Welcome to satsang.

Today’s topic is not an easy subject because we are going to tackle how the mind controls our life. Remember, we call these classes satsangs, which means we deal only with the truth. And what is the opposite of truth? Falsehood, lying. So today the topic is focused on the big lie that we tell ourselves. When we recognize this big lie, then we move into the truth of our true nature.

A woman wrote to me, voicing the following, “I woke up this morning with a strange feeling. It is as if the life that I live is a lie, as if I had lied to myself all my life; and lying to myself, I lied to everyone about me!”

This lady’s letter is not an isolated case. It is so common. Did you know that with this letter, this lady took the first step toward recognizing truth? Most people realize they are living a false life, that they are lying to themselves. They feel it inside, but they don’t move deeper into what is beyond that.

What this woman wrote is the litany of most awakening beings - the meaninglessness of all worldly values, the hypocrisy by which most people spend their lives. Yes, we live with a big lie, and you know what that big lie is? We believe the thoughts in our head. We make them a reality. That is the insanity of our world.

We actually believe that these thoughts are reality. In truth, we are pure consciousness, and the mind, from which all thoughts come, is only a minute fraction of that consciousness. If we begin to realize that, there’s bound to be immense growth. The Course says, “Only the mind is capable of error.”

So this lady, by recognizing that her life is a lie, made her first discovery of truth. The discovery of truth has three stages, just like you climb a ladder. How do you start? With the first rung of the ladder, the bottom. The first step to truth is that you have to know you are in bondage, that you are in prison. Ram Dass used to say, “You have to know you’re in prison before you can get out of prison.” So, lying becomes our escape. Now, when we talk about lying, it is all the stuff we do to get away from truth, because truth is frightening to the average mind. So, denial, escape, control, and change are our lies.

The second step is to inquire into who we are not - the self deception, the untruths we tell ourselves.

And third, we come to know who we really are by knowing who we are not, because you cannot know who you are. In the beginning you think you are your mind, your thoughts, and your emotions. So the only way you can get to know who you are is simply by realizing that you are watching these thoughts, these emotions - but who is the watcher? Who is the one who is observing them? You see - thoughts come and go, emotions come and go, but the watcher is always there, the “I am” is always there.

But, you cannot know who the “I am” is, because once you are totally the “I am” without thought and emotion, you are! You just ARE. So, truth is an experience. It is not an intellectual knowing, but a feeling-knowing. You can only get to that by knowing what is not true. By knowing what is not true, you come to know what is true.

So, we lie to ourselves continuously. The Course says, “Nothing that is not good was ever created and is a lie, and therefore cannot be protected.” So, every time we are defensive, every time we want to protect ourselves, every time we are depressed or upset, we are lying to ourselves, because only love is true.

Every negative emotion is a lie. Negative emotions are the result of resisting, controlling, escaping and trying to change the now-moment. We know in our hearts we cannot change what is, and yet we still try, through complaining, worrying, fretting, being anxious, angry, depressed, and in fear. Psychological fear is, of course, fear of time. You are caught in yesterday because you think that’s who you are, and you carry it over into the future. You never live in the moment. These are the lies we tell ourselves.

For example, let’s take anger. Anger means you don’t feel in control, so you assume control over others to cover up the deficiency. Self-deception! Anxiety - you are concerned, worried, and caught in a fear of a future that hasn’t happened yet. Self-deception! Depression - feeling hopeless, helpless, or indifferent. You feel dead inside. Why? You’ve resisted the here-now through an excuse. You can only deny what is by lying to yourself. Fear, says the Course, is a symptom of loss. You feel you’re going to lose something. In this particular case, the one thing you fear the most is losing the ego, who you think you are. You see, this is the greatest fear, because to us it is like death. So you fear losing what you have, or not getting what you want. But in truth, you are being. In truth, you are pure consciousness. In truth, you are spirit. They all mean the same thing. In spirit, how can you lose or get anything? You see? How can you lose or gain in pure being? So therefore, fear is self-deception.

Now, the big lie that we are our limited thinking, has created the three lies that we live by. The three lies that we live by are the survival lie, the worldly lie, and the spiritual seekers’ lie. The survival lie - this is based on the belief that only the body matters. I have heard people say, “Your physical health is everything.” This is an obvious lie, unless of course, we believe that the goal of all life is the grave!

