Self Development Idea (27): Session 8: Having It All ( 4th July 1966 ) by Lester Levenson

Transcription of Lester Levenson Audio Tape

The Ultimate Goal Volume 1

Session 8: Having It All ( 4th July 1966 )

 

The path we're on is from here on until we meet the goal —  The Ultimate Freedom.  

That's the first point I'd like to make.  We're on this path until we are infinite!  Second, we can do this, this lifetime!  

Now, generally, it takes many, many, many lifetimes for the great, great majority of people to make it.

However, we can do it this time for two reasons.  First, we are an unusual group.  Second, we have the right direction to make it this lifetime.  So that if we ever come back in the future, it's by choice, not by necessity.  

Usually, those of us who want to help others to that point will come back just to help others.  But that's a matter of individual choice.

For what we do, the main thing is to achieve that ultimate Freedom state.  Now, becoming master over life is really a basic and necessary step through which we learn that we are not the victims in life, but we are the masters.  After we master the ways and means of making our environment the way we want it, then we look beyond.

No matter how happy we make our life, if it's involved in livingness itself, it will never satisfy us, because our real state is that of being infinite.  And being happy in life and living has limitations.  

Are there any questions?  I've sort of brought us up to date.

Now I'll go into what I think should be our direction in the future.  We have to become more universal.  We should let go of our own livingness to the point where we can live outwardly more for others.

If we are universal beings, we must be universal beings.  Every human being is ‘as me’, is the way we should feel.  “You are me.” —   It's the attitude we should have toward all people.  

Now I use the word ‘attitude’.  We can't help the world by giving them things.  It's just too much needed.  But we can give them that which is much more than things.  We can begin giving them the knowledge that we are getting.

And our attitude should be one of ‘Wanting to help everyone who wants help.”  And never helping those who don't want it.  That's imposing upon them.  We should try to help just those who cross our path.  We don't have to extend ourselves into directions.  

Because people will just fall into our lives.  They'll ask us questions.  And as we give them the answers, we find that certain people will feel that you are giving them the right answers, that you are helping them, and they'll ask more.

And it's really an obligation to answer questions of people who come to you sincerely seeking the right direction.  As we begin to live outward and think less of our little self and more of the other one, we are helping no one but ourselves.  

The world sees it differently.  They would probably interpret it as we helping the other one.  But there's no other one to help but ourselves.  And actually, we get the greatest benefit.  And we'll never make it unless we have this feeling of compassion, of oneness with everyone, with a wish that they too know what we know.  

So to repeat, we have gotten to the point where we have learned how to control life and make it happier.  Now we should try to make it happier for others  —  who want it.

This does not mean stopping our own growth.  That we never stop.  We keep working for our own further growth.  But at the same time, we help others.  

We should feel that we would like to give away everything we have.  This is the way you feel, from here on, you will just want to give away everything, you have to control yourself.

The point I try to make is that the world is in such a state of HAVINGNESS.  They think all they need is things.  And, if we try to provide that, we are not helping them, we’re not helping them, we’re confirming that things are what they need. 

 

It’s NOT THING, IT’S UNDERSTANDING!  Because you’re living in the world of separation, there are you and people, and deals.  When you begin to live for others, that [separation] begins to diminish. 

Every living soul wants peace.  They're all seeking Happiness.  Therefore, if you would expect it, it would come to you.  Expect peace, then I have peace.  Expect to want to help people find this peace.

You spoke of love and compassion.  Define what it means to you.  Well, love is only understood when you love.  Compassion is understanding what the other one is going through.  Compassion is understanding what the other one is experiencing.  But the emotional part sort of comes automatically if you live to see the other one happy.  Practicing that way of life would bring tremendous amounts of happiness.

The basic point I tried to get across was what to do now that life has become happier and the next step is to live more outwardly if you can.  Live for others.  Live more for others.

This is another way of saying “See God in everyone.  See them as perfect.”  Then you help them most.  Feel that everyone is you because there is only you, there is only God.  And God is that which “I Am” really.

The basic, absolute truth is what?  

