A Meeting with John Sherman in Ojai, California - April 6, 2005

Spiritual Maturity

There are a number of explanations that we give ourselves for why we come to meetings like this. I come because I love to be with you, I love to meet with you like this, in an atmosphere and a context in which the true desire and the willingness to know the truth prevail. Many others come for the same reason, because we love to meet together and talk to each other, and share with each other our experiences and tribulations in an honest and mature desire to know the truth.

There are others who come in various states of spiritual trances. People go a lot of places in various states of spiritual trances. The trance of being "mentally enlightened" for example, which is a state of just knowing that "I got it, I know it, I got the truth."  And a state of great misery, as we try to monitor everything that is going on to make sure that everything is in conformance with the certainty that "I got it, I am awake." There are lots of other spiritual trances, too. There are spiritual melodrama, and spiritual neediness. There are probably many other stories and explanations that people tell themselves for why they come to these meetings, but a rather small percentage of all those who come to satsang come because they are gripped with a vivid and lively desperation. They come because they have tried everything else, and nothing works. They have tried mental enlightenment, they have tried spiritual practices, they have tried spiritual understanding; they have tried mundane, secular understanding, and material acquisition; they have tried relationships, they have tried everything all of their life and nothing works. And they are desperate. Those are the ones I really love. That desperation, I am really familiar with it.

I got an email a couple of days ago, and I am going to read it to you. I almost never read letters in these meetings, but I am going to read this one, because it is pretty much my favorite, so far.

I don't know if you will see this, but I felt compelled to write. I wonder if you have any words for me. I have been a frustrated, unhappy, spiritual seeker for thirty years, and although I know intellectually what the truth is, I am very depressed, because I just can't be happy. I cry all of the time. I have felt called since I was sixteen. God, or love, is calling me, but I can't feel it, I can't experience it. I read the words: your words, Papaji's words, Ramana's, and they are all just words. I have been to so many satsangs. I try to be still, but always end up feeling frustrated. I have seen all of the videos, and listened to all the tapes. I studied a Course in Miracles. If I have free time, I sneak out to my newest metaphysical bookstore to soak up the truth. Then, I read your words: "If you would know yourself to be the perfect realization of truth, you need only stop searching for truth." How do I know I am peace, love, and self? How can I experience what I know intellectually? How does one stop? Why can't I? How can I experience my true self? When I read the letters of love on your web site, I just can't understand how others are getting the truth and I am not. Maybe I am just not ripe enough to fall off the tree but, if I am not, why is grace knocking so loudly at my door?

That is pretty much everybody's story at some point. This is the story that brings us into the spiritual realm, in the first place. The question, "How can I stop?" is maybe the only question that is of any value whatsoever. Most of the other questions are exercises in postponement. A way to wait just a little bit longer, to get just a little bit more understanding, a little bit more assurance. But the question, "How do I stop?" seems really hard. Arising within us, there is this ever outward-flowing, energetic sense of neediness, of something missing, of something to be gotten, something to be understood, something to be gotten rid of; some way to put an end to this neediness, to this energy of searching, this energy of not finding.

It is our relationship with this force that comes from we know not where, and drives us always outward, that is the cause of all of the misery and suffering in humanity. Our attempts to understand it, follow it, satisfy it, control it, deny it, do something with it, feed it, ignore it, and get rid of it constitute the entire story of suffering in human life. That is what is meant by "not stopping." It is the continuing relationship between me and this sense that "I need something," this sense that "there is something that I don't have, something that will satisfy me." This force is very real. This energy is very present. We can numb ourselves to it, we can do all kinds of things around it, but we can't get rid of it. Sometimes, it seems that there is nothing whatsoever we can do to be finished with pandering to it, in one way or another.

We know (we recognize it when it is called to our attention), that if we could just stop this incessant looking, monitoring, working, trying, keeping things together, trying to keep a coherent story in place; if we could only stop that, everything would be all right. But how to stop? Papaji said, "Stop." Ramana said, "Stop." Gangaji said, "Stop." How do I stop?

