The Unthinkable Secret Of A Quiet Mind GF Live 8-10-24

Getting stressed and struggling to change the outcome of any past event is like arguing with an echo to make it see your point of view! Choose stillness instead of one more bumpy ride down the river of thought.

Transcript

We're looking at this idea, I think I entitled our meeting today, The Unthinkable Secret of a Quiet Mind. You know, You don't have to be an Einstein to recognize that history itself has proven that our understanding of the pains and the problems in this life, At best, It's incomplete. And the way that we know that it's incomplete is that all of our ideas of solving problem are connected to some form of blame, And blame, As we know, Inevitably gives rise to conflict. And then there will be some kind of war, Whether it's personal or global. And this has been going on for millennia, Where the digression of our possibility as a species deteriorates the conditions around us, Follow the consciousness responsible for it. And even as we search, As we continue to do, The world is driven to look for new powers, No matter what they are, Social, Economic, Religious, Political. We watch all of these things worldwide, They get worse and worse and worse. And as they grow worse, The whole thing starts itself over again. So to set the stage, As I'm trying to do in the first couple of minutes, Our idea of strength, Our idea of power has completely failed us. And I think that's what we need to look at if we want to recognize that what we need is another kind of power, A new kind of power, That I would add, Deliberately so, That the world cannot give you. You can't buy it. You can't borrow it. You can't own it. And the power that I'm talking about, And that we're going to now get into, Is the power of a mind that is quiet. Now, I know, Especially if you've been working with me for a while, Or if you're an aspirant of any kind, We all love this idea of a quiet mind, Of what I would call a meditative life, Not one where I sit and do my chanting, Or my meditation, Or my puja, Or whatever it is that I do for a certain amount of time, Once, Twice, Three times a day. I'm talking about a relationship with another order of stillness that allows for all possible movement as it does, But that itself isn't moved. A kind of stillness that allows for all the movement, But itself is not moved. We all know the old metaphor, I think we all know it, Of this idea of the open sky and the clouds that move through it. And here they come and here they go, And when they've come and gone, When they've done what their business is in that moment, The sky remains unchanged. It is constant. It is in conflict with that which appears and disappears within it. We have, As human beings, Made in the image of the divine, Built right into our true nature, This relationship with life around us. I think that we sense it sometimes, And I'll get into some examples, But for the most part, We find ourselves constantly apart, Constantly apart, Doing all the time this effort to try to change the world that we see, According to whatever ideas we're given that we're conditioned to have hope in. Always trying to change the world that we see instead of another idea you're familiar with, Instead of changing the way we see the world. But what does it mean? How do I change the way I see the world? And this is where it gets problematic, Because for most of us, We believe the way in which we change the world we see is that we change our thoughts. We change the way we think towards the moment where these clouds, These storms come into the sky, This consciousness. The transformation of changing the way in which we see the world cannot be affected by thought. It's impossible. And we've seen, If we've worked at all, The useless struggle of looking for ways to get out of the box we may be in by using the tools we find in that box. We need a completely different relationship. Something new needs to be awakened within us that's already there, That isn't conditioned by the past. A level of understanding and intelligence that has no allegiance of any kind at all to any tradition or belief, Because regardless what that tradition, Belief, Hope, Ideal may be, The very fact that one holds and keeps an attachment, Dependency upon it in order to define oneself in difficult moments, That means that one is always confined to the mind that goes looking for a way to comfort itself in moments of difficulty. Looking for a way to comfort itself in moments of conflict. We don't want to have to look for something to comfort us in times of conflict, Of impatience, Of problems with other people. We want to be present in the moment to something that cannot be troubled the way that we are troubled, Because it lives from a completely different order, If you will, Of wisdom. A wisdom that serves only the wholeness out of which it is born. And as we'll see, And I'm about to get into it, We can put all of these initial ideas into a context that's familiar to all of us in one way or another. I trust that you are following. First of all, Back to the beginning, True or not, One way or another, Most of us spend a lot of our time on this planet trying to keep our heads above the proverbial waters of life, The waves that come in unexpected. So that so much of our life is involved in this social, Cultural, Economic uncertainty of a planetary life, Because we are dependent upon the things that that same planetary worldly view tells us will keep us safe, Keep us from being drowned by these unexpected moments. And yet our struggle to stay afloat, Meaning the constant dog paddling, Dog eat dog world, Dog