2006

 August: It's A Tsunami!

I’ve been talking a bit more than usual in these opening days of the X-Run, because I have to get the mind to cooperate. All this talking feeds the mind so it is able to say, “Okay, that sounds alright to me.”

I have a saying which is, “Everything that happens is a taking away.” There’s also a saying in economics, “Good money drives out bad,” or it might be, “Bad money drives out good.” Does anybody know?

A participant: I think it’s, “Don’t throw good money after bad money.”

That’s another one, a Canadian version. How those sayings apply to what we’re doing here I shall now explain. The energy that we’re working with moves out all the energy that is not resonant with it. At the same time as there is a resonance in you – and there has to be some, and with some of you there’s a lot – the grosser energies begin to move out. That’s what creates most of your experiences during the work, and that’s why it’s a taking away; because energies move out of you.

If you start identifying with the beautiful things that can happen, then you are identifying with something that is doomed to go. It’s on it’s way out, it’s passing through, so if you try to hang on to it you’ll be in trouble. You’re not supposed to hang on to it, it’s what is left afterwards that is important.

So after today’s happening I asked you to find a place to sit down, and then it was there. Much went on, and many of you had great experiences – lots of interconnectedness and love was passing – but it was when we finished that everything became light.

When I was walking around the garden just now in the break – stopping and chatting to a few people – I said to one person that I’ve known for many years, “You were looking very beautiful this afternoon.” She blushed a bit of course, then said, “Sometimes I look around and I see that everyone’s beautiful. It’s really a miracle.” I told her, “This happens very often in the seminars. Everybody, in that moment, is with the jewel inside, and suddenly their beauty shines out. The jewel is always there, but when you’re with it you’re beautiful. It doesn’t matter what size, shape, or age you are – I’ve seen it with every range of people. You could say that what we’re doing is washing that diamond.”

So please don’t get attached to the processes that go on in you. Enjoy them or not as the case may be – there are many different kinds – but let them come, be there and go; don’t run after them or hold on to them.

The same goes for the stuff that passes through the mind. Occasionally you can get a great insight during the work, but mostly it’s just stuff passing through. It’s a bit like having a good shit. Sometimes it’s great to have a good shit! It’s very beautiful when you don’t make any effort and it just comes out all on it’s own; that’s fantastic! I think that is one of the most beautiful experiences; when you sit down on the toilet and suddenly it all just comes out. But sometimes we have to push a bit. It’s still nice to get it out, but it’s not quite so beautiful. I know it’s common for people, when they’ve had a shit, to take a look and see what it’s like. But after that they pull the flush, they don’t put their hands down there and carry it around saying, “Look what I did!” Actually kids do that: “Mummy! Look what I did!” A lot of the stuff that goes through the mind is just like that. If it smells nice we say, “Hey great! Now I know who I am, I know what’s going on, and I understand everything.” But please don’t do that, because it’s all a grasping. The moment you say, “I am this,” you’ve missed it. You can be ‘this’ when it is happening, but you can’t own it. Things just pass through, and if you grab and hold on to them then after a while they will begin to stink.

The self is very greedy, it’s not satisfied with just having an experience, it wants to own the experience, make it part of the identity, and tell people about it so it looks and feels great. This is a fundamental error of the spiritual path; to try and grasp things and build a whole new spiritual ego.

Please don’t hang on to anything, because then you are free, always empty and ready for the next moment. Then you won’t meet the next moment with what you’ve already acquired. If you’ve got stuff that you’ve acquired and something new comes in you say, “How can I fit this into what I’ve already got? Is it going to harmonise it? If it is I’ll let it in, and if not I’ll reject it.”

I told you yesterday – when I was talking about my time at Cambridge studying Law – that my teacher said I knew more cases than anyone else in England. Then I left university and decided I wasn’t going to go on with law, and within a week they all vanished, except two. I don’t know why I still remember those two out of ten-thousand cases, but I do. My mind said, “I don’t need them anymore,” and flushed them down the drain. Then I was ready for whatever came next. That’s the way to approach things, emptying out all the time. Don’t hang on to any great experiences; have no identity.

There’s a Zen saying I’m reminded of, “Inwardly no identity; outwardly no attachment.” The more that you stay with this impersonal energy and let it in, the more you won’t be able to hold on anyway.

This primal energy works like a tsunami, it just washes all the structures away. It is so powerful that it swamps everything, but the moment that you turn away from it all the things that got swamped resurface again – they were just under the water and had not yet disappeared. When you’re living this wave then you are letting that energy come through into your life, and that is a great revolution. You no longer feel you’re an isolated being, you feel that you’re like a wave on the ocean and behind you is the whole ocean.

