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So, in the talk we just heard, “Open intelligence saves the day”.
I like that.
And when I first heard statements like that I thought automatically that
that was a statement that applied to something, you know, very grand,
like the state of the world, or, you know, all of the problems in the world.
But I really saw that the most important place for that statement
to be true, really, needs to be our own experience.
So, open intelligence saves the day.
And what that means is very basically in the beginning,
when you're introduced to open intelligence, right from the start.
So, I know there's a few new people here today.
So, as you heard, the way to identify open intelligence in your own experience
is just to stop thinking or stop describing. You can do that right now.
When you do that, what's looking through your eyes,
what's listening to me speak, becomes just more obvious.
There's an openness, an alertness when you stop thinking,
that isn't necessarily obvious when you are thinking or describing.
And so, that's great news, because
you've already got what we're talking about in this Training.
And so, the practice, the simple practice of the Balanced View Training,
is simply to emphasize open intelligence whenever you remember—just to recognize it.
And the way you do that, and the actual specific instruction
is short moments of open intelligence, repeated many times, become continuous.
So, the conventional approach to life has been to try to rearrange our
thoughts, emotions, sensations and other experiences
into a set of thoughts, emotions, other experiences that we're happy with;
and so that's the ongoing project of our lives.
In the Balanced View Training we call thoughts, emotions, sensations
and other experiences—people, places and things—data.
That makes it very simple, and also it's not so annoying when I'm speaking about it.
It's much easier to say data than people, places, sensations, thoughts, emotions,
you know, like bah bah bah bah. That's really boring.
So, it's very simple. Anything you experience, anything as a human being, we call data.
And that makes it wonderfully simple. So, in your experience you have one choice.
You can either recognize open intelligence or not.
And right from the beginning that’s the simplicity of this practice.
And it doesn't matter how complicated you think your life was;
and I guarantee you that nobody had a life as complicated as me when I came to this Training.
I had like billions of thoughts that needed sorting out, and everything was a problem;
everything needed to be looked into; everything needed to be changed in order for me to feel okay.
And I'd been trying to do that for like my entire adult life—
trying to change everything about myself in order to feel okay and failing miserably at it.
I mean, I can't really remember what it was like, but even talking about it
makes me feel a bit queasy, uneasy, you know.
And so, so that's very simple. So, in each moment,
like for example right now, if this is your first open meeting,
you can test this practice. Some of you might be wishing
you hadn't come here. I mean, sitting in plastic chairs
in thirty seven degrees heat isn't the most pleasant thing you could be doing right now.
I mean, I would much rather be floating in the sea myself. But I'm here, sweating.
And you see, now, for me, that experience, sitting in front of people,
not having anything prepared to say, sweating, feeling really hot, really uncomfortable;
conventionally I would describe this situation as an absolute nightmare.
But my experience now, after just simply relying on the simple support
and the practice of short moments, is that everything is totally wonderful and an absolute joy.
And that especially includes the things I don't like about myself.
So, in the last four or five days I've been more angry, more frustrated,
more aggressive, more bored than I've ever been in my entire life—continuously.
Now, I can rephrase that statement for you; I have never been more
in love and more at peace in my entire life. So, that doesn't make sense.
And this is the great power of this Training, is that we, like we heard in the talk,
we'd been fed a line of ***— total ***.
We've been told and trained since birth that in order to be okay we need to fix ourselves.
And the whole of human society reflects that, every country, every religion, every science.
It all screams, “You are imperfect, the world is imperfect, we need to be sorted out.”
And that's the ongoing motivation for everyone—individual and collective.
And so, for our entire lives this has been the focus:
relentless negativity, relentless criticism, blame and judgement.
Now, you can see this in yourself.
One of the interesting things about being involved in this Training is that
we start to look and focus on the gratitude and value we see in ourselves and in other people.
And when you first come to this Training, I remember there's a question in one of
the trainings that says, “What are your strengths, gifts and talents?”
And I just sat there when that was asked, and it was just like,
“I have no strengths, gifts and talents.” I left it blank.
“What are your weaknesses, fears?" There was a question like that as-well.
I couldn't stop writing, and it was, I could have written for eternity
about the things that were wrong with myself.
And again, this is just indicative evidence of the way I'd been trained—
to only focus on what doesn't work.
Because we are very powerful, we are precious, and we are beautiful.
And nobody said that to us. I mean, you might have heard it a few times,
probably from your mother, when you were baby.
My mum said, you know, that used to make me very uncomfortable
when my friends came, when I was a teenager and, you know,
I was just really surly and angry. And she just looked at me and said,
“When you were a baby I used to kiss you all day long.” Like that.
“And you loved it.” And I was just like, "Err."
But you see, that preciousness, that unconditional love
that babies just beam out all over the place, where they're just absorbing everything,
that's so precious— and that is our true nature.
