Self-Development Idea (39): The Way — Lester Levenson’s Last and Highest Teaching (2/3)

 Continue from Part I (Tape 1)

Tape 2 – Side A: June 18, 1989

Maybe we ought to take off where we left off last night.  You guys got some deeper realizations.  I don't know whether you're aware of it…  It was real good…  

Be not the doer!  Who wants to be a doer?  So I say, be not the doer. [LOL]  

And in general, there was a lot of question on, “What does it mean, be not the doer?”  So I think I start off by saying, “Well, I told you to release, you get everything you want.”  When you are released, you have no sense of Doership.  Everything falls into line, right?  That's it.

When you are released, you experience the sense of being not the doer.  So that ought to connect for every one of you.  When you're completely released, it just happens with no effort.  And so you sit back and watch it happen.  It's the experience that you go through.  That's being not the doer. 

Now, you can't stop action.  You cannot go into inaction because of your karma.  But you should use the action to grow by the action.  And one of the big biggies is, be not the doer.  Watch it happen.

Your sense is, you're sitting in a theater watching a show go on.  When you be not the doer.  The newer ones to this idea have any question on it?  I think the three of you last night had a real good experience of what it means to not be the doer.

The three, do you have any question on the sense of being inaction and being not the doer? 

Student: I don't know why I have a question.  Because this is what I was working on last night.  

Stealing my show, huh? 

Student: Maybe I was hearing your show on the floor.

You could.

Student: But I got to the point where, and this is what confused me, where even my will seems senseless. 

It is.

Student: But at that point…

If you can be not the doer.  But if you cannot be not the doer, then will is usable.  Will is effort.  Efforting to undo the effort.  But there's a power in you.  It's a willpower where you can decree if you will.

[Willing would bring you to certain height, but it remains on the mind and effort level. ]

Now, willing is good.  Because you could will out the whole thing if you so decided.  I've yet to see the first one do it.  Okay, so what's your question now?

Student: You just answered it.  Thank you.

See, with Alan, I was able to explain it in relative to something that was going on.  He wanted to make a preparation for somebody to do something that he would like them to do.

And he asked me if I'd call that party.  And I said, “No.”  Well, in his idea, “You had to dah dah dah to get ready for it.”  My concept was, in a matter of 30 seconds, I'll have the whole thing completed when I see this person. Because I'm not the doer.  It happens right away.  If I continue to be not the doer. 

If I am the doer, then I got to make preparations.  I got to do convincing. I got to do asking.  A lot of roundabout stuff.  But when you're not the doer, it's the sense of letting go and letting God do it.  You actually sit by and watch the body action go on.  Just as you would a moving picture of your body.  

I think you've all experienced times when you were not the doer and you saw things happen.  Right?  Right!  So you've all experienced it.  

And experience is the main thing that we need to use to learn.  We cannot learn intellectually through the mind, through the head.  The mind is the enemy.  The mind is the obstacle.  The only way we can learn is through experiencing.

And each and every one of the six of you  has experienced being not the doer and watching the thing fall into line without effort.  All right.  Now, the thing to accomplish is to have that happen all the time.

When it did happen, was it miserable? [LOL]  But every time you effort, you're unhappy.  You're striving, you're struggling.  Every time you effort, you're not happy.

But the moment you let go of identifying yourself as being the body, things are effortless.  I say, add body-mind.  The opposite sides of the same coin, the mind and the body.  Mind says the body is there.

So experiencing is something you should know, the difference between the intellect and experiencing.  Everything you accumulate even now in the intellect, you're going to have to drop.

To get that intellect, that mind, totally quiet.  Everything you've learned in your lifetimes, you're going to dump.  After which, you're omniscient.

After which, you're in touch with your beingness – which is omniscient.  And what thinking would omniscience require?  Everything is known.  What is there to think about?  So you shift from using your head, which is your block, to quieting that head, so you just remain as your beingness.

And everything is effortless.  Everything falls perfectly into line.  And you're in the perfect happiness that there is  – That's really your basic nature.

You know, I feel like stopping there.  It's such an important, powerful point.  I feel if I talk on further, I just dilute it.  So let's stick to that as being the point of this meeting. 

