Spiritual Liberation in Times of Uncertainty

[Music] I mean I'm feeling very I said great sense of urgency about the situation we're facing as a global species right now I feel um intimidated insecure and confused as I'm sure most people do and anybody who doesn't I don't believe them anyway so when I was sitting here I realized that I'm not sure I'm ready to die yet but I mean I mean it seriously spiritually I'm not ready to let go of this Incarnation so work to do so please take the time we have you've taken to come spend time with me here seriously which means don't waste a minute but I'm very pleased that I could feel the minute I walked in the room I could feel in a lot of you there was a great intention in your in your presence here in your in your presence here in your attitude to being here I could feel in the first second I walked in the room and inherent in that I could feel the momentum of the last 30 years of my work alive in a lot of you being expressing your intention to be serious would which is very hard to find these days people being serious about Enlightenment the first thing I wanted to say was that um in the enlightenment context which is what this is the Quest for unconditional absolute inner freedom is a primary value right but in evolutionary Enlightenment and from an integral perspective as I understand it freedom is not an end in itself but it's a means to being able to become a a sane clear thinking morally informed human being so at a certain point some of us realize that unless we can have access to a profound degree of inner Freedom we will have no way to figure out how to make the right choices in relationship to the actions we take and the choices we make in life so the goal of inner freedom is is the means to giving us access to deep and profound sanity and the ability to to act in insane and purposeful way in a crazy insane world that's the idea so he these days a lot of people feel that Enlightenment or the seeking for personal Transcendence is a form of escapism or spiritual bypassing which I firmly disagree with it's it's a means to a particular kind of relationship to life that's based on putting the Primacy of Consciousness first and uh it gives us a particular vantage point a particular way of seeing reality and a particular relating to reality so the point I'm fond of making and what I wanted to make this morning is that freedom is the freedom I'm speaking about the Freedom I'm speaking about that I've always spoken about is a state of consciousness is is a conscious experience is a direct experience that we can gain access to the freedom is is an inner experience a spiritual experience which is in and of itself liberating but Freedom isn't only a state of consciousness or higher state of consciousness it's also a deliberate informed inspired disciplined choice in relationship to actions we take in life and when we understand that freedom is a state of consciousness as it is is a direct subjective inner experience but it's also a choice it covers all all options and all possibilities now without the experience of inner Freedom the profound experience of inner Freedom we can't well we won't be in a position to make the right choices but the experience itself is not enough because the right choices at times still need to be struggled with and for so it's this is an ongoing Perpetual ordeal for people who are very serious about doing the right thing for the right reasons in a crazy world desperately in need of ity so from my perspective and the perspective of the teaching that Enlightenment as as the way at least in the way I'm teaching it is not uh becomes an obligation as a stepping stone for our potential to be our s most sane selves and in the teaching I make I speak a lot about the difference between relative reality and absolute reality which we'll be speaking about a lot these days so in the enlightenment context the experience of inner Freedom as higher state of consciousness is understood to be is usually understood to be a revelation of relative or an absolute dimension of reality so the the absolute transcendental nature of reality is absolute and unqualified infinite birthless and deathless and indestructible and overwhelming in its immensity and intensity and Liber inherently liberating nature so it is always free and when you recognize that the absolute is your own true nature at the deepest level of reality you'll realize the freedom is who you always really are at the deepest level and those are fancy words and they're important to understand but unless it becomes your actual experience from time to time it's unlikely that it'll be all the time but unless it becomes a tangible part of your experience from time to time any talk of Liberation won't have any meaning for you besides intellectually intellectual or philosophical or metaphorical so the experience of unconditional radical absolute liberated Consciousness and all its ecstasy joy and unimaginable love and freedom is essential to have from time to time so you so you get to remember who God is and who you are free from any kind of doubt or insecurity or ambivalence that becomes the source of your what I call spiritual self-confidence so that kind of experience is important to have at least once in your life but if possible relatively often because it's hard to remember how amazing the highest truth or God actually is it's easy to forget hard to remember and easy to forget but if the experience makes a deep enough penetration into your soul you'll never forget it but in order to be able to live in act with spiritual self-confidence you need to have that kind of experience on a regular basis we all do that's why we live the spiritual life in Earnest or at least that's my understanding of Bo but the experience in in the context of the