I only say the following so that we can establish,
At least hopefully for many of us,
A common base for our work today.
I've been speaking at length and not just on Insight Timer.
You can find me,
I speak several times a week for free online,
Nothing to join.
But I believe it was last week that we covered this idea of the need to make what we would call a U-turn,
And then I strengthened that,
Understanding the meaning of that idea in difficult moments where instead of our attention being turned outward the way that it always is by our identification with these reactions that always point and blame things outside of us.
Then I went a little further and I spoke on,
I think,
The following Sunday.
Not sure,
Maybe it was the Wednesday,
But about this idea of the necessity for us to learn what it means to dive into the disturbances,
Not avoid them,
But to dive into them.
Certainly not fight with the conditions that seem to produce this conflict,
But to have a completely different relationship with those moments where it seems as if life has set itself against us.
So this is the basis for our work today because I have entitled this talk,
A Shocking Revelation That Sets You Free,
And we're going to expand what we've been working on up to this point.
And again,
I might add tomorrow,
Deeper Still.
So if you are interested,
You can find out about where I speak and join me.
Let's get started.
I want to get started on this new approach with a very old idea.
Most of us have heard it.
I'll just touch on it ever so quickly.
As above,
So below,
The inner determines the outer.
As within,
So without.
These are the old hermetic ideas,
But they hold in them a great truth.
And one of them that we can learn and must understand how to apply the meaning of it is that everything that appears in this world appears from and unfolds from the inside out.
We know nothing of the inside story of life.
Quite literally,
We know nothing.
Unfortunately,
We're interested in the inside story of entertainers and titans of industry.
We can't wait to read the inside story,
The inside story.
But when it comes to our own heart and our own mind,
We know almost nothing of the inside story.
And more importantly,
As part of our God-willing awakening to this inside story,
To realize that all of life unfolds from the inside out.
We see the surface of things.
We are very superficial creatures because our life is a relationship between what we see manifested in form outside of us and the movement that time puts it through.
But we know nothing of the consciousness in which all of this is being revealed,
From out of which this is unfolding from within us.
Everything is true this way.
How does anything grow?
Everything grows from the inside out.
You study a tree,
You look,
You learn about the age of a tree by its rings,
And the rings are concentric and they grow out.
How does a pearl become formed?
A single grain of sand causes a reaction and that emulsion surrounds that grain of sand until it becomes a beautiful pearl.
How does a wound heal?
Wounds don't heal from the outside in,
That's ludicrous.
Wounds heal from the inside out.
Even our relatively explorable universe is what?
It is expanding from the inside out.
So with this basis that I hope we can be in some concert over,
Can we not see that there seems to be only one immutable law of creation and yet at the same time only one exception to its revelation?
And what's the exception?
Us.
This fallen human consciousness sees everything in the world around us as coming in upon us.
So our level of life sees events,
Relationships,
Everything coming at us and unfolding over us like waves so that it means that our experience and the way we experience our relationship to these moments is that it looks like life is coming at us.
That's how we see things.
I'm sitting in my office,
I'm in my car,
My mind is set on some time that I need to get something done,
Something someone said I need to get straightened out and everything is seen as waves coming at us and not just waves coming at us but because of that perception we feel that we have to somehow or other be there to meet these waves or to run from them accordingly so that there's this incessant struggle with a world that we perceive as something unfolding outside of us,
Imposing itself upon us so that we never have an end of this list of things that if we want to be free we're going to have to control.
There are things we have to change,
Our past,
I've got to control,
I've got to figure out what happened,
If I'm ever going to be free of the fear of this future I'm going to have to first figure out how to protect myself from all of these unknowns that are just tumbling toward me and that I feel like if I don't know what to do with what's coming at me surely I'll be washed away,
My security will disappear so that our perception of this world is that we must ceaselessly protect ourselves from a world that's pressing in on us,
Coming at us from the outside in.
Nine minutes into the talk,
Can you see this with me?
We have no awareness whatsoever of the fact that our experience that now tells us is a product of a world acting on us,
Our actual experience is not the world that's acting on us but what is revealed within us as these actions take place around us.
So that back to the beginning we are creatures who do not understand that our experience is an inside out affair and the real story will never be understood until we realize our experience of the moment is an inside out one because our present experience separates us from the world outside of us and the reactions that create that separation then interpret everything that they see to validate the consciousness that sees it that way.