Could you keep a record of what the major topic was of each meeting?  You've got the first four, have you not?  The first five.

And make this number six.   [Being Not the Doer!]  Because someday we'll want to do it again. 

Student: Also with Hale on the tape. [LOL ..]

I remember in the early days, they'd put a tape recorder on, and that's the odd, wish that worked…  When I'd replay it, it was blank.

Nothing out there but your picture. 

And for some years, when anyone took a picture of me, I wasn't on the picture.  And if it was a crowd, everyone would come out but me.  Until Nevadel came to town and had a national conference here.  She kind of put me up high, and, “Oh, I must be in the picture.”  And so I said, “Oh, Lord, let it come out this time.”

From that time on, my picture comes out now when people shoot it.  But it's just another example.  There's nothing out there but your consciousness. 

I know what did it.  “Oh, I'm not that body. That body's just an imagination.”  So it didn't come out on the negative, nor on the positive.

Student Hale: I have a question.  This is going to sound like a funny question, but how do you get yourself into the place of not being a doer?

Me? I just say I'm not the doer, and that's it.

Of course, the very best way, as I said before, is releasing.  When you're released, you're not the doer.  That bothers you sometimes.

Student: Well, it seems like things happen.

That's it.  Things happen.  You don't have to do them.  They just do you in.  But the sense is that release sense.  You let go and it happens.

You have a sense of letting go and letting God.  You don't have to do a thing.  You just watch it happen.

You're not the doer.  Did that answer your question?  It's experiential. You're not going to get it in the head.  You're going to get it in your experience.

So you get it in the experience, not in the head.  If you want to understand it, come back in a million years and you still won't understand it. 

Student: Well, I don't understand it, but I have experienced it, so I'll just keep going.

That's it.  It's the experience.  I had to tell you a friend told me that she said, “It's understanding.” I said, “No, understanding will keep you from being free.”  Boy, did she look at me.  This was two times ago.  So yesterday she said, “I think I understand what you mean.” [LOL]

She wasn't positive, but she thought so.  Anyhow, understanding is in the world of duality in the realm of Maya.   I understand something.  When you're in the realm of beingness, there's no understanding.  Everything is known.  That needs to be known. 

But what needs to be known?  One thing only.  One thing only. –  How long would it take you to know one thing?  That you are your beingness.  That's all you need to know.  That you'll just only be your beingness.

That's the experience that covers everything.  And you say, “Oh my gosh, I've always been omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.”  You are so right now.  So,  spread your wings and be not the doer. Just fly high.  Any questions?

Student: It was just the sense of, it feels like I try to make myself be the doer. That's still control?

So let go.  It's not a make yourself to.  It's a sense of letting go and letting it be.  It's experiential again.  You've experienced it.

See, trying to explain an experience would be like trying to tell you how to fly an airplane, or even drive a car.  You've never been in an automobile.  I say, “Just put the key in.  Put the shift into drive, step on the gas, and you go.  You want to go right, you turn the wheel right.  You want to go left.”

Could you drive?  I've told you everything you need to know just now about driving a car.  But could you drive it?  No.  You need the experience.  A little stronger would be an airplane.  I can tell you how to fly an airplane.  Go up there and come down here quickly.

Experience is what counts.  You can do it on a bicycle.  I can tell you how to ride a bicycle, but you'll never know how until you experience it.

And once you experience it, you can't intellectually transfer an experience to someone else.  They must experience it for themselves.  So there's a distinct difference between experience and intellectual understanding.

The intellectual understanding will not give you the ability to experience.  It will lead you toward the experience, but it will not give you an experience, because it isn't.  It's in the head.  It's thinkingness.  It's not experiencing.

Student: I've been recently just looking at all the concepts I have up here, including the spiritual ones, like I'm not the body. 

And one thing, a way of working on it, I want to make sure I'm going in the right direction, is you wouldn't let go of that belief.  Because when I let go of the belief, I very often get more of an inner experience of that concept as opposed to just the concept.