I’ve been working with energy for a long time – more than thirty years. I’ve done work with individuals, and at times there has been a man-mountain standing in front of me, yet I could touch that person with one finger and they’d fall over. The cosmic energy has more power in a cubic centimetre than there exists in the entire world. The whole universe has that power, but then we take from it and build something on another dimension altogether.

Each time you have these happenings just let them go. Many great things happen for people, a lot of energy is released, insights come, inspirations come, great bliss and love experiences come, but then they go. They come and they go, but the more you fall into the empty space that’s left behind afterwards then that place can stay.

Buddha said, “Look for that which does not come or go.” We’ve all had marvellous things that have happened to us, and they’ve all gone. Bliss comes and goes, love comes and goes, peace comes and goes, success comes and goes, even life comes and goes. But there is something that doesn’t come and go. As Ulong was telling us about this satori experience she had, “Never born, never died, had always been here, and would always be here.”

There’s a great English poet called William Wordsworth, and in one of his poems he describes an experience he had with the words, “At that moment death was a laughing impossibility.” Many people have spoken of such experiences, and if you trust that this is the case then one has to balance everything else against that. You can have these experiences and say, “That’s not it, and that’s not it,” but ultimately, it’s the background that’s the basis. I think it’s good never to forget that, though not to be obsessed by it or let it interfere with the beautiful things that there are in life. Don’t become too serious about it!

Does anybody want to ask anything about what I’ve been saying today?

A participant: I’d like to ask something. I’ll just share with you what came up in the constellation we just did. There weren’t any feelings of bliss or sadness particularly, but more some helpful advice on how to be with my two sisters. But now I’m confused, and my mind is saying, “Am I attached to this?” I see there’s scope for me to do what you’ve been saying, but at the time I felt it was very helpful.

You saw how to be with them in a new way?

The participant: I just got some feelings of how to be more loving or grown-up with them, but now I’m thinking, “Am I making this into a blissful experience that I have to let go of?”

I know that I can’t always follow what I know, but often I can. I do know that all problems can be solved if you look at them from a different place, a place where they’re not problems anymore.

The participant: Thank you.

If you look at the problem at the same level as the problem then you’ve got to work it out, but if you look at it on a deeper level then it’s not a problem. If you can approach these people on another level then the clash can’t happen because it doesn’t belong to that level. On that level, there is nobody in this room. The room is empty. It is as if we are all apparitions or ghosts. We’re just playmates, or energy happenings. If you are with that other reality – though it’s not the only reality – then you are bound to be in a state of bliss. Not, ‘maybe’; you’re bound to be. There’s nobody there, and in a way you’re not there, but whatever remains includes being in a state of bliss. When you move from that space towards the apparitions then that movement is inescapably a movement of love. It’s not so much that you love, but that the movement has to be love. That’s what is meant by the phrase, “God is love.” Whether that also means, “Love is God,” I’m not sure, but they’re very close. What I mean by that is if you’re in that love, does it mean that you’re at that level called God, or is it just one attribute?

Some people can experience something like that when they walk in nature. You can experience something like that if you’re with someone you love very much on an ordinary level; a very strong love connection can allow you to fall into that cosmic love. You can fall into it if you’re doing something that you love to do, if you’re totally involved and almost lost in it. Music is also a good connector for many people.

There are many chances in ordinary life to taste what I’m talking about, but I think that in pretty well all those cases it’s short-lived. But I know that if you find that space that I’m talking about – a oneness with all – it need not be short-lived. It can last for a long time, and when you’ve experienced it quite a lot then it happens more and more. Sometimes you find that there’s a trigger that can bring you back. My triggers are trees, and – I confess – resonant members of the female sex. Through that connection everything is there. It’s not just between me and the tree, or me and that person, it’s that through that connection a door opens to a feeling of oneness with everything.

If you feel that connection in any of the thing’s that I’ve mentioned, or in something else I haven’t, then that’s a peak experience. The peak experience – which probably many people here have had more than once – doesn’t necessarily equate with a satori, it’s just a high. It’s possible, though, that these experiences can become a regular part of your life. Maybe it can always be there, though I can’t say for myself that it’s always there, but it can always be part of your life in the way that a close friend is part of your life; you don’t spend all your time with them but they’re always there, so you can see them, and you often do. The possibility to fall into that space can always be around, so you never feel you’ve lost it or that you’ll never have it again. This is what happens to people when they first have such experiences. I’ve had many people come to me and say, “I had this fantastic experience seventy years ago. Michael please help me get it back!” They’ve become obsessed with one peak experience, and you shouldn’t do that because you can’t get them back.

Through working with the energy again and again – as many people here and in Onelife have done – such experiences become more and more part of your life. You can’t click your fingers and have them, but at any moment they can be there again.

Talk, X-Run, Italy, 21st August 2006