This Moment Is The Teacher (Satsang - A Sacred Wisdom Talk)

We've taken the unprecedented step of sharing this month's Open Space Satsang here on Insight for anyone seeking answers at this time.

Description:
We turn the eyes of our hearts to look at what is unfolding in Britain at this time and explore the critical role of consciousness in navigating through it. With a compassionate perspective, we discuss how to create meaningful change amidst societal turmoil, emphasizing the importance of true self-awareness. We reflect on bringing the light of wisdom to our personal and collective dynamics while encouraging a shift from hyper-individualism to a more inclusive and supportive community.

This Satsang is an invitation to embrace the wisdom of the present moment in order to engage in actions that reflect the truth of the light that is throughout all existence.

Transcript

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the August satsang video.

It's really beautiful to be here with you.

I hope you are doing well in your life and your shining of the light out into the world through the sort of the mandala that you're making.

It was really beautiful to sit together about a week ago in our live satsang and such a clear feeling coming through that as we have been moving on with our sort of practice and teachings and so on that you are the mandala.

People moving into different roles in their lives,

Wanting to be helpful in the world,

Meeting the obstacles of the day with that bit more clarity and truth and you can actually see it in your faces.

That's what is really interesting.

It's just really interesting from my point of view,

Seeing you and seeing the light begin to inhabit your physical forms and then,

As we've talked about a lot recently,

Moving out more in genuinely meaningful action.

And yet the forms are very different for each of you,

What you're doing and so on.

It may be that we're allowing the light to come into our relationship.

It may be the way that we work in the hospital.

It may be the way we sit with somebody who's dying.

It may be the way that someone stands on stage and communicates with those in the audience or through the video or whatever.

Beautiful,

Absolutely beautiful.

So my deepest gratitude to you for your life and for your practice and for just being who you are because that's it.

The actual secret is there.

It's about actually being who you are and allowing the light to illuminate that.

I want to talk about the current situation in the world,

Well in Britain actually,

Which I'm sure you're all aware of because the path cannot divorce itself from what is actually happening to real people,

With real people in the moment.

And while we work on understanding the ground of being as we've been discussing,

Being like the primary initial spiritual concern,

When we begin to tread the path and we can either take a structured approach to that or a directly pointed approach.

I'm more of a direct pointer as a teacher,

But I do understand that people need structures too.

So I do my best to create structures,

But I find that the hardest work of all actually to work in that way because my own change was direct.

And so I have to kind of rethink everything and trying to kind of put it into some sort of conceptual framework,

Which of course what we're talking about is beyond concept.

Let me grab my cup of tea.

And so I'm sure you've seen England,

Britain,

Right now in this first week of August 2024,

Through some news media or through social media or something.

And people are calling it this and calling what's going on that.

Very interesting,

Very,

Very interesting,

Terrifying as well,

From just a basic human point of view.

And so I wanted to look with you at the conditions that are part of this,

Because you will recognize it in use within your own society too,

I am sure.

And then I want to reflect on what we might do and how we rehabilitate a little bit from this with a very long view,

Which is what we've got to have.

You know,

So we're working with the now,

The eternal moment,

The fourth state,

As it's called in,

In certain principles,

Turiya,

It's called when you have that experience of the emptiness that is full,

That is you,

But is not you,

That has always been.

And yet,

Life and expression and the mandala takes place in time,

And organically.

So,

As we were saying,

In the satsang,

It's complete as one,

And it's complete as two,

When we stand on the ground of truth of being of the light that is throughout.

But then it's the action into the world that really,

Really matters.

So we don't try and change our lives.

But what we do do is we allow our lives to be changed from the urgings of spirit,

As we might say,

Rather than the falling through the conditions of mind.

So just looking at what we might call the situation.

I just want to invite you to take a moment to feel that for yourself.

If you don't know what I'm talking about,

I invite you to go access TikTok and type in British riots,

Something like that.

TikTok is probably the best place to look because it's more unfiltered.

Standard news media is going to give you what that system and its allegiances and alliances want you to think of from that point of view.