There are two possibilities, and they both amount to the same thing in the end. One is to set aside, just for a moment, all spiritual understanding; to set aside your whole spiritual biography—where you are, what you have accomplished, what you know, what you don't know.  Just set it all aside for a time, and try with all your heart to find this sensation that all the fuss is about. This energy that we have this relationship with is an experience like any other experience; it is a sensation within the body, like any other experience. We spiritualize it, but it is really just another sensation. So, one possibility is just—in order to do something different—to try, with all of my heart, to find this sensation that has driven me my whole life, and fall into it with my eyes open, to see what it is. That is stopping. That is one possibility.

In my own personal experience, I couldn't do that. I could no more hear the instruction to do that, than I could fly to the moon, although I was given the instruction to do that in no uncertain terms by my teacher, Gangaji. But I couldn't even comprehend what she was telling me. And I was desperate, I was really desperate. I knew that I had happened upon a possibility that, by its very nature, by the way in which it is presented, is the last chance. It presents itself as kind of all or nothing. Since it has no spiritual trappings to it, and no grand liturgies and explanations to it, if this offering of the gift of investigation into what is real proves to be false; if this extremely practical offering of the possibility of directly investigating what is real proves to be just another dead end, then all hope is gone.

I couldn't do that. I couldn't stop. But I discovered that Ramana Maharshi had a second option for stopping, and it really comes down to this: you will stop when you find what you have been searching for. Ramana tells us that what we have been searching for, our whole lives long, is nothing other than our self. We all have heard that, but Ramana takes it a step further—or a step less. He doesn't suggest to us that we find our "true self," our "higher self," our "God self," our "Buddha self," or our "eternal, radiant self," but just find our self. Just the experience of being that is me. Don't be mind spiritual mumbo jumbo about the impossibility of the subject to see itself. Just innocently, nakedly, like a beginner, find yourself. Find this present experience that is me, that always has been me, that has never moved, never changed, and see what it is. Just that, see what it is—directly, immediately, before the stories, before the beginning of the spiritual biography.

Ramana tells us to do this every time we think about it, every chance we get, without regard to the inevitable falling back into old habits, ideas, understandings, sufferings and stories. Just stop for a second, and look for yourself. Find whatever experience is present that you are referring to when you say "me." If we do this when it occurs to us, the mere experience of continuously tasting our actual nature clears everything up, and puts an end to the whole show. Not in any way that can be incorporated into a spiritual understanding, although we have tried very hard to do that. Not in any way that can be expected or predicted; not in any way that will satisfy the nattering monkey mind, as it comments on what is taking place. But in a most mysterious way, it is possible to see that not only have we always been free, alive, eternal awareness, but we have never not known that. The investigation itself doesn't produce anything new. It doesn't produce any new understandings, but it reveals what is already here. It reveals itself to be, truly, what we have always been looking for. And the mechanism of the endless needy, grasping, horrifying misery of searching for a solution stops.

In the email, this person ends by suggesting that maybe she is not ripe enough to be taken by this grace that really is authentically calling to her, this hound from hell that is grace. But, from my point of view, this email is representative of the highest form of spiritual maturity, the highest form of spiritual ripeness. It is the coming head on to the recognition that, "Nothing I have done has worked. I have tried really hard. I have thought, from time to time, that I got it, but nothing I have done has really worked. I am ready to try anything."

So that is what I have to offer. It is not much. It is only you, just as you are. It is this invitation, this offering, this chance to meet with each other and talk about this. Not about spiritual stuff, not about "higher being," "true self," or "enlightenment," but of this possibility that I received from Ramana Maharshi, which proved true to me—the possibility that, if I am just willing to try to find out what I really am, it is not only all that is required, but it is really the only thing that will work. The rest of it —spiritual understanding, spiritual practices, therapy (whether spiritual or psychological)—has its usefulness. Having a good job is useful; having a good relationship is useful. But none of that will bring you home. All that will bring you home is to discover what home is. And that is you, just as you are.

