EN - Awareness Without Evaluating Everything b.
Disarmed, everybody disarmed. We're coming to that, we're coming to that, we're coming to that: the final liberation, I'm an ass, you're an ass. I press a button you're up; I press another button you're down. You like that? How many people you know who are unaffected by praise or blame? Totally and completely unaffected. That isn't human! Human means you've got to be a little monkey, so everybody can twist your tail, and you do whatever they think you ought to be doing. Is that human? You mean, you find me charming? You know what that means? It means right now you're in a good mood, that's what it means. Generally it also means that I fit your shopping list. Everybody of us carries a shopping list around, you know, and it's like you've got to measure up to this-tall, um, dark, um, handsome, um according to my tastes, um "I like the sound of his voice." "I'm in love." You're not in love, silly ass. Any time you're in love-I wonder if I should say this-you're being particularly asinine. You really are. Sit down and watch it. What's happening to you? You're running away from yourself? You want a nice good escape? As somebody said, "Thank God for reality, and for giving us the means to escape from it." So that's what's going on. We are so mechanical, we're so controlled. And we write books about being controlled and how wonderful it is to be controlled and how necessary to be controlled and how necessary that people would tell you that you're O.K. so that then you'll have a good ok feeling about yourself, Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. How wonderful it is to be in prison! Or as somebody said yesterday, so rightly, to be in your cage. Do you like being in prison? Do you like being controlled? Because I tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when they tell you that you're O.K., you're preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you're not. And secondly you're going to be a monkey for the rest of your life because in the whole time going to live up to their expectations, you better watch out what you wear, and how you comb your hair, and whether your shoes are polished-and whether you live up to every d a m n e d expectation of theirs. Everyone of them. You like that? you call it human? See? See what I mean? This is what you'll discover when you observe yourself! You'll be horrified! Because the fact of the matter is that you're neither O.K. nor not O.K. You really are not. What's ok? What's not ok? You mean you fit the current mood or trend or fashion so you become ok? Does your O.K.-ness depend on that? Does your ok-ness depend on what people think of you? Jesus Christ must have been pretty "not O.K.", you know, by those standards. So you're not O.K. you're not not O.K., you're you. And that, I hope, is going to be the big discovery, at least some of you, if three of you, I think you're about 200 and 20 or 30 whatever, if three or four of you make this discovery during these 4 days we're going to spend together, my, what a wonderful thing! Extraordinary! Unprecedented. You're you! Cut out all the O.K. stuff and the not-O.K. stuff; cut out all the judgments and observe, watch. You'll make great discoveries. Those discoveries will change you. You won't have to make the slightest effort, believe me. Here's another bomb-shell. Talking about the bomb-shell, reminds me about this guy in London after the war. He's sitting with a large parcel on his lap, wrapped in brown paper; big, heavy object. And the bus conductor says to him, he says, "What have you got in your lap there?" And the man says, "This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden, I'm taking it to the police station." He says, "Is that an unexploded bomb?" the guy says, "yes" "You don't want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat." That's my story for telling what psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) does for you. You know, it transfers the bomb from your lap to under your seat. It doesn't really solve your problems. It doesn't. It exchanges your problems for other problems. Has that ever struck you? You had a problem, now we exchange it for another one. And it's always going to be that way till we solve the problem called "you." We're gonna get nowhere.