There is nothing but an absolute, perfect oneness.  That is I.   Someday you reach a point where you just think and things happen.  Someday you go beyond that. —  You just know the perfection and there is nothing to think about.  Everything is perfect, therefore there is no thought required.  Everyone makes it.  Everyone does.

But in terms of time as we now know it, the great, great majority will make it in over a million years from now.  And we can do it this lifetime and we should.  We're all moving in that direction.  

The very greatest of the sages are still here.  Some embody, some not embody.  Leading us on whether we're aware of it or not.  And all we need to do is to open ourselves to their help, which is the most powerful help there is.  And we'll get full realization this lifetime.  

I try to follow them.  If you follow me, you're following them.  I take my guidance from them through me to you.  So we're all moving in that direction, but this group is moving much, much, much faster than the great majority of people are.

 

IMPERTURBABILITY

Imperturbability is an indication of how far we have gotten.  Can I be disturbed?  Can I be annoyed?  I can and must eliminate that.  We should get to the place where no one and no thing can annoy us.  But effortlessness does show how far we have gone on this path.  

I think a better indicator is peace.  How peaceful am I?  The greater your peace, the further you've gotten.

Your attitude should be the same toward good and bad.  If it's good or if it's bad, where is it?  It's in the world of limitation.  We want to transcend limitations!  The good thing is the other side of the coin of a bad thing.  It's all in this dream world, illusory world of limitation, good and bad.  

So after we learn how to make our life good, then we should look upon good and bad as the same thing, as the opposite side of the same coin.  It's all part of the illusory world, but our attitude toward the world is expressed in the highest.  

And what I said about the body, what I said about accepting good and bad the same way, what is it good for?  What is it bad for?  Things that are good and bad are for this body, aren't they?  But we are so much more than this body.  We are immortal.  We are perfect.  So these things don't touch us.  

Our attitude should be the same toward good and bad.  Have an attitude of it doesn't affect me.  I'm eternal.  I'm immortal.  Nothing can affect me.  So that attitude toward the flat tire should be applied all the way up to the body.  

We have been making life better.  Now that we can do that, we shouldn't care whether it's better or worse, because we are not it.  We are not limited by it. This is a big step.

 

Our attitude toward good and bad should be the same, right?  Do not identify with what's happening out there.  It's all in my own consciousness.  So what's the difference whether I think of a good dream or a bad dream?  It's all in my consciousness.

It's necessary that you apply what you learn.  You have to do it.  I can't do it for you.  I'm just pointing out the way you should go.  You have to go it.  Therefore, I have to step away so that you can swim on your own.  I'm telling you how to swim in the right direction.  You have to do it.  If I were to stay, you would develop a dependency relationship.

You would feel good while I'm around.  You would unconsciously attach that to me.  You would not do on your own nearly as much as when I leave you and come back in and out.  I give you the theory.  You get your lab course when I leave in the world.  I leave you and the world bumps you.

Every time it bumps you, it makes you think. You think in this direction.  But what you read is also true. — You do need the assist, the confirmation, the reestablishing of the basic truths and directions.  But you get that each time I come.  Someday, you’ll have no need to listen to anyone.

Also, there's only a certain amount that we absorb at a time or each time.  Now, the reasons that time, that I don't give you the whole thing before I leave.  Many times, right?  The whole thing.  But it takes time to digest.  It takes time to work it out in practice.  

So I say you're getting an excellent way of my coming and going.  —  There's no dependency relationship set up.  And this dependency relationship is a thing that happens when people are with a teacher all the time, which holds them back.  

Now, what I'm saying might not be 100% so.  If we had a set up where we all lived together at one point, actually all lived together right in the same place, this teaching could go on all the time.  You would get your practice working with each other, like you and Ken sometimes would.  You would practice letting go of those feelings of opposition until there was none.  In other words, the world would be right with you in your friends.  

See, the way out of the world is through it.  Isolation isn't good until you have completely renounced the world, until you have gotten to the place where you see nothing in the world that you want anymore. — You know that your happiness does not lie in the world.  Then isolation is all right.  You have no more desires for the world.  Then you may isolate.  