Does anybody not understand what I am saying?

I guess I don't understand what you are really saying. 

Why do you guess that? What do you think I am saying?

How to find myself, and accept it, and be happy about it.

You are adding too much to it. Just find out who you are, whether you are happy about it or not. Be willing to find out the truth of what you are, without regard to being happy about it, or not happy about it; and without regard to accepting or rejecting it, since acceptance and rejection are irrelevant anyway. Here you are: you can't get rid of yourself. What I am saying is to find out the truth of what you are, without any conditions. Isn't finding out the truth what all of the spiritual energy is about? And what truth could be more primary than the truth of what I am? What truth could be more accessible than the truth of what I am?

I am sure that we all have some experience with teachings about "what I am," such as "I am infinite, eternal, radiant consciousness." But those teachings never satisfy us; they are just some story that we can use to torment ourselves, or try to become the truth. You cannot be anything but what is already here, what is actually present here. It can't be a story about it. The story about it springs forth from the discovery of its nature, and it has no real useful relationship to the actuality of truth. So, since the goal of all spiritual striving is to know the truth, and since the phenomenon that is nearest and dearest to our heart, the one that is the most accessible, the most recognizable, is yourself, start there—and end there. If you start there, see whether anything else needs doing or getting. The whole story is about myself —my getting it, my not getting it, my happiness, my peace, my torment, my confusion, my understanding, my love and my hate. It is all about me, and our habit is to look into the things that are about me, instead of the common denominator of it all: me.

So, the suggestion is to simply see how straightforward and easy it is. It is really easy, the truth is easy. Truth is here, the knowing of the truth is here. It is never not here. It is inescapable. Truth is easy. So why not postpone all the rest of the practices and understandings, and first find out what it is all about? It is all about me! Do you see that?

I think I have heard you say it in other words like, "God doesn't make mistakes."  

I don't know if I have said that, but I am willing to say that. (Laughter)

When you try to look at your true self, and you see so much imperfection…

The reason you are seeing imperfection is because you are looking for your "true self." I am not asking you to look for your "true self." I am asking you to look for your actual self. If it is imperfect, don't you want to know that?

Yes.

You have to see the distinction between what I am asking you to look into, and what we are accustomed to thinking of as our self. What we are in the habit of thinking of as our self is the story of me. As subtle and sophisticated, spiritual or unspiritual as it may be, what we are accustomed to looking at is the story of me, and part of the story of me is, "I am imperfect, I need to be perfected." But, who is it that says that, if not I? What I am suggesting is that, without regard to the absolute certainty that I am imperfect and unworthy, find the actual nature of what that story is referring to; find the experience that you are pointing to, when you talk about "imperfection."

I am still perplexed.

That's okay, perplexity is not a problem. Perplexity, confusion, none of that is a problem, it really isn't. It is only a problem, if perplexity means something. That is all that makes it a problem: the conviction that perplexity means something about me. But you can cut right through that perplexity, and find the one who is perplexed. What does the word "perplexity" point to? It is an experience, is it not? It is a feeling, right? Instead of paying attention to the obvious, justifiable understanding that this feeling is perplexity, feel directly the sensation that goes by the name of "perplexity." Do you hear me?

I hear that, but to put it into practice is harder.

Actually, it is easier. It seems hard, but it is easy. Is that sensation not here? What about the sensation of it "being hard?" That is here, isn't it? You can feel that. The spectacular promise of Ramana is that, if you will feel whatever is here any time you get the chance, any time it occurs to you to do so, that is all you can do, and that is all that needs doing. You don't have to worry about clearing up confusion, you don't have to worry about doing away with imperfection; you don't have to worry about the clouds of obscuration that are self-hatred and greediness. All you have to do is feel what is here every chance you get, and let the devil worry about the rest of it.

Just to stay with those feelings, to observe them?

