There's a few people who were not here last week, I believe. And one of the things I think I brought up was to ask you if you feel if you feel in your consciousness if you feel conscious of a sense of moral obligation. If you feel a sense of being required within to be ethical. Did I ask something like that last time? So maybe I said, do you feel some obligation?

[01:16]

Sense of obligation. Sense of obligation. And so now tonight I ask, did you find some obligations, some sense of obligation within yourself? Maybe I should ask, what obligation did you discover? Anybody care to say? I felt an obligation to look for a sense of obligation. I felt like it was, I think, some sense of wondering or even a little conflicted sense of obligation. And what I found more inside was a sort of hearing.

[02:18]

I felt an obligation to look at everybody for the first time. When we started, and when we brought up this question, and I looked at that, I thought, that's not enough. We need to find inspiration. What is the bodhisattva vow? Do you feel an obligation to help all beings? And not harming them would be part of that? Any other senses of obligation discovered?

[03:35]

Yes? I have a sense that some people have been assigned to me. You have a sense that some people have been assigned to you. Yeah, so it sort of relates to the way I feel about my kids, but there's other people. I have a sense. It's not like I think with everything. obligation to be respectful or something, in a general way, but then when I'm related to certain people who I feel are assigned to me, I feel a really strong sense of obligation to respond to them. Are you saying there's kind of a sense of something being assigned to you, or someone being assigned to you, and when you feel that they're assigned to you, that's when you feel the obligation? more compelling?

[04:37]

Because they've been assigned to you? Well, I heard you use obligation along with responsibility and ethical consciousness last week. I was troubled by those three is because they felt like burdens to me. And you'd use, I think you had referenced last week, you'd prayer use aspiration. And I was thinking more about your teaching last week about the habitual of the road versus being in the flow of the river. The word responsibility, that was struggling with that. And I was thinking, well, you know, responsibility is two words. It's the ability to respond. And that's the obligation I feel, is having the ability to respond as things are changing. When the ethical consciousness feels like that, I have more of an individual response to that.

[05:46]

Not one thing. It's kind of mixed. One second. I just wanted to point out that you kind of went responsibility to... obligation and I'd like you to consider the other way around that when you feel an obligation the responsibility follows from the sense responsibility maybe has part share overlaps with part of responsibility might be the sense of it's been assigned to you it's your responsibility The other part of responsibility is what's been assigned to you, you have the ability to respond to. And that's where the freedom starts. You're assigned something and you're kind of obligated to take care of your assignment.

[06:48]

But the responsibility part overlaps with what's been given and you have the ability to respond to that. And I'm saying that your ability to respond to that means that your response is not determined by what's given to you. And there's your freedom. And in the part where it's been assigned to you, it can feel heavy. and burdensome because it's been presented to you, it's given to you. You don't look inside and choose to feel — I'm not asking you to look inside and choose to feel the obligation. I was asking you, did you find it? Is it given to you? And Laurie said that when she feels like it's a sign, she can feel more that when she feels like it's given, she feels more of the compelling requirement side of it.

[07:56]

And that's the heavy side of obligation. So givenness, pressing conditions, are there some pressing conditions in you you find pressing conditions, requirements in your consciousness, something about you that you feel that. And then that, I would say, goes with responsibility, and that's where the freedom is, and that's where the peace is. Yes. That's a suggestion. So, Enrique and Laurie. I am assigning myself that responsibility, rather than somebody else assigning me the responsibility to help or to be of service or to respond.

[08:58]

And when I see the difference between that need to respond and that the response is appropriate, that it's, it feels like freedom. And I have it sometimes. This thing responded in a helpful way. And this is a little classic of me. And when I step back and kind of like, And then I'm able to free myself from the obligation part and just possibly work in another way. I don't know how to put it, but that's two ways of the sense of obligation presents itself.

