School Talk 33 - Experiencing Freely

(*Audience participation is in parentheses--notations in brackets have been added for clarification )

Today we will talk about experiencing freely. I have more people can tell me about not experiencing freely. They tell me they simply can not do that. The people they work for are all squirrely and they can't experience that freely, and the people they work with are all squirrely and also the people they live with, etc.

But regardless, we are going to experience whatever's going on-it is going to be happening around us, so we might as well do it freely. So whenever I experience whatever's going on freely here in the moment-it is what is, it's happening. Maybe it's like sitting in a theater when there's some parts of the show you don't like-you're still going to be there to wait for the other part of it you do like; and so you might as well experience it freely. To experience anything freely is without condemning it or justifying it, no matter what's going on-whether it's pain, discomfort, unpleasant people around us or whatever the situation may be. We are experiencing whatever is happening at the moment, and we might as well do it freely. I have more calls about unpleasant situations from somebody, who has talked to me at least a time or two before--and we've said that if something isn't going to suit you, experience it freely. It won't last long! It will be gone away in just a little bit anyway-always does. But if you don't experience it freely, you're in a state of conflict, struggle and resistance which is the only human problem.

So nothing is a problem unless we're in a conflict with it, unless we're struggling with it, or unless we are resisting it happening. So whatever's going on is happening--it's what is--and if we experience it freely, it's altogether different than when we were resisting it.

It not only seems different, it really is different because the situation is fed and influenced by our resistance to it.

It set's up conflict not only within, but without; and it makes things go, as the old saying goes, from "bad to worse."

Now everybody in the world is doing, at the moment, what they feel is "right or proper or justifiable"--if they are aware at all? If they're sound asleep, they're merely reacting. So if people are reacting and I shouldn't want to go along with the reaction-I could I turn it around a little bit. I could find something to laugh about the situation or make a joke about it. Let's say someone was blaming me.

Now most people when they're blamed, they immediately react and want to go into a state of resisting and defending themselves. But if you could notice that being blamed is possibly the greatest compliment you could get. They're saying you're an extremely powerful person. You are just totally in control. You influence whatever goes on. So when somebody wants to blame you, you can jump to the acceptance of it because they are telling you how powerful you are and how great you are. And you always say, "Yes, I'm a very powerful person." "I'm a witch or a warlock," as the case may be and, "I can make anything happen." "I can create chaos anywhere." Pretty soon they'll say "Shut up, you can't do that." And so they will start telling you that you can't control.

You see, as long as you try to defend it, everybody is reacting, and a person may be horribly blamed and criticized and all sorts of things. The only way to get really rid of the situation is to accept it-so what? "I'm doing all this." "It's all my fault." "I'm doing it." "I'm very powerful." So if somebody blames me for something that happened, aren't they saying I am very powerful? Aren't they crediting me with great power to control all sorts of things-situations, events, whatever? [What he is actually doing here is giving us a method to experiment with. The hard part is remembering to do it rather than allowing the reaction within of defending ourselves to take over……….Marsha]

So let's begin to put out a little effort [and remember…..] that we're going to experience freely whatever may arise in our way today. You're going to experience it anyway, you might as well do it with good manners and grace as the word says-you might as well do it gracefully. Get all the mileage you can out of it, you know, so what? […….that is going with it. And I don't think he meant by "going with it" that we give somebody a hard way to go…….Marsha]

So when we're experiencing freely, the other people begin to behave differently. But as long as we're resisting, sticking up for our rights and blaming, why things go, as we said, from "bad to worse." The whole situation gets totally out of hand.

To straighten out any situation only requires that one person be there that's relatively conscious; and when you accept everything that's going on-freely-- you're experiencing it freely. You're then being conscious; and at that moment, that's all it takes to straighten out the most difficult situations we find ourselves in.

That's why we talk frequently about higher consciousness because any one person in a higher state than those around them, whether there is one or many, totally changes the situation because there is a conscious person in the midst which can now bring about a total transformation of everything.