No, I mean to feel it. To observe it is what we are accustomed to doing. We observe all of these energies and these sensations very carefully. We monitor them, we keep an eye on them, and we track them, to make sure they conform to what we think they ought to conform to. That is not what I am suggesting. What I am suggesting is that we stop doing that. That is what needs to be stopped. Not forever, you can always do it again. But whenever it occurs to you, don't observe it—feel it, just sink into whatever is here. Make it your meditation room. The promise is that that is all you need to do. Then, quite unexpectedly, without any rational explanation, this vastness of knowing, of love without condition that you are will reveal itself to have always been here, suffusing everything. When you least expect it, it will dawn on you.

But this is not a method whereby you can become enlightened. You can't become enlightened, and that is the simple truth of it. No one has ever become enlightened; no person has ever become enlightened. You are alive, free, eternal love—and you know it. You just don't know that you know it, because the habits of the mind have accustomed you to think you know what knowing is. Just as we think we know what perplexity, confusion, desire or hatred are. This method of Ramana's is absolutely practical. Whenever you think of it, find yourself. Meet whatever is here. Sit in whatever is arising, as if it were your meditation room, whenever it occurs to you. You can't do it wrong.

Did you say to just stick with sensation?

I said feel sensation.

Be your sensations? When I am just sensation, I am sort of meditating that way and things arise. And if I don't do anything about them, they fade and then another thing may come up, and it gets deeper and deeper, and then it opens up and it is everything. Is that what you mean?

That's what I mean. This whole search begins in the mind. Somehow, it occurs to the mind that "what I have been looking for all this time is spiritual, rather than material." God knows how that thought occurs in a mind, but it does. Then the mind gets busy trying to do away with itself, because we have read and heard that we are inexistent. But we don't even know what inexistent is. We have read and heard that ego the problem; that the ego-sense is what has to be done away with. The ego-sense is this upwelling of energy that feels like neediness, lack, failure, wanting. The payoff for the mind is that, when it finally gets tricked, cajoled, caught by surprise into actually looking for its own source, it breaks into this vastness, incompressible reality that is the source of all. Whether it knows what is happening or not, it gets soaked with this knowing. In that soaking, the mind's knots (the pettiness, the old habits, and the deep conditionings) loosen. Over time, mind gets better, looser, and quieter.

You mean, when you go back to real life and have to fix dinner, you retain some piece of that sensation?

Isn't that your experience?

I still get caught up.

Isn't it your experience that, over time, this getting-caught-up, this conditioned misery that so afflicted you when I first met you has loosened, that it has gotten softer?  My God, there is nothing to you but conditioning! Conditioning will remain until your last breath.

Just a little bit.

Is that your experience? It may seem like it from there, but from here it seems like a whole lot.

Thank you.  There is a trust about it.

Yes, there is a great trust about it, and that trust too is a gift. That trust arises just like the knowing, because the proof is in the pudding. There is no dogma to Ramana's offer; there is no complicated, metaphysical explanation and storyline that will give me peace, rest and comfort. The proof is in the pudding, and the startling thing about this offering is that this is for everybody. There is no one walking the face of the planet who cannot turn their attention inward for just a moment to find the experience of being me.

Is that a problem? What else are you going to do with your time?

I don't like having to make all of these decisions.

This investigation has no end to it. What you don't like is welcome, too. Not the conditioning around it, not the tasks of it even. There are some tasks that come to me that I really don't like. So, it is not that. But when there is this experience that "I don't like it," meet that experience of "not liking it." See if it is any different from everything else you have found when you have turned inward. See if there is any bottom to that.

If you can go into that and it passes…

Everything passes.

Is that what you mean?

