(The following is based on personal notes and taping. Please do not consider as verbatim or as a quotable source for Eckhart’s teaching)

We'll spend the rest of the day in Noble Silence. Except perhaps for this body sitting on a chair this afternoon, words may come. Some of you may be watching a film tonight and there's no reason why you cannot be silent as you watch the film. Fierce...I believe it is tonight, "Fierce Grace" about the life of Ram Dass. A good film. And so if you can extend the silence into sleep, until sleep happens tonight. For those of you who have come with a partner or friend, it would be good occasionally also to walk alone out here in Nature in silence and awareness. That's why it's called Noble Silence. There's silence and Noble Silence. Silence means you're not speaking. Noble Silence means you're not speaking and aware. The expression I believe originally comes from Buddha, or Buddhism. About many subjects it is said when asked, the Buddha kept Noble Silence which means he didn't give you an answer. That reminds me that probably tomorrow morning we'll have a question and answer session. Questions, perhaps answers.

This morning I believe there was a CD played of meditation music and if you still have it, if we could listen as a musical illustration of this morning's, what we were talking about this morning. I'd like you to just listen for two or three minutes to a little piece. And what to listen to namely, predominantly is not the sounds or the tones, not the foreground, but the background. The background of space. The background of stillness. And with music like that even the act of listening to that because it is the act of listening to an absence, the absence of sound. Listening to stillness brings about inner stillness. Only with that can you acknowledge the dimension of silence. External silence. Only when the inner dimension of stillness which is consciousness without thought. That's what stillness is. Consciousness without thought. Only from that dimension can you be aware of silence. What seems external silence. That's why that I mentioned perhaps briefly on our first day, whenever it was, perhaps yesterday...how listening to silence out in nature or in a room can also be an opening into that dimension. Because you cannot listen, acknowledge silence, notice silence without the dimension of stillness. Thinking cannot even notice silence. It's a little mystery and its a miracle. The simple act of noticing that dimension puts you into that dimension. Otherwise you can't notice that. So listening to this music we listen, we're aware of the background more than what happens. One could say the canvas in which the sound is painted. And as you do that pure awareness, that consciousness without thought arises. So if we have that CD we could listen to track 2 (Music for Zen Meditation, Tony Scott, Murmuring Sound of a Mountain Stream) of this mornings meditation CD.
Music Played.
The background is more important then what happens.
(Pause)
The only way the dimension of the sacred can come into this world is through the awareness of the background which is awareness of awareness. Space. Inner space. We said this morning in any interaction ask yourself whether there is space in the interaction. The very question makes it possible for space to open up. This is really no different from asking whether there's love in the interaction because out of that, love arises. The awareness of that is love. I don't use that word too often, because it's been misused allot.
So to see, the is the essence of our retreat, the essence of any spiritual teaching, to see this, to realize this truth that is so simple is one thing, no thing. That realization they call satori in Zen, when you for the first time see [the nature of] Reality. And its another thing to live it in your daily life. The ability to live it could be called enlightenment. And again it's not that helpful a concept because it sounds like an achievement. Somebody's achievement. And one could almost say that the essence of enlightenment is the opposite of "somebody's achievement." Enlightenment and perhaps some of you may have come here expecting to gain something. It's not a "gain" of anything since it's already here. It would be closer to the truth to say that enlightenment is a loss of something. Of that which covers it up.

So it cannot be an achievement. So the question is then how to live it in one's daily life where the challenges pile up one after the other. Living in this world, mad to some extent. Faced with the challenges of everyday life which are primarily in oneself. They seem to appear as external factors but your real challenge is the conditioned mind, the momentum of it. And your real challenge is not to lose awareness when that starts up, not to lose awareness when the pain-body becomes active and associates itself with the thinking mind, old emotion, old human emotion, old human pain, linking in with the activity of thought. Personalizing the pain. The pain-body says 'don't talk about me. I can't stand it.' So there's thousands of years of conditioning, collective mental conditioning plus your personal conditioning from this lifetime which is bad enough in itself. And the personal pain from this lifetime and which would be quite enough.