Have you ever noticed something that could be called literature, a good movie, a great book, or a meaningful television show. If it's any good--and instead of going on 30 minutes with violence--why it has a story to tell. It always has people that are not quite conscious creating a terrible chaos; and one conscious person shows up on the scene and settles everything. That's the theme of every story that has any value. Now every once in a while I see something that's on television that they just have chases and shooting and violence for the allotted time-30 minutes or an hour, two hours--and then it just quits-it never told a story or did anything else. There was just a bunch of violence. I'm talking about a story of any kind that really is considered to be a story. It is always that there are several unconscious people creating a great big chaos or a big problem; and then somebody comes along that is in a higher state of consciousness and solves the whole situation--just like that.

Now you might as well be the one that's in the higher state of consciousness. People are going to ask you about their situations, about their turmoil and so forth. They're going to tell you about all their problems. The phone started ringing very early before I even thought about getting up this morning; and there was one problem after another which all disappeared as long as it was looked at just a wee bit differently. Everybody's problem just disappeared. They all said, "Well, I don't know why I bothered you with this?" But a moment before they were in a big turmoil. They, a moment before, had all sorts of problems because they were not experiencing something freely.

So one of the approaches to higher consciousness is to be aware of what's going on and be free to experience it as it is-without any conflict, without any struggle, without any resistance, without fighting it. So it just goes on and what difference does it really make what's going on. Something is going to be happening all the time, isn't it?

Now you are not required as an individual to evaluate it as being "good or bad, wrong or right, should or should not."

The not "I's" that hang around all of us are very quick to judge everything in sight. They say all those people are crazy-that one is terrible-that one is mean-that one's trying to do me in-that one's trying to get me fired-this one is trying to break up my whole series of relationships, and it goes on and on and on because we are resisting experiencing something that a not "I" said wasn't so good.

Now before we could evaluate some situation as being "good or bad", we would have to know the outcome a week from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, three years from now, 20 years from now and etc. Is that right? Do you know all that all the time? No, not even if you have one of the psychics from down the street hired-because they don't know anything about it either. They don't know anything at all about it. So you don't know the outcome, so how could you say that this situation is "bad".

It's like the story we like to tell about a farmer who lived out in the country-he and his son and his wife. They had one valuable piece of property-a lovely Arabian mare. So they were very proud of their mare and all their neighbors more or less envied them for having the pretty mare. One morning when he got up and went out to feed his little mare, she was long gone. There was a hole in the fence and she was gone. So all his neighbors gathered around to say how sad it is, how bad it is that you lost your beautiful mare. The old gent said,

"Well, I don't know whether it's good or bad, all I know is the mare's gone."

Well, this went on for a little while. The mare was still gone and their lives went on about the same as usual. But one morning when he got up and went out, the mare had returned, and she had with her seven beautiful wild Arabian stallions she had gathered up in the field. No doubt, she got lonely and went out looking for a boyfriend and came back with seven of them. So the farmer and his son put the stallions in the corral.

The neighbors all came by and said, "What wonderful fortune it is that you've got your mare back and all these beautiful stallions with her." The farmer said,

"I don't know, all I know is the mare's back and has seven stallions with her."

So his son decided he would break one of the stallions to ride. So he got it out and put a halter, bridle, and finally the saddle on it. He was attempting to ride it and get it calmed down to be what you call a broken horse, and the horse threw him and broke his leg.

So then the neighbors came and told him how unfortunate it is that your son has a broken leg. The old man said,

"I don't know, I just know the boy has a broken leg." "I don't know whether it's bad or good or how terrible it is or anything." "The boy's got a broken leg." "That's all right, he's laying there with his leg growing together."

So in a few days after the son got his leg broken, the king's men came through the country to get all able-bodied men for the army. His son couldn't go, he was laid up in the sack. So the army went on by him. They didn't want any guy with a broken leg.

The neighbor's sons all had to go for the army; and so the neighbors came over and said, "How lucky you are, you son didn't have to go to the army. The farmer again said,

"I don't know, all I know is my son had a broken leg and didn't have to go in the army."