And basically, if you heap decades of *** on top of that preciousness,
it's gonna disappear. And it's gonna be unpleasant,
it's gonna be smelly, and you're not gonna be able to do much about it.
So, in the Balanced View Training, that instruction that we talked about
right at the beginning, the short moments of open intelligence
repeated many times until it becomes continuous,
is a way of identifying that preciousness—right there, right now.
Then it immediately slips away.
So, the importance of the second part of the instruction, I would say,
is the most important instruction, “Repeated many times.”
Because there are many people here who probably have,
or are engaged in practices that are about maintaining a state of,
say, no thought, or bliss or openness.
Now, that's impossible, because the nature of reality,
the nature of data, even if it is beautiful data,
like oneness or bliss— it's fleeting.
It will come, and it will go; it will come, and it will go.
And just look at your experience right now. What's going on?
So, we can stop thinking, all of us right now,
just stop describing, identify open intelligence.
From that relaxed potency, just see what's going on in your experience,
just how vibrant that experience is.
I mean, there's so much going on; it's almost impossible to take it all in.
So, my experience would be, “Okay, there's sweatiness.
I can hear the fan. I can hear the tapping over there,”
the thoughts, memories, just relentless—appearing and resolving.
And so, what we've learnt, like I said at the beginning,
we need to somehow stop this flow and make it into a certain set
of descriptive frameworks like happiness, openness, love, benefit, whatever it is.
But what you'll find is, if you just allow the recognition
of open intelligence to occur, either automatically or forcefully,
by stopping thinking in the beginning, what you'll start to recognize
is something really miraculous, that the data—your experience—
is your trainer, that is your teacher, so to speak.
Because what it does is, it presents you with the choice.
So, that simple choice, the uncomplicated choice I mentioned earlier on,
to recognize open intelligence or not.
What is it that's giving you the opportunity to make that choice?
What is it that's empowering you to make that choice? It's you! It's your life!
So nothing needs to change! Woohoo!
And it doesn't mean that you don't want things to change,
so this is another key— a key point.
I want everything to change about my life.
But guess what, I don't have a choice.
And it's pretty clear by now that nothing is gonna change.
I am a miserable fat Englishman, and that's gonna be my reality
for the rest of my life.
But when you practice short moments, what you start to recognize is
the inseparability of that precious perfection from everything that's occurring in your life.
So, in the beginning the data of your life remind you to recognize open intelligence.
But just by taking those short moments, what you'll start to experience—
experience—not understand— experience—
is that everything about you is inseparable from the basis of that experience.
So, everything is a unified expanse. Everything is a unified expanse.
And from the very first moment you're introduced to open intelligence—that's it.
So, the point is that in the Balanced View Training it's up to you;
we empower you to test what's on offer here.
And you can do that immediately.
So, we heard earlier about the Four Mainstays.
That's a simple support structure, again, that's offered to you to test in your experience.
So, the first Mainstay is the practice of short moments of open intelligence
repeated many times until it becomes continuous.
You can do that wherever you are, doesn't matter how you feel.
You don't have to get rid of depression, say, in order to recognize open intelligence.
You either recognize open intelligence or not when depression is there.
And then you repeat that recognition whenever you remember.
We have trainings. So, after the open meeting,
at the back there, we can load your MP3 player or USB stick up
with hundreds of hours of talks.
So, just listening to talks, reading the books—it's all free—
will elicit the experience of what's being described by me. It's guaranteed.
So, you don't have to believe this; you just test it, and then see what happens.
Then you've got a trainer. So, the trainers are there just to support you
in this simple recognition and then the community.
And open intelligence saves the day, the statement I said right at the beginning.
Balanced View is a grassroots organization that empowers individuals—you—
to recognize your innate perfection. So, it's not rocket science.
The more people that do that, the more humanity just shifts in a very powerful way.
Because instead of emphasizing imperfection, you emphasize perfection in your own experience.
You become an example of perfection, and that alone attracts other people.
So, here at the center in Goa, and we have centers all over the world now,
when people get together, and they're all taking responsibility for their own data streams.
So, that means they make the choice to recognize open intelligence
rather than indulging on their data.
So, like I said, I'm angry, frustrated, aggressive, bored, miserable all of the time.
Now, I could be a very, very unpleasant person to be around,
but I empower myself amidst this negativity to recognize that that is my power;
it's inseparable from precious wide-open, open hearted love—open intelligence.
And in that recognition I am free to be of powerful benefit and just a nice person;
and when you get lots of people doing that together you get amazing results.
So, again, this is something you don't need to believe;
you can test it in your own experience.
Even if you're not with people who are relying on open intelligence,
just by you taking responsibility to recognize open intelligence whenever you remember,
that will have a profound effect on the people around you;
don't believe me, just test it.
And so all of the problems in the world will be solved by you relying on open intelligence.
“Oh my God what did he just say? It's outrageous!”
So, again, you don't have to believe me; just test it in your experience.