And so what to be aware of in your daily life is of course, the movement of thought and the flux of emotions. Aware means know that it's there so that there's a space around it. One could say a space between you which is the space between you and the thought, the space between you and the emotion. But ultimately you are the space so then the emotion happens within the space that you are. Knowing yourself as space, not as that which happens in that space. This is why this music is helpful...knowing yourself as the underlying field, not that which takes birth and then dies in the field. Comes and goes.

So it means not believing in every label that the mind comes up with. That's what's so important is to begin to live your life in such a way, the aliveness of life is not obscured continuously by labels and concepts.

That's why it's so important to go for a walk here and perceive clearly, aware, in the space of awareness without needing the labels. That's why it's so important to sometimes do things, little movements that, conventional little activities and bring presence to them. The space. They happen within the spaciousness of no-thought. Just aware presence. Even such a simple thing as putting an object from here to there while it travels from here to there, there's a space of pure awareness. So it's a beautiful gesture. It becomes beautiful through that. Before it wasn't beautiful, it's a means to an end. I need to put this here. It doesn't have that quality to it. It comes only with awareness. Walking across your room consciously from the door to the bed. Free from thought for that little interval. It’s just beautiful. So this is the beginning of not getting completely drawn into labels and believing when you have a label you know what it is.

Living in that state of openness which is true intelligence. Which has the appearance that you don't know and yet all knowing arises out of it. All true knowing. So here we have, this the beginning, little labels, not to believe in the ultimate reality of the labels. And then of course there's more, the human mind, there are huge patterns of ways in which you interpret to the universe, inherited from your personal past, inherited from the collective past, your cultural past, your collective past of mankind, of humankind. Ways of interpretation which are based mainly on separative egoic consciousness. The little me interprets the world in certain ways. And no longer totally believe in one's interpretation of situations, events, or people and beware of premature conclusions which the mind quickly reaches about things and people. That's how it is. So beware of all interpretations of people or events and recognize them when they come because they come. Recognize them as interpretations, as a perspective, perhaps, a possible perspective. Never the entire truth and very often a complete fantasy.

So it's always a standing back from thought into the spaciousness. Being the spaciousness. There's the interpretation and you stand back a little bit. There are many stories in Zen to illustrate how interpretations can mislead you. I will tell you a little one. It was for a long time the custom in monasteries when visitors arrived in the evening to ask for lodging, sometimes other monks or other visitors. In order to gain the right to spend the night in the monastery they had to challenge somebody who lives in the monastery to an argument and win the argument. But it was a Zen argument so it was never conducted with many words. And if they won they could spend the night, if they lost they would have to move on. So there was one monastery where the Abbott was a monk and his younger brother who was not yet very enlightened also lived there as a monk. The younger brother only had one eye. He had lost his eye early in childhood. So one evening the younger brother came into the Abbott and said a visitor has just arrived and I happened to be standing at the gate and he challenged me to an argument, discussion. What do I do? He had never done it and the Abbott, his elder brother, knew that was a rather risky thing to do so he said, but he had been challenged so he said okay conduct the in silence. Okay. He went off, ten minutes later the visitor comes and knocks at the door of the Abbott and says, "I'd like to pay my respects to you and take my leave because your brother is so clever and enlightened he completely defeated me in the argument. And the Abbott said "How so, what happened?" He said, "Well, it started, our discussion started said the visitor with me raising one finger to signify Buddha the Enlightened One. The your brother raised two fingers to signify Buddha the Enlightened One is not complete without the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching. The I raised three fingers to indicate that the third element is also needed which is the Sangha, the brotherhood of monks without which it's not complete. So here they went. And then the visitor said, your brother suddenly shook his fist in my face to signify that all arises from the one act of enlightenment, the one realization. And so he completely defeated me. I'll move on to another monastery and seek lodging there. Good bye. And a few minutes later the younger brother comes in and says to the Abbott, "Where is this fellow? I'm going to beat him up!" He completely insulted me and the Abbott says, "Tell me what happened." He said, "Well, we started, he raised one finger to make fun of my one eye. Then I decided to raise two fingers to compliment him on the fact that he had two eyes. And then he dared to raise three fingers to show that between us we only had three eyes. And so I was going to punch him in the face but he ran away.