paddling, Trying to keep our head above water is due to a fundamental misunderstanding about our relationship to this world. We're trying, And you have to see it for yourself, We're trying to think our way into a world without waves, Because that's how we're conditioned to look. If I can just build a moat, A wall, If I can isolate, Separate myself from the suffering that these people, Friends, Family, Whatever it is that they bring to me, If I can just get away from that stormy water for a moment, Then I'll be okay. And so without knowing it, We imagine and accordingly believe that it's possible for us to create a world that's free of disturbance. And if you examine your life, It is a constant movement into, Or something moving into you and I, That creates a summary disturbance. And the minute that the disturbance, Those waves start to move through us, The only thing we know how to do is to begin to try to think our way through what it is that caused that, How we can change it, And then get back to what we call a world without disturbance. And it is this search, This endless search, This futile search for a life where there are no waves, Where there are only welcome waves, That is at the root, That desire is at the root of all our useless struggles. And we've been talking at great depth recently about useless struggles. And why is it a useless struggle? Because the problem is there's no such realm without disturbance as we imagine it. It doesn't exist. The mind latches onto an image, A hope, A desire, Lashes onto that image. And for a moment, It derives a certain sense of unity, A certain sense of pleasure, Because what it is imagining holds within it what it is imbued with, Which is now everything's okay. Everything's good. Everything's good when this finally happens, When I become this kind of person. But the problem with these ideas is that they are conditional, And they are as conditional as the world in which they are sewn, So that when the world starts to waffle and wave, Suddenly all of these things become like an oasis on the desert. You've seen the shimmering heat waves, And when those waves shimmer, The images behind them shimmer, And everything starts to shake. And then we have to try to get back one more time to collect for ourselves what we thought would console and give us the comfort we seek. The problem is that the world we imagine and want to see doesn't exist apart from the eyes that have imagined it. And that eye, Those eyes, Is as false and unreal as the world it has imagined. Let's bring up the key lesson, Kate, The second key lesson. Read along with me, Everybody. The only world not in conflict with constant change is the present moment, Whose timeless nature is the kingdom of all possible changes, As well as the endless changing taking place within it. The only world not in conflict with constant change is the present moment, Whose timeless nature is the kingdom of all possible changes, As well as the endless changing taking place within it. Now, I hope that you can at least grasp some sense of that idea, That there is a world that is, As we can evidently see, That is the ground of endless change. And yet, The world that is the ground of endless change, Those changes come up from within it, They express themselves, And they return back to that world. So the world from which all of these changes take place is literally changeless. It isn't affected. The whole of it isn't made into something else because something acts upon it. Everything, And here's the point for this transition, I want to help you understand this, That key lesson. All of us, One way or another, Have been someplace, We've known moments of some kind of harmony. For instance, Standing on an ocean shore. I think most of us have had this experience. You're standing there, You're sitting there, And you're watching in front of you, As far as the eye can see, These endlessly shifting waters. You're looking out, You're watching these waters, You're seeing waves come, Rise, Fall, Disappear into the shore, Retreat, And return again. Now, One of the joys, The peace in a moment like that, The power over us, Is that as we stand there watching, We're not troubled that the waves rise and fall. We're not concerned that the waters never stop moving, That they appear and disappear. None of that comes into our mind because we're in a relationship in that moment, In this instance with an ocean, That part of its attraction for us is that it never resists its own waves. It is a living entity, And its activity is inseparable from all that comes out of it and returns to it, Leaving the ocean itself unchanged, Even though it never stops changing. In moments like this, If you're following me, It's like watching a river. The joy of it, The peace of it, The power in it, Is that we have an inextricable relationship with all of that movement, Not connected and attached to any of it, Because all of it, As it moves into us and through us, All we watch is that ocean that never resists its own movement. It naturally quiets the mind, Because for a moment, The whole of our being is captured in the presence of an immensity beyond the scope of thought to contain. So thought is in abeyance, And it's in abeyance because we have given ourselves, We have found within and around us something that the mind, The thinking mind, The conditioned mind, The past, Has no relationship to at all, Because so powerful is this relationship, This undivided relationship between observer and observed, Is that all the rest of that movement is collected into a stillness and allows us, As we will and do, As I'm trying to describe, To