On The Path

 Everybody Can Be A Winner

Okay, we’re going to have a feedback session now. How are you getting on?

Padro: Great, apart from my small episode of snoring.

Great? Then you must be missing something!

Padro: I meant it’s great in the sense that it’s not easy.

Oh. The true ‘great’ then.

Another participant: I can feel my struggle in being here, and looking for that place of being relaxed and calm. It’s not that I’m criticising myself, but there’s still this hammering thing coming up and judging what’s going on.

What is it judging?

The participant: It’s saying, ”It’s not easy. It’s hurting, it’s burning.” It’s commenting on all that body stuff.

When Padro implied that he was feeling great, I responded by saying he must be missing something, but then he corrected himself by saying it’s great even though it’s not easy. This is the key.

When it’s not easy and you’re suffering – which is a big story in our lives, perhaps even the biggest story – then it’s important to look upon it as a teaching, as something to test you out, and to trust that the suffering has an end, either because it slowly disappears, or because you find a way of dealing it. If you come to that end then you will feel triumphant and liberated, not only because you’ve been released from the suffering, but because you’ve learnt a great lesson in how to deal with it.

There is nobody in the world that does not suffer. Transcendence of suffering is the chief feature of Buddhist teaching; Jesus suffered at the end of his life, on the Cross; Socrates also suffered by taking poison. Suffering is probably the most worldwide and powerful form of negativity. It is the peak of bad experiences.

When we have suffering thrust upon us, it is not good to say, ”This should not be happening to me.” Perhaps every time it comes you say, ”No thank you, not today. Tomorrow would be better, because today I’m on holiday.”

You’re bound to have to deal with suffering many times in your life. Some people go to meditation camps and deliberately put themselves into suffering. There are some meditation groups that last for two or three weeks non-stop, and you know that you’re going to suffer when you sign up for it, and yet people still do them, because they feel that it’s worth it. The suffering will just be by-the-way, and the more important thing is to find something that is there in spite of all the difficulties.

When I’m suffering it’s always a challenge to find a way to deal with it, overcome it, go beyond it, and put it on one side and find the free space that isn’t in the suffering. Having done that ten-thousand times, I’m finding that I’m not suffering at all during these days here. In all these years I seem to have learnt something about suffering, and I can sit quietly on the floor or on a chair for an hour without a hint of pain; most of the time there’s just a deep peace. I wouldn’t have said that thirty years ago, and it’s not that I’m blessed now and I wasn’t then, it’s that I have found a way to deal with it. I’m not saying that this will always be true, because I may still get badly hurt, or acquire some incurable illness which might be very painful, but I would be better equipped than most people to deal with such things.

I think you can bank on the fact that nobody has ever got to that state of peace and neutrality – where you become one with all things – without having suffered, without having had to sit quietly for a long time, and without having had to deal with the mind. The mind drives most people completely crazy, or else, if it doesn’t drive them crazy, they just are crazy. The mind only drives you crazy when you see how crazy it is; once you try to get out of it, it drives you crazy, but before that, craziness is just the normal state of things.

What else is going on in this group of people?

(long silence)

Only emptiness has an answer to that silence! I don’t think you are all quite empty yet, so why don’t you tell me about that in you which is not yet empty.

Padro: There are some nice things happening too. It’s not just suffering. There’s lots of love in this group of people.

Sure, I can see that. At different times I can see that some of you are full of light, and looking like angels, then five minutes later, the light has switched off and I think, ”Christ, what’s happened to her? Last time I looked she was completely shining, and now she looks like thunder.” Better times do come, but we usually remember the bad times afterwards. They seem to stick more with us.

(silence)

I don’t like being the only truly happy person here. It’s not that I feel lonely, but I’d be glad to point you towards ways in which you can join me in a state of peace and happiness. If you don’t tell me where you’re stuck, then I can’t tell you how to get unstuck.

Duija: Well, I always have this, but I’ve realised during this group how very conscious I am of the way other people see me, and that I want to be ‘seen’. I’ve been going through all the layers of judging myself about this, and being conscious of how I react. It’s very interesting.