teaching is there to help us to remind us what's most important and to act like a North star or a compass about what's most important because within the complexity of The Human Experience it's very easy to forget what's most important and most people do all the time every single day including people that are occasionally awake so as I always say waking up is easy staying awake is very hard so waking up is usually not the end of the search It's usually the beginning of a process of Awakening that may take many lifetimes probably does take many lifetimes but in this context we want to see The Awakening as a means to an end not an end in itself in the way that my teacher taught that the Awakening up was an end in itself you wake up and that's the end and the rest is irrelevant but in an evolutionary creative approach to Enlightenment it's what happens after that that means everything or nothing so in evolutionary Enlightenment the first 10 of the teaching says I Want to Be Free more than anything else so I can be a sane liberated creative relatively significant participation participate in The Human Experience so I can contribute to meaning purpose and value in this crazy chaotic unfolding that we're all part of that's why it's important so it's in this teaching we don't see Enlightenment as an end in itself but as a means to an end as a means to be sane to liberate our creative potential and our capacity for love and care so that's why you want to do this so it's not for you or me for the universe for the creative process how does that sound so the point I wanted to make this morning is that um is is the apparent polarity or the apparent um contradiction between the fact of Freedom being our own Natural State and our own true nature and synonymous with the highest level of reality and that which is non-relative and absolute and the fact that freedom is also a conscious choice that needs to be made by most people again and again and again in other words to be brutally honest as most of you already know unconditional radical inner Freedom can never be taken for granted no matter how you think you feel on a good day because in terms of relative reality freedoms can only be discerned or understood through the choices we make and their consequences in the in the complex continuity of our Karma the unfolding of our Karma over lifetime as I understand it and how to understand all that it's a very complex business depending on so many different multiple perspectives it's unimaginable to to be conscious and to be saying to be deeply wise and intelligent and self-aware in a context of infinite complexity it's almost impossible but at least we can try so trying our best is a big part of what it's all about and in an evolutionary context there's no end there's no final there's no point to final arrival there no now I now I know now I understand because there's always more to understand and more complexity to come to terms with so you can nobody can ever in that context nobody can ever get anything absolutely right or even if you do it'll only last for second then it's gone so because of that there's a there's a uh there's a degree of Eternal vigilance and humility and an intensity of seriousness that we all have to bring to the Endeavor of waking up and and not only waking up but staying awake and working to act at awakeness in spite of how hard it is how confusing it is and how difficult it is to be free in a crazy world the world is a crazy place a lot of people who have don't really believe that now can see very clearly that we are crazy and then of course everybody finds ways to avoid this is the seriousness of the Endeavor through getting lost in survival or other things security procreation Fame any number of relative issues can suddenly become more important than these non-relative or absolute concerns and the ego is a monster from my perspective so always going to take you in another Direction and take you in another Direction what about this and what about that and what about this what about that so I've been thinking a lot about how I can justify my work this teaching in this world context of this crazy time in history so what I've come to is very simple and kind of obvious that that in spite of all this madness fear insecurity chaos in spite of it all if we can find a way to come together in truth honesty soul level Integrity meaning purpose expanded Consciousness that is emerging at a higher level than the one before whatever that was was and we can live it and embody it and and ultimately ultimately over time be able to demonstrate that it this A revolution of Consciousness which a lot of spiritual gurus speak about is actually happening in self- sustaining in and through a certain group of people and they can demonstrate it and and survive chaos survive conflict survive challenges without crumbling it'll say a lot about the nature of spirit and it's and it's religious potential religious potential means to be able to cohere groups of people in a shared Vision or a shared ideology and in the enlightment context it's a shared utopian ideology which most people don't believe in anymore for a lot of good reasons but I do I haven't given up because to me without a utopian ideology life this this this Incarnation doesn't make any sense to me personally so if we can succeed dramatically in spite of all the failures in spite of all the cynicism and doubt and fear and insecurity and narcissism and narcissism and narcissism then we can say yeah we we did it and then then we can die with a peaceful heart so unless I get unless I can accomplish that I won't be able to die happily and for me personally that's my karmic predicament so if you're serious you want to get to the point where you feel when you wake up every morning that that's actually who you