I am not the body.  Is it admitting a body?  Isn't it?  So that's the trickiness of the mind, we're into.  The mind will just trick you, prick you, shove you, keep you believing you're an infinitesimal body.  The function of the mind is limitation.

So when you let go of the mind, what's left over is your beingness.  And that's it. And it's there right now.  Unlimited.  Maybe we need a banner, unlimited, on it and wave it.

Student: One of them says, I'm not the doer. [LOL] I didn't do it. He's the doer. I'm not the doer, he did. [LOL]

 

 Tape 2 – Side B: June 25, 1989

 

Pause at 7:55

To be continue... after break...

Self-Development Idea (38): The Way — Lester Levenson’s Last and Highest Teaching (1/3)

 Most of what circulates under Lester Levenson’s name is the Release Technique as it’s handed to beginners — notice the feeling, let it go. This is not that. Recorded over the summer of 1989, “The Way” is a set of late private sessions in which Lester drops the scaffolding and speaks only to those already committed to going free. He distills the whole path into a few blunt instructions — want freedom more than the world, release directly on the fear of dying, get everything by releasing only, be not the doer — and then refuses to add more, so as not to complicate what is already simple.

A word of warning: this is not for the beginner. Lester assumes you’ve done the groundwork and are ready, in his words, for the “post-graduate work.”

[Transcribed from the original audio recordings by KHTang, with the help of audio-to-text conversion tools.]

Tape 1 – Side A: 21 May 1989

The way you've been doing it, the track record is, can take almost forever.  Because how long should it take to do a three-month job?!  Or three months or less?  In other words, you were not doing it.  You were toying with it, playing with it, using it to better what you really want – the world.

If you were using it to go to the infinite being that you are, you already would have been free.  Does that make sense?

So what's missing is your ‘want to’.  Your ‘want to’ is the world.

And if it's the world, that's the opposite of your unlimited Beingness.  And each Sunday I've been trying to give you something really substantial to work with.  Can you remember what the first one was?  Anyone here remember?

Student: The first one was let go of the world and focus on freedom.

Right, that's step number one.  And it's step number one of the method, isn't it? “You've got to want freedom more than you want the world.”  Let me change that around a bit.

That's the way it was originally.  It seemed to be meaningless to people, so we changed it to “You must want freedom more than you want approval or control.”  – for approval and control equates to the world.

But I think it's better put, “You must want freedom more than you want the world.”  And if you do, then what's your behavior from there on?  Turning your head away from the world and focusing it back on you.  Doing that which is required to detach you from the world and allow your infinite Beingness just to be.

So step number one is “You've got to want freedom more than you want the world.”

Okay, the number one hold down is the wanting to survive as a body.  Which comes out as the ‘fear of dying’.  

Out of that evolves every other feeling – “If I get everyone's approval, I'm safe, I'll survive as a body.”  “If I can't get their approval, I want to make them approve of me.  So I'll be safe and survive.” and that's control.

But because you're so fearful of allowing the feelings of the ‘fear of dying’ to come up, you need to work with ‘approval’ and ‘control’ first.  And when you release that appreciably, naturally up comes the bottom ‘fear of dying’ for you to release. 

But I think you've done enough on ‘approval’ and ‘control’ to directly attack the ‘fear of dying’ and work on that, and work on that...

And when you get stuck, use the how-to and the method – “Let go of wanting to change the feeling of stuckness.”  If it's a "vague feeling", let go of wanting to change that "vague feeling" and it releases and then you can attack the "fear of dying" feeling.

[Letting Go of the FEELING is the KEY, ANY FEELING, RELEASE it!  Which include the ‘fear of living’, which is the other side of the same coil for "fear of dying" feeling.] [Note: This sentense is inserted from Lester other tape.]

That first little release will allow you to move up to the place where you'll discriminate and realize the ‘fear of dying’ is only a feeling.  And that right now you're equating it to actual death.  And that's why you don't allow it up.

If you didn't equate the feeling of the fear, if you didn't equate the ‘fear of dying’ to death itself, you'd let it right up and you'd go free in a matter of a week or two.  And it is pushing hard to get up and get out.  It's the most suppressed feeling we have.  And you're doing a beautiful job of suppressing it and holding it down.

