Self-Development Idea (40): The Way — Lester Levenson’s Last and Highest Teaching (3/3)

 Continue from Part 2 (Tape 2)

Tape 3 – Side A: July 30, 1989

There's nothing you have to do to be totally free!  How do you like that?  Why? Right now you're totally free.  You're all-powerful, you're all-knowing, you're everywhere present, you're whole, complete, perfect.  Right now, there's nothing you have to do for that.  

So, says I, why all this effort to be unfree, limited and miserable?  Why, oh why, oh why, oh why?  All you need to do is let up these suppressed energies. – “I am limited, I am in bondage, I am miserable.”

By letting up and letting out, – ‘approval’ ‘controls’ and ‘security’.  You've done it, but why don't you do it all and be done with it?  You'll be in a happy state that you never dreamed existed, you've never tasted the ultimate state yet.

You don't have to do a thing to be free because you're already free.  You have to stop this asinine conviction that you're a suffering body that's going to die, and you've got to keep trying to keep it alive until it dies.  You draw a blank.  You don't win.  So, let go of all this concept of I'm a limited carcass.

How long should it take?  A month or two, if you carry out the six steps.

I think the steps that you're lacking most in are the very first step.  Anybody know what the first step is?  –  “You've got to want freedom more than you want the world.”  None of you want freedom more than you want the world.

Were it so, you'd be free.  It's that simple.  To be what you are is so easy.  But if any one of you wanted freedom more than you want the world, you'd be free. 

So, you're out on step one.  You can't get over the first step.  You go the next five.  But when the hurt is enough, you release enough to get rid of the hurt so you can try going on looking to the world for your absolute security, which you will never find in the world, which you will only find in you. 

So, get smart.  Be what you are.  Why all this effort and misery to be what you are not?  There's a 100% loss in the direction you're in.  Where are all these bodies going to be 100 years from now?  Everything you're doing is trying to keep the body going.

And if I were to wish you a curse, the greatest one I could think of is to be a physical body.  I think the only other one who says that is Ramana Maharshi  –  That the worst curse would be to condemn you into being a physical body from here on.  It's like condemning you into being in a straitjacket from here on.

So, I try to give you, in all those first meetings we had when we started this project, very practical things that can get you free quickly.  And the last one is such a powerful one, I think I'm not going to give you any more practical things to do, because it will confuse and jumble what you've already gotten.

What have you gotten?  Those signs in your room.

Get everything you want only by releasing!

Has it worked, Kevin?  Are you getting everything now.  But everything you do want, you should get by releasing.  Do you have that in place?

Student: I do.

Okay, when you have everything in place, you have the sense of not being the doer.  When you're getting everything by releasing, you become a witness, whereas before you were a doer of it.

You just witness your body going through its motions.  With a complete sense of non-doership, which should be spelled with a T instead of a P. [doershit, Laughing]  

See, that makes it effortless.  When you're not the doer, there's zero effort in it, and it happens harmoniously and immediately.

What are the other three or four steps I gave you before that last one?

Develop the Behavior of A Master.  As a Master, you be successful in whatever you are doing.  Makes that your behavior, become a habit.  Whatever you do, digging a hole or putting up some rocks… Whatever it is, be successful.  Whatever it is you do –  be successful!   

What was the another one?

Student:  You're quiet and you're just being, and that's the joy you feel. There is no other joy.

Take All Your Joys From Within By Releasing.  Recognize that all the joy you get, is from getting your mind quiet by satisfied its desire, and just being your Beingness.

There is only one single joy and that is being your Beingness.  But you set up a lack, a want, a desire to agitate the mind.  And when you fulfill your desire, the mind just went quite and you just being your Beingness –  that’s that joy it is.  There is no other joy.  So get all your joy from your Beingness.

Is there still one more?

Release Directly On The Fear of Dying.

I'm just wondering if that isn't too forceful, bring up the fear of dying.  That'll do it for you, if you'll do it.

