I have two key lessons that I'm going to present,
One right at the start of the talk,
And then near the end,
As part of a kind of practical application,
I'm going to post three separate exercises actually,
Very short,
And each time I post a key lesson or cover these practices,
Kate is going to put into the box here,
The verbiage,
So that it'll be and travel with this material as it stays up on inside timer.
And so that if you wish to,
You can come back and copy it.
So let's,
Let's get underway,
I would beg of you just to not post for a moment when I asked Kate to put the key lessons up.
And also when I put up the exercises.
So here we go.
Let's put up the first and main key lesson for this talk,
Which by the way,
It's entitled the path to enlightenment requires that you cultivate this power,
We're going to learn about something very important in our interior work.
Here's the first of the key lessons.
The real reason for being impatient with ourselves or with others has nothing to do with the condition we blame it on.
Impatience along with its dark twin frustration is born of our refusal to accept the revelation of some present limitation and to remain conscious of it until it's transformed.
Refuse the revelation of a present limitation and to remain conscious of it until it's transformed.
What does that mean exactly?
There are certain things that are vital in our interior work,
In fact,
Without which it is impossible to proceed at all.
And really one of the first things that is mandatory is a kind of ruthless self-honesty.
We're not very honest human beings.
I'm not saying that you wouldn't or I wouldn't return a $5 bill if we saw somebody drop it out of their purse.
But I'm talking about honesty when it comes to our character,
To our nature.
Honest about what we have been able to do and unable to do as human beings,
Who God willing since you're joining me here,
Have an honest urge,
A wish as deep as it runs to know what is true and good.
And we often call this wish and its work the work of enlightenment,
Of making a relationship with the divine.
But I just want to say that if we're honest,
Our best ideas of what it means to be awake,
Aware,
Kind,
Have failed us.
The ideas are kind of like life rafts with holes that are constantly leaking that we have to pump up over and over again because the ideas haven't changed anything about our lives.
And the truth is an idea alone can't change anything about your life.
Nothing I will ever say to you here or anywhere I teach has the power to change one person.
I always urge men and women,
Do not take what I say and think to yourself,
I believe it.
That's good.
That's how I'm going to be.
You must take what you hear and allow what has moved in you accordingly to bring you into a kind of constant question about whether or not in the moment where it is required,
You are an individual capable of manifesting what it is that you say you believe is good and true.
People talk all the time about Christ,
About Buddha.
And then when things go south and there's filled with suffering or anxiety or anger towards someone,
Then they turn on themselves and say,
Well,
You should have been like this and you should have been like that.
That is a useless,
Useless action.
All forms of judgment are born out of,
Incidentally,
A kind of impatience with having seen that we could not in that moment produce the nature that we said we want to be or to understand.
So to the point,
An essential force,
An essential understanding is missing from our lives.
And the evidence of it is everywhere.
Look at this world,
Everywhere on the planet,
In one way or another,
From the smallest incident on the street where somebody pulls into your parking spot to these global conflicts where individuals are trying to eradicate each other because they don't believe we don't hold true the same things that you do.
So there is something critically missing.
And what it is,
And just,
If you will,
Just listen,
What is missing from our lives,
The ingredient required for this process of bringing us into a full-blown awareness and relationship with the whole of life so that we can't act against ourselves and others,
What is missing from our lives is patience,
Real patience.
And real patience is not about waiting for something that you want to manifest itself.
It's not about being tolerant,
Tolerance and all the rest of that secret nonsense about manifesting what will make you whole.
All of that crud is actually the very source of the conflict that we live in because we're forever imagining something that we need or believe we must have to be whole.
And then in the very imagination and identification with those images,
Now we're filled with conflict and stress every time life challenges what it is that we've imagined we need.
So we have to get rid of this imagination business altogether when it comes to being enlightened,
When it comes to being an awakened,
Decent,
Patient human being.
It has to go out the door.
And for that to happen,
We must have a new understanding of the true nature of patience.
If there's any chance for us,
You and I,
To become a different kind of human being,
Not someone who speaks later of how I should have been,
But rather who sees how I am in that moment and in my patience,
Write to a piece of scripture actually,
And in that moment of seeing myself as I am in my patience,
Possess my soul.
In my patience,
Possess my soul.
