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Remember that thoughts that may be going through your head
don't matter that much as you sit here.
.
.
.
There's a stillness underneath the thoughts and in between.
.
.
From the point of view of thought that is nothing.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It's in everyone, even those who are completely
trapped in mental noise, one could say, so to speak,
underneath that there is a pool of stillness,
but they don't know it.
.
.
As it arises, when the screen of thought
loses its density,
then from underneath thought stillness arises, and the
arising stillness is
what I call the new state of consciousness, and as you know,
all words are limited.
.
.
.
.
That arising was already happening,
so here there is an intensification of it,
or a deepening.
As I pointed out yesterday,
you're not really here to add anything to your mind.
You can go to lectures
at universities and add things to your mind.
That's fine, but the reason why we are here is not
that pointers,
the words are not there as
added baggage to your mind, but they are simply pointers
beyond that helpful pointers.
So we are here for the
arising of presence.
.
One could say an evolutionary
transformation,
because so far most humans
have lived and are living in a very different
state, the normal state of consciousness,
which is continuous
thought streams
and identification with those continuous
thought streams as a self,
a me. So everyone carries
a heavy burden of
personal selfhood, if that's a word that exists, I think it does.
Everyone carries the burden of a personalized
me contracted and personalized sense of
self. And I say burden
because there's a heaviness to it.
And as
you go through life, you feel this heaviness
and people perceive it as the heaviness of living
another day and more
stuff happening. I had another problem.
What's the point of it all?
The last straw, that's the last thing that I needed.
So there's
the burden and then there comes the last straw.
And it probably won't
be the last.
And so there's this
heaviness of me. I have to carry me around all the time.
And if
that weren't enough
there's the living
past in me, both personal and
racial, meaning belonging to the whole human race.
And the pain of that, because humans have generated
so much pain through living in such
a way, reducing their lives to a
little personalized sense of self, which sometimes
tries to make itself bigger by identifying with a collective,
a tribe or religion or nation, but it's the same heaviness.
Identifying with a collective for a moment
looks like liberation from a little personal me, but it's the illusion
of liberation. In fact, you've gone into something even worse,
even heavier.
So they've...
Humans carry pain inside from the human past,
emotional residue of emotional pain, of suffering.
And they don't see it as that.
Through unconscious identification with it, it becomes part of one's personalized
sense of self. So it was heavy
and now it gets even heavier
because the whole heaviness of human existence
in a state of consciousness
that could be described as ignorant, not ignorant in the sense
of not knowing enough, but ignorant of who you truly are.
So you carry the burden
really of the whole of humanity with its heavy past
and believe it to be yourself.
And then
you interpret
whatever is happening around you
through that.
And you can imagine and perhaps you know
from your experience, I know it from my
past experience, how distorted
everything gets when you interpret
the world around you through
the heaviness of a painful, often,
more often than not, painful
personalized sense of self, of me.
And then you see all those situations out there
and all those people out there
that seem to have been put there by some demon
to make my life painful.
That's the interpretation.
And that's what it looks like. That's what the world looks like
from that point of view, ultimately
illusory viewpoint, perspective.
And then
you begin to fight against
situations and people because
you perceive them as your enemies.
And then
you create the world
that when you switch on the TV, that's what you see,
when millions live in that way.
Not that each one manifests that condition
in the same degree of intensity.
No. The degrees of intensity,
the degrees of ignorance that manifests
through you differs.
Nobody in this room probably would
perpetrate acts of terrorism or carry a bomb
on your body and go to a public place
and then detonate it and eliminate yourself
and another hundred people. That requires extreme degree
of ignorance, but it is the same
mechanism at work, the same misinterpretation,
the same fighting the external
enemy to get rid of my pain.
So that's
the human condition.
And again,
the human condition is not
a personal problem of yours.
It is the human condition.
Now that personal
sense of selfhood
sometimes dissolves in the face
of extreme danger. We talked a little bit about it
yesterday. It can dissolve in the face of imminent death, sometimes.