are that your mission in life is to demonstrate a higher potential for all of humanity and to prove to prove that beautiful liberating beautiful potential in human beings is possible against all the odds against all the Nay against our own failure personal failings also want to succeed anyway because there are forces in culture there forces in human consciousness and human culture and there always have been that don't want that that don't want this this liberating truth to emerge to become known by too many people the anti anti-spiritual forces in the universe aurc forces I'm not just being superstitious in order to succeed in doing this you need to cultivate a ferocious degree of Independence to be able to pull this off for the idealism to be able to survive in your heart and in your mind in your soul so we want us to learn in this in if you are a serious practitioner of Enlightenment or evolutionary Enlightenment or the highest highest human aspiration the evolution of Consciousness you want to constantly be working with the the polarity between freedom being a state and freedom being a choice so in relationship to Freedom being a state is are the choices you're making related to that State of Consciousness that you experienced as being the highest and most liberated moments of your Liv your life is our life in the way we're trying to live it a reflection of our of our own deepest understanding of the highest truth we've experienced and some days it's going to be more an expression of that and other days it's going to be less so if if there was nobody making Cho if there was nobody existed who was making choices there was no choosing faculty there was no Chooser if there was no choosing faculty but Consciousness was just an experience that was happening to someone who was no one then CH Choice wouldn't matter because there was nobody choosing to do anything anyway and so then in that kind of context just letting go of the idea that there ever was a Chooser is your is your path to Liberation is your source of your experience of Liberation but when you wake up to reality and realize that part part of the evolutionary process is the emergence of the appearance of a choosing faculty and a Chooser and and a unique individual soul we want to we want to become very interested in that part of ourselves and that part of each other and what he or she's up to yesterday today and tomorrow morning noon in evening so it's the part of us that makes the choices the Chooser the choosing faculty that gets confused from time to time once in a while or every day all the time but what the right thing to do is so in an Enlightenment context You'll Always Find that the re that you're on Reawakening to that which is non-relative and absolute CL clarify for you all the confusion you're experiencing at the deepest level so oh that's very simple hard to remember and so easy to forget so the radical Enlightenment that I teach which is that's I've always been known for being a radical character and the radicality doesn't doesn't come as much from my pathological narcissism as it does from my my my my understanding of a very deep and profound Embrace of the implications of a non-relative or absolute dimension of reality because when your Embrace of reality gets bigger and bigger and bigger the the force of the of the non-relative or absolute nature of Truth or absolute reality itself begins to infuse itself and overwhelm your mind and personality for better and for worse but it's also can be a source of enormous confidence spiritual self-confidence life confidence person confidence confidence in the power of creativity and they need to be they need to be relatively free more and more free to be able to be a true truly creative per truly creative participant in The Human Experience so unless you're free inwardly free unless you have access to the power of the absolute our ability or capacity to be a creative co-conspirator with the UN with with the creator of the universe is going to be very narrow but it's the access to the liberated State of Consciousness that needs work from all of us when it comes e it comes easily and that's good but when it doesn't come easily we have to do whatever work we need to do to remain steady and centered and nobody knows what tomorrow is going to bring except more chaos in this world and I've been paying attention over the last year quite a bit to what's happening in relationship to the all the complexity we're all facing and it I dawned on me the obvious dawned on me about six months ago that nobody knows the answers at this point in history we're dealing with a level of complexity that's Uncharted Territory for human beings and this no nobody knows the answers because nobody's ever lived through this anything a challenged like this before so in order to get through this and not be destroyed by it and also ultimately be able ideally be to be able to be a a positive expression of the possible amidst all this chaos we all we're all going to have to do a lot of hard work on ourselves and together with each other in order to be able to be in the right spiritual metaphysical position to be able to deal with and respond in the highest manner we're capable of so the nonduality in this context is seeing is the practice of seeing and reminding yourself that the the complexity and the chaos that we're facing AS Global species is your problem it's our problem it's my problem if we blame everybody else or the system and somehow and somehow see oursel dualistically somehow arange from this Cosmic predicament as if we have nothing to do with it first of all it couldn't possibly be true and and second of all it's not helpful so so if the question comes up but what does it mean to be responsible for all this I don't know the answer to that question