I've spoken at length about this idea of patience,
But I'm going into it more deeply this morning because I see increasingly everywhere around me,
Around us,
This strange impatience with everything.
St.
Paul said,
For we are saved by hope,
But hope that is seen is not hope.
Hope that is seen is not hope.
What does that mean?
Anything that I can imagine and then hope in can't be hope.
Why?
For what a man seeth,
Why does he hope for it?
In other words,
If I see something,
The truth of something,
I don't have to hope to be a decent human being.
If I see that love is preeminent and intended to be,
And that sacrifice is a requirement,
If I see that,
I don't need to hope that I have it.
And I don't have to go looking for it after I see it's missing from my life.
And he goes on to say,
For what a man seeth,
Why does he hope for that?
But if we hope for what we see not,
Then do we with patience wait for it.
But if we hope for that we see not,
Then do we with patience wait for it.
What does that mean?
The language is archaic.
But simply put this,
In our heart of hearts,
God willing,
We hope to be decent human beings who don't judge one another.
In our heart of hearts,
We hope not to be someone instantly set on fire because of the smallest infraction of someone disrespecting us.
In our heart of hearts,
We hope that we can go through our day,
Walk down the street,
Engage with one another,
And not poison one another with the pain we have because the other isn't giving us what we want,
Or because we're pushing so dramatically because of some compulsion telling us we've got to achieve A,
B,
And C,
Otherwise we're gone.
But these passages reflect,
And they're not just Christian passages.
In every true spiritual religion,
True teaching,
There is this idea that the path,
The real path can't have anything to do with being identified with some image,
Some popular concept.
It's impossible.
Because for one thing,
And I hope you can see this,
If I'm attached with this idea,
For instance,
I have this idea that I know so-and-so-and-so-and-so.
And we all have those ideas.
We are stuffed with these unconscious ideas about ourselves,
All of them flattering,
By the way,
And they don't even have to be flattering,
They can be negative,
Makes no difference.
Because there can be no image without some identity that sits and props it up.
And so image and identity work hand-in-hand.
And as long as image works hand-in-hand with identity,
Then anything that challenges the image or the sense of self that's derived from it instantaneously becomes my enemy.
And in the instantaneous appearance of an enemy is an instantaneous resistance to what I believe is the person or the condition responsible for the conflict I'm in in that moment,
When seen properly and that which only true patience can reveal,
Is that the problem isn't that person or that condition that has popped up and seemed to be threatening me.
The problem that I can't see is that I've come into that moment fully identified,
Attached to and dependent on a certain image of myself that must go unchallenged,
Otherwise I find myself in conflict and then impatiently trying to change or prove or otherwise punish anyone or anything that threatens this image I have of myself.
Can you see this with me?
And if it's true,
Which it is,
And again you have to see this,
Then our hope has to rest within this wish to transcend ourselves,
Not through,
Not by immersing ourselves in some new idea,
Image,
Some new God,
Some new religion,
Some new socially acceptable,
Iconic path,
All of that's insanity.
Our hope lies in being able to realize in real time that only patience,
As you will see,
Can afford us,
Is a glimpse of this consciousness that is so asleep that it believes itself to be what it imagines itself to be and that never even suspects it holds these flattering images of itself until something challenges it and then,
Oh no,
Then in that moment when it's challenged,
That's when blame appears.
Blame is always a substitute for the possibility of seeing with patience that there is something going on inside of us where our actual impatience is what?
I'm asking you,
What is it that I'm actually impatient with?
This is,
It's funny,
It always works out like this.
I don't know that I should take the time,
But people like it when I tell personal stuff.
So I'm sitting here,
I'm never quite full with,
Done with what I want to talk about ever,
Even before I start speaking.
But I like to have a few notes so that I can follow a particular point because there is a particular point to this and that is there is a relationship between conscious patience and enlightenment.
So for a split second,
I'm sitting here and I don't know how much you know about me or my work,
But I'm an animal lover.
I've,
Here on this mountain where my wife and I live,
I have this little house and I have cultivated a relationship with what really amounts to now a herd of deer that I feed every morning and there is a turkey,
His name is Frankie,
And he's my new bud.
Now Frankie and I have become fast friends.
I can almost pet Frankie.