It can also dissolve
when there's intense suffering, which of course is
generated by that itself. So the
redemptive factor about the whole
sad story is that the very
suffering that it generates for yourself
and others ultimately wakes you
up too, because you can't stand it anymore.
So there is a self-destruct mechanism
built into the illusion
by the grace of God.
But that could
take time.
Unless you run out of time.
Unless you run out of time.
And so the alternative to
needing more time for that to happen,
to become free, and the alternative to
needing more suffering, needing more pain, needing more drama,
until finally you can't stand it anymore,
the alternative to that is sitting here.
And in a much more
gentle way, allow
that personalized sense of self to dissolve.
Because it wants to dissolve. Or rather,
something is emerging from underneath
that wants to...it's pushing through.
So when I said it wants to dissolve, that's not quite true.
It doesn't want to dissolve. It does and it doesn't.
It wants to continue. It has a momentum.
But ultimately it also wants its own destruction.
Yes, the two are true.
And you can see it in excessive cases of
extreme manifestations of that
unconscious state, that it seeks its own destruction.
If it can destroy others in the same process, so much the better.
We can see it
reflected in the events of past week.
You can see it in certain very...in many
people's lives that are very unhappy.
A self-destructive urge in many, almost addictive.
I certainly had it.
But it worked.
The self-destructed itself.
...
...
...
Now you may have...this is a gentle way
of the arising of presence.
You may already have gone through more violent forms of
transformation, of suffering. You've had your suffering.
...
And perhaps that's cracked you open.
There was the screen of mind and of thought streams
and the density of pain body and identification with all that of me.
A dense, heavy personal self-hood. And then perhaps for quite a few of you
something happened either to you or in your
surroundings, someone very close. And it cracked
open that dense density.
...
And whether it was some great loss
or an illness or an accident.
...
Or suffering or death of someone
very close to you.
The crack appeared. And at first, of course, a crack
like that is very painful. Nobody likes to be hit on the head.
And then comes
you begin to realize the enormous grace that is
suddenly in your life and that came into your life because of that.
...
...
And then so much presence begins to emerge. Through that
crack, one could say, the sense of personal
self-hood loses its density and something
can shine through.
...
...
...
And with that comes a depth. Because you have
no depth. You have depth but you don't know it when there is only
that screen. When the crack appears, suddenly there is a depth to you.
...
Somebody that I watched on television the other day
talking about the disaster of last week actually said
a writer, she said there was, she perceived through the suffering
there was a deepening, a shift from type A
personality and a deepening in the collective psyche
of this country. And that may be the case because all these things apply whether on the
personal or collective level.
With that comes a depth and there comes
a humbleness, a humility, no longer a
me that needs to triumph or control.
And if it cannot triumph, it can at least
be triumphant in its misery because it's greater than yours.
Mine is greater. Just listen to it.
...
And then a point is reached and many of you,
most of you, perhaps all of you have reached the point
where there is already presence arising. Not continuously,
it can get covered up again occasionally, yes. A personal sense of self
can return even during our retreat.
The
complaining heavy me is back.
...
It may happen to you.
...
It can come upon you suddenly as you sit here
and you may have to run out of the room.
...
Now don't let this stop you from going to the bathroom if you need to.
...
What are they
going to think of me?
...
So it can suddenly
come back, the contraction, the heaviness, the pain body can react.
In some people the pain body would react particularly
here because, and again we haven't even addressed the pain body
directly yet, we will,
it may react particularly here because it feels threatened by the emerging presence.
Pain body is an aspect of the personalized sense of
self when it's unconscious. When it's conscious
the pain body is simply the pain body, old accumulated pain,
not all that problematic anymore. It's only when it's unconscious
it is part of the sense of me and it then controls your thinking,
it runs your mind. Then
you may have to run out of the room or you may get up
and shout, no, no, this is not right.
...
Or it may shut off, you're not hearing anymore.
...
It can do
strange things.