Now we could go on with this for several hours, but I guess that's reasonable limited amount of time, so we'll quit. But the story could go on and on. The point is, the old man was being free to experience what was going on and things worked around for him pretty well. All the other people were not free to experience what was going on. They were judging every situation as "good or bad". [not only does the judging as good or bad make the moment unpleasant and away from keeping the mood up; but if intense enough requires adaptation by the body to restore balance-if the importance placed on the "ideal" is great enough………Marsha]

If it is "good", you want to keep it. If it's "bad", you want it to go away-so the neighbors in our story were having problems. They were even having problems over him, you know-the guy just wouldn't see things like they really were. He wouldn't see that some things were "good" and some were "bad". But you see, in a few days everything that they saw as "bad" worked out to be seemingly to the old guy's advantage, is that right? So we don't know what's good and what's "bad". But if once we could ever discover that fact for ourselves. We don't truly know what's "good or bad". We could then be much closer to being able to experience freely whatever may arise in our way today.

Now you're going to experience "it"-whatever "it" might be. As long as you don't falsely believe that you know "what ought to be", then you will begin to see that certain things are happening, and that you can experience them freely [discovering that the situation is influenced by people, places, events and circumstances that are not in your control……Marsha]. You will find yourself in a decided higher state of consciousness than you would be if you reacted like all the neighbors coming over telling the old guy what was "good" and what was "bad".

He was in a higher state of consciousness, and it looked like everything was working out that what the neighbors said was terrible worked out to be pretty good and the things they said were good seemed to work out OK too. The neighbors couldn't do it, but for an entirely different reason. And what was that reason?

So if you would be a person that is removed from all the difficulties around you, then you would be a person that experiences freely whatever may arise today. That is the way you are the remover of all the difficulties around you. That you are experiencing freely whatever may arise in your way today-whether it be that the person is in physical difficulties or in a mental difficulty or that it looks like the whole world is topsy-turvy and everything's gone to Hades. It looks like the job is a royal mess, and it looks like things just won't ever work right for me, and on and on.

How many times have you heard somebody say, "Nothing's worked for me very well since so and so." Like one of the favorite expressions, when I used to be in practice, was a lady came in and I would say, "Tell me about yourself-how long have you been sick?" She'd say, "I haven't been well since the baby was born." I'd say, "Well, how long ago was that?" She'd say, "Thirty two years." So you know the pattern was fairly well entrenched. Remarkable how many women tell me how I haven't been well since the baby was born. The baby is 32, 36-one of them was even 62 years old. But she hadn't been well since the baby was born.

So one can be free to experience whatever is, whether it is the discomfort-whether it is distortion, whether it's being rejected by someone, whether it is some event that took place that you were totally unprepared for, etc. If you're free to experience it, you have gone a very long way towards changing it because higher consciousness always changes it. Only a person in a more desirable state of consciousness is free to experience whatever may arise today.

So you're boyfriend says, "I'm tired of you". "I don't want to put up with you anymore." Is that "good or bad?" We're like the man with the horse, I don't know. I just know he said he's not putting up with me anymore, ok? So you're free to experience being rejected to that degree, so what? It will decidedly change everything now and then you would see it different in a few days, "Well, I'm glad I wasn't stuck with that jerk." Because then you have something a lot better, or it will all straighten around--whatever the case may be. It will come along.

The point is, you don't know whether it's "good or bad" because you don't know the outcome of it a week from now, a month from now, or a year from now or anything else.

One case that particularly comes to mind over on the east coast this year-a man felt he was horribly rejected by his lady who said she'd never be with him again--no matter what. But they are together again and they are probably having a better time than they ever had in their lives before. She's being treated like a princess every day of the week, and he's very happy to be treating her that way. Now if this so called "bad" event not come up, it probably would have been lumping along about like it had been for several years which was neither terrible or passable. It was just a situation that wasn't any great shakes for either one. Now it's fantastic for them. So who can say that that was a terrible situation to happen--or that it was bad. All that got it straightened around was that we kept working and working with the person to experience freely what's going on here now, which decidedly raised the consciousness level with the people involved; and brought about an entirely, totally, completely different situation-one of which both of them are delightfully happy and pleased more so than they have ever been in their life-everything's working for them better than it ever worked before. Now there's more income coming in, there is more of everything. There wasn't any great hardships before or anything, but just a lot of things are different, to a very decidedly degree.