[10:07]

It's either congruent with the flow of words somewhat distracted by my mind, by all the things that I should do or whatever. Here's another statement for your consideration. Freedom arises in our life without cutting, without breaking the bond to the world. And the world is these old tapes. So I heard in your a sense of when you looked for obligation you found the world of old tapes and somebody telling you what to do and

[11:12]

what doesn't look like freedom. Namely, what's given to you is and a sense of obligation which seems heavy and not freedom. So we have to be careful. I'm suggesting to be careful about looking for a freedom which separates and make from our sort of our original situation of old tapes and a sense that somebody's telling you what to do. And in that situation where you feel like somebody's telling you what to do, you feel compelled to do what they're telling you to do. but you may feel compelled to do something else. And the thing you feel compelled to do, that you didn't choose yourself. You don't choose what you feel required to do.

[12:15]

And what you feel required to do is not necessarily what other people are telling you you're required to do. They feel, like some teenagers, if you tell them what to do, they feel compelled not to do what you told them. But they feel obligated by who they are, to not do what you said. In other words, to do something that is not the obligation that's given to them. They don't choose to fight against some instructions. So in that story you told, there's some place in there where you do feel compelled, but not necessarily by what other people are telling you or what the old tapes are telling you. However, it's given to you. and also how you what you feel you should do is given to you and then you have a chance to respond to that situation and that's where the freedom is i'm suggesting you could feel an obligation to respond to what's there without baggage.

[13:40]

But again, yeah, so that could be the sense of obligation you feel. And, guess what I'm going to say? Well, there's always baggage, but also the sense of obligation to respond without baggage is baggage. And you can respond to that and be free. your original condition of wanting, not wanting, but feeling that you really should, like you, who you are requires that you not be caught by that. That's given to you. You didn't choose that. And now you can respond to that. And I'm cautioning to watch out for, are we going to break the bond? I say the world, but anyway, a world.

[14:44]

A world means are we going to break the bond with some sense of enclosure that our mind, that is proposed in this tradition that we live within a mental enclosure. Our life is completely constructed. And that's not different from saying our life is completely given. And in this constructed world, do we feel an obligation to be free? Do we feel an obligation to be good, to be ethical? Do we feel that in that world? And if we do, then we can respond to that. And the way we respond, I'd say we don't have to respond in any old way.

[15:47]

But we cannot get rid of the old way. And I wanted to tell a story about this TV show TV series, actually, which was on a few years ago called Deadwood. It's a fictional account of a town in South Dakota where there was a gold rush. I think in the 1880s, 1870s, 1880s, they discovered gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. And this one of the main towns there where the miners got together to do their work from called Deadwood.

[16:52]

And so they made a TV series out of it. And I listened to the so-called creator of the series, which I mean, maybe he did some of the writing, but didn't do all the writing. He might have done some of the directing, but I don't think he did all the directing. But he had the idea. He was kind of the creative, the artistic director of the event. And he said, at some point he said, that, how did he put it? He said that these people got together and worked to create an alternative world so that these people all lived in a world. They lived in a constructed world that was given to them by the workings of their

[17:59]

in response to other people's minds working and all that. This was given to them. And then they decided to make another world. And they named that world Deadwood. And they made, you know, like, I guess, weekly, in a weekly basis, a world. And then the next week they made a world, something like that. And they did it together. each of them within their own world, work with other people within their world to make a world that they shared. And he said something about how, I don't know what he said, but something like how liberating it was to create an alternative world. I don't think those people thought that by creating this deadwood that they were getting away from the world of being... Actors, writers, camera people, producers, directors, I don't think they got away from that world.

[19:10]

I don't think so. Matter of fact, I think that they worked from that world to create this alternative world. And by creating an alternative world, one becomes liberated from the given world. So actually, here in this class, we kind of create every week. And it's good if you understand that you're contributing to the creation of this world, that each of you is given a life that's constructed moment by moment. And we join together here. And sometimes we get to a point where we make another world. And when we do, probably that helps us with the world we never really got rid of.

[20:25]

And if we try to get rid of our old world by making this world, then I think that's not going to lead to freedom. I propose that. But I invite you to join in making, creating in this environment. Another way to say this is that comes from going beyond our given situation, where we feel things have been assigned to us, given to us, that we didn't choose. We go beyond that and also from it we stay the same. So this is a class about change, facing change, and now I'm talking about recognizing that we're always the same.

