Walk Away From Worry And Fearful Thoughts Gf Live 11-04-23

The more we anxiously look around for a way to deal with the fear of any moment imagined as yet to come, the more immediate grows the fear we experience in the here and now. To know that every moment - regardless of how it comes wrapped - is a gift greater than you can give yourself, is to be well on your way to a life without fear.

Transcript

The idea is this,

Where are we going to find the freedom to walk away from these rather consistent,

Painful,

Worried thoughts and feelings?

Our daily visitors,

As we are,

If we're honest enough to admit so.

And that's what we're going to look at,

Is where do we find this freedom?

And so here's the key lesson,

If you'll let Kate post,

Please,

In its entirety so everybody can see it.

And the same thing later in the session today.

And as always,

I will hold time at the end for you and I to have some kind of discussion,

Answer a few questions,

God willing,

And move the study forward.

Here's the key lesson.

The more we anxiously look around for a way to deal with the fear of any moment imagined as yet to come,

The more immediate grows the fear we experience in the here and now.

Let that sink in.

The more we anxiously look around for a way to deal with the impending doom,

The fear of any moment imagined as yet to come,

The more immediate grows that anxiety,

That fear that we're experiencing in the here and now.

So that though we don't see it,

The point is that our fears,

Our sense of doubt,

They don't exist without comparing what we think the moment is bringing,

What we imagine the moment means,

As opposed to the fact that in this very present moment,

If we're truly present,

All of the things that we fear may be coming don't exist.

They are literally figments of a negative imagination that belongs to an unconscious nature that I'm going to talk about now,

That in its identification with its own imagination,

Projects and then produces a very distinct sense of self that we are totally familiar with,

And that we totally identify with,

And derive from that literally unconscious,

Dreamed-up nature,

A very distinct sense of self.

So let's put these first few minutes aside and get to the first point.

There are certain things that if we ever want to be free of these worried thoughts and feelings of the nature involved in them,

We're going to have to gain a certain insight,

A certain understanding,

And it can't be just the idea of it.

It has to be a hands-on revelation,

The realization of what?

You and I,

To whatever extent it is true,

Believe that we are a single,

Solid,

Constant identity at all times.

This is our belief,

And how do I know that this is just a belief and not the fact?

I'm going to ask you to fill in the blanks.

I want to be forgiving.

I don't want to harbor hatred or enmity.

I don't want to carry forward old accounts with people.

I want to be able to forgive and forget,

Because I understand from something that though I cannot live from it yet,

There's something in me that knows that love can't act against itself,

That love doesn't harbor anger and enemies.

Fill in the blanks.

It's not complex,

And that love doesn't act against itself.

I know that without having to think about it,

And yet in spite of the fact that there is one part of me that wants to let go and let God,

That really longs to do that,

The truth is there is a very distinct powerful sense of I that seems incapable of letting go,

That isn't just constantly creating or cultivating an enemy out of someone or some situation,

But even as it does that,

It pushes aside any consideration that this conflict with the moment is very painful,

Not just to me,

But everyone else,

And that I always have good reasons for feeling bad.

That one idea alone,

If it were examined and taken to its full extent,

Would change you.

How can I have good reasons why I should feel bad?

Who in the name of God gives themselves good reasons to hate someone when hating someone begins with the destruction of the only part of ourself capable of love?

That I can't be afraid of a moment without separating myself from it,

And then believing that this fear is there to protect me.

Fear can't protect me.

So the point is that this seemingly solid,

Very strong sense of I is not I at all.

It's just one of many,

As Christ would have called it,

Legion,

A multitude of various identities that appear on the spot,

Like lurch out of the Adams family,

That always bring up in the moment when they appear something about that moment that part of myself,

It wants to relive,

It will embrace that anger or that anxiety.

It will bring up that punishing condition,

Desire,

And then each time that very sense of myself,

That I,

That part of myself that I don't know is as temporary as the conditions that have brought it out of this unconscious nature.

Let me do it again.

This temporary sense of self that has been triggered out of an unconscious nature by some circumstance that's vaguely familiar to some other pain from its past.