And then there is the worldly lie. The worldly lie is that all men’s laws cater to worldly values. All businesses, political systems, governments, military, and the police reinforce and control the economic system. The strong belief in having some control in the world creates the need for personal success. We tell ourselves therefore that if we are successful in the world, we have found meaning in life.

And then there is the spiritual seekers’ lie. Did you know that most spiritual seeking is a way to escape from the world because we cannot deal with it? We believe that if we are religious, study the bible, practice meditation, ritual, and prayer, we are being spiritual. But it has been proven, and all masters say, that 95 percent of all spiritual practice is self-serving, to strengthen the ego. “If I meditate, then I, Burt Harding, will be enlightened.” And we want to assert that little world and achieve it, not realizing that enlightenment is when you become the all; you realize you are the infinite. Spirituality means spirit. Spiritual lying, wanting what is love and light without experiencing our fears and darkness - that is self-deception.

So, what happens is this: many people say, “I only want to think of love and light.” In the meantime, they don’t deal with their anxieties and fears, their nightmares. Then they say to themselves, “These are not true, these are not real. That’s not who I am.” And in the meantime, they are burying it instead of experiencing it directly. When the lie is looked at, truth will come, not as an intellectual knowing, but as an awakening. Only when you can look fear in the face can you find love. Only when you can look pain in the face can you find joy. You cannot go after joy and avoid pain. It just can’t be done.

So, the whole ego mind is one big story we tell ourselves. We believe we are the past instead of this very moment, which is the only reality. Our lives become our stories, with needs to be fulfilled. For example, here are some false ideas - “If I have a partner, I will be fulfilled.” “If I have a greater sex life, I will feel fulfilled.” “If I have more money, I will feel fulfilled.”

The search for fulfillment becomes a need for power, fame, good looks, and success, and we forget what true fulfillment really is. What is true fulfillment? The realization of what life is about, who you really are in essence. But we forget that because we stay on the surface. We make the world our medium for fulfillment.

An important question to ask is this: “Can we help believing these lies?” Can we help believing these lies? [pause] No, we can’t help it! We have bought into it. So, the question is, “Why do we lie?”

We lie for two reasons. One, we are afraid of the purity of this moment beyond the mind, so we try to escape it. This moment, beyond past and future, beyond thought, is the true paradise, the kingdom of God, the portal of true happiness and fulfillment in peace and love and joy, and all the things you have wanted subjectively.

In truth, that’s how it is. But we never experience this moment itself in its purity because we are afraid of it. Because when you enter the portal, when you enter this moment, you begin to feel as if your ego is dying, and that is frightening.

Two, we believe that all problems, fears, and limitations exist in the present. For example, listen to the following question. Someone asked, “When I look at my present life, I see nothing but fear, pain, and problems. So I want to think about the future, because by hoping for a better future I feel better.” How many people think like that? Most people. The present is full of problems. “I don’t want to think about it! So I hope the future is going to be better, and by hoping for a better future, I am going to be better.”

But that is a big lie. Why is it a big lie? This is a common belief. First we have to ask this person if they are true to themselves, or want to be true to themselves. Ask him this: “Right here and now, in this very moment, where are your problems and fears that you are trying to avoid? Where are they?” And then he’ll stop and look, and find that they are nowhere to be found, except in his head. “Where is the problem? I don’t see it anywhere. I am just here. It’s all in my head.” That’s what we are talking about. All lying is in your thoughts. If he were honest, he would recognize that they are all in his mind.

Any hope for the future to be better is an escape from the now. And any escape from facing the now comes with you into the so-called future, although it is still now when it happens, right? You take your thoughts of avoidance with you. So how can your future be better when you’re taking the avoidance of that moment with you?

So any hope for the future to be better is an escape from the now. Hope for the future, when the present is not accepted, merely repeats what the mind is focused on. So really there is no past or future. There is only now. Even now as you listen, feel it. The past, when it happened, was the now, but it is now gone. The future, when it does come, will be the now when it happens, so it is an extension of now. But there is only now, this moment! And how you act this moment will determine the next moment. You see? So, when you are aware in this moment, the next moment is assured. It is a law of life.