[21:34]

We're always completely constructed, and our life is completely given. Yes? So you're making the statement, when you say beyond, are you saying freedom within the construction rather than freedom away from it? Freedom away from the construction I'm proposing is impossible. That would just be a kind of, well, that would be the kind of thing that is more tricky than usual. Well, I say beyond, and then I say without leaving it. staying the same, and yet go on.

[22:44]

Breakthrough, breakthrough, without changing anything. Yeah. Well, like, again, you construct an alternative world. And in fact, when you do that, you break out of the other one, even though you know you didn't touch it at all. And when we walk off the set of Dead, we're going to be back in, you know, I don't know where they made that movie. whether they actually filmed it in South Dakota or they filmed it in California. Huh? They filmed it in Los Angeles? Huh? Yeah. So they walked out of Deadwood and then they went to Lake and Beverly Hills and stuff. And they probably thought through the whole time that Los Angeles was still there.

[23:50]

that was given to them. Now, maybe they thought Los Angeles had disappeared, but that would be another thing that would be given to them. But they did create this thing, and in creating it, they did kind of go beyond, or they did kind of break through. They also knew that they can't, or that they shouldn't. Because if they did, that freedom would not be true freedom, plus it also would Everybody they feel obligated to. All these other people who are not living, who are not in this program. Their family, for example. Yeah. Right. The relationship between the tradition and us, that interaction, creates an alternative world which liberates us from this world without touching it.

[24:57]

And then another world's given, which is completely constructed. Yes. So I just want to kind of see if I understand. It seems to me that the debt would You know, when you're a producer or a director, your constructive world, you're kind of snared by it. You might think it's unconstructed or it's real. So you're snared by the drama of it. And so creating this alternative world gives you a chance to see the magic of construction. So when you kind of examine, it kind of loosens your being snared with your clothes. That could be, yeah. That could be that for the creator of the thing, that could be as given to him as Los Angeles. But when he creates this other world, like the TV program, with all these other people,

[26:07]

he probably loses the feeling that this is not constructed. Maybe he forgets he's constructing when he's just given this world. But when he actually sees that it's constructed, I had this experience once, which just makes me think of, which is very early in the computer game world. My father had a very early computer, and we played this game on a holiday when we were visiting. I didn't play computer games, but it had lots of kind of rules, and it was a very primitive game. And we kind of played it together and played it for a long time. And such that we really, we played it over the course of like eight hours at different times. Maybe like several of us just sitting around things. And then we left that environment and we went kind of out in public. We went to this, it was the 4th of July.

[27:09]

It was a place where there was a fire display of people. It was crowd control. And we started joking because we had been cooped up in this alternative world. We started it going, oh, we need to get this. We need to have the chalice. Oh, we need to have the keys. We need to, like, her channel is this way. Oh, and the world of the socially constructed world, all of a sudden, we begin to see the terms of this other world. We attended for eight hours. And it just became very funny all of a sudden, you know, all the characters, all the people, just was just like another programmed, constructed world. Which was different from the way you probably would have related to it if you hadn't just come from alternative world construction. It was just like we were getting. It was so funny. Yeah, right. One time I was driving in a car back from Tassajara.

[28:10]

I think I was driving, yeah. And my attendant was reading to me about the structure of galaxies. You've heard of galaxies. Well, this was an article about how they're actually in a structure. They're actually out there in a structure. He's reading to me about that. And we pulled into a convenience store. And I looked at these people that were going into the convenience store to buy like ice cream. It's like I could not believe that human beings did that. You know? Yeah, I think you're getting it. Yes? It sounds like a lot of what you're describing is like a metaphor. This is... The job of an actor is very much in line... What?

[29:18]

It wouldn't be real freedom if they left their own world because then they couldn't get back. They probably wouldn't be very effective. They probably would be taken away from the acting job. Because they go into that world and got stuck there. It's to go into it. The alternative world does, you know, when I first wrote that down, I've already noticed to myself, and I remember this guy saying that I wrote alternative reality and I crossed off reality. It's actually alternative world dash alternative unreality. We make an alternative unreality so that we realize that our usual reality dash world is an unreality. If it was reality, we wouldn't need any relief from it. But it's not reality, it's constructed and also it's given to us and we should not try to get away from what's given to us. It's constructed, it's not real, it's just an appearance.