Yes, everything passes, whether you go into it or not. You can start it up and keep it for a while longer, and most of the time that is what we do. We do that with our torment, as well. We do not have much experience of openheartedness and bliss to hang onto, although we certainly do that desperately. But, even more, we work at keeping this experience of torment, or not liking, or not getting it, or not quite ready, or not quite done; we work at keeping all of that here. You have to see that. Well, you don't have to see that. It might be useful for you to see that, but you really don't have to see it. The only thing that is required is that you fall into the experience of it. Then see for yourself whether or not it is true that it is mind that keeps these things stirred up. See whether it is not true that it is mind that desperately clings to suffering and misery.

The world is made up of it, and you have to deal with it. You have to keep the body going and get your taxes done.

So, that is not the problem.

You don't think it is a problem that people are getting bombed?

No, it is not a problem. What is perceived to be the problem is the bad feeling of it. If all that was going on, without any bad feeling about it, it wouldn't be a problem. What is perceived to be the problem is the bad feeling. What I am telling you is to find out directly what that bad feeling is. You don't have to stop feeding yourself, or writing checks, or going to work. When there is something that feels bad about it, instead of doing whatever you have done in the past about it (such as deny it, ignore it, control it, get rid of it), do this: find out what it is, immediately, directly. Go into it, let it have you. Sit in this bad feeling as your meditation room, and see what is needed there.

It is a judgmental mind about what we have done.

Even the judgmental mind is no problem. Who cares, really? That is what this whole show, this human melodrama that we are so in love with, is made up of: them and us, the good guys and the bad guys. It is all made up of the judgment of the mind. That is what mind does: it judges, and it chooses. It says basically, most fundamentally, this is good and this is bad. Those are bad feelings, and these are good feelings. I want this, I don't want that. We can make it a lot more complicated but, at the heart of it, that is what it is all about: I feel good if I am a good person, and I feel bad if I am a bad person.

So, it is just this made-up stuff, and we don't have to get all worried about it?

We don't have to do anything. What we can do is find out directly what these things are that have been driving us. What these things are that are not welcome here. Before we kill them off, we ought to meet them; we ought to find out what they are. We don't have to be saints, for God's sake. We don't have to never get caught up in the story again. Just whenever it occurs to you, when the bad feeling comes the tenth time, the hundredth time, the thousandth time, just say to yourself, "Wait! This is that bad feeling. Let's see what this is." That is all that is asked of you. That is all that is required. That will do the work. The "bad feeling" will do the work. You just have to sit in it.

I don't think I understand.

Yes, you do. You may not understand the story I am telling about what I am asking you to do, but you understand what I am asking you to do. And that is all that matters. Okay? I don't understand the story I am telling you about it. That is the incompressible, spectacular beauty of it. You don't have to understand it. You just have to do it, and all will be well. You don't even have to know what you are doing.

****

I suspect that it is because you are looking at worry and fear.

Well, it is in my consciousness at that moment, right?

That is your explanation of it. "This is worry and fear, this feels really horrible, this really sucks, it is worry and fear." If you just forget that it is worry and fear…

But the mind keeps reminding me about the specifics.

It doesn't matter, ignore the mind.

I can't do that.

Yes, you can.

In that moment, it seems that I am that mind.

And you are, that is not so far from the truth. But it has occurred within you, as that mind, to find out the truth. Now, we all have some big issues with finding the truth and those issues have to do with the strength of our conditioning. It is in your nature to continually know what this is: it is worry and fear. And we come back in a circle—this is worry and fear, and I am going to try to find out what it is, so it will go away, right? Then, it's back again, it's not going away, it is still here. That whole playbook does nothing but keep it apart from you, afflicting you. But it has occurred to you, this mind, that it would be useful to know the truth of it. That is all you need. You can do it, I promise you. The next time you are lying awake, afflicted by worry and fear, you will remember this conversation, and you will remember that what you are doing is not trying to get rid of anything, since it doesn't do you any good, anyway. What stays, stays; what goes, goes. You certainly have enough life experience to know that there is nothing you can do about any of that. So, you are not investigating this in order to get rid of it. You are investigating this in order to test the preposterous claim that your certainty that what you are feeling is worry and fear, and therefore it is bad, is actually wrong.