So I can highly recommend that we start an experiment that "I can experience this freely" remembering that and then acting upon it. I'm going to experience this freely. Now you wouldn't get out of experiencing "it" if you didn't do it freely, is that right? You're going to be in the same situation, but you will be experiencing it with much more turmoil than if you were experiencing it freely. You can see how that would be because you're adding your conflict and struggles and resistances into it.

Now it doesn't matter what the situation is at this moment, you can experience it freely, is that right? You're going to experience it anyway, might as well do it gracefully-might as well do it with finesse-might as well do it with style, and a little class. You're experiencing it freely, is that right?

Somebody blames you-fine, I'm the cause of the whole show. I'm a very powerful individual. It won't take them long to cut you down to size and tell you that you're not, ok? Now whatever's going along, you're experiencing it whether you're experiencing it freely or fighting it-is that quite correct? You're doing it anyway-might as well do it freely.

I've talked long enough, let's have a little discussion now. Everybody likes our discussions. So who has a comment, a question or a challenge or a refutation or whatever. What have you got Miss Mary?

("Well, something that I have been experiencing in the last couple of weeks is learning to really experience conflict, and I've been viewing lots of conflicts about everything in my life.")

Right, been free to experience it? How did it feel?

("Felt wonderful every time I remembered to do it.")

And when you didn't remember to do it, you were all torn up.

("It was terrible, terrible!")

So you see that when you are self-remembering, and you decide to do something, you are in a higher state of consciousness. Otherwise you are just fiddling along like a poor cork bounced around on choppy water. You're just bumped here and there and elsewhere-so you have no charge. But if you say, "Well, I'm going to experience this conflict freely, so what." Yes I want this on this side; and I want that over here on the other side and it's altogether different. So conflict is wanting the un reciprocal things to go together; and some things just don't go together--they don't mix real well. You want this, but on the other hand, I want this over here.

But when you're free to do that, pretty soon you begin to laugh about the whole show-probably don't want either one then-more than likely.

("Often")

Very frequently. It isn't worth talking about, thinking about, or anything else; but as long as it seems so important for it to get done one way or the other, you're in a sleeping state of consciousness (as we refer to), and you are in terrible problems. Weren't you, a very unhappy lady, a very unhappy woman?

A lady called me yesterday and said she'd been trying to be happy all her life and it was getting worse everyday. I suggested that she quit trying to be happy and see if she could amuse a few people around her. I said, "After all, you can make a wiseacre remark now and then and somebody else will laugh". I said "They all feel as miserable as you do". "Oh," she said, "I never thought of that."

But the point is, you see, that as long as she's trying to be happy, she's checking up constantly to say she's not.

She just recently made total complete changes in her life-in everything-and she found she was more miserable than she was before. She threw the husband out because she had a perfect illusion of a new man all dreamed up. I guess a not "I" had laid it out that if she left the situation where she was, she would be pursued by the ideal man who would pour great sums of money at her feet, take her to all the beautiful places in the world, and ensconce her in a beautiful castle that cost at least a million dollars, and, in addition, she'd have fine automobiles and furs and friends of the jet-set. It went on and on.

However, it worked out that it wasn't quite that way. In fact, she had gotten her a new man and he turned out to be a real drunk. He had even bopped her a couple of times which previous the one she had been married to some twenty-odd years had not. The first one had ignored her a few times, but he hadn't bopped her. This new man was an athlete and was very interested in athletic behavior, and he came in and "bop" on the poor soul. So, of course, she was in a sad state of affairs-what's she going to do now? So I told her quit trying to be happy. Maybe the day she quit trying to be happy, she'd see that she wouldn't want to trade places with anybody. But as long as she was trying to be happy, I guarantee she'd be miserable. Long as you're trying to be happy……Well, why not just enjoy the show that's going on out here.

