to something that the mind has blamed for the reaction?

So that the question seems to produce the confidence that the source of the conflict we're in in these moments is because of someone and something outside of us that happened 10 seconds ago or 100 years ago.

And the answer is yes,

Absolutely.

So we're given these questions.

We follow the answers that come from them.

And again and again and again,

We find ourselves to use a word from English history,

Like York was sacked.

We find ourselves sacked again.

So I'm going to explain to you,

Or at least I'm going to help you see,

If you're willing to see how it is that we're in this circular kind of psychological prison where events bring up these reactions.

Reactions produce the why and when and how come.

And then the questions suggest answers because the questions point to the source of the pain.

And then we set out to save ourselves because we have the answers only to find out that the answers turn out to be the next prison,

The next captivity that we find ourselves in,

And it goes on and on.

So let's take a quick break,

Meaning nice deep breath,

And let me start to show you something about this.

Are there not always questions,

Why,

When,

How come,

That appear on the heel of any negative reaction?

And we know the answer.

Yes.

The questions that appear on the heel of a negative reaction are questions that we believe we are formulating in order to be able to deal with what it is that our mind is looking at as being the source of our problem.

But I want you to understand something that you presently don't,

But that you can begin to see the truth of it,

And if you're willing to investigate this truth,

You will find this truth will free you,

Not only from these negative reactions,

The continuation of them,

But everything that we're involved in wasting our lives trying to get them settled,

Where life goes aha to oh no,

Aha to oh no.

Questions that are born of a negative reaction,

Any question born out of some summary resistance to a moment,

These questions are a kind of a Trojan horse.

Now,

I realize that many of us,

God help this world,

May not even know what the Trojan horse was,

But in Greek mythology,

The story goes that the Greeks wanted to take over all of the territory and fought the Trojans,

And on that great battlefield,

When it seemed like they had lost,

They built this Trojan horse,

This massive horse,

And left it at the gates as what seemed to be,

In the eyes of the Trojans,

A gift from the gods for having won the war that they thought they'd won,

Because the Greeks seemed to be retreating.

And they bring this great Trojan horse into their city,

And all too late find out that hidden in this huge Trojan horse were Greek soldiers that when night came out,

They descended from this Greek,

From this horse,

And opened the gates,

And the city of Troy was sacked.

Questions born out of resistance are a Trojan horse,

In that hidden in all such questions,

Hidden in the questions themselves,

Is the nature that on one hand asks these questions,

As if somehow it's innocent and separate from the circumstance it's putting into question,

And then,

Having asked the question and being given a solution,

Seeks the solution to the conflict,

When the consciousness that's asking the question is the same as the cause of the reaction itself.

So that the Trojan horse means that when we ask these questions,

We never see that the questions asked are always the same questions.

They're just pointed at different places,

Problems,

And people.

Why?

How come?

When will?

What does that mean?

And it doesn't matter that the question points to different times in our life,

Different situations.

The questions are all derived from the same order of self,

That when something challenges it,

In that moment,

It meets the challenge,

And our experience of that challenge is this negative reaction,

Because somehow life is threatening us.

Something has come up,

And our identification with whatever it is that we expected,

Hoped for,

Wanted to happen,

Believed needed to take place,

In that moment,

Whatever we were identified with and came into that moment,

Identified with it,

Meaning that our sense of self,

Our security,

Relied upon that image,

That life challenges that image,

And the reaction we have is this instantaneous sense of,

Oh my God!

Why did that happen?

What does it mean?

And we never suspect that what happens in that moment is that,

This is the Trojan horse part,

Our immediate identification with the negative reaction from out of which comes the question,

Does it not?

Why?

Why?

Why?

So here's this painful reaction,

And our attention is taken off of the reaction,

Which is inseparable from the level of consciousness giving rise to it.

Let me say it again.

The painful reaction is inseparable from the unconscious nature that it comes out of,

And our attention goes from,

Oh my God!

What will I do?

To the pleasure of being identified with a solution suggested to us in the question.

Oh,

I hope you can follow this.

When the question comes,

What do I do?

Well,

I know I'm going to go get something.

I'm going to go get some food.

I'm going to take that trip I've been thinking about.

So here's the reaction.

Life isn't what I want.

And I believe that the pain is because life itself is denying me something.

And so my answer to the conflict that I have with life,

How can there be conflict with the moment of life?

Life is what life is.

But now,

No,

No.

So the Trojan horse is that my attention goes to the question.

The question holds the promise of a solution.

And the solution is pleasurable as I identify with it,

Because it includes me escaping whatever I felt had attacked me in the moment before.

So if you can see it,

It's a kind of psychological sleight of hand.