[30:24]

However, we still feel obligation in relationship to the appearance, and we have this ability to respond, and our ability to respond creates new worlds which are also unreal. Trying to get to a world behind the unreal world, we're trying to relate to the unreal world in such a way, respond to it in such a way of respecting that it's been given to us. and not try to get away from it, and respect that we have an obligation to accept it, and because we have an obligation, we have a responsibility and we have freedom. Yes. I was listening to your Deadwood story and thinking, gee, that'd be nice to have some sort of recreation like that, or have my job be creating alternatives. I experienced that, and then I heard John's story, and I was like, oh, wow, he had a chance to do that. And then I was thinking, well, I kind of get to do that in my job.

[31:28]

And I think, actually, aren't we all kind of always doing this? This isn't that unique, right? It's important more just to remember how we're doing it, how we're creating, how we're acting, what role we're playing, and that it's a role, and that it's... And then when we see that, it helps us not think that... Yeah, except the one point is the way you just put it, it sounded like you missed the part that was... You missed the given part. Anyway, that when you're doing this, it isn't that you're creating it, but that it isn't that you're constructing it. Because you is another construction. It's that it is constructed, and it is being constructed, but I'm not constructing it. It's given to me. Just like in his case, he didn't construct that thing. That was given to him. Here he was, just an innocent bystander, started playing these computer games, and suddenly he was given a new world.

[32:32]

And he didn't really realize it until he went back to the more usual one. So you are doing that. Your life is that way. Your life is totally constructed. Your life is totally given. And to become aware of that. It's given to us, but as you were talking to John about the responsibility, that's where freedom starts. Isn't that the way in which we're It's not passively given. We don't kind of co-create it, I mean, by responding. Yes, you do co-create it. So it's also, it's not, I'm not like completely creating it. Well, it's not. So not just completely receiving it. It's appearing in me. Well, isn't that you, that it is co-created. It is co-created, but not by you and somebody else. So the thing that's co-creating it is not the thing that I call me, or my story of who I am.

[33:33]

The story of who you are is engaged in the construction. So that's what I meant when I said I'm co-creating it. Yeah, but I didn't hear you. It didn't sound like you said the story of me. It sounded like you said I. It's shorthand. Yeah, well. Okay. I just have to say this because it's really important, and that is, this is possibly the reason that we cannot get these teenagers away from those video games. Because when they play those games, even by themselves, they're playing with these computer people. who have figured out a way to draw them into creating an alternative world. And that alternative world gives them a big relief from a world they can barely stand, and they're so confused they cannot find their sense of responsibility about it.

[34:41]

And in that world, their parents are telling them what to do, and they're, you know, they can't tell if that's their responsibility or that's their obligation, and they just really want it. They don't want to go back there. They do not want to go back to that world. They want to be in this alternative world. They know they have to go back, but they're postponing it as long as possible. And we would like them to come back because we think maybe they could find their sense of obligation if they would put the thing down and interact with human beings. I think that's part of why they want to do these games is that they They get a break and then maybe when they come back, they have a little bit of taste of freedom, maybe. A little bit of freedom from coming back to living with their parents and their high school friends. How can we? How can we? How can we?

[35:42]

How can we? And my answer is join them. But it's hard to join them. It's hard to join them. Because of the way the screen's built, it's hard to get in there. But the other kids, the other kids, or if you're playing this game, you can join them. And I think when that happens, the sense of liberation would be more likely to be realized. Yes. Yes. Why is it freedom? Because you understand more deeply that it's constructed.

[36:43]

You understand the unreality of where you came from by going to a place that you kind of can remember pretty much that this is not real. And yet it feels like a world. But you know it's not real. You kind of keep track of that. When you come back from the computer game or whatever, there's freedom in this world. And you have a sense of responsibility from the world you left, or your sense of obligation in the world you left, and you think it's real. You feel the givenness. ...constructiveness, thoroughly enough to be free. If you feel the constructiveness completely, you also feel the givenness repeatedly. Those two together. If you feel the givenness completely, you will not try to get away from it. If you think there's a little way, some possibility to get away from it, The reason why you want some possibility to get away from it is because you don't understand that it's constructed.