(laughter)

Different realities. Different worlds. And so a beautiful example, this of course was the conditioning of the brother and how did he get the conditioning. Probably as a child he was mocked many times. So there was already expecting something like that to happen. And immediately the neutral event was interpreted so basically and this happens to many people still in this world. They inhabit a fantasy world of conditioning from the past and looking at events that are happening in the present through that conditioning and interpreting events through that conditioning. And in many cases it's complete fantasy but the strange thing is when you continuously interpret the world in certain ways, it tends to reflect back to you that interpretation. So one could say that what is called karma...usually its regarded as things that happen to you in your life. Good things, bad things, good karma, bad karma but really how your life unfolds is perhaps ten percent of what happens to you, ninety percent of the reactions to what happens to you. And continuous reactions create their own reality. Reality confirms back to you that your interpretation is correct. That's how it works.

So if you interpret human beings as being basically dishonest and out to get you or get something from you, that becomes your selective perception of reality. That's the way in which you interpret events and then after awhile because perception is selective, you will get confirmation because you will only meet those people that will conform to your expectation. The others you are not even interested in. And you might even bring out in people who are not totally conscious yet, that which you expect from them. Or that which you fear from them. You pull it out of them. They're not fully conscious. So to be aware, very much of the way in which one interprets reality.

That's why I like Byron Katie (Loving What Is, End of Suffering) spiritual teacher has this question that you ask yourself whenever you have thoughts arising about a person, a situation, an event, and you have your interpretation of it, "Do I really know that this is true?" Can I really know that this is true then you look deeply and say "I don't really know" this interpretation is true. I don't really know it. Maybe it looks true to me but I don't really know it. And so you are beginning to take a step back from thought. Any thought. So that you can begin to dwell in the region of no-thought and have your home, your dwelling place there. Not in the interpretations of the mind. Have your dwelling place in that field, in that pure intelligence and out of there, yes, you respond to situations and events, but you don't react. React comes out of the old conditioning.

So people carry inside them the past. They look upon the present through the eyes of the past. And so what then happens is that provides the continuity between past and future. You make sure that the future is going to be the same as the past. And this is how most people live and this is the essence of karma is that there is a continuity between the unconscious past in you and the events that unfold. You are creating it through your interpretations and total identification with the thought structures which then create that reality.

Nations do it to each other. Collective bodies, entities interpret it in their way. They cannot see any other perspective except that. There is no other perspective. This is the truth. As I mentioned the writer that I read in the New York Times, "competing narrative." "The unwillingness or the inability to accommodate a competing narrative. To see that view and to hold that in awareness. So to see inside oneself, the structure of thought and the movement of old emotion that goes with it and step back from that so that there's some space. And that applies particularly, of course, when the movement of thought becomes connected to the old emotion and they become a vicious circle. The old pain body, the old emotion, personal emotion from your past, collective pain from humanity as a whole with which even every baby comes into this world. Most baby's already cry. Why do they already cry?


Some babies cry more than others. Some babies have a heavier pain body than others. It doesn't mean that those who don't have a heavy pain body are closer to liberation. Who knows? The pain body is an aspect of the mind made self and it is that which makes it hard to step beyond it. If it were only thought structures it wouldn't be that hard. But it is thought structures combined with the force of old human pain. So when the pain body that lives in every human, not always active, sometimes dormant for periods of time. When it needs to replenish itself which it can only do by absorbing energy frequencies that corresponds to its own virbational frequency which is the frequency of (makes a noise as if in pain and suffering) Pain in whatever form...(makes a growling angry sound) Whatever it is. This explains it better than concepts. Concepts create a distance. Okay, anger (makes angry sound) or heaviness of depression. 'Ohhh! Can't take anymore. Can't take anymore of this.'

When the pain body needs to replenish itself, it can only do that by creating energy that vibrates at the same frequency which is pain. And so it will move into your mind, the emotion rises up into the mind, thinking, and then suddenly you thinking reflects the emotions. If you think along the lines, if the predominant energy field of the emotion is anger, you think angry thoughts. Of course it will be about something here, some situation, somebody next to you, a situation you are in. It seems to be coursed, the thoughts that you are thinking with great energy are seem to be coursed by something around you. But of course that which is around you, very often a relatively insignificant event or thing that somebody did or said but the thoughts and emotions are extremely powerful, incredible force to them. Out of proportion to the event which was really only the triggering event, not the causal event. Such that the mind made self believes it to be the causal event. You caused this. You did that to me.