And so since pain body
except in very rare cases cannot be dissolved all at once
but it can be seen now for what it is, so
when it arises all that is necessary is for you to recognize it
so that it doesn't become part of a heavy personalized
me that is reactive and then interprets everything through that.
...
Look at all these people, what are they doing here?
They're running through the pain and distorting through that and you're distorting of course
your own life through that, your own view of me, who I am.
And when you see it, so
there's enough presence for you now to see it when it comes. You can't stop the
pain body, if it wants to come up, it'll come up. It's old pain, you
can't stop it. But if you see it for what it is
it's no longer that much of a problem, it's a bit like
a physical pain, which in itself
it's painful, yes, but not a
problem, not the heaviness of problem. Unpleasant
perhaps, but if you don't label it even, it just is, it is
a turbulence, or it may be a heaviness
or it may be a painful contraction, whatever the predominant energy field
of your pain body is, there it is. And it
passes, especially if you don't feed it with thinking along the
same lines as the pain body, same kind of thoughts to reflect the energy
field of the pain body, there's enough presence for you to watch it, instead
of allowing it to run your mind and then it becomes
a me. That's the fundamental difference when that shift has happened,
pain body is fine and it begins to dissolve.
It is no longer part of the personalized
sense of self then. And that removes an enormous chunk
from the heaviness of a personalized sense of
me or self. Certain mind structures, of course, are still
at work. Identification with mental images
of me, problems of self esteem
and all kinds of things, who am, who I am,
an opinion about yourself, or many conflicting opinions about yourself,
good enough, not good enough, who knows.
And the same
mindset creating opinion for others, who they are,
not as good as me, better than me,
a possible threat to my sense of self,
I need to defend, or maybe I can incorporate them into
me, my sense of self, that I could be bigger with that.
And then I find a trophy wife.
Trophy wife is an expression that I read
relatively recently for somebody who chooses
a wife because he's already wealthy and the last trophy that he needs is a good-looking
wife to enhance his sense of
self.
Self esteem,
of course, part of the sense of self. Now I've already removed,
we said the pain body is already, when you are aware of pain body
as it arises, a lot of the heaviness is already gone.
What remains still is the mind structures and again you need to see
those when they operate, recognize them for what they are.
If you have problems with self esteem,
it's opinions, viewpoints, images
in your mind of me, of who I am, me.
As not good enough, not as good as,
better than, and that varies.
Some of the Eastern teachers, when they come to the West, the
Western mind is very developed.
Even the East has ego too, but the Western mind is even more developed.
I read recently
the Dalai Lama when he first came, started doing some teachings in the West
when he was quite many years ago.
He was with a small group of Western students and somebody mentioned
self esteem, problem with self esteem, and he said, what's that?
It was explained to him and then he went from one person to another
and asked him, lack of self esteem was explained to him
and then he went from one person to the next and asked him, do you have that?
Lack of self esteem.
Most people said, yes, I have that.
And probably
not a single sutra of the ancient scriptures
mentions that.
Because when those
scriptures were written, the mind wasn't as advanced yet
as it is now.
So to see that
and here, this is
quite a helpful environment for you
to see whatever arises either
emotional, particularly the heaviness
of the emotions that are the past accumulated pain
that lives in you as an energy
frequency and to watch
the mind, thought stream.
Hmm, as it comes
and goes.
And the more that the washer arises,
the more the sense of who you are,
sense of identity, sense of
I amness shifts from being this mental construct,
mental emotional construct, which after all
are only formations, energy formations.
So your sense of who you are shifts from being, believing
you are those energy formations, forms
to being
the observing presence, that
which sees all that. Another word that I
used yesterday, I always give you different pointers, if one doesn't work for you, the other one might.
You are
the spaciousness in which
the emotional and mental constructs and conditionings
operate. That's the liberation.
You cannot perfect or infinitely
improve the construct, the emotional mental construct.
If you improve it in one end, then you lose something in the other.
There are always polarities. If you become good at
one thing, then you lose your ability on somewhere else.