[37:48]

If you completely understand it's constructed, you won't try to get away from it, and you'll realize that you can't. If you really could accept it, you would see that it's constructed and that you can't get away from it, but you can be free from what's given. You can be free from your obligations or with your obligations if you understand that it's totally constructed. Yes. I was just thinking that the whole thing can get kind of scary. Yeah. But biofeedback was... relatively new, I went to a biofeedback workshop, and all kinds of things. And one of the things they showed was brainwaves of people watching TV. There was less going on than some people speaking. And then they were also showing how a person who has a psychosis has very similar brainwaves

[38:51]

to somebody who has some genius ability. I remember the instructor saying that the genius can swim where the psychotic person whooped her on. So it's like, where do you find that balance? Because it might be nice to Well, that's another aspect of this story is that this man who said this, the creator, he pointed out that a community created this world. And you can imagine that when you get all these people and their livelihood depends on it and their artistic success depends on it Their sense of their worth in this life depends on it, and other people have different opinions, and some people may become late to work, and so on.

[40:00]

You have to actually practice generosity and ethics and patience and so on to create, to make a really good alternative world. If you do it by yourself, I don't think it works very well. That's why I think that if the child's doing the screen time by themselves, I think that the screen time will be as beneficial when the screen's put down and they come back. They might get addicted to that screen time. Rather than not being addicted to creating alternative worlds, but do it as a regular exercise, without cutting off from the world that you have now received some freedom with. We're not usually going into and trying to become free of the alternative world. That's not the world we're trying to become free of. Unless we got stuck there, then we would try to get out.

[41:03]

But the addiction is the addiction of, yeah, being stuck there as a way of avoiding this one. So that's why I had to balance not going away from the usual world by creating an alternative world, like biofeedback. Whatever. We should do it in a community so if anybody gets stuck on one side or the other, There's people around to notice, because you can kind of notice by the way a person moves, and the way they talk, and the way they, yeah. Yes? The idea of acting out. I know a professional actor who's got his creative alternative world. Right. And in his own personal world, he's got his creative alternative world. This guy worked on Deadwood?

[42:13]

Wow. he has to break down and cry and just lose it and no boy dies i just knew that and it's like the things that you know basically and he's not alive there's Thank you. Yes. There seems to be a lot of all of that. Did you say that when you go to the supermarket, you're making an alternative world?

[43:38]

You could. You could, but do you... A lot of people, they go from their house to their car to the supermarket. They don't feel like they moved to an alternative world when they got in their car. It takes some effort to create an alternative world. Pardon? No, no. I was riding in a car for a long time imagining these galaxies in structured in certain ways with the aid of these scientific stories. And that imagination, that realm I got into, I worked at for several hours. And then I went into the 7-Eleven. And then the 7-Eleven world looked very strange.

[44:43]

I could not understand why people were so concerned with, like, getting ice cream bars. It just seemed like how, it just seemed, I mean, ordinarily I can see, yeah, you go to a convenience store to get that kind of stuff. Right? That's But when I went into these, not just galaxies, but sort of the family relationships among galaxies, and I was doing that for a while, I went into that world. Then when I went to 7-Eleven, or whatever it was, I was shocked what I saw. I got a break from my usual understanding of that situation. And yeah, I had a totally new perspective, which was really, Yeah, it was very enlivening and enriching. It was, you know, one of the, I mean, it was, nobody got hurt. You know, I guess if I went into a 7-Eleven and I got robbed and shot, that would be a very, you know, a big change in my usual attitude towards 7-Elevens too.

[45:51]

But this was like nobody got hurt. People were doing, nobody's robbing it or, you know, people weren't stealing anything. Just the whole enterprise of people that, feeding each other, it just seemed really far out to me. And people would be concerned, like, to eat. Eating, I thought, was really just like, wow, people are like, they care about stuff like that. That's what I mean. But you have to sort of like make it, you can't create another world quite that quickly. The world that's given to us, we don't know how that happens. but it's very complex and it includes our whole history together. To make this new one, it isn't quite as substantial and uncreated as the one we usually have. The one we live in, which is completely created, doesn't seem completely created, and we think there's an alternative to it.

