I enjoy watching you do walking meditation in the serpentine fashion. Can you hear me okay? Would you raise your hand if you're having trouble hearing me? Would you raise your hand if you're having trouble hearing me? Let's see now. Is this class about perfect wisdom? Yes. Is it about good friendship? I can hear that.

[01:01]

So let's see. The basic principle is that if we're sentimental about things, they are what we might call the triple world. Or mundane things appear when we are sentimental. If we're sentimental towards perfect wisdom, they are worldly things. If we're sentimental towards worldly things, they are worldly things.

[02:12]

Well, thank you for saying that. Shall we talk about... Just let me say, as a kind of warm-up to the discussion of sentimental, I have some proposals about it. A phrase which goes like this... Flowers fall in our attachment. Weeds... Weeds flourish in our dislike. Okay? Flowers fall in our attachment. Weeds flourish in our dislike. Okay? Usually people... people are sentimentally inclined towards flowers, like them usually, especially when they're not rotten.

[03:25]

But nonetheless, if you cling to them, they fall. And a lot of people, not everybody, especially in the old days before we were so sophisticated. People used to hate weeds. I said a long time ago, before you were born. Now people are more sophisticated. If you don't like weeds, they flourish, is the proposal. And if you attach to flowers, they fall. So the analogy there is people usually attach to beautiful spiritual flowers, but then people oftentimes don't like obnoxious, negative, troublesome, worldly affairs.

[04:31]

Then they flourish. But if you don't like them. ...of... sentimentality, being sentimental. Another example of not being sentimental is the example I used last year, I mean last week, which is the example of a what? What am I going to say? Example of a Wind bell. Wind bell. The wind bell is an example. Hmm? What? The open mouth. A mouth hanging in emptiness. No matter what direction the wind comes from, the wind bell responds appropriately, not sentimentally.

[05:40]

It would be... Some people like southern winds. They habitually prefer southern winds. Some people prefer northern winds. They like southern winds. And a lot of people don't like northern winds. But anyway, the wind bell doesn't like or dislike southern, northern, eastern or western winds. It's unsentimental about him. The word sentiment is not the same as sentimental. Sentiment means like a feeling. Sentimental means a customary cast of feeling. It's a rut. It's a habit. So like sentimental about pro football.

[06:42]

Some people go, yuck, how obnoxious, how savage. Other people think, oh, I love it. Some people are sentimental about the San Francisco Giants. They just think they're amazingly wonderful. Other people are sentimental, they think they're a waste of time. And some people are not sentimental about them. Like you say, San Francisco Giants, they go, huh? What did you say? Did you say something about giants? Oh, what's that? So that's a warm-up to a discussion of sentimentality. Oh, also people are often sentimental about friendship. Well, I think it's like a, it's clinging, like a feeling, or a sensibility.

[08:04]

Let's not get personal. It's okay. What was the question again? Let's see now. Am I sentimental about her? We could have a trial. I think you try not to speak by sharing your experiences with others. She thinks I try not to be. Is trying not to be sentimental? So we could have like for various opinions like, who has the opinion that I'm sentimental about her?

[09:24]

I have a customary cast of mind towards her. If I do, then I am sentimental towards her and then she is a worldly thing in my life. I wonder if sentimentality was kin. How much of that is sentimentality and how much of that is a genuine love? The teaching is, I think, that genuine love, well, there's different kinds of love. One kind of love or one kind of compassion is called sentimental compassion. One kind of loving kindness is called sentimental loving kindness.

[10:39]

But then there's other kinds of loving kindness, and one of them is called great... There's other kinds of loving kindness and other kinds of compassion. Great compassion is the compassion of the Buddhas, the greatest compassion. In that case, there is such intimacy realized that there's no object to the compassion. So one could have a life partner and be working on intimacy with them but not quite have reached the level of intimacy where you understand moment in some moments or moment by moment that the person who is your partner is none other than yourself. we habitually think other people are not ourself.

[11:51]

So Buddhism doesn't say there's not other people. It says they are who you are. You are nothing other than other people. And you are nothing other than the other. but we are sentimental towards others, and sentimental friendship is not what's called good friendship. Good friendship is perfect wisdom. One more thing I would say, which I've said before, is that to the extent that the perfection of wisdom is a word, it is the perfection of wisdom. Or, to the extent that the perfection of wisdom is just a word, that maybe helps. It is the perfection of wisdom. To the extent a word is the perfection.