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi said, “There is only here and now. Everything else is an illusion.” This is greatly affirmed by the Course in Miracles, which says exactly the same thing in different words.

People lie, not through sheer malice, but through unconsciousness, through the need to escape the truth, because we think the truth is something. Truth is nothing. When we say “this moment,” is this moment something? No. Can you grasp it? Can you understand it with the mind? We’re not talking about Burt talking in the moment; we’re not talking about you sitting here - we’re talking about the eternal moment. Every moment is this moment, and there can never be a time when you are not in this moment, because this moment is eternal.

There is no death because there is no life, there is only this moment in consciousness. When we think the body is alive, we fear death. But why are you afraid of death? Are you alive now? Prove to me that you are alive now! You may say, “My body is alive.” Really? You mean to tell me that your body is keeping your heart beating, your blood circulating, your cells changing? It is consciousness that is doing it. Your body is nothing more than an appearance of consciousness. That’s all it is. But consciousness cannot die because it was never born. You see? It is not an individual thing. The “I am” of consciousness is universal intelligence. It is the universal mind. Science of Mind calls it the “Universal Mind.”

Being a hypnotherapist, something I hear very often is when somebody says, “I’ve been hurt,” of course, I won’t deny it to them, but this is an unconscious lie, because to be hurt requires your permission. Some people on the spiritual path lie in a different way. For example, they might say, “I feel like a victim, but I know in my heart it is a lie.” That’s dishonest, because if you believed that being a victim was a lie you wouldn’t feel like a victim. So, somehow you still believe it, but intellectually you say it’s a lie.

When a person says, “I feel like a victim, but I know in my heart it is a lie,” it is an escape from honesty. It is a denial of the true feelings, which is this case is the feeling of being a victim. Another lie is pretending to know things by spouting beautiful spiritual phrases you have heard or read, when you don’t live by them. You only know something to the extent that you live from it.

So, another question is, “What if I attempt to stop lying? Can it be done? Can I stop lying?” It’s impossible. It’s impossible to stop lying as long as you think that your thoughts and emotions are real. Lying is the ego mind’s personality. It can’t be helped. So, what can we do? All we can do is to be aware that it is not who we are.

So, you might ask, “Why is the ego this way?” Could it be that it is all a lie? Could it be that maybe we are seeing the world as the illusion that it is? Could it be that we have never delved into the source of things, but pretended that appearances are the real thing?

Everything that we experience, either sensually or emotionally, is just an appearance resulting from a cause. Just like the clouds, they can be dark, snowy, cottony, whatever shape - they came from a cause. The cause may be unknown, but nonetheless, everything that we experience has emerged from an emptiness that we do not understand. We call it “consciousness.” It appears as objects and other living forms, but it itself is not the object.

So, the source is emptiness, spirit, nothingness, the great void. How do we know? Simple. Ask yourself, where did anything come from? It has been scientifically proven that all matter is mass, like Einstein said. Mass is energy, molecular structure, atomic energy. So emptiness has two aspects. First, emptiness appears as the emptiness we feel inside, and it makes us seek fulfillment in the world outside. “Oh, I feel so empty, I feel so lonely, I feel so lost, I feel so empty, I feel so hurt, I feel so empty, I feel so heartbroken, I feel so empty.” So emptiness, in the beginning, is always felt as darkness, fear, even death. When darkness is directly experienced, however, it changes into light, love, and eternal life. Both are one in consciousness.

Albert Einstein discovered experientially what Buddha emphasized in all his teachings. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. And Jesus emphasized that everything is spirit. So why do we cling to form? This is important - why do we cling to form, to the body, to things, to objects in the world? Do you know why? Think of any object. It is not the object you are really seeing, but your ideas about it.

Objects take on a reality that we assume to be the truth because of the importance we place upon them, but these are just concepts. For example, a man buys a Ferrari, and it might cost him a year’s salary. Did he buy it because he is interested in transport? Of course not - it is the concept of self-importance. The Ferrari is an object to make him feel better.

The truth is, we never see objects, we see ideas. Now you are beginning to see the power inherent in this. Everything in the world is mind! We fail to see that forms are the appearances of energy, which any physicist knows.