This is just in your mind though. You’re usually in the front row, so everybody else is behind you, and I haven’t seen anyone actually turn to face you…

Duija: (interrupting) Oh, but you are in front of me.

A-ha, I see.

Well, I should tell you, I have written a little book about you. Every time you come to a group I write five or six pages, so there’s quite a collection now. Actually, the only thing I’ve written under your name is, ”Duija: sits in the front row.”

Duija: That’s not even true, actually.

So, you’re concerned about what other people think of you. That’s a bit like entering an apple-pie competition where everyone brings along their best pie, and a judge tastes them all and gives them marks out of ten. What you are comparing in yourself with others is just apple-pie, but what you are is beyond comparison. What you are is both unique and absolute.

Because you’re unique, you’re bound to differ from everybody else, and if you’re absolute, then there’s nothing to compare you to. In the end, comparisons can only happen on a certain level.

If you have a goal, and you’re competing with others, then you will feel, ”What can I do to be better than the other people and become the winner?” You may want to be the most outstanding student, or to be the best meditator, but the true goal – which is your Source, or your True Nature – can have as many winners as there are people that arrive there. Everybody can be a winner; it’s not like the premiership, where only one team can come top while everyone else is in despair. In this game that we’re playing, everybody can make it. Not only that, but when you are making it, then that movement – rather than defeating everybody else – is in fact helping everybody. When anybody in this room finds a new step on the way, then immediately the energy of that achievement floods throughout the room, so there’s no competition here whatsoever. A seminar is always teamwork.

I do essentially the same work wherever I go, but some groups take off whereas others don’t. When they do, it’s because of the mix; people are supporting each other and sharing their gains, so the energy passes between them.

In a meditation group you’re all on your own, but here, because we’re concerned with energy, any new vibration that comes in is not going to be limited to one person, because energy does not stop at the borders of your body or your energy field; it radiates out in all directions. Anybody’s gain is a gain for you all, and my gains on the Path are a gain for you all; that’s why I’m here. It’s as if we’re all on one large ship going out into the ocean; we’re all one crew. When the crew is harmonious and the connections are strong, then the ship can go far.

To find your connection with everybody, you have to forget everybody but yourself; that’s the paradox. In this room there should be no family, no wives, no husbands, no children, no lovers, and no friends. They should all be left out there in the street. In here there is just you and the rest of the people present. If anybody else enters your mind, tell them to go, because you’re busy. You don’t want to hear from them, you don’t want to speak to them, and you don’t want to think about them. Right now you don’t even want to know that your lovers, friends, and family exist. In this situation they are nothing but a bloody nuisance! They are attachments; in your mind you are holding on to them, and they are preventing you from donating all of your energy to yourself.

If they are not here then they are not here, and if you are thinking about and concerned with them, then that is just an attachment. Attachment is one of the seven deadly sins! You are just wasting your energy; it takes it away from you, and gives you nothing in return. Anyway, it’s a conspiracy of your mind; to think about ‘important’ things, just so that it doesn’t have to be here and go through the suffering of facing its absence of freedom, and its inability to be still, silent, and empty

The mind – or the ego – can deal with anything, except one thing. What is that thing?

Padro: Nothing.

Thank you.

The mind does not know what to do with nothing, so it will not allow you to be in a space of nothingness because then it has nothing to do. The reverse is also true; as long as you are thinking you are not with nothingness, emptiness, and space.

Duija: For me it has something to do with being true to myself, whatever that means.

You do not have a true self to be true to, Duija. You are just being true to a bundle of habits, conventions, constructs, and history. These are the things you take to be what you are, and I’m saying that’s absolute nonsense.

Your natural self emerges out of nothingness. Only when you find the rock bottom of your being can you begin to think about being natural. Until then, what you call ‘being natural’ is simply a repetition of what you have been constructed to be. To be loyal to that is ridiculous; it’s just a construct that is always falling down, and constantly needs to be propped up.