And not surprisingly, the very very common characteristic of the self linked to pain body is to see itself as the victim of some person or situation. Very common, almost every pain body has it. The interpretation of reality as doing something to me. The Course in Miracles puts it beautifully. It says beware of the temptation of seeing yourself unfairly treated. And that is almost in everyone, that is an aspect of pain body and the self, mind-made self when it's linked in with pain-body. Something there is doing something. Even the criminals in prison, almost all of them consider themselves to be victims, in some way. One could say they are. It's a perspective. You can take any perspective.

So let's see when the pain body needs to feed, there's a readiness for it to come. It cannot come unless it can find some trigger. The trigger could be just one thought that goes through your head. The slightest trigger it can use. A little negative thought, a little negative reaction, then the pain body can use that and link into that. And that would lead to a stream of thinking along the lines of the pain body. So just a little, even driving in the traffic, an upset about another driver (makes sound like upset) when the pain body is ready to come up, it will use that moment and that will lead to a train of thought movement that is increasingly painful and the pain body loves it. It feeds on every painful thought because the thought carries the vibration that it wants. It's all suddenly seen through those eyes of pain. So from one little traffic incident, suddenly the whole universe...and yourself and the pain body is feeding on movement of thought. And then that is the movement of unconsciousness.

Is there a possibility at that point to wake up? Yes, now there is, if there is enough presence in you, there's the possibility of knowing what is happening as it happens. If you can catch it at an early stage it's even easier. Just as it arises. Catch it, to feel the emotion directly before it becomes a thought. If you can do that, it cannot begin to use your thought processes. If you are aware that it is there and that requires alertness. That requires that. If the alertness is there, you can watch the emotion wanting to become a thought. And you continue simply to watch it on the level of the emotion. Semi-physical entity. Beautiful. It's no longer a personal matter. It's simply the movement of emotion in you. And when you watch it, it is implied that you accept it because its here. It's part of your acceptance practice which is the most powerful way to go beyond is to accept what's there. There it is.

If you don't catch it at a very early stage you may have to catch it when thought is already moving. And then you may notice a strong disinclination, if that's the word, to want to get out of it. There may still be a presence in the background. A witnessing presence. How strong it is then that will determine whether or not you can still rise above it, step out of it, see it for what it is. Ah..,oh..and feel it. And then it's not replenishing itself through your thinking. Of course, I'm sure many of you know it also likes to replenish itself through other people. To provoke a reaction. To challenge somebody else. Please give me some emotional reaction. React. 'You did that to me! I didn't, you did it to me!' So it feeds on the other persons. It wants to awaken the other person's pain body. Pain bodies love other pain bodies. So partners feed on each other's pain body. It's an essential ingredient of most relationships. The drama that is a necessary part of relationships, periodic drama and after awhile the pain body has replenished itself and it subsides. And then the same cycle starts again. And so to bring consciousness into that requires alertness. Vigilance. You cannot suppress it. It would only get stronger. Or temporarily you could. I'm not going to let this pain body get the better of me.

I'm just going to sit here. Not acknowledging what the mind may call negative emotions is also dangerous. The mind might be saying, you may have an image if you are still deriving your sense of self from thought, you may have an image in your mind of who you are, a spiritual person, maybe. Somebody who has already gone beyond these things or if you are a Christian and want to follow the teachings of Jesus without having gone to the bottom of it, just the externals then you may have an image of yourself as a good Christian. There are certain things that a good Christian does not feel. And so there may be a clash between the emotion that you feel and your self image. And then you deny that it's there. 'I'm not angry at all. How dare you even suggest that I am angry.' Can go so far as somebody shouting, "I am not angry!" So to watch that because people believe that the emotions that they experience are some personal dilemma that they're not yet advanced enough, so that's why they are still there or not good enough people to have those emotions. 'I'm not good enough if I have those emotions.' It's the belief that emotions are a personal matter. Deriving your sense of self partly from emotions and partly from thought. The mind-made self consists of those elements.