[12:59]

To the extent anything is just a word, it is the perfection of wisdom. To the extent the perfection of wisdom is just a word, it is the perfection of wisdom. To the extent that good friendship is just a word, it is the perfection of wisdom. And it is good friendship. To the extent that good friendship is more than just a word, it is sentimental. It is like clinging to a flower. I often tell the story that I heard Suzuki Roshi say once when I had just met him, not just to me, but to a group of people. He said, to look at a flower and say that it's beautiful is a sin. And I thought, how strict of him. A sin. Yeah. A friend of mine told me that the root of the words, that etymologically the root of the word sin is related to the word sunder.

[14:08]

I have not been able to verify that etymology. But in this case I think it applies that Susie Gershey might have been saying that when you see a flower and you say it's beautiful, you separate yourself from it. And again, it's quite sentimental for people to look at flowers and say, beautiful. It's okay to look at a flower, but is it, in that case, are we being sentimental? Yes? Is it because the flower... It's not outside us, but other things are not outside us either.

[15:29]

Nothing is outside of us. Others are not outside or inside. Most people don't think others are inside. Most people think others are external. Others are not external. We are in resonance. We're nothing but a resonance with all others. but we have sentiments about them. So let's hear more about what sentiments means. And again, getting personal now, I would say, I work on being aware of and being kind to and letting go of any sentimentality with regard to my leader. also called granddaughter.

[16:33]

I work on it. I think I would be doing her a great kindness, a great blessing, if I would learn to be with her unsentimentally. it wouldn't be like anything. Sentiments are like something. So like the wind bell, how does it respond to the wind? You can't say beforehand how it's going to do it. It depends on the particular strength of the wind. And we say east, the poem says east, west, north, south. But the wind doesn't just come from one direction. It comes, there's a whole complex pattern of wind touching the bell.

[17:35]

And it's, you know, it was rarely exactly, probably never exactly the same, like a snowflake. So the bell is always responding somewhat differently. And also the bell is also responding by its own weight and age and level of patina and so on. So we can't say what it's like is like the realm of sentiment. What good friendship is like is the realm of sentiment. What perfect wisdom is like is the realm of sentiment. Kind of a sentimental direction to be approaching. Yeah? Why are we talking about this? Why are we what? Why are we talking about sentiment?

[18:38]

What's personal about this? What are we talking about? Well, I don't know. I could tell a story, you know, that because I heard the word sentimental recently, I thought, well, I'll bring that to class tonight. But I don't know if that's why we're talking about it. I don't know why we're talking about it, really. What might we get out of examining sentiment? What might we get out of it? I'll be right back to you. I want to just check something, just a minute. Vera? I always thought sentimental, left sentiment, but sentimental had

[19:39]

a negative connotation as though it wasn't really a true emotion. It didn't imply compassion or empathy. I think that some other people might share that connotation or even denotation of the word but certainly it's a connotation and maybe a denotation of the word sentimental. You said it's not a true emotion, did you say? Well, it could be. You started out by saying something about negative. It might be a negative emotion. Even though we like it sometimes to be sentimental, it actually might be harmful. It might be harmful. Yeah, sentimentality might be harmful. But in a, what's the word, kind of like warm honey could be harmful.

[20:47]

Or warm maple syrup could be harmful. Even though we kind of like, we kind of like the flowers. And when we like the flowers, it's not good for the flowers. They fall. They fall. Like my grandson, he was rather sentimental about some newts, and he wanted to touch them a lot. But if you touch him, he also wanted to take other animals that he found in the wilderness home with him to L.A. And he said he wants to take them home because he loved them. And we explained to him that if he took them home that they would die. The mentality for some people, yeah, sentimental, it's a negative emotion. And now, so back to, okay, back to Tracy, what good is it to talk about this negative emotion?