So there, it always exists, it has the limitations of form.
And when you see your own limitations of form,
then that's fine.
The seeing, there is something unlimited
in this spaciousness that sees all
that and allows it to be. That is where you are
unlimited. And that is
the realm of
that is the spiritual dimension, if it has any meaning,
that's what it is.
That is your true nature, as it's sometimes called,
beyond form.
It arises simply through the arising of the witnessing presence
that allows whatever is there
at this moment to be.
And then
you may become aware
sometimes of that
power that lies in that
spaciousness, that witnessing presence.
And as it arises more in you,
through you,
that becomes greater,
vaster, it always was, but now you realize that is
vaster than anything that happens in it.
So it could happen to the most
unworthy, in quotation marks, judged as the most
unworthy and pitiful
and seemingly deluded human being
who had a life of sordid events.
It could and has happened, can happen,
it does not happen through
affecting the me. That would be nice.
Everything would be neat and tidy and we could say we can now
embark on a course like a university course
where you have one-on-one and then you start from there.
The mind likes that because it's neat and tidy.
And you can finally graduate up to enlightenment.
But
the eruption of that can come at any time and it comes often to
people with very unfavorable conditioning,
often a very heavy personal sense of selfhood, so heavy that it has
inflicted pain on many other human beings. It can happen.
And then of course that pain is, more and more pain is self-inflicted and suddenly
it goes. So you cannot predict
to whom this will happen.
And not even, for many people it might not even
be perceived as an event, a particular event. It could be a gradual
dissolving.
But as it does and you no longer, the shift now happens and you
are the witnessing presence and you realize
that's who you are and you feel that and not all the stuff
that's been going on in your mental-emotional field, not that you deny it
nor you see it. But you're not looking
for yourself there anymore.
And then you become
a blessing to others because
you are no longer doing
to others what until very recently you had been doing
to yourself and that is mistaking
the density of the mental-emotional
conditioned energy streams, mistaking that density
for who you are or for who
that other person is.
So you become a blessing because when you have seen
the reality in yourself and the illusory nature
of identification with that
mental-emotional conditioning as the me entity, then
you're no longer imposing
perpetuating and fueling that illusory sense of
self in others by reacting to it because the illusory
sense of self energized by the pain body, they continuously
strengthen and feed each other through reacting to people around you.
That's how the whole thing keeps going.
And of course then you will see the density
often still operating in others and you
realize beyond words that is not who they are.
You
were trapped in the same illusion and density
means they are identified with mental-emotional energy
formations. That is a heavy me.
And then you would say, oh, react to it.
That goes because only the me, when you're still trapped in it, strengthens itself
through reacting to others. So you can
look through that density, which perhaps that in the other person, because
you've gone beyond it in yourself and as you witnessed
and as you continue to witness the same in you,
you witness it and allow it to be in the other
person. And by staying present with that,
being the observing witness and allowing it to be,
you no longer recreate the illusion
of an identity, making an identity for that person
out of the unconsciousness.
And in that sense, the Course in
Miracles puts it quite beautifully. There's a line which says,
whoever you meet
becomes a witness for either Christ
or the ego, whatever you perceive in him or her.
Christ means that your true nature, in one way of putting it, you could say
Buddha nature. So whoever you meet, whoever you come into contact
with, any human being in your life, will witness,
witness means confirm to you the truth.
That person can confirm to you that your illusion is true, the witness
for the ego if you perceive. The ego is the egoic me entity, the density.
So whoever you meet can witness, say, yes,
I was actually right. That's who he or she is.
So that person becomes witness for the ego. And continuously
through this misinterpretation, the truth of the illusion,
the truth in quotation marks, the truth of this illusion will
continuously be reflected back to you and confirmed.
And the truth, the absolute truth
also, everyone you meet
can also become the witness of Christ
which is Buddha nature, your true nature.
When you do not mistake the density for who that being
is. And that's the,
becomes part of your spiritual practice is
sitting here, the part of your spiritual practice is going out into nature.