And when that identity appears,

That I,

Not I,

Not real I,

But when that false sense of self appears,

It is fully dressed in all of its gear,

All of the content of its past,

So that all it sees is what it needs to see in order to validate its appearance.

And then when conditions change,

Which they do,

That circumstantial I disappears and it is replaced by another sense of I,

Another identity that comes out of that darkness in this unconscious nature with the stage set,

All the characters in place,

And it knows the lines,

And it knows the direction,

And it produces that scene.

And this is what happens in this unconscious nature.

It's like a perpetual stage that's on a rotating platform where every condition produces a certain sense of consciousness.

The condition passes,

That I passes,

The next I steps in and takes charge of the stage,

Always being brought back to life each time it remembers the condition,

Now listen,

That didn't even exist as a direction,

A directive in our consciousness until something went back and revisited that moment.

And that's a key idea here,

That I am captured by something that I don't recognize because when I'm captured,

I'm completely identified with the conditions that have grabbed me,

Something that doesn't know that each time it revisits this moment and identifies with reliving it,

It is trapped,

It is a captive,

It is confined by the conditions that are defining it in that moment.

And the conditions that are defining that I,

That sense of self in the moment,

Are all of the content,

The conditioned content from the past,

That as it comes up and one is captured by this identifying with it,

In that moment we begin to understand one of my favorite ideas,

William Blake,

He writes,

The fox blames the trap.

It's such a clever idea,

Four words describe the whole of this process of this painful identity that we keep struggling with.

The fox blames the trap.

Do you remember those Chinese finger puzzles?

You know,

It was like a straw tube and you put one finger in one side and put the finger in the other side,

And then after you put them in,

If you tried to pull your fingers out,

You couldn't pull them apart because the more you pulled,

The tighter the straw clamped down on the fingers.

Do you remember that,

That Chinese finger puzzle?

It's a great spiritual Chinese teaching.

Chinese handcuffs.

Yeah,

Well,

Why is my handcuff?

Because the more I try to pull out of them,

The more I'm cuffed by them.

What is that trap?

What is the actual nature of that trap?

The actual nature of that trap is identification.

My mind,

Without me knowing it,

Is triggered by some circumstance that brings up out of it some thought or feeling that as that negative thought or feeling comes up,

That consciousness that brings it up doesn't want it.

So it imagines a circumstance or a condition.

And by the way,

Any time that you are reliving the past,

You are in imagination.

I know that's difficult to conceive because nothing feels more real to us than when we are.

And by the way,

We never choose to go back to the past.

This mind draws us back into it so that it can relive the experience of itself at our cost of being present.

I should add.

So the more my mind brings up and remembers,

Looks at these things it doesn't want,

The more it resists,

The more it tries to pull itself out of the very position it put itself in.

The more it tries to pull itself out of the very position it just put in,

The more painful and tight the trap becomes.

I hope you're understanding,

ZKB.

I am explaining the trap.

So that moment of stress and strain that seems to repeat itself,

In this mind it always feels as if it's always talking and looking at the world as if he,

They,

This and them,

This condition has set itself against me.

And because it's set itself against me,

I have to fight.

I have to push.

I have to struggle.

But the fact is the world cannot set itself against you.

The world is a constant revelation of a perfect creative act.

At every possible level,

Even the darkest moments belong to a light yet seen.

So the world cannot push against us.

What is pushing against us is our own consciousness that perceives the moment,

Defines the moment according to the demands I have on the moment.

And then it isn't me,

Real I,

That sets itself against that life,

But something in me that a very distinct sense of self from the past says,

You know what,

That's not how it's supposed to be.

You shouldn't be like this.

And in that moment,

All I know how to do,

And listen,

Because I have identified with a threat that my own mind has created.

I have identified with a threat that my own mind has created.

Now if I identify with a dream,

A threat,

Some perceived event that brings up this anxiety and anger in me,

If I identify with it,

Is it really me that has identified with this ostensible threat?

Or is the I,

That part of myself that identifies with that threat,

Actually a part of the mechanism of the consciousness that's produced it?

And that's all that I want to point to at the beginning of this talk,

Is that there is something going on in the dark of us that we have no idea is going on.