allow that relationship between the ocean and our awareness of it to create a living meditation, Because that's why we love those things. You go into an old growth forest, You watch, Even in the simplest level, You're enabled to stand next to some magnificent natural creature, And that summation of a moment where self is not separated from all that is moving into and through it brings about a kind of meditation where peace prevails because in that moment everything is an inseparable part of that life. Now, I know that these moments are fleeting, But it doesn't mean that they have to be, That the silence that is born in sitting in the presence of something that is endlessly moving and endlessly changing, That silence is because we share a corresponding part of ourselves with that endless movement and that which allows that movement without changing itself. That's what seeing is in the truest meaning of the word, And because of that capacity in these moments we've been able to and because of that capacity in these moments we realize a harmony that is born of this relationship with the ocean, With the waves, With the sounds, With the smells. Our entire sensory apparatus is alive and it is, As we are allowing, It is drinking into itself all of the whole of that as it rises and falls, As it moves into and through us, Just like the wave and the ocean moves into the shore and washes back. It is the exact same thing. We are meant as human beings, We have the capacity to understand that just as the ocean rests within its own surge, Let me say it, We have the capacity to see that just as the ocean rests in its own surge. Can you understand that? The ocean rests in its own surge, From out of it comes and back into it goes. It rests in its own surge, Just as the ocean of life rests in its own surge. We're enamored, We're captured, We love the understanding of watching the ocean rest in its own surge. The power of a quiet mind, Of a meditative life, Is that you and I are given the capacity to rest in the surge of all that moves through us. But for now, Our problem is that we only embrace parts of those movements, Parts of these thoughts, Parts of these feelings, Parts of these impressions, And if any of those parts don't match what we are particularly identified with, Meaning the past, Measuring it, Then in that moment we resist every last one of these movements. I resist any thought that I may not be able to understand. I resist any thought that according to my conditioning is alien, I don't understand, That shouldn't be there. Any sensation, The summary reaction to any unknown sensation is the resistance of it because it isn't recognized. And I'm talking to you about a life in which you actually are beyond, This nature is beyond trying to recognize life. If you could see it as I'm describing it, There's something in us that goes before us at all times looking to see if what the wave is that's coming is recognizable, And if it's not recognizable then off it goes. I want nothing to do it. Summary resistance meets any wave of thought or feeling that it doesn't recognize as being part of what it says is good and true. So there's this constant disturbance in this consciousness, Always fighting. And if you can see this with me, And I should pause here for a moment and ask you, Are you able to connect with, Are you able to see as best I've been able to describe it, This other possibility? Please. The question, If we're understanding, And I know it's a stretch for some of us, Here I am, I love to watch. I love to watch the fields when the wind moves through them. The wind moves through them. Up here on this little mountain where my wife and I live, Pretty much at the end of every day, Starting around five o'clock, For whatever reason, The thermals change and it begins, This wind comes up, This breeze comes up. And the trees are still caught in the setting, The light of the sun. And so you've got all of this movement, Just like you watch the diamonds on an ocean sparkle, Because the ocean is not resting. The winds are moving it, The currents are changing it. It's the exact same thing. You watch the currents of air and you see the sparkling of the sun on the leaves. You watch all of that. And I call it the magic moment when I'm up here. Why? Because there is an endless movement and you're not outside of the movement. You're not separate from it. Because you have within you the capacity to have an order of awareness that recognizes you can't see, Feel, Touch, Taste, Be moved by anything that doesn't have a corresponding part in yourself. So even if it's a trillion, Billion little things moving, You have within you this infinite web of potentiality that is moved by it. And that's the point that just as we are absorbed and love all of that movement, When we watch the ocean or the trees, What's wrong? What is keeping us from understanding that you and I, This consciousness that sees everything apart from itself, Isn't apart from what it sees. You know that's true in the moments where you watch the ocean or the trees. I'm not apart from that. I give myself to it. But I don't give myself to anything that when it comes rolling in as a wave of fear or worry or doubt, Any of those thoughts and feelings, All I know to do with the ocean of life in that moment is to try to quiet it down, Control it, Or get away from it. So the question is, How can we come to this kind of understanding that is no longer just some construct in the way we see, Which we start with, A new idea, A new insight, And convert that understanding into a relationship so that in that relationship, We would recognize as we are