There is nothing personal, neither in emotion or in thought. It's just human thought. No different from other human thought. Another human next to you has very similar thought structure and emotions. Anger is anger in the other person, very similar to your anger. Basically the same. The stories around it might be slightly different. The explanations of why I am angry maybe slightly different from person to person. Slightly different script in the head. But so what people derive their identity from, the sense of person, personal selfhood, is ultimately not personal at all, just human emotion and human thinking. And that makes it a little easier when you realize that your emotions are not a personal matter, they're human emotions to do with the fact that you are a human, temporarily, a human here on this planet, have inherited certain things, that are connected with the past of this planet. And those things are there. And that's all. So you can by watching an emotion, you begin to depersonalize the emotion, not denying, but depersonalizing it. So it is not a personal problem of yours anymore, the fact that you get anger attacks once a week or whatever form the pain-body may take. And you can actually see that, the fiery emotion of that. (Makes a sound like fire.) It's easier to accept it too when you realize it as not self, as not you. It's easier to accept that. yes, there are still human emotions in you, oh, how dreadful. (chuckles) so with that begins a depersonalization of pain body.

The pain body wants to pretend to be a person, wants to be taken very seriously, wants to be linked to the story of me. It gives energy to the story which then becomes a very unhappy story when the pain body is there. And even to see that the story also of me which consists of thought and reactive patterns, thoughts, reactive patterns, memories, mental images, are thought forms, concepts, thought-forms and images that happen in the field of consciousness.

Today you would be surprised how similar the basic structure of human thought is from person to person. When you get to the bottom of it in yourself, you know every other mind, even from other cultures or in other cultures the story may be different but the basic elements are the same, of totally identifying with one mental position.

If you are a woman and you travel to certain countries and forget to change your clothes and you arrive at the airport wearing a skirt and short-sleeved blouse, certain people in those countries will immediately interpret you as immoral. Has no shame. Is immoral. That is their perspective. When they come here you might have some other interpretation about them. And they cannot yet step beyond it and see it as an interpretation, as a perspective. They're still completely wedded to that mind-form, that mind structure and anybody who challenges it, challenges their very identity. It's the essence of unconsciousness.

So your self is not in thought and emotions. It is in the space in which the thoughts and emotions happen. The one who can allow the thoughts and emotions to be there which is the space, which is the I-AM presence, the deepest I-AMness. I am is usually followed by some concept or word, this or that or a name, just a thought-form. The most frequently used word in the language may be I. And usually it refers to the mind-made me and it's emotions, which is a story and when people tell you about I, they tell you about their story. But the deeper meaning of I, I is both the greatest illusion, the word that contains the greatest illusion and the word that contains the deepest truth in language, the deepest essence. Usually when I is used, it is the illusion, the illusory entity but potentially I is the deepest statement of who you are, I-AM pure aware presence of me. And you can only know that then thought comes to an end. What is left, let's say you don't even remember your name anymore or the stories from your past, at this moment. I can't remember my name or the stories from my past, what is left, is there anything essential that you have lost? No! In the absence of the memory of your story or your name, the deepest sense of beingness is still there which before got mixed-up in the stories that you were telling yourself and others. It is the amazing thing that that remains and it remains in its essence. And that is so precious and so beautiful and that's you, I. It is the divine in you.

It is formless and that's why in the most profound statement in the bible is God's self-definition, who are you? And God says I am that I am. The essence of I-AM is that. And sometimes it comes to people who through some apparent accident, accidentally lose everything that they thought they were. Life takes it away from them, strips you of all the things that you've been hanging on to. And then you're left with this bare I-AM. A deep sense of beingness, aliveness presence. Everything has been removed from you. And that works too. It works in many different ways this, in some places they may not come to teachings like this. Somebody may become a refugee and lose their homes. Loss does it sometimes. So this is emerging now on a larger scale for the first time on the planet.

Thousands of years ago, that realization came to one human being. The first flowering of human consciousness. The first realization of "who I am beyond form." It is quite possible that that person was a person whose existence on this planet goes back into the legendary past. We know even less about him than we know about Jesus or Buddha. There is the legend in India of Krishna and Krishna may well have been the first human to have realized that dimension within. And over time...Now the amazing thing is that some humans recognized something in him. They recognized something of themselves in him, but didn't fully know that that was what was happening. They recognized something of themselves. A purer version, an undiluted version of themselves. An unobscured version of themselves. And over time they associated the formless consciousness that was emerging with the form of the person. And so the person became a kind of God in people's eyes, in people's thoughts.