So I invite you to pause this if you don't know what I'm talking about,

And go and have a look.

Or if you do know,

Then sit with it for a moment and sit with it in the heart of wisdom,

In the light of self.

Now,

What can be difficult is because we're moving in the nameless realm.

It can be hard to name things.

It can be hard to explain things.

But the heart of the light,

The wisdom in us sees,

And it is the wisdom that we need individually.

So what we see structurally,

And we always have to look at the structures,

Is we see that the UK has.

.

.

Ha!

United Kingdom.

I'm going to have to change the name.

The UK has recently become a vassal state,

And much in the same way,

In political terms,

Much in the same way that the US is a vassal state.

And so there's always a function being played out through that.

And what we've seen for the longest time is influence into education,

Which has kind of deprived people of knowledge of the light that is.

But not just within education,

But within the culture as well,

Generally.

So the removal of the arts from culture,

The removal of culture from the culture,

The removal of the humanities,

And so on,

As well as the non-teaching of history in a meaningful understanding way,

And so on.

And you can build something over a long period of time,

And this is how regimes work,

You know,

In a kind of a long.

.

.

It's a long playbook.

80 years,

We've talked about this,

That the span of a human life-ish is a great way to radicalize a population or create what you want within it.

Through the filtering in of ideas,

Because there's the reaction to what came before,

Which lasts about 20 years.

Then there's the middle years of kind of comfort and complacency.

And then there's the tip back over into the stuff from before,

Because it didn't get healed during that time,

Because we expect things to be automatic.

We expect things to be we expect things to be automatic.

We expect love and healing and democracy and so on to be automatic.

So what we've actually seen in using our language here is we've seen the creation of a weaponizable pain body,

Populace.

So you get people operating at.

.

.

Most people operate at about 30,

20,

30% of pain body.

The average person,

They have about 20,

30% of pain body in them.

They avoid certain things in their lives.

They build their structures in a certain way to keep themselves safe from it.

They have little bubbles that they move through,

Not realizing that they create their lives in that way.

Of course,

Because it's all acting out of the unconscious,

But generally that's kind of what's going on.

And that's kind of okay.

And then once in a while,

Something happens,

You go visit your parents at Christmas,

You go to on holiday with your partner or something like that.

And boom,

The bomb goes off kind of thing.

Or both your bombs go off or everybody's goes off.

And then you feel like a five-year-old child again,

Humiliated and belittled at your own explosions and so on.

So that is pretty standard fare.

As we walk this path,

The open space path,

Of course,

That recedes more and more until it pretty much doesn't exist.

So I've not had a pain body experience in that way for a decade since the change,

Where something has just taken over in that way,

Which is very reassuring.

That's the reason I'm telling you I'm not boasting.

It's just the practice actually works.

This way of life actually works.

But when you want to create a weapon,

The best way to do that is through sort of deprivation,

Radicalization,

Separation,

And removal of space,

Removal of anything connective and so on,

And replacing it with a kind of constant messaging about something.

And so what we actually have,

People call them rioters and things here,

But what we actually have is a weaponizable massed pain body that operates around about 80% with some people trying to go for the hundred.

And it's easily triggerable by very,

Very small things.

And that's very,

Very easy to create.

It's very interesting.

One of the,

This is purely psychologically we're talking,

Is that if you create the conditions in the right way so that parents and children don't form proper attachment bonds,

Which often happens,

Not just in what we might call the lower class.

It happens very much in the middle classes too,

Through distancing and egoic ideas of self and so on.

And the higher up you go,

The weirder it gets actually,

The more upper class,

The weirder it gets.

So there's lots of dissociative stuff goes on.

And whichever of the classes,

If you work with that structure,

Forgive me for working with these structures today.

If that proper attachment model doesn't take place,

It's not even a model,

A proper attachment is a necessary human condition and human thing.

Then the child does not develop a self.

And so the self then becomes externalized objects.

So nationality,

Nation state,

Political class,

Us against them.