So last time we did something that's been done for the very first time.  Focus in on the ‘fear of dying’ feeling.

I generally avoid it because most people jam on it rather than carry it through.  But I think you're ready, if you're committed as you say you are, to allow the feelings of the ‘fear of dying’ up and allow them to go out.  Did you hear that word ‘allow’?  That's just the way it happens.

Instead of holding it down, you allow it up and out.  Because it's trying to push up and out all the time.  Every suppressed feeling is.

So when you do it, it's easy.  It comes up in waves and goes out until the waves stop and then you're finished. 

I want to give you another very practical thing that'll help you go free.  And it is this – “Whatever you do, whatever you want now, get it by releasing only.”  “Whatever you want, get it by releasing ONLY.”

I'm underlining ONLY.  It might kill you because it's so easy, it drops into your lap. (Laughing from audience)  Is there anyone who has not experienced getting something with no effort through releasing?  So every one of you has experienced getting something just through releasing.  No effort, no doing, just releasing.  And it drops into your experience. 

What's wrong with that? (Laughing from audience) What's wrong with that?  You've done it.  You've done it more than once. (Laughing)  And all things are possible when you do it that way.

Student: I just don't want an elephant to fall into my lap.

Okay, so the point I'm making now is – from here on, everything you want, make it a point to get it by releasing! 

Do you think you ought to write that down?  I'm afraid you'll forget it the moment I stop talking to you. That means your life is going to be beautiful from here on.

Students: Oh, God. We can put away all of our work clothes and tools… (Laughing)…

From here on, get everything you want by releasing.

All right, now what will that do?  It'll get you into the habit of releasing.   It'll get you to use it more and more and more until it's natural, like breathing.

Now, your greatest prize is not going to be the getting of the things that you want, but in your State of Beingness.

You'll move into that high, high, high state.  Because when you let go, by releasing, it's letting go and letting God.  Can God do it?  You need money?  Does God have money?  He could give you a trillion dollars tomorrow if you would let him.

It's just a letting.  And basically, it's a letting go of the ego sense – ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my body’, ‘mind’.  Letting go of the ego sense is letting God do it.  It's letting the God part of you, your Beingness, do it. 

That's simple, isn't it, what I've said so far?  

(Followed with short a chit chat with student for fun only…)

But this is an assignment: From here on, produce everything you want by releasing, until it gets to be permanent.  When it's permanent, you're awfully close to being free.

Student:  I'm a little confused.  That means we take no action physically?

No.  In your mind, you take no action.

When you release and you let it happen, your body goes through the motions, but you have a sense of "being not the Doer."  “It's not me, but the Father who worketh through me” is the sense.  It's letting go of ‘I’, ‘me’, ego sense and letting God run the body.

Student: That's what I did when I did in the Air Force.

Do it all the time. Things get to be effortless.  You'll be surprised and it's almost like this  – now to lift your arm takes effort.  If you release, your arm floats up with no effort.

And that applies to everything.  There's no effort.  When you let go of the ego sense, there's no effort.  It drops into your experience.  When you do it enough, you'll learn to create instantly.  That means materializing and dematerializing things.

Through this process, you'll learn to materialize – even gold.  Of course, when you got the formula for making gold, you don't want to carry it around with you.  It's heavy.

The only thing you think of is what you want, what you need.  You produce things for use, not to store up.  Storing up just shows uncertainty, the feeling I can't have so I better build it up for the future.

Student: I was taught to save money, save money…

Yeah.  (Laughing from the group)

They (the enlightened one) never carry things with them.  If they want something, they materialize it.  So, again, starting today, we get everything we want through releasing.

And I'd suggest you put up a sign in your room – “Get everything Only through releasing.”  And I think you need to really put it up over your mirror when you look at least once in the morning or wherever it's obvious.  Put it up in a very obvious place.  

Because it's obvious that even though you've released more than once and achieved something dropping into your experience, you don't want to remember it.  You prefer to do things the hard way.

You love to grovel (abase oneself). And this will take you out of your hovel of grovel and help you solve all problems.

