If there's one thing that should be more than evident to everyone on the planet, it's that the level of pain in it is increasing. We'll prove this in a number of different ways before we're done with our talk, but we always want to move away from what's planetary and get personal right away. So let me ask you a question, and I'll state it in simple terms. How many of you suspect you're imbalanced? Human beings are imbalanced. It's an imbalanced planet, not because the planet is wobbling, but because the human mind and the heart are caught up in a kind of dance, wobbling all over the dance floor, like one of those tops when it starts to run out of energy. Have you seen it teeter like that? That's the human being; we're forever teetering.
Now, how do we know the human being is always teetering? Because, if you just push it a little bit, down it goes. How many of you know, down it goes? Just the simplest thing... one comment, one look from somebody -- the phone rings when you're eating your pizza, and the whole thing comes apart, doesn't it?
I want you to start understanding something that's very important about the imbalanced state of our own emotions and psychology, our thoughts and feelings. Why is a person so easily pushed down, falls down, is angered, fearful, worried? These states, these chronic emotional states that stay in us, why is it that we don't find a balance that allows us to be kind, regardless of the circumstances we're in? Why isn't there a patience that can take being pushed by anything? These are very important questions, if we want to have a real life -- if we want to understand our present circumstances.
So, here's what we're working to now. What do we call on, what do we recruit in moments of crisis in our lives? Something happens and I feel "Oh, no!" -- what do you call on in a moment like that? Say it. Thought! I call on thought. There isn't even a "me" that calls on thought. The crisis occurs, and suddenly I'm knee deep in a pile of considerations about what to do in this situation. This is what human beings call on.
Now, you can say, "No. I don't call on thought. I call on God, or I call on the Light, " or whatever it is. But I want to prove something to you quickly. If you were calling on what was genuine, as opposed to a sentimental image, the problem would be resolved, which we're going to prove. So, I want just to get this nailed down right now -- that when we have a problem in life, when we're heart-heavy, when we're worried, when we're frightened -- that we call on thought in order to produce lost balance.
Now, what does thought call on to produce this balance? More thoughts! Thought calls on the past, doesn't it? Thought calls on its plans, its spiritual ideas, in order to solve problems like this. Thought calls on all kinds of things. And then thought will call on a future that it creates out of reconfiguring the past. Thought will call up a future where I won't have this problem because I'm going to get rid of her, I'm going to change him, I'm going to move, I'm going to get a different job. Thought is always calling upon thought in order to create a balance.
Now, the key here is that thought is not intended to be a balancing force in us. You don't use gasoline to put out a fire, do you? Well, what got knocked over? What is it that allowed the moment -- that simple glance that that person gave you, or a word that someone said -- why would something as simple and as innocuous as a comment cause you to topple over? The answer is, it's because you live in thought, images, ideas about yourself. All someone has to do is psychologically accost that which you're standing on and saying is real, and as soon as something challenges it, the whole thing, like Humpty Dumpty, comes falling down, doesn't it?
How many of you had your life fall apart? And when your life falls apart, what do you put it back together with? Can you say it? Thought, or thought's ally -- negative states. Thought loves the glue of negativity, because when we can get negative over what happened to us, it proves to us that we really don't want to be in that state of ourselves; and that somehow, if we could just get angry enough, or worried or frightened enough, that this is going to put us back together again.
But there's a very key idea here, and it's this: First of all, thought can't balance anything, because thought always adds weight to one side or the other, doesn't it? When you're thinking about something, you're always adding thoughts here or you're taking thought away there, which means you're always working in one of these opposites. And no thought can balance what thought has created in its imbalanced state. Oh, what we're touching on is so vital to understand. Have you ever done this? Have you ever spun yourself into the ground with thinking? I mean, you start to try to think about how to get the loss balanced. You know, she's leaving, or they're doing this, or what's going to happen, and you start thinking. And then, more thought and then more thought and more thought and then, what happens? Tell the truth. You have a breakdown. One way or the other, you have a breakdown. You either fall into a deep depression, you either get angry at someone or something, or find something to justify the negative states coursing through.
In the midst of all that, what is thought doing while negative states are tearing into you? What is thought doing? It says, "this is necessary. This is natural, man. This has to happen because you see, we're going to work all of this out." And then you say, "Okay. Let's work it out" -- and it works you over again!
