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Thank you
You know, there are some people out in the world
who always want to tell me about everything that's wrong.
I'm not sure what the realization is
that they're trying to bring me to - but I'm not getting it.
I don't consider that there's anything wrong with the world,
or the people in the world,
other than that they're still evolving.
Things are what they are, and if you don't
like it change your mind, or make them better.
I personally like the attitude "everything is all right".
You remember Diana Ross and the Supremes?
Baby, everything is all right -
uptight - out of sight!
Baby, everything is all right -
uptight - out of sight!
Hey, I've gone through 3 hurricanes in the last 2 months.
I've had 2 trees fall through my roof,
I've sweat off 30 pounds doing physical labor,
and I'm still humming to myself: "Baby, everything is all right -
uptight, out of sight"!
And if I'm wrong, well that's all right, too...
This "all right" attitude is what connects you
with the higher self.
Everything is all right;
and if the ego self has secondaries, they're all right, too.
Anyway, I really came today because I want
to tell you, you're all right.
And if I can only convince you of one thing,
that's it; you are all right.
I want to tell you my hurricane story.
We're out here...
Between the 1st and 2nd hurricane there was a gas
shortage here in Florida, and the supplies were rationed.
And in the few gas stations that had power there were long lines.
And I had to wait in my truck for 2 hours
to purchase a 5-gallon can of gasoline -
one of those red jerry cans, like the army uses.
And I finally got it and was on my way home,
and I saw another man,
and he was pushing his truck off the road.
And his wife was trying to steer,
and she was really nervous and scared...
So I stopped and helped him push his truck into the parking lot -
good Samaritan, right?
Well, I asked him what was wrong,
and I was hoping for, "dead battery"...
No, he was out of gas.
You know that moment when the universe tests you?
I have a can of gas in the back of my truck, and he needs it.
I don't catch all the tests that the universe throws at me,
but this one was really obvious.
So I took the red jerry can
out of my truck and I gave it to him.
And the man offered to pay, but it was sort of an empty gesture
because both he and I knew what the value of gas was
and how hard it was to get.
And I said, "Ah - forget it.
Pass it on.
Help the next guy."
And he asked where I lived,
and I told him, and then I drove off.
And I actually felt pretty good.
I felt better than even if I had the gas.
You see, the satisfaction
in kindness is unlike any other joy that you experience.
Unselfish service to others always leaves you feeling a
little bit better about yourself.
So I went to the office, and even though I was 2
or 3 hours late, I was on top of the world.
Happy.
"Everything is all right...uptight...
baby..."
You know, I would have been miserable and angry all day
if I'd withheld that gas.
And it reminded me that if I want to be happy,
all I need to do is be kind.
What a concept.
Anyway, that night I went home, and the jerry can was waiting
for me by my front gate, and it had been refilled.
What a really good world it can be, you know?
And that, to me, has the feeling
of an Enlightened Planetary Civilization.
I know that his kindness
in returning the gas made him happy.
So you can make a good world just by being kind.
Speaking of a good world, as you can see,
once again the trainers have invited me to talk to you.
"Harry, please talk at the Pro Course - just a short talk,
so people can see you."
"Well...
I don't know.
What would I talk about?"
And this time it was Avra who took the bait.
She said, "Oh, talk about anything..."
YES!
There it is, carte blanche!
Harry unleashed - talk about anything!
Avra just realized she made a mistake.
Too late...
Let's see, what would anything include?
Oh, enough about anything.
Let's talk about me.
As some of you know,
underneath this urban, super-sophisticated identity,
is a simple country boy.
Yes, it's true; a country boy who has dabbled in farming,
and gardening, raising animals, most of his life.
In fact, at this very moment, his swimming pool is home
to 500 thriving 'happy tilappy'...
all swimming into the current.
You've probably heard him tell that story.
Let me tell you what that simple country boy learned
from farming.
In the 60's he took a class in Botany,
but it was pretty boring.
He skipped most of the lectures, and the deadline
for the final term paper kind of snuck up on him -
and at the last minute he turned in a 1 page,
2 word term paper: "Everything grows."
It was Botany Class, right?
He felt this was a very profound statement.
It may have had something to do
with what he was smoking at the time.
[Impression of 60's hippie talk] "Everything grows, man...
...everything grows!"
I told you it was the 60's.
But this was a "Lucy in the sky,
diamond-mind" cognition; everything grows.
And he hoped that the professor would see the wisdom
of that insight, and maybe the professor did.
But he sent the paper back, marked with an "F",
and he'd scribbled in red,
"and dies!"
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
The country boy thought the professor had a pretty negative
attitude; kind of pre-adolescent issues -
definitely not a Diana Ross fan.
And this was at a time before the country boy had met Avra,
and he was still very good at getting in the last word.
I'm going to pay for that...
So he turned it back in, and underneath the professor's
"and dies", he wrote "What dies?"
Well, he not only flunked Botany Class,
he became really insufferable to his friends.
He kept injecting into every conversation,
"You know, everything grows."
"How are you doing, Harry?"
"Everything grows..."
People started to avoid him; so he had a t-shirt made
that said, "Everything grows."
I tell you honestly; right there he figured he knew pretty much
everything there was to know.
Growth is the purpose of life.
A few years later he had occasion to grow green beans
for a Health Food Store.