but I but it's a question that I think learning how to Grapple with individually and collectively earnestly has to be an important part of this individual and shared spiritual practice at this point in history no now it's a very heavy it's a it's a it's a very heavy truth to kind of be able to sustain bearing witness to from day to day it's just so what we're facing is so absolutely overwhelming and inconceivable and crazy and insane and frightening and confusing but we have to cultivate the spiritual strength to be able to do it so we'll actually be living in the real world some things are hard to think about but if that's what's happening then we got to think about it think about it bear witness and somehow be able to respond in some kind of way that means something good and also when you realize that nobody has the answer nobody has the answer people have different kinds of answers and there are a lot of very good kinds of answers going on but other people's answers might not be yours so how authentic can any of us be in this endeavor to find out what our what the most appropriate response to all this will be in the context of our understanding what it means to be a conscious human being so if we can find out what the answer to that question is for us personally and collectively that in in and of itself will be very liberating for at a soul level the most important thing spiritually is to know you're doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons for your soul that you're not wasting your time in responding or reacting or engaging in in in things that are just not really [Music] relevant so if Freedom if the experience of inner freedom is a state higher state of consciousness then you need to do what you need to do in order to experience that higher state of consciousness so you can know what Freedom actually is for yourself and you don't have to take anybody else's word for it when you find out for yourself you realize that God exists that this there's an absolute principle that's real that's self- liberating that's Eternal birthless and deathless and ab and indestructible and you'll know it and if the experience is deep enough you won't have any doubt about it you won't have any doubt about it you won't have any doubt about it you won't have any doubt about it and in case you miss that one you won't have any doubt about it which is what it'll set you free because you won't have any doubt about it as long as you have doubts you have more work to do it's only when you're free from doubt that you're free when you're free from doubt it doesn't matter what you experience is because you don't have any doubt then you're a lucky person but a lucky person if someone who's lucky because they don't have any doubt is not really lucky they're actually spiritually heroic because it takes a lot of courage and faith and faith and Faith to have no doubt in the face of the temptation to doubt because once you once you begin to allow yourself to begin to doubt you don't have to believe anymore you don't have to have have faith you can become cynical and nihilistic and victimized and the ego loves that's a big relief for the eagle let me tell you you mean I don't have to have faith in what I can't see anymore what a relief so the eagle lik it like that's eag goes on a permanent vacation thank you so that's the result of these higher state experiences and then the question is what the hell am I doing with the gift of life that I've been given am i m is my is the life I'm choosing to live and the way I'm choosing to live it the most meaningful and purposeful choice that I have or not and if it's not why not and examine the reasons and have the courage to be brutal with ruthless with yourself you don't have to talk to other people about this if you don't want to but you need to have an honest conversation with yourself at least if you if you don't have the courage to have an honest conversation with yourself you don't have any Integrity I can understand why we might not want to have honest conversations with other people because most of other people aren't trustworthy I agree if you show any real vulnerability to a lot of people they just stab you in the back or in the face but at least have the courage to have an honest conversation with yourself brutally honest just between you and yourself or you who's ever sitting on your shoulder and wrestle it out with [Music] yourself and you have to be careful who you trust if you want to speak about such vulnerable important things in your life because not everybody has the same values we don't all have the same values we don't all share the same fundamental principles we don't all make sense out of life in the same way so if you're going to really dare to be that vulnerable with anybody else you have to make sure that they share your values it's easy to get off track hard to stay on track so freedom is a higher state spontaneous natural effortless easy obvious self-evidence and it's also a choice which is deliberate intentional sometimes very hard takes effort sometimes takes a kind of emotional and intellectual [Music] muscularity and remember all the forces of inertia all the forces of inertia which could all entangle with the ego are against you or us so sometimes making what you might consider to be the right choice in your highest moment takes an a an awful amount of soul level effort sometimes it's easy a lot of you already know this I think but the reason I make this point is because a lot of people think that that Enlightenment is supposed to always be easy a lot of people just want to get off the hook they don't want to they don't have to struggle they want life to be easy for me why should it be easy for you A lot of people that want life to be so easy spiritually have had a pretty easy life