intended to that these waves I'm pausing for a moment because I'm trying to find a way to communicate a specific idea. Thoughts come in waves. A thought is a wave. It is a form distinct according to the conditioning connected to the idea. But the conditioned idea, The form of it, Is powerless and of itself has no meaning apart from the wave that gives rise to it, The forces that give rise to it. And then correspondingly, The part of us through which that, If you want, That thought moves into, Then instead of recognizing that the basis of this thing allows everything to rise and fall, And that that's intended to be our relationship with it, So that without exception, We begin to see something that is very difficult for us to understand. We actually don't want, On one hand, This is a conflict. We want to understand it. The other hand, We don't. Life never stops unfolding as it must. In every given moment, No exception, There is no movement into or through you that isn't exactly the way it is supposed to be in that moment. Just as there's no wave, No current moving through the ocean, That isn't a corresponding reflection of the totality of all that is acting in and out of you, There is no movement or totality of all that is acting in and upon that ocean to produce those movements. No separation. So that if it is a fact, And it is, You cannot change, I cannot change the moment in which, For whatever reason, Something moves, An impression comes, Suddenly up comes a painful thought. A powerful fear. There's nothing that you can do in that moment to change the appearance of what has been brought into your consciousness. It is unfolding exactly as it must. But you and I don't see life that way. We see life as imposing itself on us in these painful thoughts and feelings that the mind that is separate from that movement then looks out and points to the problem, Blames it, Believes it can get control over it. You're not controlling the experience. You are being controlled by a desire that wants to latch onto some new idea so that it can have that consolation instead of going through the change in this consciousness it's intended to go through when it begins to see and understand that these waves, Like or not, Cannot be changed. And to fight with any wave, As we should know by now, Any time we fight or resist any moment, All we do is create more waves. Resistance never reconciles what the mind pointing to the problem says it will. Resistance is an acceleration of the unconscious nature caught up in trying to contain or control the waves moving through it. So our task, If you understand, If you're following me, Is to no longer try to control or otherwise change the nature of these waves. Our task is to understand, Which, You know, I don't know why it takes so long. I'm 75 years old. How in God's name did it take so long for a man or a woman to understand that you can't change the nature of the waves? All you do with this frustration and this anxiety and this constant struggle to try to change the experience of the moment, All you do is kick the can down the road. The world that we are in today is the empty can of a broken consciousness that keeps trying to find some content in itself that will rescue itself from its own machination. And you can see the world is not getting better. It can't get better because if anything is ever going to truly change, A, It's going to begin with individuals, And B, It's going to begin in that individual with recognizing that there is another order that he or she is intended to live in and from, And in and from that new order, From this quiet mind. Intelligence is allowed to reveal what has been concealed and act accordingly and bring about the changes so that the more we understand that, The less afraid we are, The more we understand this relationship with this ocean, The shorter the distance of that disturbance that we experience, The more we're allowing it to come to a quietness so our impatience with others doesn't become a problem with them. Our worry about tomorrow doesn't turn into a nightmare, Some kind of whirlwind that captures us, Carries us off in more thoughts and feelings, And the more we think and get caught in that struggle, The more waves that mind creates, The more waves, The worse we get until we feel like we're drowning. And you can, You can learn to do this. And when I say learn, It's not so much like learning, Like learning, Learning. It's like, Okay, I've seen over and over again that my fear never resolves itself when I let the wave of it carry me to what the fear promises will free me from it. So that anger, Worry, Fear, These thoughts and feelings as they come up, We should have suitable experience at this point to see, I've been, I can't count the number of waves. That I have either watched come in, Or that as they have crested and crashed, I felt like I was going to be drowned. And then I scramble, I swim, I struggle to save myself again. And all I get is another whack of another wave that isn't diminished in its power to punish, But that because of my resistance to really my own misunderstanding, Just produces more and more of these waves. We can learn to let these waves of thoughts and feelings roll in, Crest, Fall, And retreat. You literally have within you that nature that just like the ocean that rests in its own surge, Rests in seeing everything rise up within it, Become what it does and disappear again. And you can be assured if you've understanding this, That it will do that, But only as you learn work to let it run its natural course, To let the waves run their natural course. This relates to an idea, I suppose, But