Transcription
And so for some people, the first awakening is to become aware of the humming, so to speak, of their mind, the constant chatter, the constant dialogues and monologues that make life so hard. And so you become aware suddenly, "Oh, that for many humans, that's a moment of awakening. What is my mind doing?"
And then you begin to be able to differentiate between what is in this moment out there, what is, and the inter- your mental interpretation of what is. If you're very unconscious, the way in which you interpret the phenomena that surround you and that constantly change—people, events, situations, places—uh, when you're very unconscious, your the way in which you mentally interpret and mentally react and mentally emotionally react to other people, places, situations, and so on, are perceived as a single phenomenon. You cannot differentiate between what is out there and how you see what is, how you interpret it, what you call it, the narrative that you spin around what is. They are a single thing. You experience as a single thing.
And so the way then in which a very unconscious person interprets the phenomena that happen around you continuously is determined by the conditioning of their mind, the mental emotional conditioning. So they don't experience almost anything as it is. They experience it through the veil of their mental conditioning. And a lot of that mental conditioning is verbal. It is, in many cases, an important part of it is a narrative in your mind. And so if you become aware of the narrative in your mind, that's a great step forward. It's a great awakening.
And when you see that what you, the way in which you're talking to yourself about something that's happening here and now, that's, and the mind, "This shouldn't be happening. They should know better. Why do, why can't they do better? Why do I always encounter situations like this? Why are people always so obnoxious? I just can't stand people anymore. Um, why is this person? Look how he pretends, he's pretending to be spiritual, and just, you can see he's completely unconscious. Um, what's this play? Why did I even come here? Well, I'm stuck here in this, in this room, and it's, is it even clean? I, I, I could be in a much more comfortable if I hadn't left home. I could be in a much more comfortable place at home. Why did I do that? Why would you always do things? It's completely pointless coming here. I mean, this, what is this man even talking about?" And so it goes on and on, and you don't, you cannot differentiate between what is and how your mind interprets what is. It's crazy.
So the moment you can separate, you see, "Here's the isness of things. This is what is. Here I am." And there's that person talking about whatever politics. And, and you may find in yourself the an urge to to say something. But it could happen here, even here, because it's unlikely that you left your mind outside the the boundary of Omega. It came with you. But that's a good thing because then you can become aware of it. And so life suddenly becomes much more simple, and you begin to practice here when you differentiate between the isness of things and your interpretation of it.
This includes people too. Every person behaves as they do according to their level of consciousness at this particular moment. In many people, their consciousness varies. Sometimes they are really unconscious, and at other times they're fairly present. You might have noticed that could happen to you. Sometimes still, sometimes you're very present, and then something is triggered. "I got triggered. He triggered me. He always triggers me." So you got triggered, and then you, so what happens when you get triggered? Something takes you over. It's like you become somebody else for a while. And you might even say things that you later regret when you're a bit more conscious again. You say, "Oh, I said something terrible." It's too late. You said it. [Laughter] Of course, then forgiveness has to come in. Oh, there's another problem. You have to forgive yourself. No, you don't have to forgive yourself. That's too complicated. You just have to see that you, you nor neither you nor anybody else can manifest behavior or speech that is beyond their level of consciousness at that particular moment. That's obvious.
So if you get annoyed with people, or of course, some things on a practical level, you can have changes on a practical level. You can say, "Don't do this. I don't, this behavior is not acceptable." And that's a clear statement. It doesn't have to be reactive. But to learn to re- to realize that, and this is a strange way of putting it. Um, when you criticize other humans, or you, you look at them and say, "Oh, the dreadful person." Uh, I wrote that somewhere, I think in the book *Stillness Speaks*. "If you had the same personal history as this person, and if you had the same level of consciousness as this person, you would behave in exactly the same way." Uh, it's the, because that person is determined by his or her past. The behavior is determined by the conditioning of this person's mind.
Now, this, of course, we have to look very carefully. It seems to imply that people are not really, and this is a little problematic, people are not responsible for what they say or do. Is that true? Are, is nobody responsible for what they say or do? Well, you can see that a very unconscious person, they cannot help doing what they do. And if they, even if they do dreadful things, if they were more conscious, they would not. However, human, the evolution of human consciousness, uh, happens gradually, and sometimes right now, faster than much faster than before. It happens through suffering for all those who are very unconscious. They generate suffering for themselves and others. Suffering. When you're very unconscious, you generate an enormous amount of suffering for yourself and anybody who happens to be in your immediate surroundings. And ultimately, although you, you're not responsible for what you do, you will suffer the consequences of your unconsciousness. And that's a karmic thing. It's only by suffering the consequences of your unconsciousness you have an opportunity or a chance of eventually awakening.
So even the, even the seemingly most, uh, adverse conditions and states of other humans that make them do, uh, dreadful, perpetrate dreadful things, uh, ultimately there's a, there's a larger purpose embedded in this. It is not immediately obvious. And that is the, the very unconscious humans, and even if unconscious humans are form a collective, an unconscious energy field, it could be a a region, or sometimes a whole country can become very unconscious. Everybody gets taken over by deep unconsciousness. It's happened even in the 20th century to several, several countries that suddenly got taken over by an enormous unc- collective unconsciousness, and that produces enormous suffering. And yes, what Jesus said on the cross, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." They know not what they do, of course, means they are completely unconscious in modern terminology. Uh, so it does not free you from suffering the consequences of unconsciousness, because that is part of the evolution of human consciousness. It is, uh, up to a certain point, it happens through pain and suffering, and it's self-generated through the unconscious state of, state of humans. And then at some point, when you've suffered enough, there's a chance of awakening.