(bell dinging) - So, if you go on the internet, you can see a significant percentage of whatever people post there, is angry and critical about others to the point of saying, these
are all awful people, awful. And so those are the patterns
that come when you live for years and years, and
years, and years, and years, identified with the conditioned mind. And then you grow old, and you bang a cranky old man or woman. (audience laughing) But this has been going
on for decades already, it just becomes more and more rigid. Any way, you are not going that way. But we need to see what we
are up against, (chuckles), which is your mind. It's not an enemy, but you need to see that it's been the momentum that is there, it's been there, been growing
for thousands of years and it's been a wonderful thing, a wonderful evolutionary
development to have a thinking mind except that it has absorbed almost everything into itself. Your entire consciousness
has become absorbed by really, is no more than an instrument. An instrument for communication, an instrument for dealing with things in this practical realm, an instrument for manifesting even, but nevertheless, an instrument. So just as in the movie theater, even much more so than the movie theater, everything demands your attention, external things and your mind. And this is, we're here in
order to deepen our ability to live from a different
state of consciousness. Where the thinking mind is transcended, can still operate, still does operate, but you have stepped beyond it. You, which is the consciousness
you are the consciousness. So the entire essence of spiritual life is not, on good say, is not
to have your consciousness continuously being absorbed by primarily your mind and sense perceptions. In the back of that Gator, there
is the analogy of the wild, the horses that are drawing the carriage in which Jonah travels
and Krishna, I think. And the horses direct
present the sensory organs which continuously take
your attention out. Now that was two or
2,000 years or more ago, nowadays, what demands,
what absorbs your attention even more than externals, is your mind. So as you walk around here, our retreat place, outside or inside, look at it and you take
everything in your sense, perceptions of course, but see if you can be aware of yourself. In addition to being aware
of whatever you happen to be aware of at that moment, people, nature, objects, the sky, walking, in addition to being aware
of whatever you're aware of, can you be aware of yourself? Not the historical itself that
gets restless and impatient, but yourself as the conscious, the unconditioned consciousness. Which is the same as what
emerges when you listen to the silence right now that, that self. Can you be aware while
you're walking, sitting, eating, listening to people,
or listening to other sounds? Can you be aware of the
fact that you are aware? Which means to be aware of
yourself as the consciousness. That's a new way of living
and that's why we're here in order to deepen our ability to live from that level that frees you from believing that all there is to you, is your historical person, the little me. And that's a wonderful liberation. It's not that, that it no longer exists, the historical person continues to exist. It will also, the ego-ic self, if you identify with
it, it's becomes a ego. If you simply observe it, it's just the actual historical itself. That's the difference. If you lose awareness,
your historical person becomes an entity that you
think is you, that's delusion. But if you're aware, the
historical entity is still there, your personal you, your personal history, or them, or whatever is in
your mind is still there, but let's use a Buddhist term, you recognize that it is not who you are. And the Buddhist term would be, you recognize it as no, not self. And that's an enormous liberation. So it's not, we're not eliminating
who you are as a person, we are just adding a dimension to it, or rather we don't do
anything, we don't add it, we discover that there is
another dimension to you. And then you begin to live
from that deeper dimension whereas the historical
person and the person, the personality is still operates. But not as you anymore. It operates as a person. That means you become
aware of your thoughts. You become, you still have your opinions, but yourself isn't in your opinions which means you hold them more lightly. You are not possessed by your opinions because otherwise humans
that have no awareness they don't have opinions, the opinions have them. (laughs) They don't even have thoughts, their thoughts have them. So that's, the safety is, the person remains but
there's a suddenly a depth to you that was there all the time. But because of the seductive or hypnotic nature of sensory experience and more importantly mental experience, you didn't know it was there. You didn't know the dimension of depth, you had been seduced out of the depth of who you are, onto the just the surface level of life, thoughts and brains perceptions, surface. And it becomes a very
unsatisfying experience to live on the surface of life only, because on the surface of life nothing is fulfilling for very long. So that's the continuous search. Now, because of the momentum that's behind the conditioned self, you may find let even
hear, from time to time, although the environment
is conducive to awareness, presence to being the
unconditioned consciousness, nevertheless there's such
momentum to the mind. It will, from time to
time take you over again, probably or possibly some of you. And so, even here, you may lose awareness
and get totally absorbed again in the mind. (audience laughing) Not present. Absent, somewhere. And then the moment
comes when you notice it. It could be a moment when
you feel restlessness, impatience, irritation with something, upset, complaining, angry, all the usual things
that accompany inevitably the personal sense of self. All the things that many
persons are actually addicted to because it strengthens
their personal selfhood, self, there's personal self
that dictate to those patterns. Addicted to being right. Which means somebody else has to be wrong, otherwise you can't be right. And you can go on the internet if you have nothing else to
do, to strengthen your ego, no other great achievements. Do you feel high (indistinct), look at me. Well, I can't think of
anything that I did, look at me, but I can go on the internet and I can make 100 people wrong. (audience laughing) And then wait for a response. They are so-called trolls,
trolls troll on the internet. They leave posts that are offensive or extremely angry, and it's an ego device that didn't exist before
the advent of the internet, an ego device for those
who have nothing else they can identify with. That's good enough. If I can make 10 people wrong a day as I sit behind my computer,
that's good enough for my ego. It can, enhanced itself
every day through that. (audience laughing) And the more people respond the better. I'm just giving examples of extreme forms of unconsciousness, which
are very common, of course, but little remnants of those things you may occasionally discover in yourself. Even here. So there is a pole to the
mind, you cannot fight it, you can only be aware of it. (gentle music) This mind made sense of self, is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are, beyond your history and
your life situation. (gentle music continues) (water flowing)