We may talk about it in more detail also.
And so allowing presence to arise and then
comes the part, presence being there when you are
interacting with others. That only works
if a certain level of presence has already
been reached in you. Otherwise, the moment you start interacting with others
you will get drawn back into identification
with mental, emotional sense of self.
Unless a certain level of presence has been reached, presence cannot
sustain itself when it is around heavy
mental, emotional energy fields called people.
So people
are really
challenging.
Wouldn't it
be easy if it weren't for other
people?
Just nature.
Just nature.
And there are
some people, also spiritual
people so to speak, who begin, who
avoid interaction because it always sooner or later
leads to problems.
I've
had enough.
But that's
the very ground where you're being tested and you can find out for yourself
your degree of presence, not in any judgmental way,
but it will become so clear when you are with people.
And when you are being challenged, and of course most challenges
will come through other people. That's how it happens.
You may get challenged occasionally through a natural disaster, but that's relatively
rare. You may live next to a volcano and get challenged
by an eruption, but it's rare. So most challenges come through
other people at you.
And then what comes in,
how do you meet the challenges of mental, emotional
entities coming at you and wanting something
from you, as they all do,
or fearing you
and thereby misinterpreting you completely.
So how do you meet the challenge
of other people, the challenge coming at you?
Or perhaps heavy pain bodies coming at you
like a
steam train.
Or very
heavy minds coming at you,
extremely problematic minds
and people identified who have their sense of self in very heavy
mind streams.
After I saw the film called
Titanic, there was a scene where they show in the bowels
of the ship the steam engines at work and the enormous engines
that's before it goes down, of course.
And occasionally when I meet
people very identified with minds,
the engines of the Titanic,
and you know what happened to that.
But quite impressive too.
I mean,
quite impressive too.
So they are coming at you
and then what can happen is
either you meet it through presence
and spaciousness of presence,
the alertness of presence,
the openness of presence, and it comes there.
Or you meet it through the reaction
of the little me.
It reacts.
And immediately you're drawn to the same frequency
as that. And that entity that's coming at you wants that.
It's not even an entity, it's an energy field that's coming at you, wants you
to contribute to its own vibrational frequency.
So it's all unconscious of course. It's not the person coming at you
how much pain I can get back from that person.
They believe that they are right and you are wrong or whatever they believe,
or that you did something to them, and so on.
But there it is. So you can meet it. Presence, openness,
which is non-reaction. And that requires
a degree of presence. Or you fall back into
a little reactive me and you shout something back.
Me? I did that. You did that
to me. I didn't do that to you.
That's only the beginning.
That's only the beginning.
So even when that comes at you,
not mistake it for who that is.
That is not the reality of that person.
That is not the reality of that person.
.
.
.
They may also come to you a suffering entity
needing to tell you the story of their suffering.
Perhaps they are coming for help.
How do you meet that? How do you help?
Increasingly people would be coming to you for help because
presence is arising in you. And many people
underneath their conditioning are ready for it.
They are ready to help you because they see something in you.
But they are still immersed in their story and they are telling you their story.
It may be a very complicated story, very complex.
What can I possibly say to that person? The problem seems
so complex. And again, are you trying
to help or simply
be there in that field of spacious presence
that is so much more intelligent
than the little mind?
And just hold the field of that spaciousness, that presence
in which it seems that you don't know anything.
Stay with the not knowing.
And there is the alertness
of that state. And then see
what comes. Nothing may come, that may be enough.
Or a shift may happen in the other person because you are not giving reality
to what ultimately is illusory
constructs. You are not giving that reality either through reaction
or through getting drawn into the story completely.
Yes, you truly are in a bad
way. Yes, you truly have dreadful problems.
On the surface they look through. It's looking beyond
that.
Before you
presence can be sustained in
human interaction, go out into nature
easier.
And even out in nature you have a choice now.
You can meet the tree, you can perceive the tree
through mental noise,
in which case you hardly really perceive it because immediately there is
the mental concepts. Or you can perceive the tree through
stillness or presence. That is much easier than
a human being to start with.