Listen to the statement that the famous cosmologist, Brian Swimme, made. It contains an incredible truth. He says, “The greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise is this: you take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes and humans.”

What does it mean to you as you hear this? Isn’t it that consciousness is all there is, which only appears as forms? What we call “space” is consciousness, which always creates out of itself. The moment it creates, it becomes form, but that form is only an appearance of consciousness. It is our minds that take that form to be reality. That doesn’t mean it’s not there! But we’ve stopped looking into its essence. And when you look into the essence of anything at all, you get back to consciousness. As you get back to consciousness, you begin to experience truth. When you take thoughts, beliefs, ideas, theories and emotions back to their source by experiencing them and not running away from them, they take you back to that which you are. If you avoid them, fight them, deny them, or run away from them, then you live in self-deception. That’s called suffering.

Initially, we can’t help clinging to forms as reality. We can’t help it! It is part of the evolution of consciousness getting to know itself. But as we cling to form, we experience its deterioration and eventual death, because all forms deteriorate, change, and die. In fact, if you look at the world, you see nothing but change. Everything is constantly changing. Can you think of anything that doesn’t change? Anything at all? Everything changes! There’s nothing that doesn’t change. But if you see that everything changes, you will find the changeless. Because who is experiencing the change? That which never changes!

It is the same with time - everything is time! And time is everlasting. Time is always. Every event takes time, even my hand moving. [moves hand up and down] It took time for my hand to go up and down, even if only a split second. Everything is taking time. And since everything is taking time, time will never end, as long as motion, change, and the world appears. Therefore, when you become aware that everything is time-full, you find the timeless.

What I am saying is beyond thought, but you can feel it in your heart. When you become still and look at time, that part in you that is observing is timeless! When you observe time, you become timeless. When you observe change, you become changeless. Not that you have become changeless, not that you have become timeless, but you have recognized it.

So when you look at darkness, you recognize light. Not that you become light - you have always been light - but you recognize light. If you enter a room that is pitch dark and stay in it, not trying to avoid it or rub your eyes or move around to see if there’s light - just staying still and looking at the darkness, after a few hours, your eyes get used to it. You will see that there’s no such thing as pitch darkness.

Cats see more than we do. How do we know that what we’re seeing is truth? You see? Bats “see” very well in the dark. So, how do we know? Our senses are very, very limited in the perception of truth, but they can help us to know truth.

However, when we cling to form because we think it’s reality, and we see its deterioration and eventual death, we begin to develop a great fear, a fear of dissolution, a fear of the unknown, a fear of being no more. But you can never be no more, because you never were! You see? When you realize that you are spirit, emptiness, then you know you can never die. You are spirit - how can you die? How can spirit die when it was never born?

But because you think you are your thoughts, emotions, and body, and you identify with time, which in reality doesn’t exist, you begin to see nothing but deterioration, change, and time, and you are scared silly of growing old and sick and dying to that which has been known. You see? But when you become very still and know that “I am God,” within that stillness, you begin to understand things which you never could understand with your mind, because you have penetrated the moment. You’ve gone into the moment.

So, this fear of the unknown and death makes us cling even more tenaciously to form, because it is all we know, and we’re not willing to look beyond it. And the more attached we become, the more frightened we become. We are afraid of questioning. These classes are simply to question, not to accept beliefs or take them for granted, but to become aware of what we’ve taken for granted, and really look. And when you start looking, this awareness increases your consciousness. The growth of consciousness is what it’s all about.

We’re afraid to question because we’re afraid that our world as we know it will crash. The more we start questioning our daily existence, the more we begin to feel disillusioned, the more we’re afraid that everything will appear like one big lie. But what if you take the plunge and say, “OK, if that’s the truth, then so be it. I’ll be disillusioned. I’ll let it crash all around me.” If you had the courage to do that, then disillusionment would evolve into reality. That is the point of courage. Because when we start looking around us, we see what we have never seen before.

