Transform Any Sense Of Loss Into A Realization GFLive 3-8-25

The mind that thinks in order to understand life believes it can see, but (it) can't; while the mind that sees doesn't need to think in order to understand life; (it) has no need for beliefs. This seeing helps us transform any sense of loss into a self-liberating realization.

Transcript

So I have, And I better get going, I've got four or five stories for you to help us understand our material. And as always, A couple of key lessons. So when we're posting these key lessons, Or at the end when I asked Kate to post the exercise for the session today, That you don't post in the middle of it so that everybody can have an uninterrupted look at the material. And ideally when you come back, If you do, To revisit the session, You can take in all of these ideas in their complete form, Uninterrupted. Kate, Let's bring up the talk title for today, Please. It is, As I trust you can all see, Transform Any Sense of Loss into a Self-Liberating Realization. Transform any sense of loss into a self-liberating realization. What if that were true, That it was possible for you and I in the middle of that knee-jerk, Oh my God, Reaction, Where it seems like something has come along to threaten whatever it is that we are identified with, And from which we derive some sense of ourself. What if in the very moment when it most feels like we are defined and confined by that moment, We were instead increasingly liberated from the level of consciousness responsible for that reaction? That's what we're going to look at together today. I want to start with something that maybe you're aware of, And I can't spend much time on the first story anyway, But I think it goes something like this. Somewhere in some distant continent, Maybe India or Africa, There was a confab, A gathering of holy men, All of each and each of whom believed that he or she knew the whole story, And one small, Unassuming holy man, A genuine holy man, Wanted to prove that these people didn't, So that the people that follow them wouldn't be so blind in their ignorance in terms of just accepting what they are told and taught by these people, That they need a new kind of understanding. So he brings to that continent four other, Five other so-called holy men from distant continents, Unlike their own, And they do not have the same creatures on their continent that they do on theirs, Subcontinent, Again, Somewhere below the equator. And when they arrive off of the boat, He blindfolds them and brings them into the gathering, And as they're standing there blindfolded, This unassuming holy man asks that an elephant be paraded in front of them, And then instructs each of the holy men to tell the group what it is that they are being confronted with. What is it that they see? Of course, They're blindfolded, So each of them, With their hands, Goes over, And the first blinded, Blindfolded holy man gets hold of the trunk of the elephant, And he says, Well, This is obviously a great leather hose. The next blindfolded holy man is brought to the leg of the elephant. He feels the leg, And he goes, Well, This is child's play. This is obviously some kind of tree trunk of some kind, Unknown to me, But definitely a tree trunk. And the other man says, What are you talking about, Tree trunk? It's a hose. Another blindfolded holy man gets his hands on the ear of this great elephant. He says, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This is obviously a large piece of the leather skin of some kind. And the last blindfolded holy man is brought up to the tail of the elephant, And he gets hold of the tail. He feels that brush at the end. He says, What are you talking about, Hose, Leather skin, Tree trunk? This is a brush. And they then commence to argue amongst themselves until at last the unassuming holy man tells them to remove their blindfolds. Of course, Everyone has seen their argument and how ludicrous it was. And it was ludicrous because not one of those men could see that what they were looking at was a single creature. It wasn't these separate parts that their sensations had told them based on their conditioning. And further, That it was a creation that could only be understood when it was seen in its entirety. Now, This little story sets the stage in quite an important way for a question that you and I have to ask ourselves, Assuming that we've gone far enough along in this journey. How can you and I possibly understand, Hope to understand the nature of who we really are, Of our true self, Let alone of that which has brought this higher nature into creation? When virtually everything about our life and the way we examine our own questions about this creation sees everything by a part, In a part and through a part of ourselves. Given the moment we see the part that corresponds to it. When we have the part that corresponds to it, We can't see it's a conditioned idea, Belief or opinion. And being blinded by our identification with this one part. We believe that that strong sense of self that's sitting there defending. No, It's a tree trunk. No, It's a brush. No, It's a stump. We think that we actually understand what the whole of ourselves is. When we don't. And we never will. As long as we continue to meet life from a part of us that sees life in parts. We don't know we see life in parts because we are taken up by that part with all of its power, Its pressure, Its pushing. And it seems like it is the whole of us. Let's stop for a second. Is everybody getting