But until then, growth is faster and better in the world.  Should you isolate before you reach that point, you are escaping.  You are running away from the world.  And that's very bad.  But it wouldn't surprise me someday to see us all living together in one place, and this growth going on all the time.

 

[Transcripted on Sep 2018]

[Updated on 23 May 2024 - assisted with TurboScribe.ai (free version)]

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Self Development Idea (26): Session 7: Creating All You Desire (14 June 1966) by Lester Levenson

Transcription of Lester Levenson Audio Tape

The Ultimate Goal Volume 1

Session 7: Creating All You Desire (14 June 1966)

The subject of this course is — Truth, God, and I preferably like to call it ‘Happiness’, because in the end we discover that the God we're seeking is the ultimate Happiness, with no sorrow whatsoever.  This makes God far more intimate, more knowable, than just using the word God or some of the other words that have been used.

The word Self, with a capital ‘S’, is a much closer, a more meaningful word to all of us than the word God is.  

God, to each one of us, is the concept that we have, and more often than not, God, in people's minds, is the greatest person we could think of within our own concept, just the greatest of everything, and God is not exactly that.  God, we call the ‘Self’, because the inner Self of each one of us is that God that we are seeking.

The God we are seeking gives us the ultimate happiness because it is without limitation.  Each and every one of us, here and now, is that unlimited being with no limits whatsoever, acting as though we are limited, and fully convinced, most of us, that we are limited.  

And since God, or the Self, or the very being that we are, is changeless and eternal, we can only be that and nothing else.  We are, right now, that infinite being called God, pretending that we are not, setting up an apparency called — the world, an apparency called diversification, otherness. 

And we have lost sight of the fact that we have set up — this falsity called the world, and we began to really believe that this real false projection we have set up is real.  But we can never, ever let go of being that which we really are, — the infinite self.  

Now all trouble stems from not knowing, from not accepting the infinite being that we are.  So the purpose of my being here is to help you let go of the false concepts that we are limited beings.  

And the way I do that is to keep it as simple as possible, by trying to show you that the only thing that covers up this infinite being that we are, is the sense of egoity, the sense of ego.  That I am an individual, separate from the all.  And the moment we start that separation, we start all trouble.  

So the reality is nothing but the infinite Self that we are.  All trouble is arised from saying, “I am an individual, separate from that one infinite all being.”  Therefore the only practical methods there are, are those which help us let go of the false concept of being an ego, of being separate.   

There isn't a moment during the day that we are not practicing being an ego, unless of course we have the wisdom that we are not.  And so the methods I propose are those that can and should be used all day, every day.

We have so confounded ourselves so thoroughly by now, that in order to undo this false belief that we are limited, we need a full time givingness to this subject, in order to realize what we really are.  In order to let go of all the false ideas we have conceived of  —  ‘basically that we are a limited body with a limited mind’.  

Now the first day, the key that I sort of threw out was — “As one sees the world, so is he.”  

As you see the world out there, so are you.  Now at first this might be quite shocking.  The ego part of us rebels against it.  But this can be used every day, all day, for checking ourselves to see what our consciousness is.  It is impossible to see something out there that is not in our mind.  There is nothing out there but our own consciousness.

A master, a perfected being, sees only perfection.  So if we would take this key and check ourselves during the day, on all the especially negative thoughts, and start looking within to discover the source of this, we will see that these thoughts are right in us.  They are our thoughts.

That the horribleness that we thought was out there is right in here. Because we are in a state of the world that is relatively low state, most of us are far more with negative thinking, because we accept negativity, and therefore we can undo that negativity by facing it, by first learning how to discover this negativity.

By seeing that if we see it out there, it is right within us, otherwise we couldn't see it.  And then using it to let go of it.  Now using it to let go of it is the most important thing.

 

So we look out there and anything and everything we see that is not just right, we turn inwardly and we look for this very thing within ourselves, and if we look honestly, we will discover that: 

— that thought was right within us.  

— that concept is our concept.  

— it doesn't apply to the other one, it applies right to us.  

And then when we see it, we automatically let go of it, because we are seeking Truth.  We are seeking Happiness.