You would never think that you could,
I mean,
Only a mother could love a turkey because you're talking about an ungainly,
Ungodly looking creature,
But Frankie,
He likes to,
He's interested.
So he jumps up on this bench that's right in front of this plate glass window in my office and he sits there and he looks at me and he just wants to know what's going on.
Frankie's developed a bad habit because I also am interested in bonsai trees and so I have these beautiful little elms and the season's passing,
They're about to shed.
Now Frankie has decided he likes the tiny little elm leaves on my bonsai tree.
Now I can't have Frankie eating my bonsai tree.
I had to struggle with the deer,
Put deer off on the thing so they wouldn't,
And there is he pecking at my deal.
Now I'm sitting here and I'm thinking,
Well,
I've got about 15 minutes before I'm going to go start talking on inside timer and there's Frankie eating my elm tree.
Now what do you think comes up inside of me when I see Frankie doing something that is irritating me?
Why is it irritating me?
Because there's an identification with the trees.
There's something in me that wants the tree to be the way the tree is.
Now that's natural.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Where it gets into trouble is if and when,
In this instance,
Not just because he's picking on the tree,
But because I want to get some ideas down and now I've got to deal with Frankie.
So in the split second,
What happens?
In a split second,
And by the grace of God,
And one day it will be so for you,
It's just jumped up off the bench.
Perfect timing,
Frankie.
In a split second,
Up comes what?
All kinds of resistance in a surge,
Yes,
A surge of resistance.
You cannot stop the surge of resistance.
That's impossible because that resistance is connected to an unconscious host of thoughts and feelings,
Images,
And identities buried in this lower nature that have already decided how things should be and how things should go.
So in the moment when things don't go the way you want them to go,
Not only are you resisting the condition,
But the real resistance isn't to the condition,
It's to this idea one has of oneself about what is required to move through the rest of the moment in peace.
So try to see the contradiction.
So usually out of impatience comes what,
Anger,
An explosion,
Some kind of.
.
.
And so here a human being is reduced to an animal trying to escape the animals outside,
The unkind world outside,
And blaming the world for the appearance of an unconscious animal nature that insists life be the way it wants it to be,
That the moment will confirm me as I have seen and expect myself to be.
And by the way,
Want to be seen.
There it is.
So what we're really impatient with in that moment is this,
I don't want this.
But when we study this,
And we've been doing this for a little couple of weeks now,
When I really study what it is that I don't want,
Now please,
I'll slow down.
When I really study in that moment what I don't want,
The only way to study the moment I don't want is to patiently observe the whole of that moment.
Because in the knee-jerk,
I don't want this,
The source of the suffering is immediately identified as being Frankie,
Who's still there.
It's immediately identified as the weather,
As the condition.
So in that split second where we are suddenly filled with pain,
Looking at what we don't want,
What we don't see yet,
But must,
And that only can be glimpsed with being patient in the pain of that resistance,
Patient with the pain of that resistance,
Is to realize that it is our unquestioned identification with that condition and our resistance to it that is producing what?
The experience of myself in that moment.
So it's not that I,
Look,
I don't want Frankie to mess with my trees,
I don't want the girls to come up and browse my bonsai,
Of course I don't.
And I'll do everything in my power,
With kindness,
To ensure that at least we can have some kind of mutual relationship between us.
But kindness goes out the window when impatience possesses the soul.
Because the moment of impatience is blamed on the condition,
Which blinds us to the fact that the real source of impatience is that I don't want to be experiencing myself as I am in this moment,
And I don't want the condition I blame for it.
So we fight with conditions,
Because impatience dictates that,
To get rid of the problem.
When the real work is to understand in that moment what I must find a way to do is to be patient inwardly with the upwelling of this pain,
So that I can see something about the whole of the moment that is producing it.
Because to understand this idea,
When we speak of being patient with something,
Patience isn't a one-way street.
Patience implies that there is something to be impatient with.
Patience implies that there must be something to be patient with.
Now when we have an idea about what it means to be patient,
We walk around pretending to be these spiritual whatever it is that we pretend to be,
Goofy,
Smiley faces,
Everybody acting like they don't have a bone of violence in them.
When we act like that,
We don't see it.
Every moment is producing a great pain in us,
Because there is the upwelling,
The rise of this impatience,
Of this pain,
Of this blame,
It comes up.