But you're not free now, so you didn't do it.  See, all the suppressed fear of dying right now is trying to push up and push out.  If you just stopped holding it in, on its own, it would all go out, pronto.

But I'd still recommend using it, to the degree you can use it.  When you have no more fear of dying, your mind goes quiet, you're identifying with your beingness and you're free.  Nice and simple, nice and easy.

The only difficulty is trying to be a limited carcass. That's where all your difficulty is. All your misery.  Everything you do not want is involved in trying to be a limited body.

“So discriminate, my son.”  Sri Yukteswar said to Yogananda when he left him, after his return, "Recognize the world as a dream."  That's all it is. 

You're dreaming this whole thing.  Exactly like you'd be dreaming a night dream.   Wake up and see it for the dream that it is.  And be infinitely happy. 

Are there any questions on what I just went through? It's really giving you the very top knowledge in the most practical way you could ever get it.

Those different steps are very practical.  Of course, being out here is another one of the steps. Living with people who release, living with people that you can express on and both of you release.

As I said again and again  – I'm convinced you'll never go free in the world.  The world is too powerfully pulling everyone down into the worldly way of things.  You need to get away from that pull.  Work together as a group.  Use your expressing for releasing.  

In the world, any one of you go out there, you have to suppress, otherwise you'll get killed.  You express your anger to the wrong person, they'll shoot you, if not beat you up.  It gets better that way every day.  I got hundreds of policemen in California patrolling the streets to stop the gang slayings.

Yesterday there were three killings by the gangs in Los Angeles.  You can't stop it out there. But you have a wonderful opportunity here of expressing, releasing and moving onward and upward.

Again, any questions on anything I've said?  Now that you all understand it so well, when I come back next week, expect to see two, four, six, eight free people or else... Okay, if there's no more...

Student: There is a question.  I'm not sure if I have to say it, this is a dream or just a memory.

It’s simply this way, it’s only your mind that say there’s a Lester here and Stuart there, right?

Student: Well, let me just back up a little bit.  When you're in a night dream, you don't sense the materiality.  But in a daydream, things have form.  Touch them.

You have form in the night dream.  You got your body, you got other bodies.

Student: It doesn't feel like that.  I have an image of them in my mind, but I don't feel like I am the material.

Wait a minute.  When you are in the dream state, you’re in a dream body.  Of course you are not in the physical body as you’re not in that state.  This is what you’re saying.

Student: That's why I have a problem seeing this as a dream state.  Because it has to depend on...

No.  You do wake up in the night dream.  You do not wake up in the day dream.  This is the problem.  Because you're so convinced that this daydream is real, that you're in it and won't let it go.  Release it.

Then you'll see the dream nature of this physical world.  Release it.  If you're holding on it for dear life, like you are, you're not releasing it.  You're doing the opposite.  That's why you don't see it as a dream.  

The same in a night dream.  When you're struggling for your life, the dream is going on.  It's real.  It's only after you wake up from the dream that you know it's unreal.

You've got to wake up from this dream by letting go of your tight holding on to it, by releasing it.  Then it'll be very obvious to you that this so-called waking state is exactly as real as a night dream is real.  But you've got to wake up.  It will remain permanently.  

Or release one thing, the fear of dying.  That'll take care of everything.  One thing only you've got to release, one thing only  –  the fear of dying.  

But don't do it.  Because you'll discover your omnipotence, omniscience, can have anything you want from me, your effortless thought of it.  You materialize, de-materialize, you can teleport, you can telepath, you can tell anything you want. 

Student: That seems like it's in direct opposition to being the doer, which I'm releasing towards being not the doer.

Okay, to be in that state, you can only be in it when you know you're not the doer.

Student: Okay, now, say tomorrow morning I wake up and I'm going to say, I can't say “I'm going to be a witness to it,” or can I?

You can't say it, you can be it only.

Student: So...