Where in one moment,

Boom,

Something that I've desired and want is denied.

I want you to be this way.

You're not.

I wanted life to move like that.

It moved the other way.

And suddenly,

If a psychological sleight of hand,

First,

Here I am.

The reaction is,

Listen,

The reaction seems to be conflict with the moment.

The conflict is not with the moment blamed.

The conflict is that we meet the moment with a nature that had already settled on how the moment should go.

So that the conflict comes out of this consciousness comparing what is to what should be.

And the reaction is the result of that unconscious comparison.

But the reaction doesn't say it is a mind divided against itself.

The reaction says it is a world,

A person,

A time that is set against me.

And now I must do something to save myself.

The mind then comes up with the question that points to the problem.

The solution is in the problem now we see.

And this goes on forever and forever and forever.

Undetected.

This Trojan horse called the question that comes up in the unwanted moment.

Many,

Many years ago,

I've told this story before,

But it's such a valuable one.

Because it connects intimately with this.

I was privileged to know and work with a great man,

An illumined man.

And at one point,

Mr.

Howard was talking to a small group of students and he said,

Do you know how the wise man became wise?

And of course everybody wanted to know,

Don't you want to know?

How does the wise man become wise?

How does the wise man stop repeating the same mistakes?

How does the wise man see through what he or she sees through that keeps them from repeating the same suffering only in a different time and a different place under different circumstances?

And the answer that he gave,

How did the wise man become wise?

The answer was shocking.

The answer is he stopped answering his own questions.

He stopped answering his own questions.

Here I am 40 years later explaining now what that means,

That the wise man becomes wise when he stops answering his own questions.

Where do all of these questions come from?

When do all of them come up?

I'm asking you,

When do these questions come up?

Are they not always on the heel of some kind of disturbance that is registered,

Some kind of negativity?

When suddenly there's this reaction,

A painful reaction.

And we know from our work,

There's no painful reaction without some unseen resistance to whatever the moment is perceived as being.

So the unseen resistance comes out of some seemingly indicative threat.

Some existential problem has taken place,

And we always see that problem as unfolding outside of us.

That's part of what the question does.

That's part of how the question works,

The Trojan horse,

The torment hidden in the question that promises the relief.

How so?

Because the question always points to a condition outside of us.

We never say to ours,

We never question ourselves directly.

We question the person that has brought up in us what we don't understand,

And our solution to what we don't understand is to find someone or something to blame for the pain we're in in that moment.

So for us,

The appearance of this reaction is literally inseparable from the question that comes out of it.

Please,

The appearance of this reaction is literally inseparable from the question that rises out of it.

Do you see it?

Negative reaction,

Why?

Negative reaction,

How come?

Negative reaction,

What am I going to do?

And so the question that seems to come out of this reaction is based on the way in which this nature that is reacting perceives the problem outside of us.

So the question places the problem outside of us.

It finds something to blame.

But our relationship,

And we're leading to this,

To our own reactions is misguided.

It is misunderstood due to the nature of our conditioning where the stronger,

And you have to see this as so,

The stronger the reaction we have,

The more dedicated we are to finding the answer to the question that comes up inside of us.

The stronger the reaction,

The more pressing the question,

The more pressing the question,

The more certain the perception that's given to us that the problem sits outside of us.

But here we come to something that's so crucial,

I can only hope that you stayed long enough to hear it with me.

No reaction,

Let alone a negative reaction.

No negative reaction is asking a question.

Aren't we sure that when we have a negative reaction,

There's a question in it?

Yes.

What do I do?

No negative reaction is asking a question,

Not to mention a question that can be answered by the unconscious nature from out of which that negative reaction has come.

It'd be like walking into a tiger's den and asking the tiger for a safe way out.

When a question appears,

What do I do about this pain?

It never occurs to us that the question is itself part of this unconscious nature that is reacting to the pain,

But in order to ensure that it never sees that it itself is the conflict with the moment,

It formulates a question,

The Trojan horse.

And that's why no matter how that question is answered,

It never resolves,

Let alone releases us from the nature that feels itself under this constant threat.

Am I going too fast?

Can you see the workings?

It's all I want to do.

I can't do more than that.

We're taking this sleeping unconscious nature as we are meant to,

And instead of being identified with the questions it asks us about how to deal with what it reacts to,

We're going to recognize our necessary obedience,

Which is to no longer be misguided into identifying with the solution these questions produce,

To no longer be identified with the promise that any moment where suddenly the mind goes,

Oh,

He's to blame,

She's to blame,

And for a second we're filled with the power of anger,

We're filled with the power of revenge,

We're filled with the power of some strange belief that one day we'll be released from this.

All of that's nonsense.