Because the tree exists in stillness itself.
It's growing in stillness.
Even if you carefully stay with the tree
or a flower, see how still it is.
But it's alive. It has its own intelligence.
Considerable intelligence, that beauty,
that beauty is really an aspect of the one intelligence, of course, manifesting as this form,
but it's so still, it's even surrounded by stillness.
It has no problems.
That's why it's easier to be with a tree initially than to be with a human
being.
It teaches you the state of no mind, no thought,
because it lives in that state.
Anything natural lives in the state of natural, original connectedness with the one.
Everything in nature lives in that state of grace
still, that humans have moved out of because they've gone out
from the one, the source, into fragmentation
and multiplicity. That's the human mind and the complexity of the
human world. Lost touch with the
original oneness, innocence, grace, beauty.
It's still there, but they're there.
Everything in nature can teach you the state of grace.
If you can be with it truly, no, I'm not with it when you perceive the tree through
mental noise. It says something about it or
labels it in one way or another, has thoughts around it.
You're relating to your thoughts, not the tree.
It teaches that state of no mind, but for you
the state of no mind when you re-enter it after losing it for so many thousands
of years, you do not return to that
level of pre-mind, so to speak, that the tree lives in, the state of
original grace.
When you return to it, it is a state of
rising above thought, and all language has limitations,
so it's just a pointer. Humans are
rising now above thought into the state of no mind, which
has certain essential similarities with the state of original
greatness that natural things and animals still live in,
and yet there is an added depth and an added
knowing to it when humans return to that state after
having moved through the ignorance of mental
being identified with mind totally. It was a
secondary stage, it seems, in human development,
this egoic stage of growth. It's coming to an end
and it's critical because it cannot survive in this form, that state of consciousness,
the egoic state of consciousness cannot survive now. The planet cannot survive with that.
So we return, and yet it's more than a return
in the state of having gone beyond thought.
Thought can still operate when needed. It's not that you forget
everything. Thought still operates and operates beautifully, but no longer
a self-seeking thought. Thought becomes
free of a sense of self. Your sense of self is far vaster.
It is the stillness around thought, of thought only as a small aspect
that operates in there when it's needed. And thought can be very
powerful and creative when you need to create something, but not as a separate me
that needs something. Creating because you are part of the totality
and the totality wants to create something through you, and then
thought may be extremely powerful when applied and you'd want to create
something, not because the little me needs it for its satisfaction,
but because the totality moves through you. And it is then when humans
will become able to manifest, to use a new age
expression, to manifest from within in ways
that would now seem miraculous, because now if they were able to
do that now, they would create even greater havoc than they are doing already. Imagine
little egos manifesting what they want.
If people, to some extent, they are manifesting, of course,
the external world, but manifesting in a more direct way. So if you needed something,
it will immediately be there,
it would be dreadful. But when humans become free
of the illusory sense of self, and then power moves in also to manifest,
but not as a separate me that needs something, as part of the whole,
the totality, the one. So in that sense, thought
the mind can be a powerful way of manifesting something,
but it won't be powerful until it becomes free
of selfhood, free of the illusory sense of self
in there. And then also it loses
its problematic quality. The mind is no longer heavily
athletic. So that happens, I rarely talk about
those things, because they happen naturally by themselves.
Usually all I address is what is needed, pointers that are needed
to become free of that. The rest happens.
So no longer, we are
moving beyond being
thought-based,
mind-based entities, beyond.
And so everything in nature can remind
you of the state of connectedness, but when you encounter that state,
it is the same and yet not the same
as the state of grace in which nature exists. It is deeper. There's a deep
knowing to it.
But use anything in nature and be with it. Anything can be a teacher. If you just
stay with it for a while, it could be a flower, a little plant, a tree, it could be a river.
Just be with it for a while
and watch it.
And become aware of not only
it, but also of the
observing presence.
So nature
is the teacher of stillness.
Ah.