But we can use even at an elementary way in an elementary way certain understanding that we realize do we not how many different interpretations there could be of any given moment right now in our economic environment,
The bonds all these rising interest rates they mean one thing to a banker don't they but they mean quite a different thing to someone who's out shopping for a new home because as these mortgage rates rise it becomes more impossible for a person to become a first homeowner so the banker is drooling because they're making money and we're crying because the conditions don't allow us to make investments the way we would like to.
Two entirely different interpretations of the exact same event and if that's true,
Sorry,
Which it is,
How much more so is that true with everything that happens to us?
But the key here is that not only do these conditioned reactions and can you understand that it is a conditioned reaction that we have to these events that's what gives them their particular their particularity is that they fall upon a particular condition nature a persona a developed cultural response so these things fall on this conditioned consciousness and this conditioned consciousness can only respond with a conditioned reaction and the key here to understand is that this conditioned reaction to an exterior circumstance produces a very strong sense of self doesn't it and my identity is very much a derivative of the way in which I am reacting to these conditions that's what my identity is in any given moment is something stirs within me that something within me blames outside of me for its appearance then I identify with whatever that conditioning tells me is the cause of that conflict fear or worry and in that moment not only it does that provide a very strong sense of myself from a conditioned nature but our identification with that consciousness is strengthened at the same time and if you're following my line of thought you can see that this is a very corrupting denigrating set of circumstances where instead of being liberated and free because of growing into new understanding about our consciousness and the way it can only respond with these conditioned reactions that place everything outside of us we find ourselves in a constant battle do we not to control these external circumstances and we feel compelled compelled to control the external circumstance that doesn't exist without a misperception of the fact that the world is not unfolding outside in it's unfolding inside out and if we understood that then would realize whatever it is that we're looking at in the world around us can't be separated from the consciousness that's creating that perception Kate I don't know if you have the key lesson available I'll pause for just a moment I'd like to post it if we can it'll strengthen what we are looking at so far let me read it and then I'll hope that Kate puts it up good in much the same way as a mirror reflects whatever object is brought before it so our consciousness reflects and realizes the character or quality of whatever is revealed within it this is what the exterior world does its activity is it acts upon the content of a consciousness to reveal the content of that consciousness to the awareness that that consciousness sits within so that through this unfolding relationship instead of forever trying to free ourselves from the conditions we blame for this sense of captivity we can begin in some small way to realize events are always neutral in nature events are always neutral in nature what gives them their character or their quality is the extent the depth or the breadth of the consciousness conditioned to respond to them that way and to derive an identity based on those reactions that's for the most part all our identity is right now if you can see it with me I have a reaction to what you said to this political party doing this I have this reaction to my econ economic circumstance I have a reaction to what the doctor tells me and the whole of my identity is a derivative of that reaction everything I think about is an extension of that reaction every solution I seek to the pain of that reaction is to somehow or other provide some circumstance by which I can change the condition that I see blameworthy for whatever it is that I'm going through but if I'm making this first point at halfway through the talk what we're trying to do in these moments when we're trying to control external circumstances is we're actually trying to protect what amounts to a mistaken identity because our stress in these moments is not the result of the event the stress is actually our own as a resistance to our own negative reaction and the negative reaction is this conditioned mind it's not just your conditioning not just my conditioning because while we can see the individual instances by which this takes place we can also see in a much broader scheme of things that there are these much larger bodies of conditioning what do you think races racism is what do you think any form of hatred towards any particular leaning left or right word where do you think you got all of that fire from and where it comes from is that over time this consciousness humanity's consciousness conditioning itself and conditioning itself and conditioning itself until a young person can grow up in this race or this creed or this religious background and before they're six years old they have hatred towards anything that doesn't affirm their identity on the name of God does that happen unless that consciousness is so asleep to itself that it has no idea what it's doing to itself let alone how every reaction it takes to validate its position proves to it that it has the right and must somehow or other secure itself in whatever it imagines life is supposed to do and be this is our our present condition and underneath all of that instead of us growing from the inside out we're being crystallized from the outside in full of reactions and resistance that we feel are necessary in order to protect who we have imagined we are who this consciousness has told us that we are and while all of that's going on the genuine self your true nature that is intended to to unfold from the inside out and you and I as a witness of the ceaseless cornucopia of consciousness lies forgotten buried underneath everything and so where instead of learning from these events as were intended to through