If you are stuck in that then you will magnetically attract suffering. Each time it crashes down you are hurt and feel, ”How can people treat me like this? I’m being true! I’m being real!” But you’re not being true or real, so you have to be destroyed. As long as there is something which can fall to pieces like that, it has to fall to pieces. As long as you are not standing on your true ground, then somebody, or something, will pull that carpet from under you, until you cannot fall anymore. Then if somebody does pull the carpet from under you, you can just laugh and say, ”I’m exactly where I was before,” but until then, everything in you has to be destroyed.

If you were to open totally to the cosmic energy you would be destroyed, and at the same time, you would become whole. Why don’t you open to the cosmic energy? Because you are totally attached to something that you’re used to, in love with, manacled to, and afraid to let go of. All the energy that keeps you unreal sucks off all the energy that you need.

Everything is full of energy, but if you open to that energy it will sweep away all the personal stuff that you’ve built up. It will be as if you disappear, but in fact you won’t. You will begin a great new adventure. What is it like to begin again each moment? What is like to just be, and see what comes? If nothing comes, then what is it like to just sit quietly in the nothingness, and to be absolutely in contact with it?

You are all looking for small gifts; a nice high, new lover, a new friend, or a new job. These are just little things that will momentarily bring you some feeling that things are getting better for you at last; ”I’ve met this great new guy, and we had a great love affair. Things are looking up.” But things are not looking up. The happiness will last a few minutes, hours, days, or years, and then it will return to dust. As Buddha said, ”Look for that which does not come or go.”

You want more plusses, but the more you seek plusses the less you get them, because you’re tense and straining. You’re demanding from life, ”Give me what I want!” Life does not operate like that, and the best people don’t behave like that. The best people are just natural.

You can’t demand from life; it will just cause you pain. You think that if you get what you want you will be all right, but you won’t. You will soon swallow that and move on to the next thing. The only goodies worth having are those you can find in yourself, and when you find that big goody, then you don’t mind if you don’t get too many goodies from the outside world, because you’ve got the big goody of yourself.

It’s a tough journey to let go of all the things that stop you from being fully happy, but you will come up against them in this special group. They don’t come up so much in the seminars because I do more, I’m more active, and I give you good times – I give you great breakthroughs, momentarily – but in this group you are stuck with yourself, because you are stuck with yourself. Even if you are busy in life, doing ten-thousand different things – having lots of friends, watching television, drinking coffee, drinking wine – you are still stuck with yourself. When you close your eyes and just be on your own, then there you are. You cannot get away from yourself.

In this group you are stuck with yourself, but I’m giving you the opportunity – in the way of resonance, meditations, and advice – to find a new place where you can leave yourself behind, and say goodbye to the very thing which is the cause of your suffering. Your ego is always suffering. You may not always feel it is suffering, but since it can suffer so easily, it will. For example, if somebody in a crowd gives you an angry look, then it can totally ruin your day. He may just have been some idiot who has just been thrown out of his home by his wife, yet you still feel, ”My God! What did he give me that horrible look for?” It’s ridiculous, but it’s the kind of thing that happens.

Where else can you go but your mind? Where is the place that you can go to to obtain the miracle of escaping your mind? Does anybody know?

A participant: The body.

The body is not much of a thing on its own. A mosquito has a body. A crocodile has a body. Do you want to be a mosquito or a crocodile? A mosquito is just a body, and a great desire to sting people for their blood; that’s all it is. A crocodile is just something which likes to lie in the sun and snap at things to fill its belly.

Yes, the body is certainly a way out of the mind, and I often recommend it. What’s going on in the body is not part of the trips and dreams of the movie – but that’s not enough.

When you come out of the mind and into the body, the body becomes like a little car, but where are you going to drive it to? Round in circles or up a tree? Where are you going to go with the body?

Another participant: Consciousness?

Yes, consciousness, but the consciousness is also running the mind, so you have to be careful.