In the beginning, what we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and read in the paper is nothing but crisis. Our idealism becomes crushed when we look at the world. Every day we are faced with cheating businessmen, crooked politicians, corrupt leaders, and daily news of famine, violence, and crime. We know that there is an economic predominance over nature, and that’s why our water and food is polluted. We watch helplessly as 20,000 species become extinct every year. We see the separation of nations, the religious wars and racism, resources spent on defense and military while millions starve; and as we look around and see all this, on the physical plane of course, we ask, “Where is beauty? Where is love? Where is sweetness? Where is truth?”

We are materialists and we don’t have a sense of larger significance beyond this. But as we start to listen and become very still, we begin to feel a hunger inside. When you become still, there is a longing in you for something more. There is a longing for truth. There is a longing for sweetness. There is a longing for love. There is a longing for connection. There is a longing for peace. And if you listen to that longing, you will find it’s always been there, not in the forms that you see outside of you, but in your own core being.

Most people stop there and never look deeply. They say, “Well, this is life. I might as well get all I can while I am still alive.” And while they think that, they are developing more greed, selfishness and hardness of being. They forget about truth.

Did you know that emptiness is all we crave? Like we said before, emptiness is divided into two parts. First, it appears as darkness, fear and death. When you feel fear, it is fear of emptiness, did you know? When you feel depressed or lonely, it is a fear of emptiness. But if you were to stay with that emptiness and feel the gut-wrenching pain, feel the heart throbbing and the sweat, be one with it, breathe into it and experience it; if you stay with it, the realization comes that the thing you feared the most is the very thing you love. You see? Love and fear are seemingly separate, but the Course says that what is all-encompassing has no opposite. When you experience fear, you find that it has always been love. What was expressing as fear was a need for love.

So when we experience fear, we look into it - the Course calls it the Atonement. The Atonement means “at-one-ment,” “be-one-with.” So if there is a fear, and you stay with that fear, explore it and feel it totally, go to the center of it and look at it like you watch a movie, then what happens? That fear becomes love. That is a law.

So, emptiness is the one thing we want more than anything but we never allowed ourselves to know it. Truth is stranger than fiction, especially in this case. We crave in our daily expression that which we fear the most. This is one of the great paradoxes of the human condition.

Death is what is most feared; and yet many young people, bored with the facade of daily life, find themselves living on the edge, facing danger in order to make themselves feel more alive. Do you know what movies sell out the most? Sex and violence - action movies. Do you know why they sell out the most? Because when you are watching them, you feel most alive, living on the edge. We love to see heroes defying death.

Emptiness is the only ecstasy, the greatest ecstasy; the only true, lasting joy, the only true meaning - love itself. For example, living on the edge - the man who risks his life to climb a treacherous mountain - why does he climb the mountain? The car racer who takes a turn at 200 miles per hour, the free-fall parachutist, the stunt man, all crave living on the edge. DId you ever ask yourself why?

A show I found very interesting was interviewing people who lived on the edge, stunt men especially. The answers to the interviewer were always the same: “I do it because it makes me feel alive.” Listen to that - “It makes me feel so alive.” Why does danger make you feel alive? Because when you are faced with the possibility of death, you become the moment, and in that moment, there’s no thought. In that one moment, there’s no ego, there’s no “you.” Just emptiness.

Others hunger for adulation, like the rock star or the film star, some, total immersion in an activity, whether it is acting, running, singing, or whatever. Some people say that when they run, they reach a point of second wind and all of a sudden they get high after they have been running for a while. You see? Or you sing and love singing, and you come to a point where you and the song become one, when you come from your heart. Or in acting, when you are such a great actor that you are the person you are protraying in that part. And you watch him act, you believe the actor to be his part, because at that moment the actor is living that part in his heart. You see?

So therefore, when we live totally in the moment, we are alive, totally alive! So we think “aliveness” is in things - it isn’t in things. It is living that moment so totally that there is no “you,” there is only “that.” You see? And when there’s only “that,” there is aliveness.

For example, take sexual orgasm. We’ve all had orgasms, so we’re quite familiar with it. In orgasm, you experience a few seconds of extreme euphoria. What is that? In that moment of orgasm, there is no ego, no thought, no emotion, just that total immersion.