And there wasn't much profit in it, but it kept him
out of trouble; relatively out of trouble.
You see, it was the Health Food Store where Avra worked.
Ok - the truth; he raised organic green beans
so he could go into town and see Avra.
What - how do you meet girls?
Anyway, as an experiment he spread compost on some rows
of green beans and he left other rows to fend for themselves.
And a month later, the beans
that received the compost were almost twice the size
of their neighbors.
Whoa - another 'diamond mind' cognition: anything can be left
to develop naturally, or it can be influenced to grow faster.
That's probably what he should have learned
in the Botany Class.
If he ever gets another shot at a Botany term paper he'll say,
"Anything can be left to develop naturally,
or it can be influenced to grow faster."
Things can be influenced to grow faster.
And at that moment he was a self-realized organic gardener.
He looked up into the clouds and said, "Ok, God -
I'm ready for the next assignment!"
And I wish I could tell you that the skies opened or something -
or even that a crow flew over and pooped on his head.
But that's not what happened.
What did happen is, he began to hear this tiny sound of chewing.
And it was getting increasingly louder.
He lifted a bean leaf and underneath there was a mob
of green caterpillars devouring his bean crop.
And since he couldn't use insecticides,
it presented him with a problem.
It was one of those 'existential moments'.
He was at a crossroad in his pursuit of truth - and Avra.
He could plant resistant beans...ugh; or he could pretend
to Avra that he was raising caterpillars
for medical research.
And just as he was about to decide in favor
of the caterpillar story, a *** Toad hopped out
and began gobbling up the caterpillars.
Hmm - he's raising *** Toads.
What was God trying to tell him?
He considered several seductive stories
about why he was raising *** Toads, but they fell kind
of flat in the telling.
So he decided to give up lying, at least for a day.
The idea that really came out of that period was that growth
and development of human consciousness could
be accelerated.
So that's what is true education,
as opposed to indoctrinating beliefs into someone.
This is what education's really about.
And he took that realization and he went back to teaching.
And the key questions are: what influences are favorable
to the development of an enlightened consciousness?
And, why? And these are the questions that philosophers
and spiritual teachers have been asking themselves
for the last 5000 years.
If you could strip any political, religious,
or spiritual practice back
to its unblemished core you would find someone's opinion
about what influences are favorable to the development
of higher consciousness.
Unfortunately the opinions aren't always correct.
One of the classic allegories of western civilization is called,
Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".
How many of you know it?
It used to be more classic than that...
An allegory is a story with a hidden meaning or teaching.
And in the "Allegory of the Cave", Plato portrays people
as sitting in front of a wall in a dark cave.
And behind the people is a fire, with figurines, little dolls;
and the dolls go back and forth through the light of the fire,
and they cast shadows on the wall in front of the people.
Now the people don't see the fire,
and they never look at the dolls.
They only regard the shadows that the dolls cast
on the wall in front of them.
And the people come to believe that these shadows are reality -
and they suffer greatly as a consequence of their belief.
You've probably had Avatar students come to you believing
that the universe was the source of their unhappiness - well,
they're chasing shadows.
The people in Plato's Allegory believe
that the shadows are reality because they know nothing
but shadows, and they assume
that there is nothing but shadows.
The principal obstruction to their awakening is the belief
that they feel they are already awake.
Then one day, by fate or by circumstance -
maybe by accident -
one individual turns his head around.
Plato uses the pronoun "he", but it might just
as well have been a woman.
And as he turns his head around he sees the dolls going back
and forth in front of the fire.
And in that moment he realizes
that the shadows are only shadows,
and that the suffering is caused by ignorance.
And if he's anything like the rest of us,
he probably goes back briefly
to watching the shadows and suffering.
And maybe the experience will not last,
but at least now he knows.
And he has had this extraordinary moment
of consciousness in which he realized
that the shadows were shadows - call it an Avatar initiation.
And having seen the truth, it will tug at him,
until he finally walks out of the cave
and walks into the sunlight.
And we call that going to Wizards.
Now he'd like to stay out in the sunlight for the rest
of his life, but he feels an obligation to the fellows
who are still suffering, who still believe in the shadows,
and who believe that there is nothing but shadows.
How to enlighten them?
If he goes back into the cave and he tries to tell the truth,
they won't understand him.
They won't believe him.
They've never heard the word "sunlight".
They will feel that he's insane and a troublemaker,
and he'll either end up imprisoned in the shadow world,
or even maybe crucified.
Because his words about sunlight are meaningless to the people
who have only seen cave shadows.
The principal obstruction to their awakening is the belief
that they feel they are already awake.
Now while this statement is quite true,
there is within it the sense of being made wrong.
You know, "what do you mean I'm not awake?"
It's a threat to the ego - and this not fertile ground
for self-development, self-growth.
This is definitely not Diana Ross singing, "Baby,
everything is all right..."
But eventually, if he survives long enough,
Plato's realized being grows smart enough
to circumvent the ignorance and the intolerance
of the shadow watchers.
He does Wizards.
He gains the ability to understand and manage creation.
He operates from the viewpoint of higher self
without needing approval or applause.
He simply takes responsibility for transforming these people,
transforming civilization.
He learns how to inspire,
and he inspires the people
who are trapped and suffering in their shadow reality.
He learns how to get them to turn around and see the light
without making them wrong.
"Baby, everything is all right.
Uptight, out of sight..."