the gist of this, Of the stage that we're setting so that we can understand the necessity for a much bigger picture? One that allows us to see the entirety of something, Not to see a part of something through a part of us that's conditioned as well. I hope so. Let's bring up the first key lesson. It'll help further set the stage. Here we go. Read along with me. The mind that thinks in order to understand life believes it can see, But it can't. While the mind that sees doesn't need to think to understand life. It has no need for belief. The mind that thinks in order to understand life believes it can see, But it can't. While the mind that sees doesn't need to think to understand life. It has no need for belief. In this small key lesson is hidden a tremendous secret about this missing big picture from our life and our relationship to that life. Wherein we can begin to understand how everything is now seen through a mind, Through a glass darkly. And believes as was with the blindfolded holy men, That the moment it thinks about what it sees, That's what it sees and that's what is and there's nothing more than that. Now, Make this transition with me. In the New Testament, St. Paul wrote words that most of us are familiar with. I think if we know this New Testament at all. But it has corresponding truths connected through all scripture. He said, When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I thought as a child. I reasoned as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I thought as a child. I reasoned as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. What is St. Paul referring to here? When he says, When I was a child, I spoke, I thought, I reasoned. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. He's saying that until I became in a relationship with this living light, Christian terms, The Christ. Until I awakened to realize that there was a much bigger picture than the little picture my conditioned childish mind assigns to everything that happens. All I could do was speak from that understanding. All I could do is think from that understanding. And all I could do with those thoughts is reason from that understanding that was childish, Meaning that was immature, That wasn't developed. That hadn't reached the fulfillment yet of another kind of understanding that will allow him, Us, To see how childish it is. Have you not had that experience of seeing how childish you are? Do you know how childish it is to resent another human being? How childish it is to want to punish someone because they they don't agree with you or you don't want what they're doing. And so you feel the need to make sure they know just how unhappy you are with their actions. This is a childish mind, An immature mind, Meaning that it only sees life through the lens of its own conditioned nature. And that that conditioned nature is what reacts to every moment. And in every moment finds through that reaction, The validation for the sense of itself, That strong sense of itself that rises up and says, That's a tree trunk. That's a brush. That's a hose. You're wrong. They're wrong. This shouldn't be like that. It matters not what the conclusion is. What matters is you and I discovering that we come to these conclusions based on a limited perception of the moment. And it's not that the moment is limited, But rather there are parts of us that are so busy responding in a conditioned way to the appearance of that moment. That all we know is that understanding that isn't understanding at all so that we speak as a child. We think as a child and we reason as a child until we become a man, A woman and put away that childish nature. That reactive, Angry, Fearful, Worried, Loathsome nature that rises up and goes before us to make sure that every crooked moment we run into, It explains as if it's a guide. Instead of us being able to see that we were guided into that relationship through that unconscious relationship with that nature. This is why if I've communicated it all in the first 13 minutes, We must have a new understanding. And part of that new understanding is. To actually recognize I can't turn to my old understanding for a new understanding. This is what we don't see. We keep thinking I'm going to make changes. We identify with this teacher, This guru, These kind of philosophies. We get caught up. And so we believe that the new things that we're thinking is the same as a new understanding. And it's not. You can have all the knowledge in the world and still be a nutcase. As we see all the time. No, A new understanding begins with recognizing the limitation of our former understanding and how we are constrained. To constantly try to push away or deal with the conditions that run contrary to its demands for continuity. So that little by little by little, We realize that this nature, This level of mind can only see what it is given to experience of itself through itself. That's what I experience. We blame our experience on the moment. The moment is inseparable from the mirroring of the content of that condition in this mind. This is why we need a new kind of awareness. Something that reveals to us as distasteful and troublesome as it is. I might add a new order of awareness. Christ called it metanoia. That allows us to see just how limited our understanding is. Imagine for a moment if you haven't actually gone through this yet. There you are. You've always acted in a certain way. You're going to make people pay who displease you. You're going to spend time