And so when something like this happens,

When this is ignited,

And it's very easy to ignite,

Then that rage,

That intensity of pain body rushing through every fiber seems to define a sense of self,

Not only a sense of self,

But then a sense of community too,

Because there are others just like you and you have an enemy.

You have an enemy,

These brown people,

You know,

These black people,

These people who,

You know,

Come over here or whatever.

And,

Of course,

You don't know your own history.

You don't know the effect of your history on the lives of others,

And the continuous pressure on those people throughout their lives and the denial of opportunity and so on.

And they form pain bodies of their own,

Because of this,

Of course,

And the relative attachment disorders,

And you have a very manipulable situation on your hands.

So that is kind of what's going on.

That's from,

You know,

The perspective of consciousness.

A friend of mine visited the other night.

And was making the argument that these people are unintelligent,

Which may be true.

But it's not true.

Because the instigators of these things,

The ones who push and pull and control these things,

We've all come across highly intelligent people who use their intelligence for no good whatsoever,

For evil.

In fact,

We might use the word evil today.

And so,

You know,

All you got to do is look at the social media sphere,

Certain peoples that use their intelligence,

So-called intelligences for evil and division.

And they end up as professors of this,

That,

And the other,

A lot of these people too,

You know.

So you can have really unpleasant,

Intelligent people doing terrible,

Terrible things or engendering terrible,

Terrible things.

So it's got nothing to do with intelligence.

So what's it got to do with?

And so I was saying to Rob,

My friend,

That it's actually a matter of consciousness.

So if you have absolutely no space whatsoever within you,

The pain body wants to explode out all of the time,

You know,

Any chance it gets,

Because at least there's a sense of freedom in that.

So the process of rehabilitation,

We might say,

And this is for ourselves and for others,

If we find ourselves in kind of closed states and not in the open space,

Is about working with consciousness.

And it's really quite simple to work with consciousness,

Simple to work with consciousness,

But it's really quite easy to suppress it as well.

So if you look at the bottom layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

Which I'm not a fan of,

But will do for this for this moment,

As it were,

Because it isn't like that.

You just,

You just got to feel into it.

It's very obvious.

It's not like that,

But structurally it's kind of,

It's a useful model for certain things.

And so if you,

You know,

Remove security around food,

Security around shelter,

You remove security,

Work security,

You have no sense of belonging,

No sense of connection,

No sense of proper sexuality and so on.

If those things are limited,

Limited,

Limited,

You know,

Imagine the simulacrum available to us now through our phones,

For example,

That not just in terms of kind of messaging,

Which creates pain body,

But,

You know,

Pornography instead of intimacy and connection,

For example,

And sexuality closed worlds,

Simulating human connection,

Instagram and so on.

And but no movement towards any actual human friendship and connection based in the values that we talk about friendliness and love and kindness and spirit and so on that naturally make a friendship relationship and so on.

So we have to work with consciousness.

And the way we work with consciousness is by creating spaces where people in some way,

In any way,

Structurally,

Genuinely can experience any fragment of the light that is throughout.

And it's really interesting what came to me as a route that helps people,

Which you might be surprised by,

But it's reading.

But,

You know,

Of course,

Getting people to read is another matter,

Kind of thing.

Not reading as like the identity of having of being an intellectual.

I know plenty of people like that.

And in the world I moved through.

But I mean,

Just reading.

I remember being 13,

14 years old.

I should have brought it with me to show you.

And and I might have been 16 at some point.

And I'm round at my beloved friend Sam's house.

You've heard about Sam,

My beautiful friend Sam.

And I used to sleep over there a lot.

And I remember picking up just because it was there.

Jonathan Livingston Siegel.

And introduced me to what I did not know I needed.

And what I was wanting to show you was I forgotten is for my 60th birthday.

I happened to be walking along,

Went into this antique bookstore and was a not first edition of Jonathan Livingston,

But the first British edition of a hardback of Jonathan Livingston Siegel with really high quality paper in it.

It's actually the fifth printing or the fifth edition of the book.