And instead of allowing that to come up inside of us,
And to use the very resistance to its appearance as a platform by which we can begin to have revealed to us the consciousness that's responsible for that upwelling,
Instead that's all deflected.
Which is why we don't change.
Let's bring up the second key lesson,
Please Kate.
Do you have it there?
Go ahead and start posting it if you will.
Patient persistence in our labors,
Coupled with persistent patience throughout each one.
These two powers serve not only to perfect the task at hand,
But also work in harmony to perfect the hand that undertakes the task.
Patient persistence in our labors.
Life is a labor.
We are laborers in a great field that the divine has created.
And we are not only to see to the harvest in this world,
But we are part of what is intended to be harvested,
Reconciled to heaven.
Patient persistence in our labors,
In the moment with Frankie,
With my brother,
With that angry,
Assaulting person.
Patient persistence throughout each and every one of those.
Those two powers serve not only to perfect the task at hand,
Meaning the reason that the moment has appeared is actually fulfilled.
Because the reason always has to do with a reconciliation,
To use words.
And if I reject the moment,
Then I reject seeing where it is and what it is my part is playing in that.
And if I work in harmony,
Then it perfects the hand that undertakes the task.
So literally,
We work in our best possible way to realize that our highest hope lies in this,
This light,
This interior light,
This awareness that this resistance usually blinds us to,
To help us work and enter into this indwelling light so that we can begin,
As best we can,
To develop not only a way to complete the labor,
But to complete the hand,
Meaning the nature that enters into it.
So I have three simple practices.
Kate's going to put up one at a time,
And then I'm going to discuss each one for a couple minutes.
And if I do this properly,
We'll have five or 10 minutes for our discussion or for you to post things.
Here we go.
Kate,
Number one.
We must develop the patience to be concerned with the character of our own consciousness before we attempt to make over the character of another.
We must develop the patience to be concerned with our character,
With the character of our own consciousness,
Before we attempt to make over the character of another.
Christ said,
Physician,
Heal thyself.
Have you ever noticed how impatient you are with people?
Because something about their character that you blame for the conflict you are in,
Nobody that we're engaged with,
Even strangers,
Everybody in our life,
This mind is always creating a makeover for them.
Any form of judgment of another human being hides from us the fact that our intolerance with that human being is leading the way.
We are seeing the person through the eyes of intolerance,
And the intolerance is not some social convention.
The intolerance is connected with the demand that I have that no one do or be anything other than allows me to be copacetic with the moment.
This patience that we need means that we need to patiently observe,
To bear the part of us that has this summary resistance,
So that we see for ourselves that there can't be negativity towards someone without negative inwardly having that been brought up inside of us that we blame on that person.
No human being on this planet is responsible for the lingering negativity,
For the resentment that we have towards them.
Love thine enemies,
Said Christ.
How's that possible?
I'm describing it to you.
Number two,
Let's bring up number two.
We must develop the patience to be kind to those who are incapable of caring about themselves,
Let alone about us.
We must develop the patience to be kind to those who are incapable of caring about themselves,
Let alone us.
You know,
When we're in the throes of a heated argument,
Or somebody's letting us have it,
Or we get an email,
Or whatever it might be,
Where is the patience that would allow a man or a woman,
Assuming he or she was willing,
To realize that to return unkindness for unkindness doesn't prove that somehow or other we're superior to those we act that way toward.
No,
To give unkindness for unkindness is to be part of that dark,
Unconscious machine called our present consciousness.
That's what that is,
To be present and to bear with patience that pain that we feel when people are unkind to us.
It's only possible with real self-examination.
You can't have self-examination of the honest kind.
You can't enter into the sudden light that is there,
And there is a sudden light.
When we have this moment of instant resistance,
Though we do not understand it yet,
That instant resistance is the revelation of the level of consciousness resisting that moment.
That's what that resistance is.
But we have no patience with the pain of that resistance,
Because that unconscious nature pushes us off to look at the pain as outside of us,
Instead of realizing we can't have that pain in us without something that came into the moment with us demanding that that person be kind to us,
Treat us the way we want to be treated.
Number three,
Kate,
Please.
Nice deep breath,
Everybody.