and turmoil thought in order to bring an end to the pain of it. And then one day you realize, Jesus, I can't believe I've been doing that for 10, 000 years. I've been a kid, Been a little petty kid. But it doesn't change the fact that that petty nature that sees what it needs to see to confirm itself as important to the moment. Doesn't mean it's not there. It just means that a struggle, A new struggle is initiated. Because now I see my own limitation. And now I must recognize that that limitation has always led the way and it can't do that anymore. And this is a crucible of a certain order that begins along the path. So we start to realize I've been confined, As St. Paul said, To a childish mind. Part of why Paul said he had this childish mind, These childish thoughts and feelings, Was because he believed back in that day, When his name was Saul, As a Jew persecuting Christians, He believed that he was doing the work of God, Crucifying people. He believed that was the work of God. And then one day, Along the road to Damascus, Suddenly his childish mind is replaced by a new order of awareness, Wherein he sees love doesn't crucify anyone or anything for disagreeing with it. Love isn't afraid of something suddenly happening and love doesn't live with the fear of loss. Love does not fear loss because love can't lose anything. It is the entirety. But this is the big picture we need to see and where I'm going with this talk. So, Nice deep breath. Where is this big picture, Assuming that you see the need for it? Where is this big picture? So I bring you in in a simple way. As I often talk about nature, There you are and you see something that is breathtaking in nature. The sun this morning rising up over the bay here, It was breathtaking. In that moment, There's nothing missing. There's no wishing the moment were other. There's certainly no sense of loss. And in truth, There's no sense of gaining anything. There's just this complete experience in which in that moment, That which is being revealed before my eyes, Cannot be separated from the consciousness that is reflecting those conditions. And in that relationship between the observed and the observer, Nothing is missing. Nothing can be taken from it. And that big picture is self-sustaining and the source of security in the moment of one's experience of it. So where is this big picture? Well, In nature, We have these moments. But that moment is replaced by a phone call, An email, Someone knocking on the door. Some suddenly glance at a clock and you is, Oh my God, What am I going to do? I'm not going to. And the next thing you know, The big picture is reduced into a little picture that feels big. The big picture is reduced into a little picture that feels big. Because one part of us is looking at something that challenges whatever it's identified with. And now I'm filled with all kinds of powerful thoughts and feelings telling me, Go rush, Change, Hate, Resent. The big picture is inseparable from our awareness of it and of its relationship to us in the moment. And that understanding that our awareness of the moment obviously holds everything in that moment. See it with me. My awareness of the beautiful sunrise holds everything in that sunrise, And my sense of self is included in that revelation. But we have another part of us that doesn't see things like that and takes the big picture that we are already a part of because we are a living body of light and reduces it to this little picture that gives us such a big feeling of ourselves and then what happens? Then we're off and running and trying to do what we have to do to get rid of everything that we don't want to see so that we can only have what we want to see and believe that that's what it means to be a whole human being. What's keeping us from seeing this bigger picture, From this order of awareness I'm describing to you? Take a nice deep breath. Here's a second story. Imagine two friends, One is much wealthier than the other, But they are good friends in that they both love art and the lesser wealthy of them always goes over to his friend's house to see if he's acquired any new beautiful art. Sure enough, He goes over to his friend's house and there on a whole wall he sees what looks like five, No, Five, Six, Seven different large mural frames each holding what appears to be spread across that wall a story so that there are these seven separate large mural-like frames holding the art and they are together on this wall and he's looking at it and it's just breathtaking to him. He doesn't have to think to himself about what he's looking at because the whole of that moment is being expressed by a level of awareness he has that allows him to participate at whatever level he can of what's being conveyed through that art. So he says to his friend, God, This is gorgeous. Tell me about it a little bit. So they go to the beginning of the mural and they go through the first two large frames, His friend's explaining to him what it is and then his friend just walks past the third frame and starts talking about the fourth and then he gets to the fifth and he walks past it and he goes to the sixth and the seventh and he never talks about the third and the fifth. And when they get to it, He says, Maybe I'm missing something here. But why are you skipping over? Why did we go past those two sections? They're part of the story on the wall, Aren't they? To me, It's beautiful. Why did you avoid even looking at them, Talking about them? And his friend looks at him