[46:51]

When we build one, the more we get into building it, the more we can see the more it starts to look real. So in that Deadwood program, it really was an unusual world, but it really seemed real, I think, to them and to us. And so it got a lot of awards. It seemed like a highly crafted creation of something. And they all had to work really hard to do that. And then I feel that this guy was saying that when he came away from there, there was this big change in the way he saw his ordinary life. So I don't think, when we usually go from house to car, we think, this is not constructed, this is not constructed, and this is not constructed. But if you go to the grocery store and you walk in and say, shoppers, we have news. We're going to create a new world here. So everybody, you know, you all have to stay here for six hours because we're going to make this sushi store into a town in the 1880s.

[48:03]

You know, of course, people would walk out. They would think it's crazy. But if you actually got everybody to go there, it would be different. They would think, oh, we are going to create something here. And at the point you get to, it's like a magic show. At a certain point, you do the magic, you do the magic, you do the magic, people don't see it. You do the magic, you do the magic, and suddenly they see it. So the Buddhist example, which I've used in the last class, the magician uses materials which are not elephants, and suddenly people see an elephant. they see the appearance of an elephant. And the magician sees the appearance of an elephant, but the people in the audience think it's actually an elephant. But the magician knows it's not. So the magician doesn't get the same relief from his ordinary life that the people who are watching the elephant do.

[49:05]

When they see the elephant and they think it's a real elephant, then when he dismantles his magic show, they go back to their ordinary life refreshed. The magician, however, does not. He has the advantage. Well, maybe the magician does, though. Maybe the magician does. He just doesn't fall for it as much as they do. You don't think he does. When I use a big piano to make a piano sound on a record, people enjoy that. It's so nice. And I'm like, God, I wish we used a real piano. Yeah. So maybe the magician is not so interested in the benefits of freedom. as the audience. So the magician puts on this show, this appearance appears and he sees the appearance and he knows it's not a real elephant or he knows it's not a real deadwood.

[50:09]

The people watching it for a moment they think it's a real deadwood and then when the show's over they get some freedom as a result of that. But the magician doesn't get any freedom because the magician knows There's never any separation from bondage. And I see a lot of hands raising now. So there's Sharon, Yossi, and Jeff. I think Yossi was first, Jeff was next, and Sharon was next. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so this is an example, and this is why you're talking about the scary part of what could happen, is that if you see beyond this, if you see there's all constructed, you might then break the bond with the world of construction, with the world of unreality.

[51:43]

Huh? Yeah, like, that is given to you to care. You lose track, you lose... That's constructed too. It is. But it's given to you. And if you lose track of that part, that's a faultiness in your understanding that it's... And now Yosi's asking, how can we help this person? Because if you tell him, you know, I need you to come out of here, he says, well, you know, that's just constructed. Yeah. I... Yeah, so I think what needs to be done is your friend needs to be taken to someplace where the metaphors get shifted. Somebody needs to take him someplace. Like this person I... Yeah, so switching metaphors for not exactly reality, but metaphors for literalness.

[52:45]

to make a metaphorical interpretation and a literal interpretation. I remember Gregory Bateson says that schizophrenics take the literal as metaphorical and the metaphors literally. That was one of the things he saw in his study of schizophrenics. So I know this woman who was sitting next to me during a meditation retreat, and she thought that her seat was next to me because she had been chosen successor. She thought that she didn't just happen to have that seat. She got that seat because she was the most gifted of all the meditators in the initiation group. And the initiation period went on for five days. A lot of times she was sitting there thinking that to herself. And afterwards, she was in this new place. this alternative reality, this alternative world, which she thought was a reality, and she couldn't come back.