We want to understand this nature that's under constant threat,

And it's under constant threat because it comes into every moment containing the conditioning of all that was formed in it through the past,

And then it never stops measuring what happens in the moment to its expectation,

And its reaction is the result of that conflict.

Now,

Do not post for a minute.

I want you to really let something settle in.

Kate,

Bring up the second key lesson,

And everybody,

Slow your roll.

Try and see the truth of this as best you can.

Nothing is good or evil,

Save thinking make it so.

You've heard that.

Please don't post.

Nothing is good or evil,

Save thinking make it so.

You've heard that.

That's Shakespeare.

Now,

If you understand nothing is good or evil,

Save thinking make it so,

So that it is the meaning we give to a moment which is the content of our own consciousness being played out and painted on the canvas of whatever that split second is,

Then can we understand the next part?

No negative reaction is a problem until the questions we're given to ask about how to resolve it turns it into one.

No negative reaction is a problem until the questions that we're given to ask about how to resolve it turn it into one.

It seems almost impossible to understand.

Negative reactions are not asking us questions.

No reaction is asking a question.

But when the reaction comes up in the psychic system and there's a disturbance there,

This unconscious nature that believes nothing is supposed to disturb it reacts and registers that disturbance and then tries to figure out what do I do with this disturbance?

The nature that reacts to the disturbance is not the reason for the disturbance.

Try to see this with me if you can.

I said no reaction is asking a question.

In many ways,

These reactions are always the answer to what led up to their appearance.

A reaction is an answer,

Not a question,

To what led up to its appearance.

What does that mean?

Here's a reaction.

I'm out with dinner for friends.

I'm enjoying my meal.

We're having a good time and then somebody makes a passive aggressive comment.

Out of the clear blue sky,

Massive negative reaction.

I didn't bring it up,

But something in this unconscious nature brings back to me the memory when I was there and he lied to me and she betrayed me.

They didn't do what they were supposed to do.

Suddenly,

I'm filled with all these questions and I believe the pain of the moment is pointing to the person that made this passive aggressive comment.

The pain in this moment is because by the grace of God in that moment,

This person asked a question and the question produced a reaction that reveals the content of my consciousness in that moment.

And the revelation of the content of the consciousness that came into that moment doesn't have a question in it.

The revelation of that consciousness is the realization of that consciousness.

And in the moment of that realization,

We are released from whatever former identification there was with it.

Not all at once,

By no stretch of the mind entirely.

But suddenly,

Instead of letting the question come up,

Why are they always doing that?

You know that.

Why is he always,

Why is she,

Why,

Why,

Why?

Instead of letting that Trojan horse question hide from us the grace of the moment in which the reaction is revealing the content of our consciousness to ourself.

So that in that awareness of that consciousness,

A transformation can take place that can't take place in any other way.

So that in that split second,

We realize the reaction is not asking us to resolve it.

I don't know how mind bending that may or may not be to you because we never have a reaction that we believe isn't asking us to resolve it.

Reactions are self-resolving.

Reactions are the intersection of what is timeless,

What is active as it meets what is passive and in time.

It is a higher level of being meeting a conditioned being.

It is a set of forces meeting something that's locked into some form and asking the form,

Will you accept the will that will change you?

But instead of us understanding that the reaction not only doesn't need to answer the moment,

The reaction doesn't have an answer to the moment.

The reaction is the answer to the moment.

Isn't beauty the answer to the moment when the observer and the observed are momentarily simultaneously united?

The unity between what I see and the seer is united and that's beauty,

That's peace.

What I'm trying to describe to you is that in the moment where what we see as the cause of our reaction is realized and reunited with the consciousness that has given rise to that reaction,

The illusion of duality disappears.

The sense of being separate from a world that has set itself against us vanishes.

And the Trojan horse within which hides this nature that will always turn and sack this poor self that believes in it,

It's left outside the gate so that nothing comes into our mind,

Into our heart,

Other than in these moments the realization that this reaction is not asking us to resolve it.

The reaction is revealing and completing the purpose of itself.

The reaction is whole.

In truth,

The reaction is holy.

Not what comes out,

But even in scale that too.

Can you not see the reaction is holy?

Even if you don't want to believe it,

Can you not see that there's no moment in which the light is not acting on that which the light itself has created,

Bringing it into a form of harmony,

The will of heaven on the will of earth.

That is a holy moment,

And the reaction that reveals that holy moment is part of that holiness.

The reaction can't reconcile itself.

It's not meant to.

It's meant to reveal to us a greater system in play where all of its interaction and the parts that are engaged are bringing about a new player,

A new conception,

A new understanding of who and what we are.

So the reaction can't be reconciled by the level of mind that asks the questions.