The consciousness that says, ”I am,” is not the same consciousness that thinks, but they are both a form of consciousness. So yes, ‘consciousness’, but consciousness without thoughts.

That movement is not so easy to make. As Buddha said, ”Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere.” As soon as you start to think you are fixing the mind somewhere, but consciousness is not fixed anywhere; it’s just a state of awareness.

‘The body’ is a good answer up to a point; ‘consciousness’ is a good answer to a greater extent, but it’s not the answer that I would give.

Another participant: Space?

Space is an even better answer!

We’re doing well aren’t we? We have ‘the body’ for the un-ambitious ones, ‘consciousness’ for the smarter ones, ‘space’ for the really clever ones, and…?

Another participant: The heart?

The heart. We forgot the heart! (singing) My heart belongs to Daddy! We’ll come back to the heart later. Where else is there?

A participant: The present?

The mosquito is in the present, and the crocodile is also in the present. For sure, the present is very important, but when you are thinking like crazy about all your attachments, where are you? Is your thinking happening tomorrow or yesterday? No; your thinking is happening now. Nothing happens anywhere but now.

There is one more step.

Shraddhan: Being?

Beedies? So that’s why everybody smokes beedies! What is the difference, Shraddhan, between Being and consciousness?

Shraddhan: Consciousness is a state of mind, and being just is.

I love that. I couldn’t have given a better answer myself. Being just is. That’s the trouble with it; Being just is, so what can you say about it? There’s not much you can say about Being. Being is a good answer, but nobody has given me the answer that I’m looking for.

Another participant: Energy?

Energy is always changing, so I don’t think it can be the base of anything.

Another participant: No mind?

‘No mind’ is the answer we had earlier, when we said, ”Consciousness without thinking.” The state of consciousness not being fixed anywhere.

Duija: Love?

You should have been a movie star.

Duija: I give up.

Another participant: It’s impossible. You can’t go to any other place.

Yes you can. There are other places that we can go to, for sure.

Let’s try again. We had ‘the body’, ‘consciousness’, ‘space’, ‘Being’, ‘love’, and ‘the heart’. Where are all these things?

A participant: In the moment?

You mean they didn’t exist yesterday? Where do they all come from?

A participant: The Source?

Another participant: Existence?

Where did everything come from?

Another participant: You’re not talking about God are you?

Where did he come from?

Another participant: The unknown?

Come on you Buddhist people! Where do they say everything comes from?

A participant: The Source?

Another participant: Emptiness?

Yes; emptiness. That’s what I was looking for.

You are trying to get out of your mind but half of you are afraid of coming out of your mind because you don’t know where else you can be but in the mind, because the mind has been such a huge prison for you for so long.

You live in a cage in the mind. You’re like a parrot or budgerigar in a cage and it doesn’t know that it’s small enough to get through the bars of the cage and fly away. Sometimes it goes to the edge and peeps out and says, ”My God what a big world. I can’t see anything familiar there and in my cage I have a little trough, birdseed and people come and feed me, and in my cage I can sing and there is no danger, no big birds to carry me off.”

Listen you mind people – for many of you are fighting like mad with your minds here – there’s a Zen statement that says: ”If you leave the mind alone, the mind will leave you alone.”

You don’t believe that do you? You think that the mind is the tyrant, but that’s not true; you are holding on to the mind, the mind is not holding on to you. You think, ”What’s the smartest part of me? It’s the thinking mind, so if there’s anywhere to go that is a bit difficult to get to – like enlightenment – then surely my mind is the best instrument to get me there.” The fact is, the mind is exactly the reason why you can’t go there.

My first big step on the Path to enlightenment – as opposed to having many satoris – was in nineteen-eight-four. I was out for a walk on a summer group, and I had my peak thought; I had the realisation that my mind was great, but that it was not going to get me what I wanted. From that moment on I’ve had no trouble with my mind. I just shut it up, walk away, go into space, silence, serenity and don’t listen to it. Not because of discipline or that I fought, struggled, and won against my mind, but because I simply saw that what I thought it was good for – to get me what I wanted in life – it couldn’t do.