[21:57]

Well, what you just said led me to think that when you divide categories, you get kind of closer to non-categorical things. So sometimes you have a general category and you can't spot it. But as you get more specific, you can say, I don't have that. I'm not going to say I have no attachments to that one. Then I can say I don't have that. I don't have that problem. I have attachment, but not that one. And then we can find out that actually there's certain attachments which you don't think you have. Well, like, we found an attachment you don't have, huh? That's probably, that's very likely to be one that you do have, that you haven't noticed before. I mean, if you have noticed, great.

[23:22]

You can work on them. But sometimes subdividing them helps you discover more details. And as you know, the devil is in the details. Sure, I got attachments, but I'm not going to deal with that detail. Just a second. I'll be right back. Would you tell me your name one more time? Sean? Yeah. So are you saying you feel that you're not quite so sentimental when positive stuff comes?

[24:34]

You're more sentimental about that. Yeah. I have an injury on my arm and I have pain sometimes when I'm sick. And obviously, if I have a clot, I guess it's happening to me. You know, those I could add layers on to make it worse. But sometimes if I'm not mad, there's no signal. And my arm is hurting right now. I want to get away from it. It's a pain. Even if I'm not happy with it or a thought about it. Good friendship, I'm proposing, would help you be free of your idea of this pain. The way this pain is appearing in your consciousness is nothing other than an idea.

[25:44]

If you understand that, you will be free of the pain. You will be free of suffering in relationship to the pain. But in order to understand that the pain that's appearing is nothing more than an idea, you have to practice good friendship towards it. Or rather, good friendship is like a detail of practicing wisdom which understands that all things that exist are just ideas. pain is actually free of existence and non-existence. But when it exists, it exists as an idea in consciousness.

[26:56]

And if we don't understand that, then we have what we call dukkha-dukkha. You know the word dukkha? Yeah. Yeah. then you have dukkha dukkha. And I think you're saying before, you're a little bit better with getting free of the suffering of pleasure. So, if you had perfect wisdom, you would be free of the suffering when you're in pain. When painful sensations come, if there's perfect wisdom, you're relieved of all suffering and distress when there's pain. With perfect wisdom, you're free of all suffering and distress when there's pleasure.

[27:59]

With perfect wisdom, you're free of all pain and distress when there's just a conditioned phenomena. Perfect wisdom understands that the appearance of pain in the category of existence, the only way it gets in that category is by mental construction. Pain is not in the category of existence without mental construction or non-existence. it lives in a middle way. So the perfect friendship is actually the way of practicing perfect wisdom. It's a way to relate pain and actually relate into the idea of pain.

[29:09]

It's a way to relate to the word pain in a way that sets you up to realize what you have here. The reality of it is that it's just an idea. So you need to be generous towards it. Well, first of all, you also need to listen to these teachings, that it's just an idea, and you need to listen to it a lot. You also need to... Am I overloading you? Okay. You also need to serve many Buddhas. You also need to believe in this teaching. And the teaching is, in some sense, twofold. One is the basic teaching is that this pain is just an idea.

[30:12]

is just consciousness only. And second of all, you need to believe in the training methods of these things prior to and after you understand what they are. So in order to understand the pain in such a way that you will be liberated from suffering about it, you need to be ethical, patient, vigorously diligent, concentrated, and wise. The Buddha, the historical Buddha, had physical pain. Have you heard about that? You know, the historical Buddha had a body. And at various points, he had pain. He had pain when he was a young man in his ascetic phase. Did you hear about his ascetic phase?

[31:14]

You know, when he was an ascetic, he didn't... And he found out that that was just painful. And then after he was enlightened, after he became the Buddha... He had back pain. So he couldn't actually sit up sometimes and give his teachings. And then his final illness, he ate some bad food and got really sick inside, the details of which I don't really know. He was getting dehydrated, it seemed like, and maybe bleeding too. Anyway, he was in physical pain, somewhat different from your neck pain, but pretty painful. His back pain probably was pretty painful.

[32:18]

But guess what? He was free of suffering. He didn't have a body. that did not register pain. He had a body which did register pain. If you punched the Buddha in the face, his skin would register pain. Like I'm pinching myself right now, it doesn't really hurt, but if you pinch me hard enough, as some grandchildren find out, it does hurt. Does that hurt? No. Does that hurt? No. Does that hurt? Yeah. We have pain sensors and we can be free of suffering even though it's turned on. If we find the middle way. And the middle way is between being sentimental about ...and being sentimental about self-denial and hardship.