The Course calls it “Holy Instant.” When you enter that Holy Instant, you are totally one with God in that euphoria, ecstasy, rapture, total bliss. One time, Ram Dass was asked, “Your guru - how does he feel?” And Ram Dass said, “How can I explain how my guru feels most of the time? Picture this. How do you feel when you reach orgasm? Well, my guru lives in that orgasm 24 hours a day!” He is in that state, because total immersion beyond ego is total rapture, total bliss. We begin to get inklings of it when we wake up spiritually. At the point where we feel we are nothing, we become everything.

So as you enter spirit, you are entering that which you always wanted but feared because you had ideas about it. Because IT is beyond concept, beyond ideas, beyond theories. It is nothing you have read or heard, but what you have come to know in your heart.

It all comes down to emptiness, a hunger for the moment that defies description, going beyond ego, beyond time, beyond words, beyond thought. There are times in satsang when you capture that moment to the extent that you are listening. If you are truly listening, you are in that moment. If you are totally feeling the words, you enter that moment.

How we do it, ultimately, is unimportant. What is important is our openness to receive it. So, when you come to a session and you say, “I want to receive it,” and you really mean it, you will receive it. Did you know that? One of the things that I say all the time like a prayer is, “Bhagavan, this is all I want. I want to open myself to truth and receive it.” And as I do that, it starts to come through me.

Stillness is that elusive word which can also happen at the height of activity, because within activity is stillness. One time, it was said to Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, “But when you are still, nothing is happening.” He said, “Stillness is like a spinning wheel. It spins so fast that it disappears.” You see?

This is what it means - when you become very still, beyond thought, your vibrational frequency becomes so rarefied, so purified, that even thought cannot overtake you, because you enter that silence beyond thought. Krishnamurti called it the “gap between thoughts.”

There are gaps in everything, right? For example, when you hear a bell ring, how does it ring? Ding [pause] dong, right? Between the “ding” and the “dong,” there’s a gap. Otherwise you couldn’t hear “Ding dong,” in the same way that you are listening to my words. The only way you can listen is because there is a silence in between them, similarly with music, and all sound. It is silence that manifests as sound.

So in truth, there is no difference between silence and sound. And in all of life, silence might appear as the world, the negative, or as spirit, the positive. However, the two are one. Because the moment the world appears, it is negative - but the negative and positive have to work together to make the world appear. It’s just like electricity. Electricity comes from spiritual energy, electrons. But we make it manifest by putting negative and positive wires together.

Similarly with the human being - the human is the negative; the being is the positive. Join them together - do not deny the limitation of the human. Do not deny the mistakes. Do not run away from the mistakes the human makes, but see them both as one, because you do not sin. There is no sinner; there is only a mistaker, a person who makes mistakes. You make mistakes because you are unconscious of the love you are.

So, when you look at your depression, see it as a mistake. When you look at your anger, see it as a mistake - not as something wrong, but as a mistake of who you are. Look at it, learn from it, and by all means don’t feel guilty for it. Then you make the human and the being one. And in that oneness, the emptiness becomes fullness. Nothing’s changed, you simply penetrate into the being, the source. Emptiness is all we crave, emptiness is the only ecstasy.

There are moments, like we were saying, when we touch upon that stillness. It can be done through physical and mental stillness, or in the height of activity. It doesn’t matter. Many times people have said to me, “Burt, I was in great danger, and I saw my life pass in front of me. I saw everything - my birth, teenagehood, manhood, up to this moment - I saw it all in a split second! How did that happen? Can you explain it?” It is because emptiness is beyond time. When you enter that empty moment, everything happens in a split second, even the life time that we have lived. What is a lifetime - seventy, eighty years of age? In that moment, a life span is nothing because you are in the moment of God. You see? In that moment of totality, it’s beyond time. In the Holy Instant, everything happens. So, what we call “past” and what we call “future” exist NOW. The emotions that we experience in the so-called “past” are in your cellular structure, in the very cells of your body.

So even in the height of activity, you can experience the moment. Did you ever feel that you were going to have an accident? You see you’re going to hit somebody, and the brakes don’t work, and all of a sudden everything slows down? That’s because you enter another dimension, another portal of the now. In the moment, when everything stops, even in the height of activity of an accident, you enter stillness! That is something that is hard to understand, because it has nothing to do with physical motion - it is stillness that appears as motion.