But of course that realization is the emergence of the formless. It is not of a person, of a form. It does not belong to any form. It comes when the form becomes somehow transparent. It is no longer obscured by the density of mental and emotional structure. And so that was perhaps the first flowering. And then came others here and there. And gradually the possibility of this happening, this realization could not come on this planet until now for the simple reason that the need for it was not there yet. They were preparations one could say almost, for the shift in consciousness, the early flowerings, prototypes.

Exactly the same happened, as I mentioned before, when flowers first appeared on the planet. Millions of years of plant life without flowers. And one day one plant developed a flower, which is one could say another dimension of plant life. Thousands of years later another flower. Thousands of years later two flowers. Until finally, suddenly a profusion of flowers all over the planet.

Our human evolutionary stage, where we are now is coming to an end, the cycle of thought. Not that thought will not operate anymore but humans are going beyond having to rely predominantly on thought. They are going beyond needing to derive their identity from thought. And this is a momentous event. Why is it happening now? For the simple reason that it has to happen now. Because the old consciousness is becoming increasingly dysfunctional which is normal at the end of an evolutionary cycle. Things don't work any more. So even that is fine. Even the madness that we witness on the planet now and we witnessed in past centuries, even the madness is good. It is ultimately part of what is meant to be. Ultimately. And part of it is also recognizing madness as madness. Recognizing dysfunction as dysfunction is equally important. This is an event that goes far beyond this room. Because on the surface of things not much is happening here.
A person speaking, some people are listening.

And yet it is part already of the transformation of the human consciousness on the planet.
Not significant enough, it is not what will fit into the news, usually or that can happen, has happened but it's rare. It's not, to a large extent, not yet a newsworthy event although once this teaching was on the national news in Canada but its rare. And they only gave it two and a half minutes. (laughter) But it's a beginning.

So don't believe entirely, don't believe that what you hear or see on television is the entire truth and is the complete news of what's happening on this planet. There's allot happening that is not being mentioned on the news. And what is not being mentioned on the news is more significant than that which is mentioned. Beware of being drawn into reactivity when you watch events happening in the world. Either into fear or into anger or into despair. Could happen. When you watch the news on television, be there as a witnessing presence. Compassion that comes naturally with the witnessing presence. Be there, alert, just as you watch the tree or the flower, you can watch the news. Or just as you sit with a person who is in pain and talking to you, you can watch the news in that way. Let it happen within a field of peace. Who is going to bring peace to this world if not you. And if enough people watch the news within a field of peace, even the news will change. It's all happening in consciousness. The collective dream of humanity is changing. The collective nightmare is changing. We are waking up out of the collective nightmare. To some extent you could say that all of phenomenal existence is a kind of dream. But it becomes a more beautiful dream.

(silence)

Be careful with the seductive quality of television. How it draws you out of the body if you watch for long. Your attention. How it puts you into a semi-hypnotic state. How a particular world-view is being continuously played out or although occasionally something else is coming in these days. Not often yet. If you have to watch, it's very helpful to be in the body. To feel the inner energy field of body so you have an anchor that keeps you present and you watch from there. Something else that pulls your attention out is computer screens. Staring at it for long periods. Again it helps to connect with the inner body and at times look away and feel the inner body. Maybe have a flower next to your computer or a plant. Something natural.

If you find it still difficult to perceive without thought which is what I'm here talking about, connect with the inner body even if its only one part of the body and feel the aliveness within that part and then look. Then you can, it is easier to perceive without thought. At the same time even at this moment you can look, see this room, and at the same time feel the aliveness within. That's a beautiful way of getting to know what it means to perceive without thought, simply in awareness.

Television for many people is almost liberating and its a drug. It liberates them from their own minds. Because when you watch television for long periods you are not thinking your own thoughts. Sometimes you are But allot of the time when you watch, you are simply linking into the collective mind. You are forced to think their thoughts. So it's not that you become free of mind, you become free of the personal aspect, your mind, your problems but then what you watch is somebody else’s problems. Well, that's a little liberation. At least it's not your problems.