I don't really like it. You know, You've got this non-violence, Non-action. If we will learn as best we are able to to be present in these moments where it feels like we're being pounded by some thought, A wave of fear, If we can learn as best we're capable to understand that what has to be reborn in that moment is the way we perceive the moment. That's what has to be reborn, Is the way we perceive these waves. And it's a bit of a paradox because the new perception of these waves isn't really new, It's already a part of this consciousness, Its capacity. So what we are essentially learning to do is to allow these thoughts and feelings to go their own way. And if we can learn to just even attempt that, Instead of meeting the habitual wave of some kind of worry with what we always do, Worry triggers what? Planning. Planning triggers what? More ideas and images about how to deal with that worry. And the more we plan to deal with a worry in the time to come, The more conditions that consciousness builds in order to complete itself in that time to come, And the more conditions and it's attached to, The more fearful it is of everything that threatens it. But what if instead of that moment, Here comes this wave of worry, I let it rise, I let it fall, As best I'm able, I watch the whole of the thing. And if you watch the whole of the thing, You see that you in that moment experience the whole of it, And you experience its return back into the depths of the consciousness from out of which it came. And all waves, Every last one of them will return on their own back into just like the ocean. All of these waves return into the ocean, It rests in its own surge. All of these thoughts and feelings will return back into this consciousness, This unconscious natures from out of which they came. But we'll never know this unless we agree to accept and to step into that relationship. Because what is that relationship? The resistance to any wave of thought or feeling that's unwanted is born out of a predetermined insistence that we shouldn't have to experience any disturbance like that. Imagine an ocean that decides, You know what, I don't want to be disturbed. So I'm going to do my best to crush, Squash, Quash all of these currents, All of these waves. I'm going to do my best to keep the stillness on top so nothing is bothered. You know what happened to an ocean if that happened? It would never be refreshed, It would never be renewed. Because all of that tumult, All of that movement, Yes, It would stagnate. All of that movement is part of its life. Not this part or that part of the movement, But the entirety of the movement. But the ocean to the point of this talk, It is that which it rises up out of, And that is those that it returns to. This is who and what we are in the true sense of it. A divine process, It's perfect, It's eternal. But we have to learn to cooperate with this understanding, We have to learn to give our attention in those moments to what we, If you will, What we are able to see is true. And as long as we perceive life the way we do now, Which is that these waves come and they're a problem, These waves come and they're pleasurable, So we're carried away one way or another. We'll never know what it means to have this quiet mind, This mind that allows all things, But it is never punished and certainly never punishes anyone by that. And when I say allows all things, I have to clarify it, Even though there's out of time. That isn't to say that when you see something move across this planet, As you do now, As is increasingly taking place, Where the solution to conflict is to make deals, There's no deal that's ever going to bring an end to conflict. And just as that's true in the world and has been proven through millennia, There's no deal that you and I will ever make with ourselves or anyone else that's going to bring an end to conflict, Because the conflict begins with the misunderstanding of who and what we are. And as long as that understanding is incomplete, We will meet all of these waves in an incomplete fashion, Instead of allowing the ocean, The divine, To bring up what it will and must to reconcile all that that divinity requires. And you and I experience ourself as a part of that movement, As a process in that movement, Perfected by that movement, But not perfected but not perfected as something separate from what is divine, But seeing the perfection of the divine because we allow it to move in and through us and change us by bringing us into a relationship with it. That's a quiet mind. And I'll tell you something before I end the talk. There is no peace outside of a mind that understands its relationship to real life. And it's a whale of a journey, Isn't it? But you can, If you're willing, Catch glimpses, Experiment, Let this wave come, And instead of letting yourself get attached, Identify yourself, Get attached, Identified, Brought, Instead of being carried off, See how long you can watch that thought. See how long you can watch that feeling. See how long you can watch that sensation. Because in time, Meaning with your work and practice and the development of the attention required to do so, You'll see this thing rise and you'll see it fall. And you'll be sitting on the other side. You'll be sitting there watching these waves and you'll understand your true nature has always been this oceanic experience. And it's intended to be.

Reviews

Profound wisdom in the simplest manner that my mind could comprehend. Needed this perspective. Thank you.

This is my favourite talk of yours. I will listen to it again and again. Thank you so very much for your wisdom.