We must develop the patience to realize that we're not the only one who suffers.
We must develop the patience to realize that we are not the only one who suffers.
And because it's true that there are millions,
If not billions,
Of human beings who,
For whatever reason,
At the highest to the lowest level,
Find themselves in some terribly uncomfortable situation,
Being denied something they want,
And then being so concerned with their own needs that they can't even begin to suspect how blind they are to the fact that in part it is these unconscious desires,
These unending appetites of ours that produce the conditions we blame for our pain.
You see,
Until I can see some of that,
I'm a cog in the wheel of that misery.
My resistance to the awareness of this pain,
Which is really the awareness of this unconscious nature that is forever placing its demands.
My resistance in that moment separates me.
It creates a me that is the victim and a you that is the one making me such.
And that's called war.
Whether it's with my husband,
My wife,
Frankie,
The people I work with.
And then it's impossible because it festers.
Resistance that is over and over again formulated into something or someone to blame takes on a form,
Literally a shape,
An unconscious energetic body that we call the name of whatever that person or place may be when it has nothing to do with that.
It's something that has been formed in us.
And so when we're suffering like that,
We are sure that nobody in the world suffers the way we do.
I am the only one who suffers like this.
And in my identification with what is a self-induced suffering,
I am further separated from seeing that if I could just learn in the smallest way to be patient with that resistance,
To see where it's coming from,
Then in that moment,
I might actually as a human being begin to go through the process of being acted on by the light of that awareness to bring me into concert,
To reconcile heaven and earth,
To bring this unseen latent violence that sits at the bottom of every unseen demand and identification with it up into the light where it can be changed.
This is why back to scripture,
But let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire wanting nothing,
But be you doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourself,
But let patience have her perfect work,
Which is what I'm describing to you.
Let me close with this last idea because it was the last thing that came to me when Frankie was standing there.
I don't know how many of you are familiar with the serenity prayer.
I can't remember the man's name.
He was 19th and the 19th century,
A theologian,
Not necessarily a religious man,
Although he was by all intents and purposes,
Probably a truly religious man.
He wrote something that became part of the creed of a lot of recovery groups.
Perhaps you're familiar with it.
Holy father,
Grant us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed.
Courage to change what can be changed and wisdom to know one from the other through Christ.
Amen.
Grant us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed.
The courage to change what can be changed and wisdom to know the one from the other.
Reinhold Neuber.
Yes,
Tony.
Thank you.
Now let's just for a minute substitute,
Grant us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed.
Grant us the patience to accept that which cannot be changed.
The courage to change what can be because now change is possible through the revelation of patience and the wisdom to know one from the other.
So that through this idea of patience comes an all encompassing awareness.
When I'm in patience,
I have no awareness other than what I am patient with or a nature that I can't stand being.
I never see them as a singularity.
But if I am patient with the pain of this resistance,
Patient with that awareness of the moment,
Then in that awareness of the whole is born wisdom.
That's what wisdom is.
And that's what serenity is,
Is wisdom,
A relationship with the whole.
And we gain that through working with these ideas and what it takes for us as best we can.
And do not judge yourself.
Do not become impatient with seeing that you have not patience.
Rather,
Use the awareness of that to let the awareness that comes in that moment to produce what only it can,
Which is a change in this consciousness.
I'll be out in a couple minutes,
Frankie.
I have six,
Seven minutes,
Eight minutes,
Maybe we can have a dialogue.
You can post if you want a comment or question.
I'll deal with it as best I can.
Sometimes I'm able to take the questions that are remaining here and put them on over to the Sunday morning when I speak or Wednesday night when I speak always for free again.
Seek me out.
I'm going to look at this topic in a more deeply personal fashion tomorrow.
And if not,
We can just quietly wait here patiently.
Isn't it true when you're with people and there's silence?
Why am I so impatient with that silence?
Because I have to do something to get through this moment where my mind is talking and yapping.
What does this mean?
I'm so uncomfortable in the silence.
How can I be patient in silence?
How can I apply patience toward my recently diagnosed illness?
Yes,
Mary.
One way to start with that,
Mary,
Is to begin recognizing that there is this involuntary constant wish that I didn't have to experience my pain.
Why me?
Any of us who've ever had cancer,
Been paralyzed,
Been broken,
And I can speak personally.