Student: The thing about we love to grovel, I had an awareness a couple weeks ago.  I was asking myself, “Why don't I let God do it?  Why am I struggling?” 

And the answer came, “because if God does it, then you won't get the Approval.”  So that was a very good eye opener.  We don't want him to do it, so we get the Approval “Look what I did.  Look how I struggled to do this.” 

Every time you've released completely on something, no matter how impossible it was before you released, it became immediately possible when you released.  No matter what it was.  

No matter what it was.  I'm saying that to dare you to think big.

I've said so much, and what I've said to you so far, I feel like cutting it now and letting you stay with that.  Do you have any questions?

Student: I have a question about what the second week was.  We covered the first, third, and fourth.  I was here that week. It was the fifth week then. There were several things you talked about one of the weeks I was gone.  I went to California.

Were you there when we decided to release directly on the fear of dying?

Student: Yeah, that was last week.

Student Hale: Oh, that week.  The question you were answering that week was how to get there faster, how to increase your want to.

And what was the answer to that question?

Student x: Just do it.?  The decision.

Oh, right.  That was it.  When you make the decision to go free, it comes rapidly.  

Student:  Another question I have is about releasing on the ‘fear of dying’.  I understand you to mean that in our workshops that we should even go as far as instead of asking is that approval or control, is that survival or is that fear?

Yes, under the approval and control the workshop leader, Hale, will then ask you to look at the ‘fear of dying’ underneath it.  The reason why you want approval or control is so that you'll survive.  So it's up to the workshop leader to lead you further down.

Now, if they jam, then release them on their feeling of being jammed.  And when that's let go of, then they can confront again the fear of dying.  If they jam, it's just running away from the ‘fear of dying’ as though the feeling is tantamount to death.

You can keep reminding them it's only a feeling.  The ‘fear of dying’ is only a feeling.  And feelings don't bite, they don't shoot you, they don't hit you over the head.

Student: It just keeps you bound.

No, you do.

Student: Yeah, you do.

It's only a feeling, like every other feeling.  But the tendency to run away from it is very strong and very habituated.  So now you've got to make the effort to get it up and get it out.

And once you start letting it up and letting it out, you'll discover you don't die each time the feeling comes up.  You survive so you can look at it again and again. 

Student: Something came to mind that Enrique said in one workshop that was very good.  – This guy was releasing on his neighbor.  He said it was for a neighbor and he couldn't do it.  So she said, “Well, release on this paper cup on the table.”   And then he did, and she said, “It's the same thing.  It's just a feeling. It doesn't matter what it's on, it's the same thing.”

And then he released on the neighbor. 

Student: Yeah.

Okay, that's one of the ways of a leader taking a person through a release.  If you can't release on anything, you release on the wall.  Do you like the color?  Don't you like the color?  So what you're telling me is that she's using a process that works.

Student: So, if you use the same thing on death, it comes up and it becomes overwhelmed and you start releasing on it.  Something..

Well, No.  Now you're contradicting what I say.

Student: Okay.

See, now you're going way down to the elementary way of releasing.  I'm trying to hold you up at the post-graduate level.  I'm taking you out of grammar school, high school, college, and putting you into the post-graduate college work.

No, release the feeling of ‘stuckness’.  See how you want to change things that I tell you?

Student: Yeah, I sure do.

Release only the feelings of the ‘stuckness’ or even the ‘vagueness’ of the feeling.  You might not even see it because you're trying to run away from it.  Release ‘wanting to change that vague’ feeling, whatever it is.  If that goes out, then you're able to approach the ‘fear of dying’ again.

Now, also needs to be thrown in the ‘fear of living’, which is the opposite side of the same coin. 

Student: It also helped me answer the question of wanting to die?

Because it is in a lot of us wanting to die to get away from everything.  So ‘wanting to live’, ‘wanting to die’, ‘fear of dying’, ‘fear of living’. Those four things can be played with.  Maybe you ought to write them down or do you think you got them? Now, this should have an astounding...

Student Hale: I know, I needed to put down the stuff.

This ought to lead to an astounding change in every one of you.  And it will if you carry it through.  You're being asked to do that, which will get you free rapidly. 