with complete seriousness and says, Well, I don't like looking at those parts of the story. They trouble me. I don't like looking at those parts of the story. They trouble me. Can you see how in this journey of your life, Even though it's not fully conscious to you yet, That it is a single journey for a single purpose, That come these moments in your story with your husband, Your wife, Your children, Your story with your plans, How it's all spread out on the wall, But come suddenly something happens and the next thing you know, You want to skip that frame altogether. You don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want to see that. I don't want to know anything about it. This is called pure resistance. And what is the purity of this resistance over the fact that in this story, There is a frame, There's a section, There's a moment in it. And I don't want anything to do with the experience of that moment. As if somehow or other you can excise, Take out of the movement of this story, The whole of the story, As if it's as if you have somehow or other, The authority to just take the parts out that are part of the movement of the story that are telling the whole of the story that are presenting the big picture, But that we can't see as the big picture because we don't want parts of it that interfere with what we say is the big picture and how it's supposed to unfold. Do you get that idea? How, When you have a problem with another person, It's because they don't fit your story. When you have a problem with the way the world is turning left or right, Because what's wrong with these idiots? They don't see the big picture like I do. And this is constant because this consciousness lives from something that is blind and is always touching, Getting the sensation of something as thought defines it. And then calling that thought and sensation, The whole story, And then defending it, By the way, Hating anybody that challenges that belief or that opinion. So what are these parts of us that we find so troublesome running through, Whatever that particular story may be in the moment. And I don't know if you've ever seen this any given day, You've got 50 different stories unfolding often simultaneously. And suddenly something upsets you and you just decide that I've got to control or change that part of the story. It's not part of my story. Wow. So how do we begin to understand what are these troublesome parts in us? Are they not our own thoughts and the way we identify with them when they appear? Are they not our own thoughts talking to us, Telling us who we should be, What they should be like, Telling us that we should not be seeing this because we ought to be seeing that. And that when we are identified with what we shouldn't be seeing and the painful experience of resisting the moment, Then the same thoughts tell us and validate the experience saying, There's no other way this can be until you change someone or something to make the moment the way it's supposed to be. Because in that split second, Something is being taken from you. And by the way, What is it that is being taken from us? Have you ever really thought, Suddenly I feel like, God, I just feel like empty. I feel like this person, This situation. Have you ever really thought what is that about? Let me help you to see it. It's because in that moment, Some sense of continuity, Some literal chain of thoughts, And a chain is a good word for it because as we identify with thought, We are chained to the nature that is creating it and sustaining it. So that I have all of these ideas of what, How life should continue, How you should continue to be like this, How this should not stop here, But it should keep going as I have decided the story should be. And I am deeply in debt to my own story because if things change in the story and the continuity is shattered, Who and what am I? I'm back to square one. So this continuity, Every time that you and I run into a moment that bumps against us, The moment hasn't bumped against your true nature. Can a cloud bump against the sky, A wave bump against the ocean? No, What we have run into that bump in the road of our life is that some moment has come along and our mind looks at it as something that is interrupting the demands that that continuity has on the moment that it goes as instructed. So we're all living from this unconscious dependency, This attachment to thoughts that have projected their own fulfillment and that anything that interferes with the continuity of that fulfillment, Let alone threaten it, Is seen as an enemy. And we become a captive, By the way, In that moment of that thought and its perception of what it says is the whole of the moment when it has nothing to do with what is holy, Only with trying to keep itself feeling whole and safe. Next story. Don't have time to go into this too deep, But many of you know I use certain forms, Instruments, Background for parables and metaphors. One of my favorite is a doctor story, But we won't go into it too deeply now. Here's our heroine, And she goes to her doctor. And she just throws it out. I'm so upset. I don't know what to do with myself. I feel lost, Broken. My mind, I'm going crazy. Well, What brought this on, He said. Well, I was sitting there with some friends and we were all talking about something we all liked and all of a sudden one of them just threw this monkey wrench right into the conversation. Everybody was having a great old time. A couple of glasses of wine, Laughing, And then somebody says, I was unbelievable, Contrary to everything that everyone was talking about. And after that, I went home, My mind caught up. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop blaming that person, Thinking about how I was going to make them pay for their contrarian view when all of us had agreed earlier on. And he says, Okay, Okay, Stop. I get it. I can see you're pretty wound up. Wound up, You have no idea. What's wrong with me, She said. And he said to her, The problem is, Is that you have soul sickness. Soul sickness? What in the name of God is soul sickness? You mean my soul is sick? He said, Well, In a way, All human souls are sick. If that's not evident to you, I don't know what should be. But in this instance, Soul sickness is really an acronym. It's a letter S-S-O-L, S-S-O-L, Soul sickness. Well, What does S-S-O-L, Sickness, Stand for? And the doctor says it stands for the sudden sense of loss. Soul sickness, The sudden sense of loss and all the reactions that follow that limit the relationship you have to the moment as it tries to protect itself from what it imagines it has lost. Soul sickness is a painful and often sometimes, He said, Crippling reaction that's born of seeing what looks like the end of something that you didn't even know that you depended on. So that in the sudden sense of this ending, Based on how you thought everything should go and keep going, You suddenly have this terrible sense of insecurity because what you thought you had, You don't. What you thought you could depend on, You can't. And you blame the conditions for the attachment and the dependency. That's what soul sickness is. Sudden sense of loss, Failing to see that who and what you are can't lose anything. How can the ocean lose its character to the waves that it gives rise to or do not the various waves define the character and give the depths of that ocean more meaning? And this sudden sense of loss includes any moment from the least of them all the way up until, And God willing, You get to the point, You understand this, Before you reach this point, Suddenly realizing your own mortality. I had a conversation with my younger brother. My older brother died. I hate to say it. I don't know when it was, A year ago, Two years ago. And now my younger brother's having some issues. And suddenly there's this great concern on his part, As well it should be at a practical level. But what's happening? What's the reaction? What's this sudden sense of confinement and desperation to try to make changes other than the realization that I'm not immortal? My body's going. And that means all of my plans are going. And how am I going to be happy if I don't follow all of those plans to the complete sense of self that they promised me? And what that moment has come isn't to take something from you. It's not a loss. It's the realization that you've lost yourself. And you've given yourself over to being identified with all of these pictures, All of these images, The ideas about what life is supposed to be like, And that makes an enemy of anyone or anything that comes along and threatens that identity. Are you able to see this with me? To some extent? Please? And if that's true, From the least to the greatest, Meaning from the way you suddenly seem to. . . Why are you doing that to God? Why are you threatening? Why are you taking this away from me? Why take this person that I love? Why take this life that I think I love? How are we to see and experience these moments that are virtually every single day, I might add, Even getting stuck in traffic? The resistance, The resentment, The frustration. What is that about? I'll tell you what it's about. I'm on my way somewhere to get rid of what I don't want where I was, Or I'm on my way to get a pleasure to add to myself, And now this moment is in the way of that pleasure and fulfillment. Any moment, Any moment in which this sudden sense of loss or a shattering of something that without knowing it we had expected to go on continuously. Where are we to find. . . How else are we to see these moments? I'm setting the stage for the next key lesson. Kate, Let's bring it up. This is how we begin to see these new moments in a new way. Read along with me. It is not until we see we live in a world the size of our understanding that we stop struggling to change everything and everyone around us and start working instead to change our relationship with a lower level of consciousness that can't see. It's a captive of its own conditioned thinking. Let's go through it one more time. We're talking about how are we to see and experience these moments that now we see as a brush, A leather, A skin, A trunk. How are we to see these moments so that instead of feeling like we've lost something, We gain new self-knowledge, Which is the task. It's not until we see that we live in a world the size of our understanding. If we stop right there, What does it mean? It means I experience everyone and everything around me. No matter what it is that's rolling or unfolding, Breaking down or stepping up. My understanding is my experience. But I believe my experience is based on the conditions because I don't understand the conditions that I experience in life can't be separated from the consciousness that calls them out the way it does. And it's always conditioned. So until I see that I live in a world the size of my understanding, That's the only way I'm ever going to stop struggling to change everything and everyone around me. Because isn't that what