neglect which is really what it amounts to we can't blame ourselves for it we're brought into a world that abhors the idea of an individual actually beginning to take responsibility for what comes up from inside of them look how popular this culture has made the idea of being triggered what a ludicrous idea that a human being can trigger me how can someone trigger me unless there's a gun loaded inside of my consciousness waiting to go off so instead of looking at the person who triggers me as an enemy I can realize something of what Christ meant when he said love thine enemies because the person that triggers this consciousness is helping me to see by that big bang that reaction helping me to realize oh my god I came into this moment I had no idea that I was so anxious or tense that I had this much anger towards this or that situation and then in a split second I'm off and I'm carried away by that reaction that I have no understanding of and have no hope of understanding as long as I remain a human being who sees the world outside of me as responsible for what is welling up within me imagine if you will for a moment this idea that if I'm ever going to understand the nature of this relationship that I have that you have with our own reactions I'm gonna have to start realizing I can't trust my own reactions to tell me the truth do you do can you see it all how dependent we are on our own reactions to not just point to the problem but explain to us the problem our own reaction that is as we're about to see clueless want to write something down there is no wisdom there is no understanding of any kind in any negative reaction there is no wisdom there is no understanding of any kind in a negative reaction none please see it for yourself it's pointless if I sit here and say these things to you but you don't see it you tell where is the wisdom in destroying yourself with anger where is the wisdom in an understanding that tells you that you must crush someone because they're not coinciding with your opinion or your belief there is no wisdom in any negative reaction even if and sometimes it does a reaction may lead to a temporary solution because sometimes they do but what good is a temporary solution it's like the the moment of a ceasefire on a battlefield just waiting for the next shell to land just waiting for the next condition to come along and stir that consciousness into its unconscious activity again and once again we're remanded over to these waves of reactions that carry us nowhere we need new self-knowledge for instance transition all and see it with me all reactions are what all reactions remember you go to the doctor he hits your your your knee and your leg flies all reactions are the passive response of whatever nature has been acted on to produce that reaction all reactions are a passive response of whatever nature has been acted on to produce that reaction do we see that so if that's true and it is that means that if I have an angry fearful stressed reaction what's the source of that reaction it means there is some passive nature in this consciousness that this consciousness is passive to itself and that when an event acts upon it the only way it can react is with the content and the the the expression manifestation of itself and those negative reactions if we follow this thought at all cannot bring an end to the source of that stress these negative reactions are secretly the extension the continuation of the very consciousness responsible for the pain be like putting your hand under burning water after you scalded it on a skillet to try to heal it which means if we're following this at all that as long as this unconscious nature the dark father of these painful negative reactions as long as it remains in place uninvestigated unrevealed none of the pain that it produces can be healed this is an adage of mine that I've spoken for years whatever remains concealed cannot be healed pure and simple this is a very important idea what remains concealed cannot be healed why because okay imagine for a moment god forbid that you or I hurt ourselves for instance just ever so briefly today's Saturday Thursday I hurt my back now imagine when I hurt my back that in the moment that I know I've hurt my back I look at that pain because that pain is what tell me doesn't it what tells us you just hurt yourself so imagine that I became aware of that pain when I hurt my back and I had the power to stop it to interfere with the way in which the body in its natural function heals itself because the body heals itself when it is injured by calling attention to the pain of that injury and so the the body if you will makes itself and the whole the rest of the centers aware of a disruption in its balance and in the awareness of that pain all of the forces are brought together to bring about the healing of whatever it is that had that pain because of the injury do you see this with me please now what if you and I could interfere well here's this pain I don't want this pain now of course we don't want the pain but we recognize the pain is part of the healing process do we not the pain isn't the problem the problem is the part of us that says the pain is a problem and the part of us that says the pain is the problem says it's the problem because it's responsible for the pain and it doesn't want you or I to ever suspect that the proper action in the moment is to is to recognize that all that we're talking about right here here is that if healing is going to take place from the inside out then that means that you and I god help us must learn what it means not to interfere with the negative reaction the pain of that reaction we must learn what it means to not interfere with the pain of our own negative reactions that's the shocking truth that brings about the healing you and I at this point in our life for the most part depending upon our level of development can't help but get in there and mess with the moment where some painful reaction is telling us something's messing with our lives from the outside in life is not messing you messing with you from the outside in life is bringing into you those qualities characters energies and conditions required for you and I to bring about the healing of this unintegrated disheveled fragmented consciousness so full of all of its conditioned content that has no idea what it's doing to itself let alone to others we must learn