You can do it here because you don't have the world telling you just the opposite, pulling you in just the opposite direction.  Here you don't have the world pulling you.  So you can stay with it.

Student: I was working on the ‘fear of dying’ one time and I brought up a lot of heavy physical pain.  So I must have been doing something wrong, but it took a long time to work through it.

Instead of releasing it, you were expressing it on the body.  You were making the body die.  Pain is towards death.  So instead of releasing it, you were expressing it into the body.

Student: So if I get into that again, I'd have to say I think that slowed down my releasing when that happened after that. I still haven't let go of what all of it was.  So what can I do to get through that again?

Talk to the workshop leader.  Let him take you through it.  Or keep releasing the stuck feelings.  See, instead of releasing the stuck feeling, you kept it going.  You were stuck with the stuck feeling and you kept it stuck.

Student: Stuck with pain.

Can you see how simple it is?  It's really simple, if you'll do it.  All right, now you got me propping Hale, and Hale will prop you, and we'll all be proper in the future.  Which means releasing the ‘fear of dying’, getting everything we want via releasing only. Doing it without effort.  Be not the Doer. 

Again, to aid your intellect, it's just letting go and letting God, and I think you accept that God can do it.  If he can't, I'll get you another God who can.  But it's a let go and let God experience, and it drops into your experience, right into your lap with no effort. 

Student: I have a question about the approval program and the control program.  If we're wanting approval and we can't get approval, then we're wanting control so we can get approval.  Is that what you said?  Okay.  How does that work when you're sitting in your room and there's an insect and you want to control that? 

Why don't you answer these questions yourself?  Why do you have to have me answer a question like that?  You see why you want me to answer it?   You want my approval.  You want my attention.  A question like that you can answer. 

See, now you're bothered because you feel that maybe I'm putting you down.  I won't approve of you.  But all these little intellectual questions you can answer yourself, and they get you nowhere fast.  They take the place of releasing.

Instead of releasing, you're questioning things.  The whys and wherefores of things never give you any answer.  They just satisfy the intellect, which is a thing you want to get rid of.

So, please, release only.  And don't ask whys.  Why this?  Why that?  It's a dumb question in the first place because asking why, “Now why isn't it the way I think it should be?”  That's all you're saying.

Whenever you ask why, you're asking someone to explain it so it fits in with your knowledge, which is lower than college.  That's down in elementary school.  So try to get out of the habit of why questioning.  Just do it.

Throwing up ‘whys’ is specifically avoiding doing it.  So, get ‘wise’, kill the ‘whys’.  Get ‘W.I.S.E’ and kill ‘W.H.Y.S’. 

Okay, I think we can end the session now.

 

Tape 1 – Side B:

Don't do halfway jobs.  You'll discover a free one does that naturally.  Whatever the free one does, he or she does it to perfection.  So it's a very practical tool.  Whatever you do, no matter what it is.

Student: that includes believing, you do it to perfection.    

When you do that, you get there in no time.  How long should it take to be what you are right now? That is how much time it should take to go free.  You are free right now in your Beingness, but you are bound in your Ego-sense.

I took this from Ramana Maharshi, something I thought I'd give you maybe next time, but I'll give it to you now.

“Work is no hindrance to realization.  Doing things does not block you from realization.  It is the sense of wrong identification that is the source of all your trouble.  Get rid of the false identification.”

And what's the false identification?

Student: That you are the doer.

You are the Doer.  And you've all experienced from releasing that when you're released, it happens.  You're not the doer.

As I told Alan, like when Yogananda was sitting in a bed, he was very high.  He didn't try to get his balance.  He raised his hand and went up effortlessly.  When you're not the Doer, and you want your hand to go up, it just floats up with no effort.  In everything you do, the same thing happens.  No energy, no effort is necessary. 

So being in action is no hindrance.  The hindrance is identifying as being the limited body-mind, as identifying with the ego.

If you tried to do no action, you wouldn't succeed, because your karma is driving you now into action.  So you tried to do nothing, you wouldn't succeed.  Whatever your karma is, you would do.  So trying to do nothing doesn't help.