Mary, what do you have to add to this conversation here today? What are you involved in?

("I have noticed that when I experience something freely, it goes away so fast.")

Yes, hardly get time to look at it-that's what we said.

("And I lose track of time.")

Right.

("And I just have a great time.")

Because you're not involved in hours and minutes and so forth, right? You're in the present moment because all experiencing is in the present moment and the precious present is very rare-you only get one shot at it.

("And also I know that it's going to go away quickly.")

Well, I don't know whether it will go away or not, but more than likely, it will because everything changes.

("It always changes.")

And we said if you are experiencing freely, everything goes into a change-almost immediately. If you don't do it, it looks like you get hung up with something sometimes.

Mary, you had the same old thing going on for a week? We told everyone the story of pulling the dead horse to the bank. You're stuck with a smelly old dead horse. If you let it alone, it will go around the bend in a few minutes. Just let dead horses alone, ok? [Full story on web page]

("So since it's going to go away anyway.")

Why make an issue out of it.

("I do the best little thing I can do to make it spicy.")

Right, and get a little thrill out of it before it goes away right quick because it's going to be gone quick, so you better grab quick or it will all be gone, right?

Ok, Bon Bon what you got to add to this here.

("It's the illusion of the thing, the fact of the matter is……")

….that everything's all right just as it is, those illusions you dream up in your head are the way things "should be" and the way they "ought to be" and the situation is not that way; and therefore, you can get very tangled up over it. That dirty dog "ought to be straightened out", shouldn't he and so on and so forth.

(And see things "my way.")

…and obviously he's not letting you have "your way" right now, and so he must be a terrible person, is that right?

("…at that moment.")

At that moment, right, but ordinarily most people are very wonderful. They're like the Arabian horses, there's more of them all the time.

("but at that moment, nothing's right.")

If you don't like somebody, they don't do anything right. If you don't like them at that minute, nothing they are doing now or ever did do is right, and probably never will.

("Then when you see it different…..")

Then everything's pretty wonderful. They got their viewpoint just like everybody else.

Miss Faye, What have you got there?

("I've been working at taking charge of my life, and I've noticed that this teaching idea is part of it.")

Yes, when you take charge of your inner state of being--first off you have to do it by being free to experience whatever's going on-not fighting to experience only certain things that you've dreamed up as "ought to be". Some people try to approach it that way, and they become very very upset.

So I think that if we stopped and looked at the easiest approach that, I can conceive of to find myself in a higher state of consciousness, is being free to experience this moment fully and completely without either condemning or justifying it. This is a moment, it is a unique moment, it never happened before, it will never happen again, and I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it, so I'm going to experience it freely; and that is being in a very different state of consciousness. The person who is in a conflict, in a struggle or a resistance with anything or everything that is going on-most people don't like much of anything that's going on-it "ought to be different".

I find I can sit down in a coffee shop or a restaurant or stop about anywhere where there is a group of people and I be quiet and listen and all I hear is people resisting experiencing what's going on or what's even gone on yesterday or months ago. There's even a resisting because they did experience it some time ago to some degree, and they don't experience anything freely.

Ok, we will see you on the following Monday.

From the Newport Beach Workshop #11-12

Experiencing Freely

(Bob it seems like what you're saying is an extension of being free to experience)

That is absolutely correct. We call it Free to ......

So the first thing anybody does is make themselves free. Now we're all free, but let's say that you discover that you are free. Now this is purely a discovery--freedom, is a discovery. We already are. We made an unconscious conclusion to be non-disturbed since infancy; and therefore, continue to try to be free from everything we didn't like.

We want to be free from loneliness, free from pain, free from tiredness, free from you name it. Now in an attempt to be free from something, even if you didn't have "it" [the something you're trying to escape] for a few minutes, you don't know that it won't return or come back, so you're still in the same boat whether you have it or you don't. But really we are experiencing beings--one very decided aspect--we are experiencing beings, and really about the only thing we can do is experiencing, ok?