And when we have identified with whatever that conflict is,

Then in that moment for identifying with it,

What is the nature of my identification with a moment that I don't want?

I'm going to pause.

What is my identification with any moment that I don't want?

What's the nature of it?

The nature of it is resistance.

The nature of the moment that I don't want,

That doesn't exist with an I that is fully identified with something from the past,

The nature of that moment is fully nothing other than resistance.

Now an important transition,

Even if you couldn't follow that,

You'll be able to follow this.

In those moments when I'm full of resistance,

What am I giving all of my attention to?

Here I am and yesterday you said this or I got an email I'm looking at it and it looks like it's going to be a problem.

In that moment where suddenly I'm feeling all of this resistance,

What is my attention on in that moment?

And I'll ask you just for a moment.

Yes,

Leah,

My attention is absolutely riveted on the experience I don't want.

My attention,

As goes my attention,

So comes the experience.

My attention is riveted onto the very thought or feeling that as I consider it and run through its iterations,

I don't want it.

That alone,

If we could ever see it,

Here I am and I'm worried about my health,

My money,

My wife,

My life.

I'm worried about the world and as the more I worry about the condition,

My mind is looking at and fabricating all of the possibilities connected to that negative imagination.

So the more I negatively imagine a condition and the more I attend to that,

The more I resist what my own mind is bringing out of the darkness of itself.

To what end?

To bring forth a very distinct sense of self.

An I that I don't know isn't I because I have always given myself over to that surreptitious identity every time it gets strong enough to grab my attention and then get me to start struggling with the condition that wouldn't exist if first that unconscious nature didn't attend to it.

That's right,

Like a bump in the night and then I'm all ears and meaning that I'm suddenly filled with all of the fears that my mind is projecting there in the darkness.

Now let me go on because this is a very important transition and we must understand this if we're going to go further in our spiritual work.

Nice deep breath.

When you give your attention,

I don't know,

It's fall here,

I don't know what part of the world you're in,

But in the fall in the states,

Western northern hemisphere,

All of the leaves are dying and in their death throes they are never more beautiful.

And that's a very important lesson unto itself.

Some of the unspoken,

Invisible,

Incomparable beauty of a leaf is only revealed as that leaf goes through the transition from one form into another.

Would that we understood the beauty of that,

But here's the point.

I give my attention to the beautiful colors,

The changing of the guard.

I walk out and I see a breathtaking night sky that I'm overcome.

I give my full attention to the depth and breadth of that dimension.

Am I not in that moment embracing the beauty,

The mystery of what I'm looking at?

Am I not in that moment embracing it?

Yes or no?

I need you to now go ahead and say yes or no.

Is that not an embrace of what I am attending to?

And we love that embrace,

Don't we?

Take a nice deep breath.

The fact that in the moment that I give my attention to something is the same as embracing it,

Doesn't change when I give my attention to an unwanted thought or feeling.

Because not only in that moment am I embracing the content,

The conditioned content of that memory,

Of that negative thought and feeling,

But in that same moment when I give my attention to that negative unwanted thought or feeling,

I am embracing the unconscious nature that creates it in that exact same moment.

But I don't think to myself,

Oh,

I'm embracing this moment from my past that I hate,

Because what I'm embracing is some part of me that's saying I hate this moment and I don't want it.

Oh,

If you could see this,

It might drive a wedge of light into this darkness in this unconscious mind that loves to recreate the experience of itself so it can be there.

And with each recreation,

The reincarnation of a strengthening of that sense of self.

Let's go through it one more time.

I look out and here I'm looking out my windows and all of the oaks are changing everything.

It's just gorgeous and the maples all beautiful.

I give myself,

I give my attention willingly to it.

And as I give my attention to it,

I embrace it completely so that there's as little distinction between the sense of self and the beauty it observes as possible.

The observer becomes the observed.

That is what holiness is.

But there is a dark,

Unholy state.

And that dark,

Unholy state is when without me aware of it,

My unconscious nature,

My mind gives itself its attention to what you did yesterday,

To what's happening here and there,

And all of the enmity and the enemies and all the things that I can't get past.

I give without knowing it,

That I gives my attention to that unwanted experience.