And it's ridiculous to hold on to the things that keep us miserable.  So the first one was, as you see the world, so are you.  Since happiness and sorrow is probably the thing that we are most concerned with every day, happiness and sorrow can be used as a means of growth.

 

I want to interject here that any one of these practical methods, if used constantly, will give anyone full realization.  Because there are leads onto the very thing that's causing all the trouble.  And if we undo that, realization results.

So any one of these methods, if used constantly, will lead to full realization.

On happiness and sorrow, all happiness is nothing but being the very infinite Self that we are.  All happiness has its source in the Self.  Anytime we are happy, we are merely feeling this infinite Self that we are a bit more, and the more we feel it, the happier we are.

We falsely attribute the happiness to the thing or the person out there.  But when we turn within, we discover that this happiness has its source right in our very own beingness, and is not dependent upon people or things, that we have set up a false concept that it is dependent upon people and things.  So the source of all happiness, of all joy, is the self.  But you must turn within, you must see this yourself.  

Anything I say, if you believe it, it helps you none.  But if you will prove it out for yourself, then you will know it, and it will be most useful.

All knowledge must be proven out, no teacher can give you knowledge.  You have to dig it out yourself, you have to see it, you have to make it your knowledge.  A teacher can only point the way, and each one of us must take it by himself or herself.

So for those who are here for the first time, I think I ought to make a point of that. — Never accept anything I say because I say it.  Only accept that which you can prove out for yourself.  Only then is it meaningful and useful to you.  

So you must turn within until you can see that the source of all joy is your very own Self.  This is a tremendous thing when you see it.  And all things lose their hold upon you.  — All people that you thought you couldn't live without, you need no more.  

You become whole and complete unto yourself, when you discover that all your joy has its source in your very own Self.  

Now on the opposite side, all misery, all sorrow has its source in the ego.  All misery is nothing but ego frustration.  All misery is nothing but the ego saying that “My joy lies upon him or her” or “having that thing.”  And “If I don't get it, I'm miserable.”  

Now if we will use that, every time we are unhappy, anytime we are dissatisfied, if we will seek the source of this unhappiness, we will discover that it's based on a concept of egoity. — That “I am an ego and I want this and I must have that.” and so forth and so on.  And we are not getting it and therefore we are miserable.  

Then when we do get it, we feel happy only because we have let go of the limitation of needing something.  And we fall back into the very Self that we are and we call that happiness.  

So to repeat, all happiness has its source in the Self.  All misery has its source in the ego.  And by tracing either the joy or the sorrow back to the source, we gain a bit of wisdom, a bit of truth and move toward realization.  

And now I feel as though I've brought the new ones of us, [the new members], up to where we were last week.  

When you see the truth, it's very easy to come out with methods because, you see, everyone is spending every moment of his time seeking truth.  And there's only two kinds of people in the world.  — Those who are consciously seeking it and those who are unconsciously seeking it.  We here are consciously seeking it.

I think I'll go into the realm of mind and try to give you a key that is a very powerful and a very tremendous thing.  And I'll put it this way. — “Think what you want and that is all that you will get.”

THE MIND

Think what you want and that is only what you will get.  When we go into this instrument called the mind, we discover that the mind is only creative.  

The mind is only creative.  The mind creates what we hold in mind.  When we create things that we don't like, we call it destructive.  When we create things we do like, we call it constructive.  But the process is just the same thing.  

Mind is only creative.  Too many of us hold in mind the things we don't want.  “I don't want this, I don't want that and I'm afraid I'll have an accident and I might not have enough money to buy this and I don't want this to happen.”  The mind doesn't understand the word ‘not’, N-O-T.  

The mind works on picture thinking.  When I say the word ‘table’, everyone gets a picture of a table.  They don't get a picture of the word T-A-B-L-E.  If I say shoe, you get a picture of a shoe.  If I say not shoe, you're thinking not the picture of a shoe and you will create a shoe.  

This is the basic error that most people make when they try to demonstrate, try to create something.  So, they hold in mind many things they do not want, and incidentally, this is the sad thing about fear. —   That which we fear we bring on only because we hold it in mind and create it.