But it is the first time it appeared in Britain as a hardback and really highly produced,

You know,

Highest quality sort of thing.

And I'm rereading it right now.

And it's such a thing of beauty.

But regardless of Jonathan Livingston Siegel.

The the act of reading introduces another voice into you.

There's space to actually experience yourself.

You begin to have empathy for characters and so on.

Reading to me is one of the most beautiful ways of transforming people's lives,

Which is why I'm involved in the creation and running of reading groups all around the country.

I'm just mentoring four new people at the moment.

We've trained up 16 people to run reading groups for the next year.

I have four of them.

And having actually been out in the street and done this for myself as well,

Actually run reading groups for the Royal Literary Fund and seeing people's lives genuinely change through this is absolutely incredible.

So that's only a kind of a tiny example.

There are other things like I have this idea of gardens and peace gardens and things as well.

So any kind of open space externally can,

Can not necessarily will introduce some space to the inside of the person.

So you can't experience space internally.

It needs to be experienced externally.

And then slowly,

Slowly things will kind of sort of find their way back.

But in terms of what we can do,

What you can do,

As it were,

Then I encourage you to,

As you have been already doing,

Is to work within your mandala.

You know,

You have a particular mandala unfolding for you from the work that you do,

The person that you are,

The relationships that you have that moves out into the world.

But to kind of keep this in mind as you work or keep this in heart and spirit as you work the mandala,

Basically.

So one example of this would be,

And that I'm experiencing quite directly,

But not unsurprisingly,

Is not one person has checked that I'm okay or that I was okay during this time.

Even though in my writings,

I have earlier writings,

You know,

Up to full blood talked about,

You know,

Experiences of literally being kind of beaten to the ground and so on by Nazi skinheads and so on when I was younger and lack of opportunity and all this sort of stuff,

You know,

Because of the systems in place.

And that this is re-triggering and so on,

You know,

In this body very strongly.

I was experiencing it for the first time ever,

What it's like to be here.

But India has its own,

When we're in India,

India has its own sort of mob mentalities as well,

Which is controlled by the the government there through WhatsApp groups and so on.

So,

But it's the same weaponization of a pain body that will trigger around certain trigger words,

You know,

Like most of you in America,

You know,

So listen to people constantly using the trigger words within their broadcast to keep people radicalized.

And so,

You know,

You'll get words like woke as a trigger,

Leftist,

Far left,

This,

That,

The other,

You know,

What do you call it?

CRT,

Critical race theory,

You know,

Black Lives Matter.

So there'll be these anti-messages all of the time.

And that's from one side to the other,

But then from the other side,

Then there's other messaging,

You know,

And it'd be very easy to mistake the other side of this thing as being in any way better.

We can mistake it as being so because we may benefit from it in some small way.

It's always small ways.

The economy might be slightly better under this lot,

But we're committing a genocide at the same time,

You know,

So we're not ready to move beyond these systems yet.

But that doesn't mean to say that we don't see them for what they are,

You know,

And so we have to do the best we can within them,

But our our intention for structural change stemming from the truth of the light that is,

Is,

Will bring bring better changes,

But we have been taught to not create structural change.

We've been taught to make noise,

Protest,

Say oh dear about things,

Which I've made a joke out of on social media these days.

Every time something happens I just write oh dear,

Which some people get the joke and others just don't know what I'm doing,

But there you go.

It's just me being Irish or partially Irish.

And enjoying that,

That kind of part of my mandolin,

You know,

That part of the expression.

You may,

If you've got that humor,

You may as well do something with it.

So yeah,

So one of the things we can do is look for areas of structural change within our own mandala,

But prior to that we can check if people are okay.

We can offer our love and it's not about knowing the right thing to say.

You get this a lot when,

Um,

You know,

Somebody dies.

No one comes to visit you because oh I didn't know what to say,

You know,

They say when they finally talk to you.

I'd have come round but I didn't know what to say,

You know,

And of course it's about turning up,

Not about what you say.

It's about turning up and saying I don't know what to say,

But I'm here.