And in that moment,

It embraces the condition it doesn't want.

An unconscious nature embraces the condition it resists.

The unconscious nature embraces the condition it says it doesn't want.

And as it embraces the condition,

It is the same as bringing back to life,

Calling out of the grave,

That nature that should have passed when the conditions that gave rise to it gave it the lesson intended,

But it didn't learn it.

And so it repeats and repeats and repeats itself.

Can you see that?

Here comes that haunting memory.

Where in the name of God did you or I get the idea that becomes some thought bubbles up from some dark tar pit in this tormented,

Unconscious nature,

This conflicted nature in that somehow or other that I must in the moment that it comes up,

It's like believing that I owe myself a trip through a haunted house so that I can be scared by my own entrance into it.

And yet that's exactly what happens.

So that without knowing it,

I'm embracing the moment I don't want.

But because there is a particular part of me that says,

No,

I don't want that.

I hate that.

I don't want to go through that again.

I don't want to relive that moment.

We believe that the part of us that says,

I don't want to relive it is actually I,

Because it's such a strong,

Familiar sense of I.

But if it really doesn't want to relive it,

What's it doing?

They're embracing the very thing it says that's making it bitter.

See,

The fox blames the trap.

The fox being this unconscious I,

This legion of various identities formulated over time and then revitalized over and over again through resistance.

And then the more that it resists the condition,

The more certain it is that it actually doesn't want to relive what it is reliving for the millionth time.

So Ellen asked,

How do I tell it to go back to the graveyard?

It is in a way the change that Bob Marley experienced.

Yes.

You cannot go past any unwanted experience of life that you don't want in that moment.

You cannot go past any unwanted experience in life that you sit there and don't want in that moment.

This is what's so challenging to us,

Because all I know,

All I know to do in unwanted moments is to feel I don't want them.

And then the more I feel I don't want them to let that unconscious,

Dark nature come up with yet some new desire or some new design by which it will overcome the very activity of itself.

But this unconscious nature can't overcome the activity of itself.

The very attempt to overcome what it doesn't want strengthens its relationship to that thing that it says it doesn't want.

So that identity is reimagined and revisited,

Reincarnated,

Even as it claims to hate the experience that it's recreating.

Now,

Just I'll stop for a split second.

I'm going to get to a little exercise and then we'll have our dialogue.

What I'm going to describe to you is a fact and a truth,

But you must of yourself see it.

The fox blames the trap.

What is the fox?

What is the trap?

It is an unconscious nature divided up into what it identifies with and then what it doesn't want out of being identified.

Identification is the trap and it is the fox trapped in it.

A certain part of this unconscious nature looks at a moment and then phenomena as it is out of all the possibilities,

This mind will select one thing.

It'll find something that you said yesterday or 50 years ago.

It'll pull out of all the combinations of all the content intervening,

Changing in the moment.

It'll find one place,

One thing,

One circumstance,

And then it'll just drill,

Like just go right into that one thing that it doesn't want.

Now,

The problem of course is that that same nature will do the same thing with what it does want and then we fully give ourselves over to the immersive experience of the fulfillment and the promise of a desire that's going to free us.

Boy,

I'm all on board.

Let me just jump right into that sense of self that feels so rich and strong when it becomes what is imagined to be.

But that same identification,

That same consciousness has the flip side and it's not the light and dark side.

Desire is not light.

It is just the flip side of a divided nature that then because of what it's imagined it wants and needs and desires to be free,

Then runs into the conditions that challenge the identity that was derived from what it identified with.

And the split second that identity is challenged by the very circumstance it created,

Then it goes,

Oh,

No,

No,

No.

And then it gives all of its attention.

It embraces the negativity.

It embraces the resistance.

And we keep making the same spiritual mistake over and over and over again.

It's uncanny.

I'm actually describing to you one of the key pillars of purgatory.

Reliving and reliving and reliving the conditions that we say I can't stand.

And the more I can't stand the condition,

The more I imagine a way to escape it.

And I wouldn't be imagining a way to escape the condition if I weren't resisting it.