The reaction cannot be reconciled by the level of mind that asks the questions.

I know what you're thinking.

Wait a minute,

Sir.

Suddenly there's this financial problem,

This issue with my health.

I've had this negative reaction.

I want to resolve it.

My mind asks,

What do I do?

And then,

Of course,

I find the answers.

I Google it.

I ask AI.

I do whatever I do,

And I get these solutions that lead me down some modality of healing that lead me down the path where I'm going to change my career.

I'm not saying to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What's practical is practical.

But there is nothing practical about a psychological question that seeks the source of the pain as outside of itself because that's the prison,

And that's the loop.

That's where we remain a captive of this Trojan horse consciousness that never stops asking,

Why,

Why,

Why,

What do I do?

Now what's going to happen?

Because the minute that we identify with the question,

We are identified with the direction it's pointing to.

And now we're looking at what that question,

A derivative of our own unconscious nature comparing what has happened to what should have happened.

In that moment,

All that we are is someone who has allowed our attention to be placed outside of us on a solution that cannot save us.

The right place to start is not with a question.

What do I do?

Where do I go?

What does this mean?

That's always the question that seems to us the right place to start because it's the only question that this consciousness knows to ask when it's trying to escape what it sees as the source of its pain.

The right place to start is to use our attention and our capacity to remember how many dead ends we've run down.

And instead of asking,

Why did this happen?

Where do I go?

Now what do I do?

We ask a new question in that moment.

And what's the new question?

Who am I right now?

What am I right now?

And then don't escape the revelation.

And what you'll see when you have a negative reaction,

If you ask,

What am I right now?

You'll see what you are is this body of pain.

You'll see what you are is what you've always been every time a moment like that has come.

You're the reincarnation of a negativity.

You're the reembodiment of an anger.

The reiteration of some kind of impatience or irritation anytime someone or something challenges your assumption.

What am I?

And if you answer it honestly,

You'll see that that nature cannot solve itself.

That there's nothing in that unconscious nature that it will ever find in its conditioned past,

Which is all it has to pull from.

Anything that will release it from the prison that is itself in that moment divided up into this negative reaction born of comparing what should be to what happened,

And then asking,

What do I do about what happened when what it's pointing to is the world outside of you when what's really happened is that this unconscious nature is in conflict once again with its own expectations,

Its own demands,

And then seeking yet something else to identify with to escape the content of itself,

And it can't do it.

The key lesson.

I don't know if you can bring it up again,

Kate.

It's a summary,

And then we'll close up the talk if it's possible.

The key lesson.

The first one,

Kate,

Sorry,

I should have been more specific.

And then the second one.

The possibility of realizing our highest good in every unwanted moment of life.

If we wish to realize the grace that awaits us there,

We are asked for what amounts to an act of divine obedience.

If we want to know the highest good,

A kindness that doesn't turn into unkindness,

A patience that is persevering,

A love of life that doesn't turn into any form of enmity when conditions challenge it,

The divine obedience is to yield ourselves to whatever we're being given to see is true about us without resisting the nature of what we're being shown,

Let alone to ask the question why.

When you ask,

Why am I this way?

Why are you that way?

It is a deflection of the reason for the moment itself,

Which is to reveal to you the consciousness that remains in conflict with the will of the moment,

With the will of the divine.

These questions are lies.

God help us to see it.

When do you ever have an enemy other than when a question asks you why did he do this?

Why is she like that?

Enemies appear out of the content of her own consciousness that wants to find a way to escape the pain of being set against itself by finding someone else who's responsible for that pain.

The second key lesson,

Nothing is good or evil,

Safe thinking make it so.

This moment that I don't want doesn't exist without the thoughts that say this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

And I'm so sure that the feeling I have of being negative is right,

That it never dawns on me that my conclusion is a result of thinking and measuring and comparing the present moment to the past.

So it's my thinking that's the torment,

Not the condition it's thinking about.

And if that's true,

Which it is,

Then the same holds true.

No negative reaction is a problem until the questions we're given to ask about how to resolve it turns it into one.

You must learn to see that these questions that have aching in them have no answer that can help you.

That's the task,

To leave the question unanswered so that if you linger there long enough and wait,

You will have the revelation of that level of consciousness that has never had any patience with any kind of threat to itself because its very sense of continuity depends upon the continuation,

Listen,

Of the question the reactions,

The questions about them,

The solutions the questions provide,

And then seeking in another time to come yet another answer that has never released us from the ache inherent in misunderstanding the nature of these reactions and the questions they ask.

I think that's probably enough.

I hope that you've understood something,

Or at least seen something.

If you have,

Then our time spent here has been very worthwhile.

And you'll see it and prove it to yourself,

And you must do so if you want to be free.