When you enter the portal of the Holy Instant, that doorway, that dimension into the total now, you find who you are. And when you find out who you are, you’re never the same again. You’ll never be the same. And it keeps on strengthening and strengthening, and deepening and deepening. It is what we call “love”, what we call “beauty,” what we call “grace.”

Emptiness is beyond time, and therefore a lifetime can be experienced in one brief split second. When awakening happens, emptiness is seen everywhere; everything is seen as empty. When a person suffers an emotion, it feels so real in your body! But stop, and you begin to see it as empty. When you experience a fear, look at it, and you see it as empty. A person can be extremely happy, euphoric, jumping up and down; look at it and you see it as empty. There is no real difference between fear and happiness. My goodness - everything is empty! When you bring it to emptiness, only the love remains, because only the love is real. It only appeared as not-love. That’s why, in the Course, it says so beautifully, “Nothing that is not good was ever created.” Such a beautiful statement!

When emptiness is not seen everywhere, then we ask, “I know the truth, but why don’t I live from it?” The truth is emptiness, but if you think in words from a book, you think it is a belief; you think that truth is a religion; you think it is something to be studied and known. Emptiness is beyond thought, memory, time, and even space - space between objects, that is. Truth is this very moment itself, a never ending, infinite BE-ing.

Once we glimpse it through the willingness to do so, it keeps deepening and refining itself. There has to be the willingness to see that everything we want is IT, everything we experience is IT, everything we hunger for is IT, that everything we seek, by whatever name we give it, is IT. And until we start seeing this, we cannot live from it.

We can begin to see it by being very, very still. But remember, stillness is not necessarily becoming like a stone. Stillness means, “Let the mind think what it wants. I watch. I just watch. I listen, and I hear.” You see? And when you make yourself listen and become still in this moment, then your heart opens. And when it opens, you begin to understand, not with words, but with a feeling-knowing.

The best words I’ve ever heard regarding experiencing emptiness were given by Gangaji. She said the following, “Open your mind. Allow your heart to be pierced by this divine arrow that will shatter every definition you call yourself. Allow yourself to be empty, nothing, nobody. Allow yourself the sweet bewilderment in God. Then wait and see.”

No other words have said it more completely than these. We have heard them in different ways and then played with the words, thinking we know. But unless we experience fully what is constant within us, and find that within every inconstant, we cannot discover our glorious and eternal emptiness.

We talked about change and time. When you see everything as change, you find the changeless. When you see that everything as time, you find the timeless. So, putting it a different way, everything is inconstant. Nothing remains the same.

Thought is inconstant; it changes all the time. We think an average of 26,000 thoughts a day. Most people, the next day, think the same 26,000 thoughts, and that’s why they become boring. That’s why we don’t grow. But when we start becoming aware, it’s a whole new dynamic! That’s growth.

What is constant in us is the awareness of those thoughts. We activate this awareness by becoming aware of the inconstant. Thoughts are inconstant - they change all the time. Emotions are inconstant; the body is inconstant. Did you know that the body is being renewed all the time? It is. Even your bones change completely in one year.

So everything is inconstant. But the one who is experiencing them is constant. Now who is the experiencer? That’s what we need to know. That is the constant. So what is inconstant about us? Everything - every thought, every emotion, every feeling, every personality, mood, and belief is constantly changing. They have never been and can never be stable. Everything that is inconstant will die eventually and pass away into its original emptiness, and then we have to ask, “If my thoughts, personality, and everything about me are inconstant and eventually dies, what is constant?”

Very simple. What is constant is not about you, it IS you. Got it? All we have talked about is your thoughts, your emotions, and your body, but who are we referring to? Who is the “you” they belong to? You think, which is inconstant, and you’re aware of the thought - awareness is constant. It is like the sky, forever constant, because it is empty.

So when we really go into it and begin to feel it in our hearts, we ask, “Why does it take so long to recognize something so simple?” For those of you listening [to the tape], we will take a pause so you can feel this. Why does it take so long to recognize something so simple? [pause] Because we believe the big lie. We believe we are our thoughts, and as a result, we try to fit everything into those slots. We have forgotten that consciousness, love, feeling, thoughts, emotions, and everything that lets you know you’re alive, are not “something.”