anyway usually very postmodern very spoiled anyway probably had it easier than most people have throughout human history and yet they want it to be why should it be easy so the Paradox or the contrast between effortless spontaneous liberating transcendental awareness and the times the times very difficult need to make the right choices which takes an enormous amount of heroic intellectual and emotional and spiritual effort you have to hold both of those truths in your in your in your awareness all the [Music] time which means when it's easy and when it's obvious then just let go and let it come through you and when you know you need to make a heroic amount of effort to just get yourself back on track and to save yourself yourself from the devil that exists inside all of us and do whatever you need to do to do the right thing but the thing we want to resist is is minimizing the existential and metaphysical and moral challenge that's at stake here the postmodern ego wants to minimize ah what he what so why is that so important it's very important it's a matter of life and death really is anything a matter of life and death say well yes for a lot of younger people these days Being Earnest is a sign of stupidity Being Earnest is a sign of stupidity you take what's the matter with you you take life too seriously relax you're going to die [Music] anyway so in evolutionary Enlightenment we have the the basic teaching of say the whole teaching is is the journey from minus one to 0 to plus one which is the journey from ignorance or wrong relationship to no relationship to right relationship a lot of you have heard me speak about that for years wrong relationship or ignorance no relationship which is freedom unconditional Freedom absolute freedom to right relationship but what I wanted to share with you this morning is that uh going from minus1 to0 to plus one as these are absolute positions is also in terms of the reality of The Human Experience these these these three positions are constantly in flux in relationship to the reality of being of our conscious experience which what I mean to say is you can say from an absolute position there's ignorance there's Liberation and then there's Clarity blindness Awakening and clear clear perception you could say as absolutes which are on an absolute level is true but then you could also say well some days the experience of the presence of ignorance or unenlightenment or the forces of ignorance and an unenlightenment are more prevalent than others right some days it's just a thin veil some days it's overwhelming so there's a sliding scale in the same way we could [Music] say the experience of trans the experience of transcending the Mind from confusion to Clarity from Pain to from what uh EA calls the pain body from being overwhelmed by the presence of the pain body to it Vanishing all together never seemingly never to have ever existed with the Awakening and as a result the capacity for Clear seeing un constructed by pain and ego right so what I want everybody to do I want you to see these as three absolute positions on one hand and also in terms of an absolute absolute position at the same time see these three positions as part of this on a sliding scale relative sliding scale terms of the reality of The Human Experience which means as I just was saying some days you're experience of the obscuring power of ignorance unconscious conditioning and just Madness will be mild some days it'll be very intense and overwhelming some days it'll be barely present and you want to try to be aware of this aware of conscious of these changes in your own inner experience in the context of a sliding scale you want to be bear witness to these things and to be aware what what's going on inside yourself in terms of your yeah in terms of what you where you where you are and then in terms of the experience of of of emptiness when your mind in ego stop obscuring your con your conscious experience your experience of Consciousness how profound is it because there's levels and levels and levels of profundity here there's levels of depth and seem L Clarity that are different they're not all the same so you want to be aware of the difference these different the experience of these different levels of depth that you're capable of experiencing on different days for different [Music] reasons some days it'll be profound and absolutely liberating some days it'll be relatively liberating some days it'll be a li little bit librating depending upon the depth of the State of Consciousness the depth of the experience you're having and then in terms of the emergence of your capacity for for clar with the result of that is the the capacity for clarity authenticity [Music] creativity [Music] uniqueness is a result of how much you've let go or [Music] not it's a liberating presence of the creative impulse Awakening to itself within you so some days this can be overwhelmingly ecstatically profound significant other days mild but present other days not present at all but you want to be aware of these aware of these [Music] distinctions that's why for some of you be following my meditation teachings online one of the things I'm always repeating is always know where you are so you want to know what's happening you want to have the cap you want to have the capacity for awareness to know what's happening within your own experience of mind and Consciousness mind body and Consciousness and you want to see what's happening within you within the context of this entirety of your Incarnation to the highest degree that you're able to understand it and make sense of it which will'll be imperfect but you always want to try and have a sense of where you are at in relationship to everything that's come before not easy might even be impossible but you want to try see see