[33:28]

How am I doing over there? When I said free of suffering, you looked like hoo-hoo. ... Yeah, you can see that that makes more suffering. You don't do that. You don't do that. You're not doing what you... You are adding more suffering by something more subtle than the example you used. The example you used is more subtle. I mean, more gross. doing those gross things, which you know some people do. You're doing a more subtle one. The subtle... What? A pain.

[34:39]

But you're actually not... You are experiencing it, but you're not aware of the experience of it. What you're aware of is the idea of it. Experiences do not appear in consciousness. What appears in consciousness is just mental construction. However, the Buddha experienced pain and the Buddha had the concept of pain too, and he had the word for it. He could tell people the different kinds of pains he had. But he understood that the words he was using for the pain were nothing more than words. And he understood that the pain that was appearing to him was nothing more than an idea. If you don't understand that, then in a subtle way, which hurts almost as much as this grosser way, you're suffering. And And also you could be suffering and want to do something which would relieve the pain.

[35:48]

Of course, if you do not understand and you are suffering, you also might want to do something to relieve the pain. So whether you understand it the pain in your neck that's appearing to you correctly or not, you could still wish to relieve the pain. And you might actually do the same thing to relieve it in both cases. But the understanding would be different. In one case, you would be like the windmill. In the other case, you would be, by coincidence, doing the same thing that the windmill did. but you'd still be scared of the next wind. So when we have a pain, we always do, when we have an experience of pain, in order to be conscious

[36:57]

We have to render it into the stuff of consciousness. We have a cognitive process. People can experience pain and make adjustments without even being aware consciously of being in the pain. You're talking about, to some extent, I hear you talking about pain that you're conscious of. Not the other kinds of pains which your cognitive process and body are dealing with, but don't bother you consciously to know about. And you might say, well, those are lesser pains, and maybe that's right, I don't really know. but they might be pains that your unconscious cognitive process feels like we can deal with this without including conscious. But sometimes the unconscious process says, I want to include consciousness in this.

[38:08]

We want this conscious guy to be in on this. He can help us something with this. So it becomes conscious and then we have a that we think, actually, we think that our experience of pain is something we can be conscious of. Most people I know, they use what they're conscious of as their experience. And I'm proposing to you that you are experiencing, that you do have life experience, that your actual life experience is experience, and you don't consciously know about it. But you unconsciously know. You're unconsciously working with it. So your question has become kind of complicated.

[39:11]

Not your question, but... So how do you feel now, Shawn, about all this? Or some of it? If I demonstrate pain and I start to restore it, I'm recognizing that it's causing me more suffering. And I'm not doing that. So some sort of issue with that, which is why I'm so often more difficult to figure out than I am in my meditation course. But that's how it comes to me. Yeah, so I said those basic training methods of generosity.

[40:14]

Can you say thank you very much? I have no complaint whatsoever. And if you can say it, can you say it and mean it? I think most people, when they first say it, they say, well, I said it, but I don't mean it yet. So the original, my original hearing of the story was this is a teaching from an old lady, maybe an old Japanese lady. She told this young man who, I don't think his name was Sean, but anyway. asking questions about how to deal with pain. And she said to him, no matter what kind of pain it is, just say, thank you very much. I have no complaint whatsoever. That's my teaching to you. And I think he was talking to her because he sensed that she was a Buddha. So he said, okay, thank you.

[41:25]

And then he saw her again quite maybe a year later and he said to her that he hadn't been able to practice what she taught him and she said, thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever. If you practice saying this to whatever comes and you notice you're insincere, then you practice, thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever with the fact that you can't really do it. And then there is a suggestion that if you keep doing this, you will get better at it. You'll get more wholehearted about it. And when you do, you'll be entering into this practice of being generous towards your life, of letting your life be what it is, and actually like, not just okay, but welcome. Form reception of your pain. In order to become free of our misunderstanding of our pain, in order to liberate our pain and be liberated with that liberation, we have to love it.