And that is
your opportunity here,
surrounded by beautiful nature.
I would advise that even if you have come here with a
friend or partner, that occasionally you take time to be alone
with nature. Maybe choose one
tree, choose one flower, one plant, be with it
for a while. Stand there or sit there
and
sense the stillness that is there.
And then all labels go.
A tree is far more than a tree. Every label reduces it immediately,
as if you knew what is there.
Every mental label gives you the illusion of knowledge. You don't know what that is.
How could you know? It's a mystery and it remains a mystery. It is a beautiful being.
The surface, it looks like a tree, perceived through the senses.
But it is a mystery. Everything is a mystery.
And it's only mental labels give you the illusion that you know. The moment you say,
oh, that's a tree. What do you know? Nothing. It's just sounds coming out of your mouth.
Laughter.
You may have heard the word
self-realization, another
pointer.
And that can easily be mistaken
by the mind
for knowing that it is a tree.
For knowing a great deal about yourself.
And you might think
that after 25 years of psychoanalysis,
when you have examined everything you can possibly examine about yourself,
that would finally take you to self-realization.
That accumulated knowledge
of all that make up the inner,
all the conditioning, the content of your mind,
but really, I have nothing against it,
on its own level it's fine, you become acquainted
with the content of your mind.
And self-realization
doesn't mean that you know a great deal about yourself.
The closest you can get to it through words
is to say that you don't know anything anymore about yourself.
From the point of view of mind.
Of course you still have some knowledge when it's needed, but really there's a space of
not knowing. It looks like
ignorance almost. Yes,
from the point of view of the mind. Who are you?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
And that's not a comfortable state
for the mind. I don't know who I am
anymore.
I need to figure something out.
I need to have a few thoughts in my head, a few images that tell me who I am.
Surely I need that.
And then the amazing thing is when you become comfortable with not knowing,
and there is some
knowing in there, but it's nothing to do with bits of knowledge.
There's a deep knowingness, one could say.
You're simply a field of aware presence.
If there's anything that you needed to know truly
at this moment, it would come out of that.
If there was anything that you truly needed to do at this moment or respond to at this moment,
it would come out of that.
Unprepared, unpremeditated, it's there. It's, one could say, the totality
acting through you, and it's just right. And then you're back in not knowing
because nothing needs to be known. And then if you can be with another
human being in that way, you become a great teacher.
The great teachers, and quite a few of you are destined
also to teach, but I'm not, please, no new identity,
no...
I'm
considering a career change.
I'll try a spiritual
teacher.
But quite a few of you are destined, otherwise you wouldn't be here to become
a spiritual teacher, either in a more formal way or simply because
you can't help it. It just happens through you.
But only because you no longer have an image of you as a spiritual
teacher and you don't feel that you know when you are with someone.
As long as you feel that I know the answers, just come to me and I'll tell you
that spiritual teacher
doesn't know. The spiritual teacher operates from the spaciousness
of not knowing from stillness, a lot alive stillness.
That is the teacher. Presence is the teacher.
No human entity is the teacher, but your true nature
is that. So in that sense you are the teacher. But there is no
personal identity that could claim to be a teacher.
The moment you claim to be a teacher, the spaciousness and the openness
of presence is lost. And perhaps you can then teach from accumulated knowledge,
but it's no longer truly true and powerful spiritual
teaching. It loses the essence.
So the sooner you become
comfortable with that state that from the point of view of
mind looks like not knowing anymore,
the more effective, the more powerful you will become
as a spiritual teacher.
The strange
thing, just a little comment,
every time I walk in here or any way I come to talk,
there's always this strange feeling I have nothing to say.
What?
The first,
when I started doing this kind of teaching,
a few times the mind came, because
of course there's a mind, but it doesn't have a lot of power. It just
occasionally comes in with a thought, what am I going to say?
I've said it all.
And then it's fine not to know what to say.
It's actually quite beautiful.
Which would be the greatest nightmare for the mind, is to
sit somewhere on a stage
and quite a few
people have had this nightmare. I've forgotten my lines.