we do when something threatens us, When we feel a loss, The carpet pulled out from underneath us? We never think to ourselves, It's where we decided to stand and build some castle on that carpet. No, We blame someone pulling the carpet out from us. So instead, We have to change our relationship to this lower level of consciousness. And the change in that lower level of consciousness comes from this big picture where we start to realize that that nature is a captive of its own conditioned thinking. There is such great freedom, Even though it comes at the cost of a certain sense of crucifixion. Because when I see that I speak as a child, I think as a child, I act as a child, And then one day by the grace of God, And it is, I suddenly see how childish it is. I'm still carrying around that grudge. I'm still hoping that somehow everybody is going to see things exactly the way I see them, And they'll line up like toy soldiers and march along with me down this path that my mind has produced that promises freedom to come. No, Freedom is the end of that march. Freedom is the end of that dependency on continuity that belongs to a mind that can't live without the security it's imagined. How do we get to the point of seeing that when, As I've described, It's all around us at all times? So take a nice deep breath. I want, With this next story, To try to show you something. I've often spoken about it in different ways. When I first had this thought, Because our house here is on something called Turnbull Bay. It's an intercoastal. It's a big, Beautiful bay. I first called this the 10, 000 Faces of Turnbull Bay, But here's the story. Mama, Papa, Little girl, They move to a place on a bay. First two, Three days, That little girl, She's so excited, She runs out first thing in the morning, 7 a. M. But lo and behold, By 9 a. M. , She's come back in the house, And she's sulking. Mom can't figure out what it is. Child seems to love being on the water, But then for some reason is afraid of the water and doesn't want to look at it. So in her wish to understand her daughter, Because she herself is a working woman, Meaning a woman who is working on herself, She goes out with her daughter the next day and watches her daughter just captured by the incoming high tide. How everything seems to be moving against the stillness of the shore, The bank, The trees, And these little islands of rock and sand, They begin to be covered up in a very gentle way and disappearing under the waters. The little girl is transfixed with the beauty of this, With the movement of it. But lo and behold, Two hours later, As it happens in this particular area where they moved, Up comes the wind. And when the wind comes up at that time because of the change of the heat, Now the sun is above and striking down and making thermal patterns, Now the wind starts to cause the waters to be turbulent. And not only does it cause the waters to be turbulent, But the tide begins, As it does slowly, To begin its change. And as it begins to change, It runs into itself. First it's coming in, And as it's going out, It's still meeting itself. And now there's some waves, And the little girl is becoming increasingly disturbed by this, And then she runs back in the house. Her mother starts to understand what's going on. And she goes in and gets her daughter and says, Come and sit with me. I want you to see something. And they sit there together. Child's distracted. A child can't help itself any more than you and I can. But over the next five, Six hours as they're sitting there and they have a picnic, The mother helps the child to see that that bay has 10, 000 faces. That one minute it's like glass, The next it's rippled, The next it's churning, Next it's white-capped, The wind's moving it this way, The tide changing it that way. And she gets her child to see that these are not separate states of the bay, That each is a face, A feature of that living entity called that body of water that exhibits in its own manifestation everything that's acting on it, Not decreasing it because it's now being discontinued from what the little girl expects it to be, But rather it's being enhanced. And it's being enhanced and the mother helps the child see this, Helps her see that this that she can't see yet is the big picture because just beneath the surface of this beautiful bay is an ocean, Is a body of water from out of which everything rises, Changes and goes back. So that there is this fullness and then there's this emptiness. There's this sense of turbulence and then this sense of peace, This loss and this gain. And that there's a living dynamic relationship between the intermingling of all of these opposites, These opposing forces that are working together to help those who can see it. There is a seamless relationship between all of this movement, Between every frame of a person's life, Between every section of the bay, Regardless how distinct it seems, Different than what we would want it to be. One becoming the other, One becoming the other, Where neither one exists on its own, But both always exist at the same time, All exist at the same time. Perfect relationship with life. Not with the life you've imagined, But understanding that the real relationship with life shows you where it is that a life imagined is now in the way of this movement and the experience of this big picture, Of this holiness. But we only have the awareness of this in the smallest way. As I said, In these rare moments where everything is moving the way we want