(silence)

Very important as this shift happens, there are already children coming into this world who are more ready for the shift in consciousness than you and I ever were when we came into this world. I wasn't ready. Allot of suffering had to happen before the readiness. But many children are already coming into this world and they are coming still of course into this culture which is ignorant of such matters. No longer totally ignorant because this is becoming almost mainstream now so it is spreading. But the structures of society, the school system and so on still to a large extent ignorant. The structures are heavy. They are in place even if some of the teachers become enlightened. They still have to work within the structures of the unenlightened consciousness. That is not easy. And that applies to many institutions. It applies to hospitals where some of the nurses bring in wonderful openness and healing power and love, space. If it weren't for them the whole place would already be worse than a mental home. It's already getting close to it. So there are human within the old institutions and this applies to quite a few of you perhaps, there are human beings who are already going through this transformation but they are still working within the old structures and only you can know for yourself by becoming still whether to continue working from within those structures and perhaps bring about a transformation of the structures from within simply by being who you are. Your consciousness. By being conscious within the unconscious structures.

Or it may be that you might find that those structures are so rigid that you see little possibility and then you will know what to do. You may remove yourself, not through decision-making but through waking up one morning and saying "That's it!" Could happen. Or you may transform them from within. In some cases that may be possible. There's no general truth here. Only you can know what the truth is in your particular case. There are the economic structures. There are the corporations. We've heard allot about them recently. The big corporations. How they operate. Are they all evil, all the big managers, are they evil? No. They are egoic entities like everybody else. Just a little bigger because of their position. Educational, social structures. All those, political. So some may collapse and some may become transformed from within. Nobody can predict how it is going to happen. Do not leave prematurely. Just see. You will know what is right and if you have to leave, life will look after you. And this is the truth. If you have to starve, and you won't, if you have to starve, you will starve beautifully. (laughter)

And then are the children, some of them have to be in those old structures. They may not function very well within them. So if you come into contact either as a parent or in some other way with children, the greatest gift, beauty you can give is the gift of space. They are just waiting for it. They'll recognize it very easily. They are waiting for you to give the gift of space. And then you give it to each other. Before you know it they maybe teaching you. It's all one anyway. So the greatest gift is the gift of space and even those children who are still burdened so it seems with the old consciousness, strongly identified with the old consciousness, the gift of space, they also long for deep within. And in families, the absence of space is the worst aspect of family life in our civilization. The one thing that matters isn't there. All the entire family is run by the thinking mind, object consciousness, one damn thing after another. They don't have meals together anymore and even if they had meals together there might not be space. You know what Thanksgiving dinners are like in families. Be there as space, not be consumed by object consciousness. Not be consumed by things that need to be done, that pretend to be important. Nothing is more important than this.

And so this begins with a little thing like the ability to listen to your child. No matter what the child is talking about. Just listen. The act of pure listening is pure awareness. Pure listening is the most beautiful thing you can share with another human being. Even if they are talking, coming from the noisy mind. It is being received within the spaciousness of pure listening. The most powerful thing, anybody who can listen becomes an effective healer. Anybody who can listen from that space as that space...if you then put up a little sign and say 'Psychotherapist' and your only qualification is that you can listen, you would do very well by word of mouth. You might not get insurance, though. (laughter) And all effective psychotherapists know that they become only effective when they enter that state. Some of them do after many years practice simply (because ) they get bored with anything else, with applying their particular thought system to the patient. Applying their beliefs, their grade of interpretation, labels and then after 10 or 20 years they get tired of the labels and then they just sit there and listen. And then they find amazing things sometimes come out of their mouth. And at other times the amazing things seems to come out of the person's mouth who is sitting with you. It's all part of not relying anymore on accumulated knowledge. It's still there for little things. Yes, it's good but not relying on that.

So lets live this now, starting right now, starting as you move away from this room, walking towards your room, one step at a time. Observing the movement of thought that may be there and perhaps the spaciousness being there as you watch nature around you. If you watch the film tonight, it's about a deepening brought about through some pain that happens, the suffering. Ram Dass suffered a stroke and experienced an enormous deepening through that. So grace, the meaning of the title "Fierce Grace," that grace sometimes comes in that form. It takes something away from you. For example your ability to move about. And then grace comes in a different form, like this. Ah. (pause) A moment of silence.
(Silence)
The weather is now ideal for a retreat.

Continue: Part 5 - Wednesday Morning