[53:57]

And people told me about it, and I went up to her and said, you've got to come back. And she wouldn't come back. I said, well, you sort of have to leave, but I know you can't leave because people want you to stay. So I'm just going to go tell people that you're doing this, and they'll probably want you to stay, but it's not going to work. She listened to me, but And I went and told people that she was doing this. And in fact, they didn't want her to leave. They wanted to, like, keep her in the monastery and see if there's some way to help her. And she kept, you know, like, it took about 10 people to take care of her because she was up all night, day after day, because she was, like, in this other world. She was free from the ordinary world of the monastery, which is, as you know, it has problems. It's like, you know, it's confined. It's constructed. There's obligations, you know. There's birth and death. But she got to go to a different world.

[54:59]

really happy, up all night, and she wore out, not the whole monastery, but she wore out about ten people who were generously trying to take care of her, because we didn't feel like we could just, like, everybody go to bed and just let her be up by herself all night, because she might wander off in the woods or something. This is like in the mountains, right? And we weren't going to put her in a cell, you know. So she was, like, free to move around, but we felt like somebody needed to be with her. And she was just never sleeping. And finally, everybody got worn out and said, OK, we can't take care of her. So in the car. And of course, she went with me because she's who she is. She wasn't forced to get into the car. That was her world that, oh, he's going, so I'll go with him. Finally, they're acknowledging this, that I'm the one. And then we got in the car, and then I got out of the car, and the car left.

[56:05]

And they took her to this place where they have doctors and nurses and stuff, and she got out and went in, and she snapped out of it. And she was, you know, said, oh, I see. She got it. You know, that she was dreaming that she was in this, where she was the enlightened Buddha's And people were just kidding when they said, you know, this is really not working for us. Somehow she said, oh, these people aren't Buddhists. These are just like regular people. And I can't really argue with them about whether I'm enlightened or not. And they didn't have to give her any medication. She just snapped out of it as soon as she got into the hospital. And she was just basically just very embarrassed after that. So way to like jiggle it, move into some situation, I don't know, with other people around.

[57:07]

So to break the glass a little bit and just make them realize that this is not any more real than where you were. Because no matter where we go, it's constructed and given. And it's given. And when we feel it's given, we feel, well, it's given. Yeah, right. Matter of fact, it's required that I deal with what's given to me. If I can't get away from it, I have to deal with it. If I'm going to deal with this person for the rest of my life, I have to deal with them. I can't get away from them. And then people start asking questions about, what if someone is beating you up, blah, blah, blah. Well, it doesn't mean you have to let the person beat you up. It just means you realize you can't get away from them. Even when you protect yourself, you're not getting away from anybody.

[58:13]

That's given to you too, and no matter what it is, you have an obligation. Some pressing conditions in every situation. What are they? What do you feel they are? And what you're seeing is the appearance of these pressing conditions. And now you have the ability to respond to this. And you will. And that's where you choose. What's my response? And my response is, maybe my response might be, I really want to take care of what's been given to me. I want to respect my obligation. and my ability to respond. I want to say, yes. And that's where the freedom is. And we know, we can know that this is where the freedom is without knowing what the freedom is.

[59:18]

We do not know what the freedom is because you can't know what freedom is, but you can know sort of where it is, sort of, or not even where it is, but you can know, practically you can know that this is your freedom. You can be sure of it. Say again? Yes. That's a frightening heart. That's a really frightening heart. Yeah, right. So he's in a pretend world where he doesn't care. He's in a pretend world. He's pretending to be in a world.

[60:19]

He's pretending to be in a world that doesn't care. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. I think very patient it's really good to well it's really good if possible to be close to him it's really good because if you if you would smash this this pretend world where he doesn't care about everybody all of us have seen that world a little bit right Like for example, all of us probably occasionally, there's somebody we don't care about. But that's a pretend world. Also the world where we do care about people is a pretend world. But that one has obligation in it. Because we are obliged to, when we care about people, we have an obligation because of that care.

[61:27]

But that's also a constructed world. So the one he's in, the problem with it is it's really off because he doesn't have any sense of obligation. So we have to be very careful not to break it. And there are stories of Zen teachers who have broken those kinds of worlds, and the person really didn't survive, really, were crazy for the rest of their lives, or for years, took years to recover. So in a real hard case like that, you have to be really gentle. Here's another case. Here's another story which you've heard. There was this guy who was in the Arizona State mental illness clinic in Las Vegas, New Mexico, or in Las Vegas, Arizona.