[42:38]

We start loving by being generous towards it. Then be careful of it. Be ethical with it. Don't lie about it. Don't ignore it. Don't intoxicate yourself about it. Don't take too much pain medication. Use sexual energy to distract yourself from it or try to control it. Don't hate it. Don't try to kill it. I don't like that term, pain killers. I'm okay with pain medication. There is a place for pain medication. But killing it is not a friendly way of dealing with it. There's a way of dealing with it without trying to kill it. Look at the bodhisattva training ethics. Then be patient with it. And patient with it means be in the present moment with it.

[43:42]

Now, as an additional encouragement to practice patience with pain, and patience is practiced with pain, is the additional comment that in this culture we have the expression patience is the greatest pain. I don't agree with that. But it is definitely a great virtue. Patience is not only the best thing to do with the pain, but it also sets the stage for wisdom. If you can't be in the present with the pain, it's going to be harder. But the way it's appearing is just a mental construction. And then be diligent about these practices and being diligent about being a good friend to pain. With pain. And then be diligent also about these pre... Diligent about practicing concentration.

[44:44]

About not distracting yourself from the pain, but also about opening to it and relaxing with it. Relaxing with it, relaxing with it. And if you can relax with it, then you can start playing. in a relaxed, playful way, not playing with it to get rid of it, but playing with it as a friendly relationship. And by being that you start to open to the actual creative process, which is inconceivable. And you're open now to the truth of suffering. and you have relief from suffering and the pain has not necessarily been changed so you can be a Buddha with your particular neck pain at that moment and then you get another pain, a different pain.

[45:51]

This is the whole course and in addition to that there's another thing which says you can serve many Buddhas So you need to understand that when you're doing this, when you do these practices with your pain, you are actually serving the Buddhas. The way to serve Buddhas is to do the practices. that when you do these practices, you're not just like, this isn't something you just heard by yourself, this was transmitted to you by your good friends. They told you about this. Who are these good friends? The ones who in the past learned how to be with pain, learned how to have a body which has pain, and to be able to say, oh, this really hurts, and is there anything I can do to help you? Buddhic is kind to beings even though she's suffering, even though she has pain.

[47:05]

And she's not distracted from caring for other beings by suffering. because she doesn't have any suffering, and she's not distracted by the pain. She's taking care of the pain, and the suffering's not making it complicated. Okay? Thank you for the question. and the way that thought is appearing how dare you

[48:16]

We actually think that the you is something other than the thought. We think that the way that that person's treating us is something other than an idea, which it is, but we don't know about that. All we know is our idea is treating us like that. And if we don't understand that, is just as painful as not understanding a physical pain. We don't experience consciously this person who's, you know, in our life. We render them into ideas, and if we don't understand what that is, we suffer in a variety of ways. Sometimes we render them into an idea and we think, we have a sentimental appreciation.

[49:20]

But basically it's also, you know, these people that are appearing in consciousness, we think they are other. What's appearing is the idea other that is there, but we think it's external, which it's not. And unconsciously people aren't external either. Their externality is just an idea. And if we don't understand it, we have something to work on. Good friendship is ways of working with our ideas that show us that that's what they are. Yes and yes, Vivian and Eric, Everything is inside and everything is an idea.

[50:30]

Did you say everything is inside and what? And everything is an idea. Well, it's not so much that everything is inside, it's just that everything that appears in consciousness is interior to consciousness. But consciousness isn't all this going on, because consciousness is supported by other processes, which do not appear. Like the way you're, this cognitive process is operating various parts of your body right now. You don't know about them. You don't consciously know about them. And those processes, without those processes, there would be no consciousness. They support consciousness. What appears in consciousness is interior to consciousness. Say interior, but you can also say enclosed. Interior is, but I'd like to emphasize that consciousness is an enclosure.

[51:30]

In a recent book with my name on it, I quoted D.H. Lawrence who said, this is what I know about my conscious self. It's like a clearing in the middle of a dark forest. So in that clearing, That's where there's consciousness. But that's not all that's going on. There's this huge forest, but it's dark. And it supports everything that goes on in that clearing. And so, what we call feeling or sensation, do you think that also ideas? the feelings and sensations that appear in consciousness appear as ideas. But there's actually feelings that we don't consciously know about that aren't ideas.