Only releasing helps.  And only releasing will get you all the way.  As fast as you will do it.

So the action, rather than being a hindrance, is really a help.  Because as you're in action, you're being pushed by your feelings, which bring up more feelings while you're in action, for you to release all your feelings.  So you must do it in the world, you must do it in action.  You cannot do it isolating.  When you isolate, you'll just escape.  

So the next major point to write down on your slips or whatever you got, is – “Whatever you do, do it to perfection!”

That's behaving like a master. Behaving like a master brings up the objections to it, while you're releasing. 

If you don't do things to perfection, it's because actually your destructiveness, your non-constructiveness, causes you to do it not to perfection.  But if you make it a point to do it to perfection, up will come these feelings that are anti while you're releasing. 

So make it a point to do whatever you're doing very successfully. 

That word perfection might not be understood.  Success might be better understood. Whatever you do, you should be successful in doing it.  Okay, I think I gave you enough for today.

These points are so potent. Any one of them that we've had will extremely expedite your going free. They're very practical and right down to earth on how to behave in your everyday life.

You'll be doing these, in your everyday life, the things that get you free rather than what you're doing now.  What you're doing now keeps you bound in the round.  And around and around you go.

You're on a ‘Merry-go-round’.  But if you do these things, you'll get off the ‘Merry-go-round’.  You'll stop spinning.

[The following session was recorded June 4th, 1989:]

I could give it to you from here on every time I meet you, if you won't kill me.  I could always keep pointing out things that you're doing that keep you going in the wrong direction of limitation.

Student: I'd like to...  Why don't we try that?  I don't know if anybody else is in agreement, but you always talked about in the days when you were giving ego presentation, people grew rapidly.  So, why don't we try that?  Is that something that would help us grow?

Lester: Oh, I'm glad you brought that up.  I don't think so. (LOL)

Because what happened before was that every one of them stopped growing. Stopped dead. There's a whole gang that was out there.

Student: They didn't have a release technique either, did they?

Yes, they did.  I gave it to them one-on-one all the time without putting them through the formal course.  Yeah, they all had it before we broke up.

Student: Yeah, before, but not long before.

Okay, they could have released.

Student: That's true, yeah.

They didn't.  Now, I know what happened.  After it happens, I can see the cause of it.  If I give you ego presentation more than you want it, you unconsciously build up a resistance to hearing anything I have to say after a while.  You stop growing, period.

So there's a delicate balance.  I can do it lightly.  Like, the way I'm doing it now is not as heavy as the ego presentation used to be.  But I'll try it. Let's see what happens.

Student: I'll need more workshops. (LOL)

Student: That's what you talk about, trying it.  But I'd have to say, over the last month or so, you've definitely turned the heat up from what you had before.  So there's a lot of you in progress.

See, that's another problem.  That's another problem I have.  I think I'm going to do something.  A higher power says otherwise.  When you go free, your thinking mechanism is overridden by the highest beingness called God.  What were you going to ask?

Student: I was going to say, who is that higher self of God?

The bottom line – it's you.  Ramana Maharshi says, “At times, there is no God.  There's you.”  

Show me God.  Anyone here can show me God?  Have you ever seen God?  Ever get a letter from him?  Ever shake his hand?  So he says, “There's no God, but there's you.”  And in your Beingness, you are that God that you're conjuring up.  Your Beingness is what the world calls God.

And when you release your ego sense and drop into your Beingness, you're all-knowing, you're all-powerful, and you're everywhere present.  Isn't that simple?  Isn't that nice?  What a present I gave you.  You're God, you're God, you're God, you're God, you're God, you're God.

Student: God damn it. 

Hope I didn't get on there.  [LOL]

But you can see why I can talk that way.  Is there a God?  Sure.  I'm looking at him.  And that's what you're looking at all the time, saying otherwise.

Yeah, I can condemn him to hell.  Wish him every bad thing there is.  But not really, because it's me, my Beingness.  So when I voice it to you, I really don't mean it, anything derogatory.

Is there a God?  Yeah. Thou art that. From the East, from the West, I AM THAT I AM.  I'm still not sure if that's the only capitalized sentence...