We can prove that thought is not intended to balance our lives by something very simple. I pulled this right out of the Associated Press, and I want you to listen to this. Did you know that over 3-1/2 billion human beings have a monthly prescription for drugs? And over 125,000 Americans died last year from drug reactions -- which makes it, by the way, the fourth leading national leading cause of death -- after heart disease, cancer and stroke. The pharmaceutical industry served up more than $250 billion worth of sales last year, which is almost the same amount of money as all the gas stations pumping all the gas in the United States -- $250 billion worth of prescriptions. And the last comment is that well over 65% of individuals over the age of 70 must take psychotropic drugs in order to remain balanced.
Now, here's what's happened. When thought can't reconcile a problem, it finds something else outside of itself to blame. It'll find a drug, it'll find alcohol, it'll find an enemy, it'll find something outside of itself to do what? To balance itself. To make it feel as though it's still in control of life.
The point is that we're desperate for something to distract us from the perpetual imbalance that the mind is going through, searching for ways to balance itself with thought. It can't do it. What is it, then, that balances? What is that which allows this nature -- this divided nature, this nature that works in opposites -- what is it that would permit it the peace it seeks? What is it that creates balance in a human being?
This is beautiful: I go back to what I said at the top of the talk, that that which creates balance is itself greater than the balancing it does. It is larger, broader, if you will, encompassing, and already exists before the opposites do. It is not thought that we must turn to for balance, but we must turn to awareness of thought to create balance. Awareness of thought is the only thing that can balance thought. Why? Because awareness -- the Light in it -- recognizes imbalance. The Light of awareness recognizes imbalance.
How many of you had that moment where you could feel a thought or feeling pulling on you, and in that moment, instead of doing what is necessary and natural for the human being who wants a balanced mind and a balanced heart -- who wants love to be their guide -- we got seduced by that thought that started telling us what we had to do, telling us how to answer that disturbance, who to call on the phone, what to straighten out.
Over and over again in those moments there is the first flash where a person senses the imbalance. They sense the onset of the negative state. They sense the rush of those thoughts and feelings that, when we are present to it, we can see (if we work), "Why are those thoughts and feelings pushing me the way they are?" Have you ever been pushed by a thought? Can a thought that pushes you produce balance? Can a negative state that's trying to pull you down ever produce balance? It can't.
But something can produce balance -- that which is aware of imbalance inside of us -- the moment in which we recognize the onset of those thoughts and feelings. Here's the event; we're aware or recognize that. And then, after the recognition comes the reconciliation. What does that mean? It means that in that moment, I turn it over to the awareness. I turn over that disturbance, I turn over that imbalance, that feeling of disturbance.
This is so hard for us to understand because our psychological grasp is so limited. When we feel a disturbance, the first thing that our nature tries to do is correct it. We must not be the ones who correct the disturbance in our own soul, because the disturbance is the effect of these thoughts and feelings -- of forces beyond themselves, by the way -- all in a certain kind of chaos, all in a certain kind of clash. And our awareness of that moment is the moment in which it's possible for us to recognize that that's going on, and then do the work.
What's the work? Come wide awake. Realize that at that moment that the imbalance that we're feeling -- that teetering-tottering tormenting thought and feeling that's trying to pull us left and right -- that we can't resolve that. We've been trying all of our lives to resolve what thought produces in us. We turn that thought, that feeling, over to our awareness of it. And that's it! We stay conscious, instead of getting caught up in the conspiracy that thought produces when first it deceives, and then drags us into its plot to resolve that problem.
This takes dedicated work on a person's part because in that moment you see what's happened is that our ability to give our attention to the present moment has atrophied. Just as muscles atrophy when they aren't used, so has our attention and our ability to give our awareness to our own thoughts and feelings atrophied. But once we understand this we can see into this dynamic. We can recognize something's taken place that's been stealing from me a balance that I'm intended to have. We're not meant to live imbalanced. We're meant to live in perfect poise. Not poise in terms of being the perfectly peaceful person, but the poise that comes with recognizing that, at every given moment, we already live within something in ourselves that has the capacity to bring balance to every moment.
