Discover the End to Feeling Empty

Transcript

Do you know when you really find peace? When you understand that for its fullness or its emptiness, it has nothing to do with you. So, you don't fear the loss of fullness and you don't chase after something to change the emptiness. Your mind isn't all the time caught up in a little hamster activity running on a wheel, trying to figure out how you can escape the sound of your own footprints... Figuring out how to escape the shadow of yourself cast by that little warming light up there in the corner of the cage, running. If you knew that summer had to turn into winter and winter had to turn into spring -- and you like the idea of winter turning into spring, don't you? Because it gives you these corresponding fixed remembrances, memories of the weather and the kind of conditions you like. "Oh, that's the time I love!" So that the time you say you love is what sets you against that which doesn't exist without it. True or not? So, we spoke on Sunday, just to revisit it quickly, of the idea of shadows. Do you remember? And we said, ever so briefly, if you weren't joining us, we talked about how -- you can't see it here but if you could you; I could turn the camera around -- I put my hand in front of this light here and it makes a shadow. And the shadow is a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional object that it's cast from. We talked about looking outside at the tree. You might be able to look down and see a shadow of your own body sitting in your chair there. I can see my shadow on the desk. Of course there's more light directly on me. Now, is the shadow the body that casts it? So, a shadow is a representation in two dimensions of something that lives in three dimensions. And then we went on to say that, if we can see, that the shadow of an object isn't the object. Then, we went on and said, can you see that the thought of something is a shadow to the thing that that thought holds as being true? They're a shadow. So, a shadow, if you want to use these words, is two dimensions and lives in a world where it's evident, because you can see them, the shadow moves when the object moves. The movement of the shadow lends credence to the reality of that which casts it, doesn't it? You take a child into a forest where there's a lot of moving shadows. And I can tell you, I used to scare myself walking into my own bedroom... "What's that? Oh, it's me!" That's the whole story only you don't know it's you that scares you. That's what liberation in the first early stages is - the revelation that there is nothing to fear apart from some part of you that is fixed and refuses to recognize that it's going to turn. You're all going to shed your body. Is this body the deal, or is this body a three dimensional relationship, a three dimensional expression, a shadow of something taller, higher, bigger... isn't it? We want to believe that, don't we? "Oh, please!" And, God willing, whatever's behind the shadow, let it never age and always have lots of hair! No wrinkles! No bad health! Everything is turning and you're missing out on the ride. You think you have to push your way through this life; all of us, to whatever extent it's true. What do you think your fear is? Do you know how anxious and afraid you are every day? So filled with making sure everything's put in its right little cubby hole, trying to punch squares into round holes and then wondering why people are saying, "Stop it!" I can't stand the round holes, because something in me wants to get everything set. Why does it want it set? So that I can be sure that no matter what this is the way it's going to be. And you can't change the way it's going to be by fixing it in the past, because everything you fix is in the past. In fact, the more you try to fix things, creating what you call the future that you want, the more you can be sure that the "future" in quotes, the moment that comes to you, does so to reveal to you the thing that you need to understand to be realized. Everything about this life is an atonement with the ceaseless revelation that emptiness and fullness are the same. And to understand that is the end of the fear of emptiness, and the end of coveting fullness.