it to. I've got to keep going. I've got one more story. I'm going to go a few minutes longer than usual. I hope you'll appreciate it. If everything, As I've just described, Is a creation of, What shall we say? The divine of the all. If every last one of these movements, Every condition acting on and changing the momentary appearance of the character, If every one of those appears and disappears as it does in life that we can see, Wouldn't it be true with us? And if it's true with us and nothing is said against itself, But everything is simply revealing a phase of itself, Wouldn't the ability to participate in that kind of life be not just the big picture, But give to us a new kind of liberation based on the fact that our security is no longer predicated on the continuity of who and what we think we are and what we have and how people should treat us. But it's based in understanding this continuous revelation of the life of God, The divine life as revealed in nature and made conscious to us through the mirroring of that life within us. So here's the story. An explorer. You are, Whether you know it or not, But I think because you're with us, You're an explorer. So here's this very famous explorer, A John Muir type. And he goes out on an adventure, Not to try to win something, Not trying to conquer anything. He's going out to see what is there because there is an innate understanding that as we see what is there, As we see what is being revealed, So are we being revealed to ourselves in our true nature. But as with all journeys and this one, He's out there with 40 men and 16 canoes and three donkeys and two dogs. And all of a sudden some water is on a bay or on a river, Turns the canoes over, Everything's lost. Most of the crew decides it's too much. They don't want any more to do with the suffering involved in it. So there's just this one explorer and his assistant and apprentice and a couple others that have remained with him. And his apprentice, His assistant comes and says, You know, I'm trying to understand. Everybody else cut out. They're gone. They don't want any more to do with this. And yet I'm looking at you and you're sitting there. You kind of have this wry smile on your face. I mean, I know you're troubled. All of us are. We have to deal with the practicality of the problem here. But I don't understand how you meet a moment like this, Seemingly as collected as you are. I've seen it before, But this is bigger. And then somehow you always come up with a way to deal with it. How can you be so collected when it seems that we just lost everything? Please help me understand your attitude. And the explorer looks and he says, Well, It's really kind of simple. He said, I'm not done yet with the exploration of this leg of my journey. What? Yeah, I'm not done with the exploration of this leg of our journey. What are you saying? He's saying, Well, This moment is part of the exploration. Remember the story where he would skip over the third and fifth frame of that life mural? Skip over it, Run, Avoid, Hate, Resist, Change, Fight. No, It's all part of the big picture. It's all there so that you can begin to understand the only thing that we meet in any moment, The source of every experience that we have is inseparable from the consciousness in which that experience unfolds. So when you don't want or don't want to see or don't want some moment, It's not the moment you don't want. The consciousness created that the sense of continuity depended on things being the way it wants it. Yeah, That's the way. No, No. What you don't want in that moment is the experience of your own journey, Of your own discovery, Of your own realization and ultimate liberation. Because liberation is the realization that within the big picture, It's all one thing. One revelation, One understanding, One divine recognition of one's true nature. Let me give you the exercise. I have to bring the talk to a halt. Katie, Let's start posting. Here's an exercise. I won't go over it. I can't. But you read it. You work with it and see if it doesn't help. Put all that we just looked at in context. Exercise part one. Instead of going into thought over what you don't want to see, Accompanied by its legion of painful sensations, Do this instead. As consciously as you can become aware of the big picture unfolding within you. Next, Quietly remain there in working to observe your own thoughts and emotions, Including the attraction you feel to the familiar but painful sense of self they bring with them. The light of this higher awareness is the big picture. It is the frame. It is the content and it is the experience. And you cannot be made a captive of any one of its parts. Any one of those thoughts, Those reactions, Those sensations, Because none of those things can enter or pass through you without your awareness of their limiting nature. So that as paradoxical as it seems, It is the awareness of the sudden onset of this stress, The sudden sense of limitation of something. Oh, My God, What's what? What is it? It is the awareness of that limitation that is the big picture. But you have to learn to stand there, Observing it long enough to recognize that all of these movements, These childish thoughts, These reactions and the actions they describe belong to a consciousness that believes it is the big picture. Instead of seeing that everything it thinks about life limits the real picture and the real profitability a man or a woman has who begins to explore and discover the truth of themselves.