Andrew Cohen - N° 18 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

I'm getting older. I'm 69. I used to be a young man. And uh along the stream of time, nothing really changes that much within within this realm of the timeline of the experience of reality. This is always the same. So happens along the timeline. But the experience of time is rather monotonous and unchanging. It'll be the same in 20 years. It'll be the same in 100 years if you live that long. That's not where the action is. So if you keep thinking that something else is going to happen in time that's going to make all the difference, you might be wrong in your thinking. It's not what happens in time that makes all the difference. What is what happens beyond time that makes all the difference outside of time which will inform the experience you have within time. But what what your experience of of life along the line of time is is monotonous and unchanging and predictable. It's not suddenly going to be great. It'll still be the same. But what happens inside that's what makes all the difference. What happen is the deepest level of your experience of reality within yourself. That's where that's where the big things happen if you're available. So if you can release your attention from from being hypnotized by belief that in the future things are going to get better and I'm going to be happy. Why will they get so much better in the future? They might get worse. Relative happiness is very elusive. It's impermanent. It's temporal. It's very elusive. But absolute happiness, like I've been trying to say, is happening in another dimension that's not relative. So you have to wake up to another dimension beyond time, beyond mind, and become stabilized in that connection to the absolute. Very few people do because they're so trapped in the illusion of time and the promise of happiness in the future. I'm going to be happy tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Why? Because I'm going to get married. I'm going to have children. I'm going to get a raise. I'm going to go on a trip around the world. I'm going to climb Mount Everest. I'm going to win the lottery. It's all relativist. You're just brainwashing yourself. This is it. Like they say in Zen, right? And a big part of Zen is one. This is it, baby. So face it. How good is it? This is it. So if we live the spiritual life in earnest means we're always every day looking deeper. Every day looking deeper, every day looking deeper, every day looking deeper. And if you're succeeding in your spiritual practice, it's possible to succeed. You will be going deeper every day tangibly. Other people will feel it. They'll feel your depth. They feel you're not a monotonous, boring, predictable person, lost into a mind, lost in conditioning, lost trapped in karma forever. They'll feel that a part of your soul is liberated. speaking from an infinite depth and it makes all the difference in the world. So next time you get bored, next time you get bored, remember this is there's always more to be found, to be seen, to be known. If you're really getting bored, you're not looking deep enough to yourself. important to write it down. You don't want to forget. They're going to save your life. These the when you're hearing about these big metaphysical truths, these metaphysical realities, these absolute perspectives is that you're hearing about it different dimensions of experience, different tr different dimensions of truth that we're not in the habit of thinking about reality that way. It takes time to learn how to organize these different dimensions of reality in our own cognitive process. Until I met my guru, until I met my guru, I started seeking when I was 22 and I went to many different teachers. I read dog dharma. I didn't understand any of it. I thought I did, but I didn't have any idea what they were talking about, but I was interested. So, I kept listening. when I met him and had this experience and suddenly my ears opened up because I knew what they were talking about from my own experience. I said, "Oh, that's what they meant." So, it's like it's like anything else in life. You have to stick with it long enough to learn about what you're talking about. These things take time. The Buddha took the Buddha a little bit of time too, didn't it? These these big leaps of transformation take a little bit of time. So you want to think now I think that for example we want to think about enlightenment is similar to winning the gold medal at the Olympics follow so when you think about winning a gold medal at the Olympics do you think it's going to take just a short period of time a little a little bit of effort or a long time and a lot of effort or a long time and supreme effort absolute effort everything you've got right when the Buddha sat under the bodh tree he said I won't get until I'm enlightened. He's very determined. So, we need to learn to think about the awakening to enlightened awareness in the same way. It's a big deal. It's the biggest thing that can happen to somebody, I believe. Not a small thing. Doesn't happen by accident. It's a huge transformation process. So, you want to take it that seriously. And you won't be surprised it's taking a little time. For some reason, when people think about metaphysical reality, about spiritual transformation, they don't think about it the way they think about other things. They they think of it in in a lesser way than they think about being good at sports or being good at music or something. So, what are you going to do? I want to do this. I want to do A. I want to do B. I want to do C. I want to do all these three things. I guess we have to make a choice which is most important. How did you have to make a we have to make a priority? What what comes first? What's the most important? What's the most important thing? Sex. You're a young man. I'm sorry. That's the most important thing. sex, money, power, fame, adoration, or is it liberation? So, I can tell you from personal experience, I've been teaching for a long time that most people when they wake up to this, I call it clarity of intention, the cultivation of the intention to be liberated. What do you want? I want to be free more than anything else. Now it's always has to be now. Always now it protects you. So only the people who stay on that one say focus on one intention until it happens succeed. Most people stay on it for a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, two decades, and then they wander off to something else. Because the way I think about it, it's inevitable that we succeed if we stick to it. This is science to this. So we have to believe in the thing itself, enlightenment. We have to believe in our own capacity to attain it. We have to believe in the thing itself, which is enlightenment. We have to believe in our own capacity to attain it. But fully believe, believe it completely. Enlightenment is real. that it exists. I have no doubt that it does. And I have to believe that I'm worthy of such a gifts. And all my imperfection and all my imperfection that I'm worthy of such a gifts, then it's going to happen. It's just a matter of time. If you don't give up, I don't mean say I give up. It's too hard. It's too hard. So if you give up, you give So if you give up then what? Go back to mediocrity. I give up. I'm fed up with this spiritual stuff. And if you give up, you get to all the things that you gave up for enlightenment, you get to do them now. All the whole list of things that you thought you were couldn't live without still waiting for you. But it's never the same again after that. Never be fulfilled by them again because you seen through the illusion. And once you see through the illusion, you can't go back. People try to go back all the time, but you can't do it. You know too much. So you're trapped by your own desire for liberation. It's a perfect system. Follow thing about the spiritual dimensions of reality is they're veiled. Most of the time in the ego consciousness, we can't see them. They're like behind a veil. When you wake up, the veil lifts and then you suddenly see it all. It's right there. Most of the time we're behind a veil. So, but when it's covered by a veil, we can forget. Make sense?