WHAT’S GOING ON 

2022 FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER

#163 FEBRUARY  2008 

ALONG THE WAY

The transformed being is aware of what he is, where he is, what is going on, and what he can do.

THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT

I don’t have any wounds that are not self-inflicted.

LIVING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

School talk #51. (Continued from last month)

There are four aspects of spiritual living. Much is written these days about longevity.  There is nothing I could suggest that would lead toward longevity better than these four things.

How do you get there?  First I would recommend to get the four dual basic urges and find out there were not worth very much after you got them.  I didn’t say they are bad.  There’re not.  They should be a by-product, not the product one strives for.  When you get it there and find that doesn’t produce what you would call happiness, then you begin to look at spiritual things.

We talk about spirit and the spiritual life.  Possibly we don’t really accept that there is spirit.  We say, “Yes, life is this and life is that.”   And we talk about it. But when it gets down to it, do we experience that there is something called “life” within me?

So a great man tried to get across to me once time that the only way you would really know about spirit is that you made it real to you.  You made spirit very real.  Otherwise it is only an academic thought or an academic idea.  It does exist, but it’s really not experienced.  It’s not part of my being.  I can read all sorts of things. I can study many books.  I can analyze a lot of things.

But until such time that I really come up with something and I’ve really experienced it and it’s within me, it’s really isn’t mine.  I  know about it.  I can believe in it.  I hear people say they believe in various religious ideas.  They believe it but they have never experienced it.  Obviously they don’t believe it very much or they wouldn’t be in such a panic.

Let’s see how one would go about making the idea of spirit within, Life, real.  If you would want to experience a certain feeling you first begin to think, “How would I like to feel?  How would I act if I already felt that way?”  Then begin to act that way and you will begin to feel that way.

Now we can say, “If I want to be experiencing spirit, how would I be feeling if I had already experienced it?”  “How would I be acting?”  So, we will start acting that way.  If you knew you had a wonderful spirit that went with you everywheres and could take care of about everything that you’ve always wanted, (not give you the four dual basic urges), but could bring about the spiritual life in a natural way, then you begin to act that way.

You act like you had this friend, this real friend that goes with you everywheres.

You wouldn’t experience boredom because you had a friend with you. You would have a loving state with you all the time.  You wouldn’t know about boredom or burn-out.  You might talk to it a little bit.  If I have a very wonderful friend, I talk to him now and then.  You would tell it about things. Act the part. You’d tell you friend.

So first begin to see that spirit was the friend.  When you begin to do this, you begin experiencing this friendship and making spirit real within yourself.  If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not real to you.  Only by making it real to you does it have any meaning.

One of our most useful exercises is to make spirit real to me–Life, whatever life is.  It is a spirit of some sort.  It’s not so hard.  It’s not so difficult.  You can see it exists.  You see that as long as it inhabits a form that it gives that form all of its properties and actions and everything.  But it does seem to act upon the information it receives.

Now if you’re giving it an entirely different bunch of information than you formerly did, you get a different attitude and feeling within yourself.  You begin to have the loving attitude.  You begin to have a tendency to serve life rather than exploit it.  There would be forgiving and understanding that life was always doing the appropriate thing for the information received from all the misconceptions that were loaded on people as they went along the way while they were trying to gain the four dual basic urges.

There would be a reverence for life.  We begin to see it as something very holy and complete and it was a friend and I would like to be acquainted with that friend.  So there would be a certain amount of consideration, of thinking, exploring, getting to know that friend that lives in the very depths of this being which gives this being all of its properties, all of its attributes.

It’s the one that takes a sandwich and makes living flesh and blood out of it in a little while.  It takes a glass of water and does all sorts of nice things with it.  It’s a marvel to watch.   You see a cow eat green grass and produces red hair, white hair, full-fledged little calf, and make white milk, all out of green grass.  Can you take green grass and do any of those things with it?  Life does it.

It’s worthwhile being a friend with.  It does all the miracles and marvels we can look at. It knows how to take a tiny, little infant and grow it to be a big guy or a big lady.  It knows how to make arrangements for things that won’t be used for a long time.  Here is a tiny baby born.  It has only a potential a reproducing and it may be 15 years before it is capable of it. The baby is conceived in darkness and developed in darkness, but has eyes that only see in light.  It can only breathe air, but it’s living under water.  There are some pretty marvelous things there.  So I want to be acquainted with that.  I want to know it.  I want to experience it, not just have some theories about it.