See, to be your Beingness, the top state's being your Beingness only, you can't say it.  Anything you say is in duality, is in a dream. 

Student: In that day-to-day action that I might be in process of witnessing.  There might be some goal that I might release on totally, and it will come in without...

Yeah, you're letting go of your attachments and aversions to the world, bit by bit by bit by bit.  What you need is a big bite, instead of a bit of a bit.  So you use what you're doing for releasing.  See, the only effort you need is to get rid of your effort.

This is what you're doing in the world.  You're using effort to get rid of the effort.  But in your Beingness you need no effort.  Things materialize and dematerialize instantly.  But if you're trying to figure it out in your head, you cannot, because your head, your mind, your intellect is the obstacle.  It's an accumulation of concepts of limitation.

So you can't figure it out in your head.  You can be your Beingness.  You are being it right now.  But you don't have to be a limited carcass.  And this is what you're releasing as you work and go through the day.  You release all attachments and aversions by getting rid of the emotion connecting you to it.

Did I answer your question?

Student: Yes.  I'm trying to figure it out, but I can see I can't jump the puddle.  You did answer it.

No, you can't figure it out. 

Student: By day to day, by releasing moment to moment, or I can shortcut the whole thing by releasing a fear of dying. That's pretty much what it is.

Right.  Releasing approval control is also short cutting it, instead of going through all those emotions below approval and control.  When you have no more either approval or control, all the emotions below that are gone.

But you'll still have approval or control until you release the fear of dying.  The only reason why you want everyone's approval is so you'll be safe and survive.  If you can't get that, you want to make them approve of you so you'll be safe, and that's control.

But when you let go of approval or control, all the feelings underneath it are out.  Then left is just approval or control, which is let go of by letting go of the fear of dying.  But when you're that far, it's easy to let the fear of dying come up.

You reach a point where it'll just push up and push out, and you'll sit back and watch it complete itself, discharging itself.  And you'll laugh your head off.  What a silly joke you played upon yourself, to think that you were limited when you never were.

Okay?  Any other questions?  Okay, so we'll call it a day of eternity.

 

Tape 3 – Side B: Aug 13, 1989

[Work in Progress... to be continue soon]

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

I got the feeling that I shouldn't, at this point in time, give you any more.  I'm giving you too much.  How do you feel about it?  How do you feel about what I gave you so far? 

Well, here's the points:

The first one was on You Must Want Freedom More Than You Want The World.

The second, take all your joy from within by releasing.

Next, make the decision to go free and then do it.

The next one, release directly the fear of dying.  Now, that's a tough one for you because you think if you release it, you'll die.

The next one is get everything you want from here on by releasing.  Now, I think that's the one I like best.  Practically, it'll do more for you than anything else.  Can you see why?  You'll be releasing every moment because you're overloaded with wants, want and wants.

How successful have you been on getting everything you want from here on by releasing?  Is it working for any of you that everything you want now, you let go and let it come into your experience?  Who's experiencing getting everything you want by releasing?  Anybody?   Oh, everything. Everything means everything.

Student: Seems like things happen.

That's the way you should sing.  “Things just happen.”

So I left out the last one, be not the doer.  Because if you do that, you're not the doer.

Student: That's the one that I've been doing a lot of work. [Be not the doer]  I've been releasing the work that I'm involved in.  I always feel that I have to do it.  So I catch myself, and that's the one that's...

You let go, and you be not the doer.  It's releasing wanting to be the ego…  Let the doer goes out the door...

But these are powerful things, very powerful.  If you can make a constant habit of one of them, any one of them will get you all the way.  

… Oh this is the one I almost forget it...  Make your behavior that which a master would do. Is that correct English?  Make your behavior that which, any way you understand it,  a master would behave like or do.

Yeah, it's direct. Make your behavior, should I say, like that of a master? 

Student: You also said that in regards to the word perfection, that kind of process communicated, or you added, whatever you do, do it successfully.

