Can we agree that our fearful conclusions about our life experiences are born of an incomplete perception? That when I see something wholly, there is a different quality to the event than when I look at something and it formulates for me my sense of identity? And then the next thing I know, I feel isolated. And when I'm isolated, strangely enough, I'm still overwhelmed with fear!
Can you see that when you pull back into yourself, it's because you've been overwhelmed? The answer isn't to pull back in the face of what wants to overwhelm you. The reason it's overwhelming you is because you look at an event and only one little part of you sees it, and it is saying it's the whole thing. You know what that's like. In those moments, you are actually blind even though you think you can see.
Have you not ever been blinded by an event? Something comes along, someone says something, something goes the way you don't want it to go, and then you know what happens. The only thing you see is what your nature that has been threatened by the event looks at and blames for the torment you're in. That's all you see -- one thing, and one thing only. And in such perception as that, an individual doesn't know they're blind.
Has someone ever told you, "I don't think you see this thing well"? And then you let them have it because you know you see the big picture when all you are is full of pain. Pain sees nothing other than what lets it gain its presence in you. Pain is blind because it's produced by a nature that is blinded by its own identification. And it's the extent to which we are identified in any given moment with any one thing or another that produces in us what seems to be sight. Why? Because "I feel whole. My sense of self is pretty strong. I see." And then, if you're lucky, you're eventually shown the truth that you were actually blind.
Throughout our life, the mind is trying to extrapolate a way -- formulate some method -- by which it can see and understand the whole of something. That's what the mind does. It's always looking for the next handle, the next way to get a wrap around what troubles it. And what that mind can't understand (because it sees incompletely) is that anything it sees will always be incomplete because the seer itself -- that nature, that level of being -- is already incomplete. All it can do is see incompletely, which means it can never know real love. It can only know a love that momentarily fulfills itself based on what it's looking for. And it's impossible to know what you're looking for and find love!
How many of you think you know what you're looking for that eventually will make you fearless? But the more certain you are about what is going to make you fearless, about what you need to find, the more afraid you're going to be. Because fearlessness is not a process of acquiring something. You can't be fearful or tense and know anything about what truth wants to deliver to you. Truth says, "Let me overwhelm you with the truth. Let me show you that the part of you that's afraid of being overwhelmed is what has overwhelmed you!"
Everything that you're lashing out against has literally come to you for the specific purpose, not of being something that has blindsided you but of showing you a level of yourself that was blind to the attachments that produce the pain. If you get angry, you're blind to yourself. If you're afraid, you're blind. But when you're afraid or angry, isn't it true that suddenly you think you've got this laser-like vision? "I can see!" No, you can't see.
So, an individual has one of two ways they can meet the moment. They can meet the moment as their educator. Or, they can meet the instance of the sense of loss, the fear of being overwhelmed, with resistance that rises up and then through its presence says, "This is what's going on." You can either go down that road and remain blind and never know anything about love, or in those moments you can become inwardly different. You can choose a new path. You do have that power. That is your right to do -- to choose a real understanding in that situation.
But certain things take a long time. We don't want to be overwhelmed. I'd rather see what I think is true than see that I've been living from something that's blind. And so I miss the opportunity for rebirth, to know something about a system that's so much more inclusive and large that I can't even begin to grasp it!
You can't talk about the real love of life, about seeing the good when things look bad -- seeing those things as possibilities -- until you understand that you represent the possibility of a different order of being. And a different order of being is what's required if you are going to start seeing a new world in which everything is always in place, even when it's not in sight.
In order for there to be a new kind of seeing, it becomes inescapable that I recognize that love is in every given moment. I can understand it with my mind, but thanks to the part of me that generates and formulates my sense of self, that part of me is washed away. And the part of me that would be and know what is good and true disappears as soon as the conditions change that constitute my identity. So my identity is formulated by the changing circumstances that I identify with. And as long as my sense of self is formulated by circumstance, then that sense of self is going to be on this rotation where everything is going to be good... oh, no, no, no, bad... ok, here comes good, good, good, good... oh, no, no, no, here comes bad. And there's no love in such a state of perception because the perceiver believes that he or she is defined by the individual things they identify with. And if you understood how intimately connected your being is to what seeing is, you would want to do everything under the sun in order to change the way in which you presently identify with what you see. Identification is a form of protecting yourself, and that's why it doesn't want to be overwhelmed.
How many of you have ever been completely blinded by a situation and then at some point you realize, "Thank God, now I see"? And when now I see is paramount, it's parallel to saying, "Now I have a different order of understanding. I understand something I didn't know before!"
What we're after is understanding all that is taking place. I can feel life rushing by me. I can feel the fear come in. I can feel the worry. I can see the concern. All that is all there, but so is the understanding that it's just a movement, and that who and what I am is that within which the movement is taking place. Tell me how I can look at life without beginning to realize that any time that something comes along, and it seems bad, that the reason it seems bad is because the seer sees badly -- "badly" meaning incompletely -- and that the blindness that is part and parcel with that pain eventually proves itself. And you see, "You know what? It's a good thing the way it moved." It was a good thing. When it was moving it didn't seem good to me. But then maybe a day, a week, a month, ten years later, I go, "No. That wasn't bad. It was good."
The process of love is the gradual recognition that an individual exists with the capacity to be integrated into the entirety of existence. And it is the entirety -- the whole of something -- that is love. It is a different order of love that we are after. Our shortcomings, our falling -- all of the things that we do that seem to produce this pain -- is simply a gradual revelation where, if we will work, we'll see the Divine Mother, the Divine Father, Christ -- we will see that we are never not right in front of, and always present to, that which cannot be made to act against itself. And when you know that nothing can be made to act against itself, you are willing, repeatedly, to let every moment of life overwhelm you, because then there is no more you to be overwhelmed.