And the more I resist the condition,

The more that consciousness derives its identity from that false stimulation of itself through all that it is trying to,

In quotes,

Escape.

It's not trying.

You are not this.

It isn't you.

That I,

That sense of self that's angry,

Afraid,

Bitter,

Broken,

That I is not trying to escape the condition it says it doesn't want.

It is trying to deepen its embrace with it.

And the more you realize the truth of that,

That you see,

My God,

This has just been going on and on and on.

And not just me.

This is humanity.

My God,

You know the slogan,

Whatever it is,

With all of the things that go,

Never forget,

All that business.

Well,

Of course we forget.

We forget in the instant that we are identified with the anger,

The hatred that produced the very condition now we're trying to forget.

And so it's just this great big dark circle of self,

Reconstituting and recreating the conditions it doesn't want.

And we're never aware of it because my identity is so fully captured.

I'm so caught up in my anger,

My frustration,

My impairment.

I'm so caught up in it.

It never dawns on me that that I belongs to a level of consciousness that knows nothing about the freedom it imagines.

Because the more it imagines freedom,

The more it's a captive of its own desire when thwarted.

Now,

All of this in mind,

You ask,

What do I do?

First,

You have to at least recognize that what I've been describing to you is true.

There's nothing that can happen if you don't at least suspect and see into this,

Not because I've said it.

Please,

God,

Never believe a word I say.

The truth is you should never believe a word you tell yourself.

Seeing doesn't need words.

Understanding isn't an intellectual process.

Seeing and understanding is the unification of all the active parts of ourselves brought to bear at once into an awareness that reveals what is true without needing to speak of it.

So we must recognize this sense of self that cries out how much it doesn't want that experience.

The more it doesn't want it,

The more it actually lives it.

But that I,

That part of myself,

If it's true that that I does not want to be free,

And I can at least suspect that,

That it wants to live again,

Even though it's not really live,

Alive.

That I is not alive.

It is a memory.

It is a sense of self,

A conditioned body of energy that every time it's stimulated reappears.

And when it reappears and re-resisted,

The resistance imbues it with a sensation of life.

But resistance does not give life.

The exercise is learn to observe that I and let it go by.

Learn to observe that I and let it go by.

No,

Nellie,

Don't shout at yourself,

Shut up.

Don't do that to yourself,

Nellie.

If you see the truth,

Would you ever go into a canyon someplace,

Nellie,

And suddenly you hear a voice echoing through the canyon?

Would you yell at the echo,

Shut up?

Or would the very yelling of shut up at the echo produce an echo that would compound the conflict of the first echo?

This is the condition I'm describing to you.

Learn to observe that I,

That terribly familiar sense of self,

And let that I go by.

It will go by.

This is the thing that is so difficult for us to understand.

Life,

The stream of time,

All of the energies pouring in from one invisible celestial realm into a planetary body and all that has been created in it,

All of that comes in and it stirs all of this.

And when all of this is stirred,

It's meant to be stirred because that's how it's refreshed.

But when we are stirred,

Instead of recognizing that this is not meant to be a moment where something is stirred and now I'm stuck,

They're hating it,

We have to recognize that what I am stuck in is identifying with this resistance I feel.

And if I'm stuck in resistance and it's resistance that's reincarnating this painful thought and feeling and the unconscious nature responsible for it,

If it's resistance in doing that,

Then all I have to do is let that resistance,

That sense of self,

Let it go by.

It will go by.

Because the conditions that are creating that consciousness and bringing it up,

They are always changing.

And if I let that I go by,

A new I will be there that reveals to me,

Shows me through the awareness,

Wow,

I never had to say I to that.

I never had to agree to be angry.

And anger is an agreement.

Fear,

Worry,

Doubt,

All of these are agreements that we don't know have been made by an unconscious nature to keep itself alive and at the forefront of our experience instead of,

As it is intended,

You and I using the experience to realize that attention is an embrace.

And if attention is to embrace,

Then let me attend to the fact that if I'm angry,

It's because something in me has decided to embrace that moment that I hate,

That I don't want.

Then I can begin to connect the dots and I will be delivered from that unconscious nature because I have seen the truth of it.

Five,

Six minutes for us to have a little discussion or for you to post comments if you want.