[52:33]

They're feelings. We do not know them consciously, but they still The pain that's been labeled is an idea, yes. And we know... Yeah, sensations that you don't know about are not And they're not a problem. That's why we are sentimental to them, because we know them, and we like them, and we like them when we do them.

[53:35]

I didn't quite follow, that's why we're sentimental. But that's why the importance of... We are sentimental to them because we already don't like it. And here it comes again. We really like it, so we have that connection with it. Yeah, we have that connection with it, and actually everything that appears which is an idea that is connected to something. So the idea is connected to something and yet the idea is totally absent in the thing it's connected to. And we think that the idea is connected to something.

[54:38]

I'm saying that connected, but it's actually not connected. It's dependent on, but not connected. It depends on, but it's not connected. It's just an idea. I've often used the example of when Ann Sullivan was teaching Helen Keller at least in the movie that I saw, there was a time when they were working with water and Ann Sullivan said, the meaning of this is a word and the meaning of the word is this. And I thought, I half agree with her. The meaning of this The meaning of it is a word.

[55:46]

And one word you could use to give it meaning is water. With the word water, this has meaning. Before the word water, this doesn't have meaning. And she didn't have meaning because she couldn't put the word with the thing. And now I have... The meaning of this water has my fingers in it for quite a while, so now it's different water. The meaning of this new water is different, or I could say dirty. But you could also say my fingernails are cleaner. But, you know, now probably you'd be grossed out if I drank this water. But I don't agree that the word water is this. And most people do think that. Even in the movie, even Ann Sullivan thought so.

[56:49]

So she was a great teacher. But if she said that, I disagree with that part. The meaning of the word water is not this. The meaning of the word water is just other words. There's no connection. There's only that words give meaning to things. And in consciousness, we're into meaning. and we're sentimental about meaning. But the meaning is our way, you know, to know what we can't know. And we're closely, we're intimately related to what we don't know. But rather than just sit there Related to what we don't know, we are sentimental and we want to know. So we make what we can't, what we don't know but we're intimately related to, we make it into something we can know.

[57:55]

But the way we know it does not exist. That's another kind of sentimentality. Eric? Well, I would say yes, but possible is kind of an understatement. That's always going on. We're always having experiences. I can stop there, but you could also add on. Where concepts don't exist? Don't appear. Yeah, you can add that on if you want to. When you're alive, when human beings are alive, I think probably when any being is alive, that's the story.

[59:05]

Experience free of concepts. creative process of life experience a creative process of life experience a creative process of life experience a creative process I think that's what's I think that's where it's at a creative process of life experience but how but now I'm talking about it and I can hear myself talk and I can know I'm talking a dimension of life that I don't know about and nobody knows about. And then there's a proposal that there's ways of practicing with what you know about so you can realize what you don't know about that's going on all the time. a realm of relatedness where we do not know anything and where things are very different from the way we know them.

[60:11]

And very different again is an understatement. A totally unsentimental realm of life where there's no attachment. There's just freedom and life. There's no birth and death. There's no fear. However, that realm is what supports this wonderful realm where we do have all these problems. So that realm into conscious beings. And the way it's made it into conscious beings, it kind of designed us improperly. I shouldn't say improperly. It designed us in a way that has stress factors in it unless we understand the process. But the situation you're talking about is more than possible. It's more basic. It's non-stop. Without it there's no life. But consciousness is an option that's not necessary.

[61:16]

You don't have to have consciousness for life. And even if you have their consciousness turned off for extended periods of time and still be fully alive, however, there's ways of evolving when there's consciousness that you can't evolve when you're unconscious. So the unconscious processes of life, consciousness, for the sake of consciousness evolved and made possible further evolutions. Is that Samadhi? Well, yes. But...

[62:21]

if you don't practice in consciousness in a certain way, you don't seem to have access to that samadhi. That samadhi being this place where no concepts are arising. So when you understand in consciousness that what's arising is just a concept, in some sense that becomes a way for you to open to that when you're open to things just being concepts, you're open to the realm of conceptual cognition. So sometimes I've heard somebody use the expression positive and absolute, positive and complete samadhis. So the complete samadhi is the non-conscious mind And the positive samadhi are the ways we use consciousness to open to the absolute or complete samadhi.