It feels bad.

You are testing the preposterous claim that what you call "feeling bad" is not feeling bad. And the only way to test this preposterous claim is to really, really feel it.

It feels like an energy that is strong.

That's right. And what you are called upon to do is just to fall back into that strong energy with your eyes wide open, and see what it is. See where it ends, see where it comes from, forgetting momentarily the fact that it is a "bad feeling." Bad feelings are feelings too, right?

What drives me nuts is that sometimes, I can do that for a moment, but then the mind will remind me again.

That's okay; that is not a problem. That will pass, but it takes time. It takes the determination, every time, to find the truth of what is here, the actual truth of it, the reality of it. All those "jumping-outs" of the mind ("Ah, but, wait…") are mechanical; there is nothing whatsoever you can do about them, except what has been suggested to you. Continue looking for the truth of what is here, despite the mind…

That almost seems to perpetuate the negative state.

Yes, that is what I am saying.

Why would I want to perpetuate a negative state?

You tell me, you're doing it!

Usually, we try to distract ourselves.

Which is another way of perpetuating it, is it not?

In the moment, it seems to make it lessen.

But it really doesn't, since it is back there, nagging away. Our opinions about this energy that drives us are simply interpretations of it. Whatever the interpretation is that is being applied to what is present, it is wrong; it is just a theory. Even the fact that it is a bad feeling is just a theory, an interpretation. The interpretation, by the mind, of this energy that drives us is that "it needs something it doesn't have."  That is the interpretation of the mind, and if I am not careful, what it needs is me and it will swallow me up. This interpretation by the mind causes it to contort itself into endless structures and conditioned ways of approaching and dealing with this ever-rising energy, which is just the life force. It is not what we think it is.

So, those ancient, well-oiled, mechanical structures that the mind has created in order to protect itself from what it interprets to be a threat to its survival continue. That is not a problem. They will continue until they don't continue anymore. Nothing that we have done has succeeded in stopping them. No therapy, no spiritual understanding, no spiritual practice, no material practice, no initiations, nothing has succeeded in stopping them. Therefore, it is sheer intelligence to just give up trying to stop them and, instead, find out directly what it is they are about.  You will get caught up in it again and again, but the spectacular promise of Ramana is that that doesn't matter. The work is done in meeting what is here, and everything else can be left in the hands of what is met here. All you have to do is, every time it occurs to you, feel what is present directly, like a child.

It really is a requirement that this be done with a very childlike nature. Jesus said that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We imagine that he speaking about a little child, full of innocence, freshness and openheartedness, but that is not what he is talking about. What he is talking about is the ignorance of childhood; the ignorance that doesn't know that "doing this won't work." The ignorance that doesn't know that the subject cannot see itself as an object, as all of us, advanced spiritual types, know. That is what is required. What is required is to put everything else aside, everything you know. All of your hard won understanding, intuition and insight, put it all aside. And, with the absolute ignorance of a small child, find out what is here. What is afflicting me? What is this, anyway? Yes, you know you are going to get tired of it, or get bored with it, and go do something else. But so what? It will come to you again. It will come around again, and you will remember.

I know this is a hard pill to swallow, I really do. First of all, it seems too easy, and then it seems too hard, and on top of all that, it means turning my back on everything I have spent my life knowing is important. Turning my back on everything in my life that I know is really true regarding the way to be, all my hard work, all my effort, turning my back on all of it. I know it is a really hard pill to swallow.

****

John, I am really new at all of this. What I have done in the past week is to commit myself to diving. I am very aware of all of the things I have done over the years to distract myself from just going into the feelings. I know I am still putting up barriers, still putting up obstacles every time something comes up. Usually it is about schedules. I tell myself I can't do that now, I've got too much to do, too much to accomplish. I have this idea that the diving takes time, that it is not a simple process, because of what I have heard about it. What I have experienced is that I go deeper and deeper, and there are all these different levels, and I end up feeling like I have to postpone it.