[62:30]

Is Las Vegas and Arizona in New Mexico? No, no. New Mexico, okay. So he's in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Vegas, Nevada. There's two. Yeah. One is quite famous. Yeah. And the other one is about to become somewhat better known. And there's a state mental hospital in that one. Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas, New Mexico. And a healer, a man who knows about magic and illusion, went to this hospital because there was a person there. By the way, this healer also was crippled. So he's brought in, you know, on a wheelchair or on a gurney to heal the people in the hospital. So this one guy thought he was Jesus.

[63:31]

That was his world. He was living in the world. He was Jesus. That was his constructed world which was given to him. But he didn't think he was God. He thought it was true. If you understand it's given to you, you understand it's constructed. He didn't understand it was constructed or that it was given. He thought it was true, unconstructed reality. And if anybody who wouldn't relate to that thing, he wouldn't talk to, wouldn't relate to. And apparently all the doctors would not speak to that world he was in. They would not talk to that place where he was Jesus. And this person came named Milton Erickson, and he went to the man, I understand you're a carpenter. And the guy said, that's right, I am. He said, would you build me some bookshelves? And the guy said, okay.

[64:33]

And he built the bookshelves, and he realized that this is what he felt. He thought he was Jesus, and he probably kept thinking he was Jesus, but he responded a little bit. And so he was released and probably continued to be a carpenter, thinking that he was Jesus every now and then, just like I think I'm. But if some of you wouldn't relate to me thinking I was Reb, I still would. I still talk to you. So you don't have to put me in a hospital. Okay, Jeff? What? Exactly, the magician... Yeah, like this... Yeah, like this guy.

[65:38]

He's a healer. He says a magician can be a healer, and I told you this guy was a magician. He's a magician healer. He goes in there, and he does a little magic trick, which is, how can I affirm his world and say, I'm willing to enter your world without literally affirming it? How can, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sharon? I was talking about the magician . And there was a documentary . The magician was married . But it was about our brains and the placement of attention that creates reality. And a magician will direct your attention in particular ways that creates realities that you believe in.

[66:51]

Right. And I did many of these exercises or experiments, one of which was... They created an audience of about 100 people. And they said there was going to be a dance troupe on the stage. And they were supposed to count how many times the dancers stepped in one of the two spotlights. There were two spotlights at the stage. And everybody, so the dance troupe came out. were there. And they did this dance, very active dance. And when it was over, they said, how many people counted more than 50 people raised their hands. How many people counted, you know, 20? And people were very proud. They had counted so many times. And then he said, how many people saw the giant bunny rabbit walk across the stage? Nobody saw the bunny rabbit. The man in this giant bunny rabbit costume, they replayed it, had walked across the stage, stood in the center of the stage, and walked out, and not one person

[68:00]

had seen it because their reality was watching their attention, was directed. What they were told to look at, it was given to them. Right. And they never saw their awareness. Right, right. So the alternative magic show is people are looking at the stage and suddenly they see a huge bunny rabbit and they don't know where it came from. because they're looking at, the magician gets them to look at the dancers, and suddenly he takes them to the dancers and they see the bunny rabbit, but they can't see where it came from, but actually just walked out there. They didn't see it. And I actually see, it's sort of a metaphor for self-construction and where our attention is placed over and over and habitually over and over again so that we do not in our awareness.

[69:01]

Right. So in this class, everybody in this class is invited to become a magician. And to become a magician, everybody's invited to be a magician in this class. How you're a magician, rather than, because there are magicians in this room. So please, would the real magicians stand up? We're all potentially, you know, capable of joining the project of creating a world. And when we join that, we are artists, we are magicians. And we are doing that. Come conscious of it and see how thorough it is.

[70:03]

It is complete. We are completely making a world together. and each of us is included in our own totally constructed world and we're making a world together at the same time. So that situation offers the possibility of freedom and peace. If we can tap into this process, may our intention equally extend to every being in place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[70:39]

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