[63:33]

So the ways we behave, the way we take, the way we're good friends that lead us to concentration open us to the teaching which is that everything here is just ideas and then when you open to that you open to the unconscious process. You still don't get to know it but you get to realize it. And in that space everybody's working together. Yes? You said something a few minutes ago the same thing but about further evolution that by consciousness, then there can become further evolution. And you said that. So are you talking about like the alaya vijnana and then the kind of process of

[64:36]

You said evolution, so it's like waking up to everything that's here, it sounds like you're talking about, because you're not talking about an evolution in consciousness, right? No, there's evolution in consciousness too. Consciousness evolves and it co-evolves with non-conscious. Everything we think all day long transforms the non-conscious processes. And there's two kinds of non-conscious processes. One is shared and one is not shared. The one that's not shared is connected to our individual bodies. So part of our part of our unconscious processes gets changed not shared by everybody.

[65:42]

Other part gets changed and is shared by everybody. And then that changed those two realms of non-conscious process which have been changed by my thinking are also being changed by your thinking. So we're all transforming the world because the world is the shared unconscious process. For every moment we are changing the world, all of us are changing the world, and we're changing the world that we share, and our own unshared world is changed. Constantly changing it by the way we think, by the way we are friends with what's happening. Well, it's an evolution.

[66:42]

It's an evolution. There's basically two directions to go. It's an evolution towards peace or it's an evolution towards conflict and stress. And in the whole world. That's why some people are saying now, it's worse than it's ever been. I have no way of knowing if it's worse than it's ever been. I know it's bad. I know there's lots of suffering, but I don't know if there's actually more now than there used to be. I heard that there used to be, I kind of remember that there used to be, and there seems to be, now there is too. The arising of suffering, the appearance of suffering, is part of the evolutionary process too. And that comes from not being friendly. That's the line. Being unfriendly to what's happening has an evolutionary impact of transforming the non-conscious processes to support more consciousness with suffering appearing.

[67:53]

And friendliness transforms the non-conscious cognitive processes which has more peace and freedom in it. Seems like it goes in cycles, so in some kinds the difficult ones, you know, get stronger. Cycles are appearing, cycles appear in consciousness. Unconsciously there may be cycles too. I think if people study the non-conscious processes, they seem to see cycles there too. And even the process of peace could have cycles in that too. So it is possible that some people become actually free, that their work, their friendship is such that their own unconscious processes get transformed to allow their consciousness to really be convinced that what's appearing here is just ideas, and their consciousness then opens to actual experience.

[69:12]

And then they can teach others how to do that, how to realize that. Simultaneously, some people are not yet learning and are still in a world that comes from not understanding. But the beings who understand understand that they're totally not separate from the people who don't. They don't. In the biggest way, nothing really changes. You could say, in the biggest way, nothing really changes, or you could say, in the deepest way, nothing really changes. In the deepest way, everything is, you know, unfindable, and it always has been unfindable. In the deepest way, there's no way to grasp anything, but there's no separation. In the deepest way, we're always responding to each other perfectly.

[70:17]

People have awakened to this, and they have been very happy to see it, and they have not felt like, well, I don't care about these suffering people. I just don't think they could understand, so it's not much point in telling them. But then people say, please tell us. And I say, oh, I guess some people would like to hear this. They do tell the way to see what they have seen, but which the people can't see unless they do the same practice that they did. So they tell them the practice. They tell them a little bit what they found out, but they also realize you won't be able to realize this unless you do the practice. And some do the practice. So then they're turning the evolutionary process in this other direction. And those who understand, just keep practicing good friendship towards them and understand that they see why they can't yet open up. Expect, like I mentioned earlier, some of us, our favorite thing is helping other people.

[71:27]

That's our favorite thing. But my granddaughter, her favorite thing is her mom or my hand sanitizer in my car. She doesn't say her favorite thing is not helping all other beings. She's not there yet. And most people are unsentimental about that. They think, okay, she can be that way. It's all right that she's a child. When she's ready, we'll give her those teachings. Thank you for coming on this night. I'm glad it wasn't raining too hard so we could come here. Welcome. Good night. Thank you.

[72:42]

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