Participant: So you lost interest?

I lost faith.

When you are born you have an empty mind; there is just awareness. Even until the age of four or five you are not thinking. All the thoughts that come into you arrive during your lifetime. You have taken in all this stuff and are juggling it around trying to find the truth, but if the truth is not in that stuff then it doesn’t matter how many times you throw it up and sort it out; if it is not there then you won’t find it.

All that stuff does not contain a single clue about becoming one with the Source, no-one in your school, job, or education talked about finding the Source, and that’s the only information that’s in your head.

As long as you are delving into your mind then you can’t find the truth, because it’s not there; your mind is the only place where the truth is not. The truth is out there in those bushes, in that roof, and in that bird flying there, but it’s not in your mind and that is where you are looking. If you don’t look in your mind and look out of the window instead, then you will see all this beautiful nature; when you do that then you are in the here and now. However, sometimes when I look out of the window, I don’t really see what’s there because it’s a form.

Last time we were here – on the first TOBAL – I told everyone that I was in paradise, again and again. This time it’s different; it’s great, but this time I’m in the base which is prior to all forms. The question I ask now is, ”What is the nature of that tree?” Its nature is to stand there, grow leaves in spring, shed them in autumn, move when the wind blows, and draw up sap from the ground. What is your nature? Certainly not your stupid idea of who you are, and not who you think you are.

You can’t find your nature unless you find your roots, otherwise you are just being something that you’ve learnt to be; today you are being what you were yesterday, and that’s not your nature, it’s just a pretence, a mask, a stage.

That tree’s nature is to stand there, but you are not a tree. A tree is all that a tree can be; it has a limited number of possibilities but it’s always pure. No-one can criticise or judge a tree by saying, ”You should be taller. You must have been smoking when you were young.” Similarly, no-one can judge this flower and say, ”Red and yellow? That’s stupid! Why didn’t you choose blue?” You can’t say that because it’s just what it is! You have to look down to your roots. The first thing you have to look for is the soil, your Source. Not who you think you are or who you love – that comes later. What you have to find is where your life is spilling out from at this moment.

At this instant your life is freshly coming. What you are doing is thinking about it, but you wouldn’t be able to think if your life wasn’t freshly coming. You’ve taken this fantastic life and stuffed it in your heads, but you can only think – you idiots – because your life is freshly coming from a place before thought! You take this fantastic life and stuff it in your heads and start thinking! That’s what you’ve done, and are doing. You are putting this pure life in your mind and squandering it, spitting it away. But you can free it right now, this moment.

Don’t look at me! I know I’ve got it! Have a look in you! If you didn’t have this pure life you’d drop dead and we’d be mourning you. What do you want to die for? Your heart is only beating, and you are only breathing, because pure life is coming in. Can’t you feel where your aliveness is coming in? That aliveness has no shape, no form, and no identity, but once you take it in, express it, and live it, then it does. It’s the same aliveness moving through all of us, including that tree, but the tree is just a tree and you are a human being with an amazing, incredible, potential to express that pure life!

The tree can only fluff its leaves. It can’t even jump because it’s stuck in the Earth. The poor old tree is so limited, but you are not. When this pure life comes in there’s a million things you can do with it. You are already doing a million things, but only from your ideas about what you want to do. If you leave that potentiality alone it will express itself through you, and when it does you can say, ”This is my true nature.” In this moment I am showing you my true nature and that’s what I want for you, but first you have to get to the ground of your Being or else whatever you find is not yet true.

We are halfway through the seminar now, so take note of what I’ve been saying and see if you can use that which is meaningful for you. Leave behind all your attachments to your own beliefs and just be.

When you are in emptiness, space, or pure consciousness, you have no friends, no relatives, no role, no job, no obligations, no history and no future. All these things do not exist; they are all possessions, ambitions, desires, goals and hopes. They come afterwards, and were not there to begin with.

Feedback Session, TOBAL II, 7th May 2007