So, if we want a happy life, if we have anything that's bothering us and we don't like it, all we need to do is to let go of the thoughts of that thing and it is gone.  This goes to the extreme of the body. —  It's impossible to have a sick body without unconsciously holding the thought of sickness.  

The way to correct a sick body is — not to think on the sickness, but to hold only the thought of health.  And the moment we do that, the moment we have only a thought of health, there is no more sickness.  It'll drop away instantly.  

So, the key is to think only what you want and you'll change your life in that direction that you are thinking.  

I guess I ought to add, — we shouldn't qualify it.  We should not limit what we want.  We should never say through whom, by what means, through what method, we would like to get that which we want.  Once we do that, we are interjecting the ego.  We are trying to direct the way this thing that we want is to come to us.  

We should let go and let God, let go, let the infinite find the way of getting to us that which we want.  We should think only what we want, not through whom or by what means.  

And also, we must think in present time.  Anytime we expect to get something in the future, we are creating it in the future and that's where it remains, in the future.  We cannot get things that we expect to get in the future because the mind being creative will create it in the future.  And the future is always ahead of us.  It's never here.  

So that when we want to create something, we must accept it as having been already received.  As the Bible says before “You ask, believe that you have already received it.”

Anything we want, we must get the feeling that it is ours now, not tomorrow, not in the future.  It is ours now and then we just let go and we expect to pick it up.  Any demonstrating done with concept of the future and it will always keep it in the future.

To be more specific, if it is a thing, we should visualize it, see it, feel it, taste it, smell it as though it is and is ours now, period. Finished. Dropped.  Many schools suggest that you repeat again and again and again.  Well, repetition is necessary if you don't accept it the first time.

But the very best way to Demonstrate is to know that it is here and now and let go.  Then it comes very quickly.  But we must have the concept of the present.  It is ours now.  So we should always think only what we want.  Never think that which we do not want.  This is so simple.  If you will do this, your life will be exactly the way you said it.  

“Think what you want.”   —  Use that as a slogan, as a way in life and you will become master over your life.  You will have exactly what you are thinking.  A master sees only perfection.  Hear no evil, see no evil, think no evil and there will be no evil.  It is not worth that.  Let go of trying to be otherwise.  

You can take credit for all the negativity you are creating and that is very helpful too.  When we create something that is negative in our life, we don't like it, we should look at it.  Look for the thoughts in our mind that cause this thing to happen.  

Then if you develop this as a way, as a habit, it will come very quickly.  You will say, “Now what did I do to cause this?” And immediately the thought will come up and you will say, “Oh, Ho,”.  You will smile and let go of it.

But that too is teaching one that — we are nothing but creators.  And when you discover that you are able to create sickness, accidents, poverty, it will give you confidence that you can create.  If we are having difficulties in life, we can use those difficulties just this way by discovering that the source of everything is a thought or thoughts in our mind at some time previous.

And when we see that, we know that we have created this negative thing and then it will occur to us, — “Well if I can create something negative, all I have to do is reverse it and I can create something positive!”  

But everyone is creating every moment of his life, because he's thinking all the time.  If things do not occur, it's because one time we can think ‘Yes’ and the next time ‘No’, and balance it out.  But if the ‘Yeses’ are stronger than the ‘Noes’, it'll come into being.  

Everyone is creating every moment that he's thinking.  You cannot help but be a creator, so long as one thinks he creates.

 

Unfortunately, we are convinced that we can only create very slowly.  If we were convinced that we could create instantly, things would happen immediately.  But take credit for all the negativity that we create.  It shows us that we are the creator.  Then we can consciously make a decision to stop creating that which we do not want, and to start creating that which we do want.  

This will conflict with the conventional concept that God is a creator.  In the ultimate Truth, God is not a creator, only man is.  In an absolute perfection, there is nothing to be created, nothing to be destroyed.  Everything is absolutely perfect!  

So in the ultimate, there is no creation.  Where the top God is, there can be no creation and no dissolution.  The only creator is man, when he doesn't know that he is God.

 

 

[Transcripted in 22 Sep 2018. :-) ]

[Updated on 22 May 2024 - assisted with TurboScribe.ai (free version)]

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