(Classroom door opening…)

Come in.  That's God. (LOL)  

God is the one, single, infinite beingness of the universe.  Therefore that must include us.  It's the part of us that's our beingness.  

(The course was interrupted by some motor cycles noise, and the class had some fun chatting… about how to avoid that…)

… What were we talking about? 

Yeah, is there a God?  Yeah, I'm looking at it.  But I look at you and I see God.  You say, “No, Lester.  You're a liar.  I'm an extremely limited carcass. If my temperature goes up ten degrees, I die.  If I get a chemical in me, I die.  If I don't put in vegetation to ferment it and make garbage out of it, I die.”  This is what you're saying.  “No, I am not the unlimited being.  I'm a carcass.”

And someday you'll see you imaged it in your mind, needing all these little limitations.

So what do you need to do?  I summed up the four days sessions we had before: 

1^st:  You want freedom more than you want the world.          

And with it, you should take all your joy from yourself, from within, by releasing.

2^nd:  You must make the decision to go free and then do it.

However, if you make the decision to go free, you will do it.  It's that simple. If you're not free, you have not made the decision to go free.  Because once you make the decision, everything you do after that is orientated toward going free.  The prime thing of it is making, releasing, constant. 

3^rd: Go directly to the fear of dying and release it.

Release directly the ‘fear of dying’.  As you know, underneath approval and control is the ‘fear of dying’.  So get rid of the bottom motivator and you're finished.

4^th: Get everything you want from here on by releasing.

I guess that is the most practical of the four.  How successful have you been?  Or are you still doing it mostly ego-wise?  Remember, when you do it by releasing, it's effortless.  If you're making an effort, that's ego-motivated.

Student: I guess I get confused about the action part of it.  You're just saying it's effortless.  You still, the body acts to get it, but it's without...

Yes, it's without effort.  It's like floating through the air, floating through the thing.  As I explained, if you wanted to lift your arm up, it takes no effort.  It just floats up.  No energy is required.

So, effortlessness is when I say “I am not the doer and I let it happen.”  Another way of expressing is letting go and letting God.  But your actual experience is no effort.  [It is Casting the Burden, and let GOD do it.]

Student: That makes it a lot clearer, because we could actually go through, the body could go through all the actions of the day, doing things, and yet be effortless if we stay released.

Right.  That's it. I think last time, didn't I read something that Ramana said? “Action doesn't stop one from realization.  Identifying as the Doer does.”

So, bottom line, it sums up to, I am my Beingness.  And when you come from your beingness, you'll just watch the bodies float around, including your own, exactly as you would watch them on a movie screen. 

And when bodies on a movie screen start shooting even bullets and wiping each other out, you know it for what it is.  Just an imagined thing.  There's no death.  You can imagine, image a death.

Actually there is no such thing as death.  Get rid of the imaging, get rid of the imagination, get rid of the mind, and all I'm saying to you is very obvious.  And again, you'll never stop struggling until you do go all the way to freedom.

These four sessions, the first four sessions are so powerful.  I decided not to add to it.  I could go on with more things like that.

I think it would get to be maybe a little more confusing.  And if I leave it as it is, it's simpler to understand and do.  So we can go on talking about things related to this rather than new things.

I don't want to over complicate it because that's one of your serious problems. You've got everything over complicated right now. 

Life is simple.  It's eternal.  It's perfect.  It's whole.

Isn't that simple?  Why pile things into the head that take you away from what I just said?  Every thought is a limitation.  Every thought is calculated to keep your body surviving.  Every thought keeps you bound and around.

So you must stop thinking thinking.  How? 

Release the ‘fear of dying’ and you don't have to struggle for survival anymore.  Release the ‘fear of dying’ and you discover you are eternal.

And all that misery you conjured up was ridiculous. 

Okay, I feel like stopping it right there because again I'm saying so much to you.  Making it so simple, telling you, you are it and you can't do anything about that and telling you to stop looking otherwise, elsewhere but into your own Beingness.

Amen. Amen. Amen, Amen, Amen.

[This is a long lecture, and therefore I think it is best to break it up into 3 sessions — to keep focus and prevent fatigue.]