Even the thought that you believe you are real is still emptiness. Everything is emptiness. And when you see that everything is empty, even the thoughts that you’ve taken to be real, then you see yourself as empty. We are afraid of being nothing, you see? But the moment you allow yourself to be nothing, you begin to experience what you’ve never experienced before, that peace you never knew existed. We think we are going to attain peace! Peace is not attainable - peace is you, when there is no one experiencing. You become pure experience.

Just allow yourself to be nothing now. Just melt into the sky. Go to the beach and look into the horizon. Feel one and connected with everything. As you disappear, you find peace, joy, you find that bliss. It was always there! But you were so caught in your thoughts, you were not able to experience it. You see?

Everything is empty. Some people say, “But I don’t want to be empty!” Do you have a choice? You are empty already! But the reason you suffer is that you don’t want to be what you already are! Just like the Course says, “You are love, whether you like it or not.” But the point is, you fight it. And that’s why you experience fear. You don’t know how beautiful you are. And because you don’t know how beautiful you are, you create ugliness. God did not create ugliness. Ugliness is the defeat of your own beauty. The reason you don’t experience beauty and love is because you thought they are “something.” They are not “something,” they are the emptiness itself!

Listen to the birds right now. [birds in background] Now they are chirping away. But do you feel the silence within the sound? You know, a few days ago in the morning, it was raining very hard and the wind was beating against the window, and I was writing and looking at that and just feeling the rain. Nothing is bad - everything is reminding you of that silence. Even thunder, if you really look. If you begin to look, you’ll find yourself everywhere, because you are that silence itself!

The daily mind cannot conceive of emptiness. It’s afraid of it. It’s even beyond its own imagination - it thinks of it as death, being no more. Death doesn’t exist. The void never existed. It only exists in our warped and fearful imagination. In the beginning was nothing, and from the beginning came the word, and the word was made flesh. The trinity, you see? But, you see, the trinity is one! Nothing is separate from anything else.

I’d like to give you an example from a discussion with Gangaji regarding this. I love this woman and she is so clear! A man sounded frustrated and Gangaji said, “Let your frustration be the fire. Don’t try to figure out the frustration or fix it. Don’t try to ignore it, overcome it, postpone it, or change it. Directly experience frustration! Discover who is really frustrated.” The man replied, “I feel like I’ve been sitting in this fire for a long time.” That’s what we think! Because if a person has been sitting in the fire for a long time, they think they’ve been sitting in it. This man has been using the analysis of the situation thinking he was sitting in the fire of frustration.

So, Gangaji replied, “You are wrong, because to sit in this fire for even an instant reveals there is no one here.” There is just emptiness. “You were sitting in some idea of it brought on by your belief about it.” That it is something bad, you see? If you experience fear in the moment and you stay with that fear - not giving it a label - it’s just energy working through the body. Experience it as it is and it changes. But that is something we don’t want to do. Gangaji continued, “When you ask yourself who is frustrated, what happens? What happens to the idea of someone sitting in frustration?”

So, to experience an inconstant like an emotion, thought, or feeling, give up all ideas about what you think they are. See, the first thing we do is to judge it. The moment you judge a thought as wrong, you begin to feel discomfort in the body - immediately! Because the body is an appearance of consciousness. So if you are conscious of something that you think is wrong, the body reflects it as a discomfort, because you made it wrong. But it wasn’t wrong; you just made it wrong. If you fight that discomfort, then what happens the next time? Confusion. When you suffer confusion, and you fight or try to figure out the confusion, what happens? You enter the next stage, which is feeling lost. After that could be a nervous breakdown or some other dysfunction, even a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Experience it as it is, an emotion; with no mental involvement. Just be still and look at what is taking place. Remove any thoughts about the thoughts. The moment you do so, everything disappears in emptiness and what is left is silence. You become relaxed in that moment, known as bliss, freedom and inner fulfillment. Nothing actually happens. You just had your first glimpse of the truth as it is, beyond the cobwebs of conditioned thought, which is always a lie. This is the direct path. And when you start going beyond the big lie, thinking you are your thoughts, then you are a free, awakened being.