not to interfere with these negative reactions with the pain of them now first of all maybe some of you have seen that as a fact when at last you know the student's ready the teacher appears when the teacher appears it's not oh boy I'm glad the teacher's here teachers come to show me something that I'm not particularly interested in learning and yet there it is and when I finally realized the lesson is not going away because by the grace of god the teacher continues to appear in in the matrix of this consciousness and it's unfolding from inside out eventually a person realizes I must I must be willing to recognize this that for every one of these moments where there is this reaction there is a lesson hidden in it if I'll let it unfold from the inside out to let the reaction unfold we're afraid of our own reactions aren't we and even the fear of our own negative reactions is the perpetuation of that identification so as long as that unconscious nature remains unexplored there's nothing that you or I can do in any given moment that's going to bring about our liberation which brings us to this point in the talk because I want to leave it open for dialogue and questions and stuff like that how am I to explore my own negative reactions when as I am now all I know how to do is what is react negatively to my own reactions all I know is to resist my own reactions all I know to do is to go into thought about my reactions all I know to do is to try to protect myself from what the reaction is pointing to as the source of my pain that's all I know to do I'm a completely limited creature because I am so much a captive of a conditioned mind it doesn't dawn on me that I've been doing these things for a thousand years ten thousand years and nothing has changed everything if if anything has gone deeper underground have you ever wondered what all of this ridiculous legislation is why why is it even necessary why do we have to legislate what it means to be a good person it's because we're trying to control outside a nature that wells up inside and the more we try to control the outside the more resistance there is and the more we begin to unfortunately experience the pain of our own resistance let me go on how do I explore these negative reactions instead of letting them tell me I must control the circumstance for it how do I do that I hinted at it I must learn what it means in those moments to not interfere with what is unfolding from the inside out I must become a witness to the movement of my own reactions not the instrument unwitting as he or she may be of what the reaction says go here do this think that run from this get your hand none of that I must leave the negative reaction pure unadulterated not get my hands into it at all because if I'll understand as I'm trying to describe and as best I could this is unfolding from the inside out that means that that reaction has a purpose everything that moved from the inside out is bringing itself to its fruition is it not is there anything that grows that as it grows isn't further expressing the the instrument the consciousness that it is that it is expressing in that moment it's almost impossible for us to think that these negative reactions serve an entirely different purpose than the one that our reaction to them tells us they do but I'm saying to you if nothing else can you not see that that has to be true if nothing else I've never even explored the idea of being patient in the presence of a negative reaction of consciously voluntarily suffering the upwelling of that reaction so that instead of getting outside of it and trying to press it down or control it I made a witness to the content of the consciousness responsible for it so that the reaction is actually revealing to me if I will let it go through this flowering it's revealing to me the consciousness that gives rise to it and that's the only way we will ever have an inlet into understanding this consciousness and all of its conditioning we have to let it play itself out from the inside out instead of letting it play us as we try to prove somehow or other that we wouldn't be experiencing this if it weren't for the people or the circumstances around us that's all hogwash it's all a lie and eventually person has to realize that person has to see it I cannot and I've never been able to change or control now listen the consciousness that continues to play itself out even when certain circumstances have been put away avoided or controlled the consciousness remains in place because it is not going through the natural healing that it would go through the what is the healing of anything as I close this talk what is the healing of anything if not the integration of it when the body heals isn't that how it heals what was wounded and disparate from the balance is brought back into the balance and integrated into the whole this consciousness cries out we don't recognize these negative reactions as a way in which we're being invited to enter into the revelation of a consciousness that can't heal itself this consciousness can't heal itself but we can bring this consciousness into this awareness of itself and that awareness when we allow these reactions to to to come up and we watch them we see them we see the consciousness responsible then we understand what is required of us for this real healing and the liberation in it to take place from the inside out simple exercise catch yourself always being taken out what is thought considering this moment considering this person what are these emotional upheavals other than some response to a moment that this is blaming for it can we can we become a human being who lives inside out instead of an identity derived from outside in mindfulness living meditation call it what you will it's it's a it's a it's a directive for us to redirect our attention to make this u-turn to dive into the disturbance to not interfere with the reactions and let them tell us about ourselves instead of this unconscious self always telling us about itself had enough this is where you begin if you want to i've got six or seven minutes eight minutes maybe we can have a dialogue you can post any question any comment i know i've seen several go by but i i wanted badly to produce the whole of this idea for you janice this talk point pinpoints of what's going on in my life it feels like hard work to remain in the moment without trying to yes it