I don't know what to say,

But I'm standing with you.

It's exactly the same as internal family systems.

We say these to our own parts as we're going through our healing in a child work and so on.

You know,

I don't know what to do,

But I'm here.

Self is here.

I am here with you.

I'm going to stand beside you and I'm not going to let you go.

I will be here.

Oh,

I know,

I'll make you some food,

Something like that,

You know.

So,

From the light that is,

We actually do need to start doing some actual things and I find that this time,

As dangerous as it is,

Is a great teacher.

Everything is a great teacher.

Every moment has a lesson in it and this is such a lesson because the media and the press will have you looking just at the edge of the wave and saying this is terrible.

How the hell did this happen?

What a shock it is,

But actually you're capable of looking at the ocean.

You know the ocean because the ocean is you and so you can see the dependent arisings that lead to these things.

You know,

You have that wisdom in you through the way that we work.

It's already in you,

It's just that we have ways of working with that and we're not just stumbling about.

So,

We look and you know you can follow the money that will always tell you really what's going on a lot of the time if you want to know what's going on and you can follow the larger structure very easily by looking at the object consciousness is involved.

And you see that it's all based on a delusion of stemming from not knowing the truth of the light that is throughout through not knowing the ground of being and so the world is attempted to be made by that lack of consciousness into visions of itself.

Over and over again,

Whereas when we work with the truth of the light that is,

Then we start to make the world in the way that it was intended to be and our lives as well.

For many of us in western cultures and there's no non-western culture these days,

Everything's touched by it.

We've been taught hyper individualism partly as a function of this thing that we're talking about so that we're unable to actually sort of empathize and so on in this kind of way and to put our own needs always first or what our perceived needs stemming from our unconscious are and the object consciousness.

So we have to kind of self-liberate from this as well.

And that's the miracle of what we're working with in that self-liberation is actually what the deal's about.

It's not really about being a good meditator or that's very,

Very nice and beautiful and nourishing,

But we start to become liberated from the thoughts.

We start to become liberated from the entrenched feelings and the vasanas.

And so wisdom can then actually move and new thought can come that we don't need to bind to and so on.

All thoughts become processed by the literal direct contact with the truth of the ground of being,

The light that is.

So I could come up with structural ideas all day,

But it's where it's coming from that really,

Really helps.

But I would say simple structural things within your mandala as best you can as a way of kind of contributing to the world.

And you're already doing that,

Each one of you.

That was so clear the other night.

But more importantly than that right now is to step out of the hyper-individuality,

If that's still affecting you,

And the bubble of comfort that sometimes sits around that,

And to see if people are okay.

Offer your love and support in the most meaningful way,

Which is not necessarily words,

But actual presence and so on.

England is not in a good way and it's not a surprise.

It's been like this the whole time,

It's just that it was kind of quiet about it.

And then people think that it's gone.

And this is how we lose the world.

This is how democracy is taken away.

This is how you lose reproductive rights.

This is how you lose anything by assuming that it will be there always.

And by spiritual bypassing,

Which is another tool of this way of doing things,

The hyper-individualized,

Vassal way of doing things.

So yeah,

There's work to be done as it were.

And yet here we are at the same time.

So it's really dangerous here.

Fortunately,

There are people infiltrating into these spaces and able to share where things are going to be happening because there's all sorts of telegram channels and all sorts kind of being used to organize these pain body explosions against other people for daring to not die in wars and so on of the colonial entities makings.

So it's a huge thing that we're working with,

As it were,

And we're not going to change that structure immediately,

Basically.

But the depth of our practice,

The honesty and integrity of our practice,

And the understanding of beginning to work with our mandala means that we are in right activity,

Basically.

And I don't know if I said it or not,

But what the great opportunity is of this time is that we're really seeing things for what they are.

Each of these things,

If we look beyond the edge of that wave,

Is really showing us the conditional aspects of things.

And it's heartening to see that some people are actually starting to see,

Which is fantastic.

But unfortunately,

Again,

We're trained in reactivity rather than response and so on a lot of the time.