Forget all of that, forget all the levels, and forget all the deeper and deeper. Those are imperfect and confusing ways of talking about something that really can't be talked about.

It is hard to hear it when they say, "Okay, this is what you are supposed to be experiencing."

Don't pay any attention to anybody telling you what you are supposed to be experiencing.  Here you are, right? You are here, are you not? Are you not here?

Yes.

What could be simpler than to look and see what you are? Now. It doesn't take any time.

Just putting your attention there even for …

Now. Always now. Now is always here, always. There is no time that is not now.

I am letting my mind wrap around that one.

All that is asked of you is that, right now, to feel what it is to be you —before the stories, before the biography, before anything. Just feel what it is to be you, right now. Then, the story of postponement is illuminated and revealed to be just a story of postponement, because now is here always. Pay no attention to what you have heard, or what you have interpreted about what you have heard from anybody about what you should be feeling. You want to know the truth. You don't want to know that the truth is what somebody else says it is, or what John Sherman says it is, or is what God says it is. You want to know the truth. The truth is here, right now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

****

Hello, John. When you are feeling something awful about what you see around you, is there a relief when you realize it is a construct?

Have you felt relief?

When I can convince myself it is.

I don't think convincing yourself will ever produce a feeling of relief. Have you not had a feeling of relief in all the time we have known each other? There has not been one single moment when the feeling of uncaused relief overtook you? Tell the truth.

Have I never had a feeling of relief? Oh, I have it when the focus shifts to beauty and reality.

If you are looking for relief as your goal, it will elude you. Relief comes and goes. I have seen you overwhelmed by what I would call relief. It may have been too big for you to call it by such simple a name, but I have seen you. Those experiences of relief, of resolution, of peace even, they come and go. The tendency of the mind to grasp onto them, to wish they would stay, is just a tendency of the mind. It has nothing to do with you. I tell you that this feeling state that you so desperately desire (not just you, but all of us), what you really want is the feeling state that is present now. And that is what is seen in the investigation, that is what you see when you look.

If I let myself think about the newspaper, that is what I am…

You do that because it is fun. It is fun to hate Bush; it is fun to hate that gang.

You think if you do something, then it must be fun. You must be wanting to do it, right?

If you do something, you want to do it. That is true.

Boy, I've got a long way to go.

You are confused as to who it is that you are. When I say, "If you do something, it is what you want to do," I am speaking to you as this crazy mind that loves to read the newspaper and get churned up about it, and wishes things were different. But that is okay, nobody is harmed. It is all just play, it is just a story.

That is a relief. It is just a story, a construct.

Yeah, isn't it?

It sure looks like it.

Give it up. It is time, give it up. The whole show is okay.

There is a certain amount you have to do.

When you come to me like this, this is that same story line running. "I don't get this, I don't understand this. Look, look what I do, I read the newspaper, I hate the people, I do this or that."

I only read it once a week.

Enjoy yourself. That is the whole of it.

I come here to remember.

Yes, I know you come here for good and true reasons.

So, what you are saying is that you feel your presence, and life continues around you, and the world happens. People hate people, kill people, do bad things.

Except all of this is happening not around you but within you, as you; and this is really important to see. I really hate to say this because it smacks of a teaching, but everything that is happening now, here, in this moment, here in this world, everything that is occurring, every thought that you think, every action that you take, every moment of behavior is the result of past action. By the time you notice what you are doing, it is already done. By the time you notice the thoughts that have come to you, it is already done. It is the same with the whole world. There is nothing whatsoever that can be done about what is manifesting here and now. It is absolutely the outcome and consequence of past action. The only thing you can do by becoming involved in the story of you, or the story of the horror of the world, or the story of the fundamental unsafeness of being, is to take action by becoming entangled in it, and cause even more misery in the future. It is not that your actions and your involvement have no effect; they just have no effect on what is here now. You have already done that. The only thing that is possible is to stop all of your doing, which has nothing to do with behavior, which is preordained by what you have done in the past, or what others have done in the past. The only thing to be done for the good of humanity, for the good of all creatures whatsoever, is to stop trying to fix things now. The only way to do that is to find the truth of what you are, to find the truth of what is here. To ignore the content of the story about what is happening. Do you follow that?