What am I supposed to say?
So you begin by being
comfortable with not knowing in front of a tree.
Or you look at the stars at night,
amazing,
the vastness of it all.
What could you possibly figure out in your mind about it?
What thought could possibly be in your mind
that could be really meaningful in the face of that vastness?
The mind has to stop.
That was my earliest meditation. I realized it later when I was a child. I would often go out at night
and look in awe at the Milky Way
billions of suns, because almost every star is a sun,
and the Milky Way, which is just this luminosity across the sky,
and it's billions of suns.
And the vastness of space, that's the greatest awe,
is the vastness of spaciousness around it, the distances, the space.
And I would actually look.
Many years later I realized,
oh, that's meditation. The mind stopped.
Later on my mind wouldn't stop anymore. It became more and more noisy.
Until finally it gave up.
So again here,
not knowing, become comfortable with that.
It is not the state of not knowing that is the state that you enter when you drink some alcohol
or take certain drugs, because if you drink
a scotch or something like that,
for a moment it can feel better,
because the mind can sometimes become less noisy, less obsessive.
You become a little bit free of that heavy self after the second
stiff drink.
But you're not moving beyond thought, you're moving below thought. You're beginning to move
towards the plant realm,
which is beautiful for plants.
And so you drink a bit more and a bit more and finally it goes
and you've lost consciousness totally.
So that it takes you, but for a moment it feels good,
because it also takes you out of the mental me.
It can also activate as you move towards unconsciousness.
It can activate in some people the pain body too. They get violent after a few drinks
and then they become unconscious.
So,
not knowing,
that's not the not knowing that we talk about.
There is an alertness to that not knowing. And you not know
with your whole body. There's an alertness throughout your being.
And there's even an alertness
it seems after a while around you.
And that alertness is still,
but alive. And that is pure intelligence,
pure awareness, pure consciousness before it becomes a thought, before it becomes
something. The ground.
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After the sound subsides, there's stillness, relative stillness,
not total, but it doesn't matter. Ultimate stillness is within.
It is simply cessation of mental noise.
Then a perception happens.
A form arises, in this case it's a sound.
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And then the form dies, as every form dies sooner or later.
And what remains then is the pure
field of awareness. Then another sound
arises in the awareness, my voice.
And goes. There's the undercurrent of awareness in which
it happens. That remains
always, unconditioned, still,
pure consciousness, pure, just
that. So in any phenomenon that
arises, instead of being
totally drawn into the arising phenomenon,
realize that in which it arises.
The spacious aware presence.
So that is the dimension. That means then
you know the world, but you also know God,
the One, continuously
connected with that. Not connected, you are that.
That is your true nature.
Then that was put beautifully in
one of the ancient Upanishads, the
ancient scriptures of India, some of which were written
a thousand years and longer ago, two thousand years.
And it talks about the nature of God.
Brahman, what is that?
What is Brahman? What is God? And it defines
that, like this it says,
not that which the eye
sees, but that whereby the eye
can see. Know that alone to be Brahman
the Eternal, and not what people hear adore.
Not that
which the ear hears, but that
whereby the ear can hear.
Know that alone to be Brahman the Eternal, and not
what people hear adore.
Not that which the mind thinks,
but that whereby the mind can think.
Know that alone to be Brahman the Eternal,
and not what people hear adore.
So there is the truth.
The closest
that words could ever
get to the truth is that.
And yet the truth is not in the words.
They point to it.
Not that which you see, that which makes seeing possible.
The field of aware presence.
Not that which you hear, that which makes the perception possible.
The field of aware presence.
Not that which you think, that out of which all thought comes.
The one intelligence, the one awareness.
And knowing it,
not in a dualistic sense,
but knowing it
as yourself, your essence.
Some people who realize that
make the mistake
of declaring joyfully,
I am God.
But they were misunderstood and killed in many cases.
It's better not to say it.
It's better not to say it.
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Thank you.
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