So we have to work with proper response,

With true wisdom,

With the heart of love that changes things in the right way.

That isn't just another plastering on top of things.

That it is movements of realization and actuality.

If we want to have a human species and an earth and so on.

Of course,

We may not end up with that.

So we choose the path of liberation anyway.

But to be liberated does not mean to be ignorant of suffering in any way.

And everyone,

Every one of those people,

The people on the receiving end are suffering and the people causing the suffering are suffering.

And so it's a huge deal.

And I sat in a coffee shop this morning,

Just before coming here,

I made a couple of notes for this.

And I watched somebody who is a more concerned person,

Shall we say,

Speaking their concerns to somebody who is extremely comfortably off,

Has learned the kind of the English middle class way of saying,

Oh dear,

And,

And,

And,

But not allowing their heart to be touched in any way by anything outside of themselves,

Thinking that they are escaping and protecting themselves.

And yet literally being entirely cut off from life and suffering the karma in that moment of that removal of self and the lack of access to sort of the truth of what is.

So it's showing us all the time in everything,

You know,

The Dharma is in everything.

The truth of life is in everything.

And the path is showing itself to us at all times,

Which is beautiful to which is beautiful to know.

Let's leave it there.

No,

Still in this office for one more week.

So this is the final satsang from here,

I would have gone out into nature today,

But I have some sort of business appointments later this afternoon.

So I just thought I'll come and use this space one last time.

I've kind of gone already from here.

Let me know how you are,

You know,

Pop me an email,

Let me know how you are.

Let me know your thoughts on what we're talking about.

Don't be despondent.

Keep coming back to the light that is inside yourself and allowing the mandala but don't don't be fooled.

Don't be fooled by the voices in the head that that keep us from things a stuttering shaky weepy I don't know what to do but here I am is far better than silence of the wrong kind.

Yeah,

I love you.

Take care of yourselves out there in there here and now.

Bless you.

And I'm glad that in this lifetime of mine I have in the ways that we do connect,

I've got to meet you.

Talk to you really soon and much love.

Reviews

One of the best talks I’ve listened to on this platform.
Those who stand for love and unity in Britain far outweigh those intent on causing division. Certain media outlets should be called to task for stirring up hatred.
Blessings to you 🙏

Thank you John. Thinking of you take good care of yourself. I’m sending love.

enLIGHTening and thought-provoking as I respond verses re-ACT 2 happenings in USA, UK and all around this spectacular WORLD we ALL share. “United” takes on a new meaning and depth as we unite around responding to atrocities verses BEing united in cultural visions the “founders” held when creating names for their countries and communities. www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa

Love to you John and all beings.

Whew.
John.
I feel
I learned alot
listening
this morning...
Thank you SO much for
adding this satsang onto IT.
I can and will share it.
How are you?
I'm dedicated to asking
now thats to you my friend.

Christine
High Desert Sierra

Incredible! Thank you for explaining everything in the context of the spiritual path. I love the concept of the mandalas of our lives and how to move from inside out with kindness and compassion. 🙏🏽

I too am glad to meet you this lifetime.

How are you dear one?

Every country seems to be dealing with it's own upheaval right now. Let us lean into empathy and kindness in our daily endeavors. My heart breaks with all the anger that is freely given by strangers.

If you wand to discuss that garden idea you shared, it would be lovely as I have ideas.

Here across the pond some try to lighten the mood and joke by looking at all of the mind boggling events daily here and just say, yes but do I need to go to work?
There are still bills to pay, and the price of food has exponentially increased so to work I go.

May the peace and strength that resides in our hearts be louder than the worry consuming us.

Ps plz go 2 u tube Off Grid with Doug and Stacy

Much love,

Green Eyes.

This is such an expression of love for this life, John. I am grateful for your mandala. The wisdom of your talk will stay with me: “This time we’re in is a great teacher.” I will try to be more mindful of turning my eyes from the edge of the wave to the ocean. Namaste 🙏🏻

This was very brave of you.
From your mouth to God’s ear. 🙏❤️