If we begin to act like we are already its friend, pretty shortly we will begin to experience its friendship.  The way it works to communicate with the usual human being is not in voices, but in intuition.  You have a sudden knowing of how to do this, or what to do about something or not to do something.  Sometimes it’s better not to do something.

This intuitive understanding begins to be a reality in the person’s life.  An intuitive individual is far ahead of the person with all the logic and reason there is.  The one with one bit of intuition is way out in front of the person with the most perfect logic and reasoning.  Nothing wrong with logic and reason, but it’s not the ultimate. After you know what to do, you use a little logic and reason on which step comes first.  But it’s not the thing to decide the course.

It’s the best you’ve got until one begins to actualize spiritual understanding and spiritual knowledge.  And we start with that by acting.  We say we have to be to the point where that begins to look like it is of great value.  As long as I see the four dual basic urges as top value, any effort I have or talk about spiritual things is still with the idea of gaining or escaping.  If you would go to the usual church or etc., it’s all concerned with gaining or escaping.  You’re going to gain a heaven and escape a hell.

There’s a prayer that says

“If I serve you, Oh Life, to gain a heaven, deny it to me.

If I serve you to escape a hell, throw me in.”

That will kind of get you down to know what you’re working on.  If you’re still on gaining or escaping, you better not say it.  Don’t say it unless you mean it.  If you’re really working at being a spiritual individual I think you could say that prayer with the greatest of ease.  But if you’re going to use it to do a little sly stunt on it and hope you’re going to get the four dual basic urges as a by-product, I would suggest you don’t say it.   It is the one prayer that I assure you is answered—right away. So be sure you mean it or don’t bother with it.

QUESTION: How do you have reverence for life when there is impending danger?  When it would appear that life is out to get me?

Life is never out to get you. But misconceptions and the Not-I’s are out to get us all the time.  So the person who is indulging in mind-bending chemicals and gets in a car is considered to be dangerous.  But so is a tiger.  So is a bull and especially a mad, boar hog.

You can have reverence for life and you’re aware of it.  Spirit has the ability to handle it. I have run into most of these situations you’re talking about and I’m still here only because life responded long before I could have ever figured out a course of action.  I can be very reverent for life within me and others, because it keeps us going through some very tedious situations.

QUESTION: Talking about spirit being a friend, a companion and someone who is always with you.  Isn’t the aim of all this is to achieve unity with spirit?  Isn’t that still creating a separation a little bit?

No.  I think the idea is to recognize spirit is all there is and all this so-called self, which is made up of a bunch of Not-I’s, does not exist.  THOU, life, is all there is.  The so-called self, the personality, is only a recording, made up here, yon, and elsewhere, a lot of suggestions, a lot of this and a lot of the other things.  There is nothing real about it.   When that is recognized and there is nothing real at all there, you’re beginning to be inside the house and spirit is all that does exist. I expect that’s where we’re headed.  There are people who do live this way.  They are almost invisible in the world in which we live.  They cast a very low profile.  They are not in step. They don’t quite fit here.

A STORY: If I were to isolate one obstruction that torments me more than any other would be the inability to focus 100% on this moment.  The mind wanders to the things I want, the things I have to do, the situations I would enjoy, rather than being present in this moment.  While watching a beautiful sunset, my mind will be planning the next day’s activities.  Listening to the beautiful song of the redbird I think about how badly the deck needs painting.  A delicious meal is eaten unconsciously while arranging my schedule to clean the oven.  A visit with a friend finds me planning what I will say when they shut up.  All of this nonsense is insanity.

All I have is this present moment.  All the rest is illusion.  I contaminate this moment listening to “Not-I’s” whose only purpose is to destroy the living being. I’m just beginning to realize that when I am out of this moment, the awareness is fragmented, which leads to death.

The one thing I can do is be grateful for NOW, for WHAT IS.  If I don’t feel grateful, the Teachings give me instructions on how to feel grateful.  Remember?  We act ourselves into the feeling….

Each moment is a precious jewel.  I hold my attention to what is right now, wanting nothing more than to enjoy and give thanks that the Universe invited me to this spectacular Party.

*****

Life is sexually transmitted.

Eat well.  Stay fit.  Die anyway.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.