does but see um it it it is what we do in the present moment that alone changes what is producing our experience of it you can post action reflection all that business and it doesn't change anything leave the negative reaction alone it's really fascinating as i'm waiting for you all to post if you're going to ask a question it's fascinating i have a negative reaction you will agree i can't stand this negative reaction right i i hate this negative reaction and and what's the first thing that i do when i have this negative reaction i give all my attention to it so i literally identify with the very thing that i'm resisting now we don't see that that makes no sense because when i'm resisting the reaction i believe that it's going to lead me to some realization that will free me you can't free yourself from identification with a painful reaction by identifying with the reaction to it it's impossible what should we do at the moment of disturbance i've been describing it nelly that's our problem is something always says do this go there think this figure that out it's a it's a it's a shell game nelly it's a fool's errand to listen to the consciousness that's creating the conflict tell you how to resolve it and when you understand that to whatever extent you can and you take that understanding with you into the moment maybe there'll be a slight pause maybe you'll dive into that disturbance to learn about it instead of letting the disturbance as it always does tell you why it's there and then say i'm going to deliver you from this just follow me no reaction can deliver you from the consciousness that produces it what are some of the ways we can engage with our desire that honors these knowings be willing to explore them edna just take what don't don't try to make a big deal out of this you'll be negative before an hour is out we can't have this this consciousness with god as my witness if it doesn't have something immediately disturbing it it will go into thought and find something in thought to disturb it it'll have a reaction to its own search and then try to search how to save itself from what it came up with you have to see this listen to me nelly observing is not nothing real self-observation is the first real activity because otherwise i am constantly in a passive place to my own reactions being the observer i become aware of the whole movement observation is highly active and what you're actively aware of is this passive nature responding passively and you see this nelly you see the truth of this and it begins to separate you free as the wheat is separated from the chaff it's all one great beautiful divine threshing machine this whole world our life is is meant to be an adventure in letting go but we can't let go until we see something's clinging should we consider negative reactions as positive feedback look we don't need to name these negative reactions in fact we mustn't that's our problem right now our negative reaction does what it names for us the reason why it's there let us let us leave the names alone i don't need a name i'm having this immense upwelling of resistance i'm feeling very negative i've never understood why i what these the real reason for these negative reactions because they always are explaining themselves away i'm going to let the awareness of that reaction explain the reality of it i'm going to let my awareness of the reaction explain the reality of it the purpose of it and when you do that you will be guided unerringly into greater and greater understanding of that consciousness and all of its activity it seems we need to get out of the matrix just like neo yeah you know one of the reasons that book that movie was so popular is because there is certain truths to that what am i feeding when i'm negative i feel like i'm feeding something i need to free myself but i'm not freeing myself when i'm negative i'm feeding that level of consciousness that not only creates the the the identification and the attachment but when anything threatens what it has created then it creates for itself a solution so all of that energy is negative and downward and feeding an unconscious nature we don't want to feed this unconscious nature we want these impressions to be what they're meant to be which is food for the soul don't try to get out of the pain of the reaction and this is our problem our reaction to the reaction tells us the pain is something that shouldn't be there imagine telling your body when you hurt your hand the pain shouldn't be there that's ludicrous isn't it the pain is there because the body is drawing attention to what needs to be healed this reaction we have is drawing attention to the consciousness that is in pain the consciousness our consciousness unconscious nature is in pain it's in conflict because it's forever divided up into what it believes life should be like according to its images and everything that threatens these images so these events are drawing attention to a consciousness that is fragmented and if we allow the reaction to reveal to us this consciousness that very awareness integrates it and it separates us properly from the suffering inherent and always fighting the situations we believe are responsible for our suffering the pain brings awareness of the source of it yes that's right yes debbie let the awareness of the reaction explain the purpose and the and the reality of it these are good comments everybody when you go into a beautiful afternoon this time of the year we have i call it the magic hour around 5 6 p.
M sun's going down the light hits a certain angle on the horizon and everything is lit with a certain gold a golden light i'd be a fool if i explained to myself the meaning of that moment my awareness is inseparable from my experience of the of the meaning of that moment you can't explain beauty but it's beautiful you can't explain stillness but it's perfectly quiet awareness holds within it the understanding that we seek because the understanding we seek is not in thought and it's certainly not an activity of reaction all right 44 minutes gotta go if you want to learn more and i hope you do continue this journey of making u-turns of diving into the disturbance of actually recognizing what does it mean to not interfere with this negative reaction let it let it unfold from the inside out so that i might see what it is bringing to me instead of me feeling like life is punishing me