So, ignore it?

By "ignore it" I mean don't move into it. Don't claim it; don't try to fix it. By "ignore it" I don't mean deny it, or turn away from it, quite the contrary. I mean to pay no attention to the content of your thought about what is arising, and allow yourself to fully and nakedly feel what is actually arising. And yes, the world, your life, the behavior of this character, this personality will continue. It does anyway, with or without your involvement. But when you no longer put future action into the mix, you no longer will be causing trouble for this personality or for the people around you in the future. The personality that is no longer afflicted by my involvement in it becomes softer. The knots loosen, the behaviors become more fragrant.

I am sure that everyone here has had the experience of reading the paper and hating what they see. I had to stop reading it a couple of weeks ago, it was making me crazy.

If it makes you crazy, stop reading it.

But then, I had a dream a few nights ago. I have two small sons. I dreamed that it was the progressives being taken away, like in a holocaust. I had to go check on my boys. The next day I thought, if I stop reading and ignore it all, and I think I understand what you mean by "don't buy into it, don't indulge it." Don't keep the ball rolling, because hate creates hate. But I thought, what about love? What if we started fresh with love, what if we didn't get infuriated by what Tom Delay is doing today? What if we started saying, this is how I am going to live? What if we all stopped getting involved, which one would roll over? Would it be the evil we see, or would it be the love? I feel like I need to be part of love.

I tell you that there is nothing but love anywhere to be found. All things whatsoever have as their essential nature love without condition. There are many stories, hateful, ugly, horrifying stories, stories that manifest as people in the world, but even those stories have as their essential nature love without condition. I have never found anybody able to do love. How can you love? Jesus Christ said to love your enemy as yourself, to love your neighbor as yourself. Can you do that? What is this love that can be done by human mind? What is this? I tell you that you are love, and I tell you that if you will truthfully, nakedly, like a child wrapped in ignorance, find out the truth of what you are, you will discover what the truth of all is.

There is no love, there is no hate; there are no enemies, there are no friends. It is all love. But what good is that to you for me to tell you that? Or what good would it be for me to tell you, Yes love, and start fresh. What good would that do? Who can do that?

Then we do nothing? Is that what you are asking?

If you can do nothing, please do so. If you cannot do nothing, then find out who it is that can do nothing. Don't you see that, for the entire history of humanity, there has been horror? The whole blood-soaked history of this species is horror, hatred, destruction, murder, rape and pillage. Throughout our entire history, there have appeared many ideas about what to do about it. Truth will take care of it all. Once I am not aggressively trying to fix myself in order that I can aggressively try to fix everything else, everything is okay. That is the only hope for us, really. We know that, we have our history, cycle after cycle, generation after generation, after generation: new ideas, new philosophies, and new political things. We have got to fix this, we have got to be right, we have got to do it right. Every human on the face of the earth, without any exception whatsoever, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Tom Delay, the whole bunch of them, everyone is doing what they think is right. We are all driven by the determination to be righteous. Let's be done with that; let's try something new. Let's try to find the truth. That is what all the great ones have told us is the only fix. The only antidote is the truth. Just to try something different, let's do what they say.

It doesn't mean that you should stop political involvement. It doesn't mean anything. All that stuff is irrelevant to the internal call which is in us all to know the truth. The truth is easy, truth is here. It never moves, it is patient, it is love without condition.

I am really happy to have met with all of you like this. Just know the truth now, not then. The truth is never then. It is always now. Thank you for this meeting. Thank you for your time and attention. May all being know itself. Not know itself to be love, not know itself to be righteous, not know itself to be consciousness. Just know itself. Keep it simple.

© 2005 John Sherman. All rights reserved.

back