So when we discover that we're free to experience all brands of sensations, feelings, etc, we have made a discovery, "I am now free." And that is possibly the greatest discovery that a person makes, ok? I'm free to experience discomfort. If something happened to us today that we could no longer sense any sensation that wasn't comfortable to us, or that we could no longer sense a feeling that was uncomfortable to us, we would be in a very precarious position for survival. You would pick up something red hot and you wouldn't know anything about it until you were severely injured. Or somebody could shoot you and you'd go on down the road and fall down. You wouldn't know to get the bullet out or anything else.

In fact, a few years ago when cortisone came out; they found that when they gave cortisone you got over the feeling of being sick. We'll say you had pneumonia. They give you a shot of cortisone, and you felt wonderful. You get up walk on and do your thing--and fall dead! Cortisone counteracts docca [a natural internal chemical] which gives you the sense of being sick so that you feel a need to lay down. So, if you take enough cortisone, it counteracts the docca; and you can go right on. They thought it was a wonder drug for a little while; but then a whole bunch of people began to fall dead. With the cortisone, they felt well enough to be walking around with infectious conditions when they needed to stop and rest-then they fell dead.

When you discover you're a free individual--you're experiencing--then you are free to experience whatever may arise in your way today.

Now there are certainly things I can do about it. If I have a bad cut, I'm not going to say "Well I'm just going to experience a cut freely." I probably would wrap it up a little bit--very little--and see if it wouldn't heal up. I would do everything I could to get it along all right. I'm free to experience what is, ok? And you've discovered that you're a free individual. I don't think you'd ever forget that again---once you discover it.

That is the beginning of being able to take charge. As long as I'm not free to experience, there's no way I could take charge. I'm going to fight everything I don't like. I'm going to hang on, for dear life, to everything I do like--which is just as threatening to taking charge of my inner state because I'm not willing to experience what's going on. I say something to myself like, I've got to hang onto this. So, I have people that say they just had a wonderful experience--we'll say last Tuesday night from 11:09 p.m. It lasted until 11:17 p.m. Now they've been threatened ever since with how to get that experience and wonderful feeling back--and they've been more miserable ever since. They'd have been better off if they didn't have that wonderful experience. So I'm free to experience joyful, delightful things, but I'm also free for them to go, ok?

So freedom is the greatest discovery I think we make--that I am free to experience whatever may arise in my way today.

I didn't say I had to like it--I don't in some cases. But I'm perfectly free to experience it.

1. That is the start of being in charge
2. because then I can take charge and do what I want to about the sensation,
3. and decide how I want to feel about the situation.

Thank goodness I can experience it because I would be half-conscious if I couldn't experience pain, unpleasant sensations, and etc.

(The first day of the workshop I had a blinding headache; and you said go ahead and experience it--the harder I tried to experience it, I couldn't hang on to it, it just.......)

………………kept running away.

(Along that line, if there is a pain and it's a signal of something; and you're being free to experience it.)

Then you let it do it's thing, and it gets over with.

(The pain is going on. Does that mean....)

The condition. Let's say that you were stressed up a bit and held it in--you know the expectation-disappointment-blaming, and so on down the line. So you had some "held motion" that was working off in an adaptation. Now if you're free to experience it, it will be done and go away very quickly. But if you fight it, worry and get anxious about that, then you've got a new false feeling of emergency, a new generation of energy to fight or run, a new adaptation, and a new misconception that this is something terrible that came upon me. Something was up there and said "I am a headache, I'm going to catch Melba." And when we believe it to be that kind of thing--we're working on a misconception, and it keeps the vicious cycle going.

What's the nature of a headache. We always felt it was a disease or a happening that was very unpleasant. We have a false feeling of emergency about what we believed it to be. We then have chemical imbalance for the actual time, place and circumstance and neuromuscular tension mobilized and unreleased energy. And then we have an adaptation to burn it up and use all this mobilized and unused energy. Now that hurts.

So if we are free to experience what is without all the "shoulds" and "ought-to's", we won't have the inner turmoil, and we won't have the physical adaptations to burn up the mobilized energy to fight or run.

So perhaps we could start an effort to remember to be free to experience whatever's going on.