It feels,

I have to be honest,

That there is a part of me that doesn't want the liberation I am constantly proclaiming.

Hypocrite and martyr in declaring I feel lighter.

If yet known Nikki,

Beautiful,

Absolutely perfect.

This is part of the,

There are certain very distinct parts,

Places along the road.

And they're different in terms of their content,

But not in terms of the consciousness.

Yeah.

I say I want to be free,

But all of my attention goes into resisting the conditions I blame for freedom,

Not being mine.

What would happen if I stopped blaming those conditions and became aware of a consciousness that creates the conditions it blames for its pain.

That that's a,

That is a complete shift.

That is driving this wedge of light into this darkness.

The observation before the particle.

Yes,

Exactly.

This mind,

This unconscious nature collapses all possibilities into a singularity,

A field of all possibilities into a single problem.

Imagine that.

And then the single problem that it creates gives it the identity of being someone pained by something that wouldn't and shouldn't exist.

Failing to see that the collapse of the field has produced that unconscious nature that hates the moment.

That's exactly right.

So just stare at it and wait for it to disappear.

Not stare at it,

Nellie.

Just observe.

Bring yourself back into your body and watch how something in you can't help,

But give itself over to what it doesn't want.

And then listen to that same part of you say,

But I can't help it.

I don't,

I'm powerless.

If you knew you were powerless,

Then that would change your relationship to the moment.

Because why am I resisting this moment other than from it,

I'm going to derive a very powerful sense of myself.

And then in that powerful sense of myself,

I'm going to deliver myself from my,

I'm going to save myself from my pain.

No,

Just learn.

Learn to observe.

Learn what it means inwardly to come to some kind of stop.

I have an exercise,

An old one.

You might want to write it down.

It pertains to this idea.

Stop,

Drop,

And endure.

Stop,

Drop,

And endure.

Here I am.

Suddenly I can feel the anger.

I'm looking at the news.

I'm getting all caught up and twisted inside.

And that's quite accurate because my mind is going right to that place where it knows how people should be.

It knows what you should do.

And the minute that that contraction,

Resistance is a form of what?

The opposites pushing against each other.

The minute I feel that contraction,

Come to a stop.

Come to a stop means in that moment,

I am going to become the observer of the consciousness instead of serving it.

All action other than observation ends.

Then in that place where I have become the observer,

I drop deliberately all of the ensuing subsequent thoughts and feelings that have come to prove to me,

No,

This is too different.

This is a very circum.

.

.

This requires you suffer.

This requires that you hate.

This requires that you revisit that enemy.

This requires it.

And you drop all of that.

And you don't drop it because you're trying to drop it.

You drop it because in your observation,

You're aware of the fact that this thing that's telling you to save yourself is burning you on the spot.

Stop,

Drop,

And then endure.

Stay there in that quiet awareness,

In that mindfulness for as long as you can.

Why?

So that you can see the dynamic of an unconscious nature that lives to deliver you into Egypt,

Into the land of darkness,

Into that servitude,

That slavery,

To a nature that because all it knows how to do to experience itself is to identify with something.

And I've shown you that identifying with what you don't want cannot bring an end to not wanting because the identification is keeping it alive.

Keep that in front of you.

Understand that.

Study it.

Don't just take these talks as something that you hear and then once and done.

I'm going to talk about this in great depth tomorrow,

By the way.

If you can join me tomorrow,

Search me out online or go to my profile here.

We have this notion that somehow or other being troubled and asking questions about our pain is the same as working to resolve it.

And it is not.

We must get in.

Truth is a full contact sport.

I hope I see you tomorrow,

If not Wednesday night,

Not Wednesday,

A week from today.

Do your work.

The fox blames the trap.

See yourself,

Catch yourself embracing the very pain that you say you don't want as you are identifying with it.

All you have to do is one shock.

It'll change everything.

Reviews

Wow. This was very helpful. Thank you so much teacher

Thank you 🙏

Very powerful . Stop, drop, and endure 🙏

AHA !!! I’m going to look deeper into this teaching moment much gratitude to you for sharing your insights with me
Namaste 🙏