what's happening in context always see everything that's happening in context always see everything that's happening in context and when you realize that contexts are multi are there m multiple contexts that exist at the same time it's a lot to keep track of this is the need for for being willing to make effort when necessary because karma and context is easy to is easy is difficult to stay on top of because the ego is very immersed in the present moment for better for worse in pain and pleasure and usually he not contextually aware I think our soul has to be awakened in a profound way for there to be a continuity of contexual awareness it's one of the things I remember in my my former Community I was have a lot of trouble because I saw so many people would be so lost in the immediacy of the present moment experience maybe of higher States Of Consciousness that they wouldn't see those High moments of higher States Of Consciousness in the context of the continuity of their own human [Music] beingness so the only way we can make sense out of our experience at the highest level is to see everything in context context is makes it possible for us to make sense out of our experience in the highest level the biggest way the most meaningful way but the context is hard to keep a track of what was it what was the most important thing in your life 20 years ago what was the most important thing in your life 10 years ago what was the most important thing in your life one year ago changes so when the context changes the way you make meaning to the way we make make meaning changes [Music] also so it's very complicated and spiritually demanded to keep track of [Music] yourself so unconditional freedom is the higher state of consciousness that needs to be attained and realized it's got to happen if you're interested in Enlightenment you don't attain that State of Consciousness it's not it's not you haven't arrived and you don't have to arrive permanently but you have to arrive for at least a few seconds it's the good [Music] news a few seconds can change your life forever if it's the real thing so this is what we have to work on is the state gain access [Music] to that state and for those people who are still interested in Enlightenment the state is everything no State no Enlightenment no higher metaphysical context that's not intellectual that's not primarily intellectual so for enlightenment to mean anything having access to the higher state is [Music] everything because it's the truth that we find out access to in higher state that makes everything right and for someone who's truly interested in Enlightenment without this without having access to that State of Consciousness you feel like you're dead so some people say well if that's where you're at then you have problems maybe maybe not just depends on what's important what's what's most important to us so realize that the state is essential if you want if you're interested in Enlightenment without the state you don't have any progress so that's one side of it and the other is that the the choice is that we have the opportunity to make every day to get a new [Music] chance every day is a new opportunity to see how free you can choose you can freely choose is that nice see how God is so gracious with all of us she gives us all the opportunity to make the choice to be free every day no matter how no matter if we've been bad boys and bad girls before the day before she's very patient very for very forgiving she gives us all another chance I'll give you another as long as as long as we're breathing we get another chance every day so that my my simple point I'm trying to make is that the the the metaphysical tension the spiritually activated tension to do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time inspired by the conscious experience of the higher state the awakened State of Consciousness is there for all of us in front of us every single [Music] day so the state is the guru the guru is the guru because he or she has more access to the state than other people so then then access to the guru gets people access to the state it's just how it works no shoulds or [Music] shouldn't but this is not a psychological context it's a metaphysical context and when you understand the science of how all this works it makes it much easier to sort out all the complexity because I I feel this just more complexity all the time I'm just overwhelmed by it every day I'm tired of it as we all are There's No Escape anywhere [Music] available there's no going back to Kansas that's from The Wizard of ozs you know that that's that's the time in history all live there's no going back to the way things however however things were before and things were many different ways whatever however things were there's no going back so Kansas and The Wizard of Oz represents going back to before she went to the to Oz The Land of Oz she wanted to go back to the way things were before so many of us for good reasons and bad reasons want to go back because there's the illusion that things will be well be a relief but the reality is there's no going back for better and for worse and it's usually for worse than for better right now so can so we have to be able to bear that truth and then do our best to try to be heroic anyway even if you don't feel like it I don't think anybody feels like being heroic do you do they even heroes well maybe if they're narcissistic enough they might feel like but most of us don't feel like it why should you want to be hero so what I'm trying to do in terms of talking about the Paradox between e effortlessness and effort is just to create a picture of the kind of the dynamic metapos we all need to be taken in relation to our experience that can take us to the height of our potential from day [Music] [Music] day