I fit into all of those characters,
All those conditions.
There's always this sense of why?
What does it mean?
What's going to happen?
And Mary,
Where is my attention in the moment when I am full of resistance to the full awareness of my condition?
Where is my attention?
My attention is riddled.
It's right on what I don't want.
So my attention is actually bringing me into a relationship with the pain of wishing I didn't have to be like this.
It seems to us when we're wishing not to be in pain,
That that proves somehow or other that we really want to be outside of that pain.
But I'm deepening the pain.
Resistance amplifies the negative.
When resistance isn't used as a form of revelation,
It amplifies what is being resistant.
Resistance is negative identification,
Mary.
Be patient and try to see some of this so that as you gain glimpses into that nature that wants to attach itself and drive down on,
I wake up and I'm in pain.
I get it.
Who the heck wants to get out of bed knowing that the day,
In quotes,
Is going to be filled with some kind of pain or suffering or worse.
I'm dying.
But on the other hand,
Can I get out of bed and see what in the name of God wants to get out of bed and look at that?
Why do I want to dwell on that?
And then you'll see I don't,
But there is something in me that can't wait to do it.
That is a form of awareness born out of the moment of patience where instead of instantly handing myself off to that pain or that problem,
I give myself over to the awareness of the consciousness embroiled in it.
Thank you for reminding me that I'm doing the best that I can.
All that is coming to me is for my benefit,
Regardless of how it shows up.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I couldn't,
There was a,
There was a surge of anger towards Frankie.
Now,
I didn't,
I didn't,
I didn't,
That first of all,
To understand the only way you'll understand that that anger isn't you is when through the practice of being and understanding what it requires to be patient,
You get to see that flare without that flare being blamed on a match outside of you.
Frankie didn't strike that,
That flame of anger.
He revealed it.
So then my enemies become my friends.
He prepares a feast in the presence of my enemies,
Because now through the practice of being patient with this pain,
Patient with my own resistance,
Patiently observing the frustration instead of letting it take me down the road,
I become a witness to a consciousness that can't see itself because it's so identified with what it's resisting.
We must consider pure potential in any given moment and not identify with prior moments.
It isn't a question of not identifying with them,
Tony.
It's a question of seeing the pain that is inherent in identifying with them.
You can't not identify that doesn't exist.
You can't not desire that doesn't exist.
It's an opposite of a consciousness trying to be what it imagines it needs to be,
To be as it imagines itself.
But if I'm present to the moment of that upheaval of that greed of that,
If I'm present to it,
Then suddenly in that awareness,
I'm no longer apart from the condition that this consciousness says is responsible for it.
Now the condition and the consciousness are seen as a unity,
A singularity.
And it is the awareness of that singularity that begins to liberate us from the separation,
The sense of identity derived through unconscious impatience.
Not so much rules to add with these lessons,
But courage to see more.
That's it,
Fiona.
Please God,
Give me the courage to be patient.
Let patience have her perfect work,
That you may be perfect and entire,
Wanting nothing.
You've never had a moment of impatience in your life that wasn't born out of not wanting.
But we can see,
If we have eyes at all,
That there is this other kind of work.
Instead of being worked over,
I'm going to work all of that moment as best I can,
Bring it into my awareness.
And in that moment,
Be perfect,
Because I'm doing the only work I can.
And at the same time that that's going on,
Wanting nothing,
Because now I'm fully occupied with what I'm being given to do and be in that moment.
Shelby,
I have been impatient for a very long time.
This was great,
Winu.
Yeah.
Oh,
Shelby,
We all are.
We have to see how being impatient is a form of blindness.
Because until we can be aware of our own blindness and that it is induced by an unconscious nature,
We will be complicit with that nature and blame running into things,
Having moments we don't.
We'll blame life.
We will hate our own limitations because we can't see them for what they are,
Which is a point in time where something will reveal it.
And in the revelation of a limitation,
The invitation to die to that part of ourself that has brought it into the moment with us.
Forgiveness,
For sure.
Forty-four minutes,
Got to go.
Don't be unkind to yourself,
But do be as patient as you can and then see where it is that that wish to be patient turns into something that is full of resistance.
And then with patience,
Experience your own resistance so you can see the nature responsible for it.