Yeah, well, that's the way a master does things.  That's one of the things I would apply to doing it as a master would do it.  The more imperfectly that we work, the lower down the scale we are, no matter what the thing is that we are doing.

So the one you like best is... Which one?

Student: I didn't say I liked it best, I just said that was one... Using most.  The one that is most is “Getting everything You want from here on by Releasing Only...

I like that the best too.  Because it does make it more possible.  Because, you can see why, it's the action required to go free.  The most directed action to go free is releasing all the obstruction. 

Freedom 101 & 102

1. You Must Want Freedom More Than You Want The World.

2. Take All Your Joys from Within By Releasing.

3. Make the Decision to Go Free and then Do It.

4. Release Directly On the ‘Fear of Dying’.

5. Get Everything You Want From Here On By Releasing ONLY.

6. Be Not the Doer. (Cast the Burden.)

7. Develop the Behavior of A Master.

So today we're going to have releasing 102.  The first time it was releasing 101.  If you've gone to college, you know what that means. I don't know whether they did it in your college, but...

Even back in my days, the first course was 101, and the second course 102.  They never let go of it.  So today, releasing 102. That means, by next time, everyone has to release 102 times, or gets put back one grade.

Can you suggest anything that would keep you reminded of that dictum? Get everything you want by releasing...

Student: I like the name of this better. [Releasing 102]

Do you all have in your room the sign?  It is a most effective way of going free…

All right, now, is it working for all of you that you're getting things without effort?

Student: It's stepped up.

The effort's stepped down, but you're getting it stepped up.  Was there any time you got it effortlessly?  No effort at all, just dropped into your lap?

Student: It's not constant.

Okay, now, that's the experience of being yourself, with a capital S, of being your Beingness.  It has to be effortless when you're being your Beingness.  But recognize these things because it will help you and encourage you to do it more so until the whole world drops into your lap effortlessly.

Wouldn't that be nice?  And now, once that gets to be your habit, then you discover you can create anything by mere effortless thought, and it drops into your lap. 

Well, we'll set out a pad out here where everything can drop into.  We've got lots of acreage here.  Right. But we'd better call it a lap pad, so we can lap up the world. It's a tremendously delightful experience when you do it that way. Have you noticed that?

Student: It brings up more feeling.

Yeah.  Because as you go free, your resistance to allowing the rest of it to come up gets less.  As you get freer, your resistance to allowing the remaining garbage to come up gets less, until someday all the fear of dying will come up and run out on its own push. 

But you have to open the door, press the button, ask it to come up, because every piece of suppressed feeling is under pressure to expend itself.  So the higher you go, the less you're resisting the remaining suppressed energy, AGFLAP, and the more it'll come up.

But when it starts coming up, please let it go.  You could sing that song, “Let it go, let it go, God bless it.” 

You catch these things, which means you might complete the journey, which consists of getting right back to where you are right now, which means you'll really stop journeying away, and you'll stay in the nice place all the time, the best place.

Wouldn't it be a nice world if you didn't have to work and scratch for a living and depend on air, water, food?  Just sit back and be, and be, and be, and be.  So we will be the four be people.  We will just be, and be, and be, and be.

When Shakespeare, who was a very high individual, said “To be or not to be.” that is the question, he had it upside down.  “To be or not to be” is the answer, and the answer is “to be, and be, and be, and be.”

And that's the ultimate state, you're just being, which you're doing right now, but using tremendous effort to look away from it and trying to be a limited body-mind.

So mind you, let go of the mind, let go of the body, and just be, and be, and be, and be.  If you hear the buzzing, that's the OM sound.  It won't bumble, it'll be nice and smooth.

Now I feel as though I ought to stop here, because what I'm saying is so deep and so powerful, and you're feeling it.  And for me to talk further would just take you away from your just being, and being, and being, and being.  And that's where the word bingo comes from.

When you're just being, bingo, that's it.  So I'm going to conclude with saying keep it up until you can just only be, and be, and be, and be.