Barry, Freedom On The Beach

Vortrag: Freedom On The Beach

Transkript einer Kassettenaufnahme des Vortrags "Freedom On The Beach" von Freedom Barry, gehalten in Cambria, Kalifornien am 14. und 15. September 1996

Englisch: (Freedom On The Beach, Tape 2, Seite A)

Plato’s remarks that: “Time is the moving image of Eternity.” And I hoped that the outcome of that would be the conviction that the contents of time are not separate entities, they’re only the moving image of what is going on in the forever eternity. It’s not two different places; it’s not two different substances. So in that same sense, I would like to make these two days reach a conviction with you, with a sentence or a verse from Revelation. If you’re taking it down, it’s Rev. 22:16. And it says: “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I Am the Root and the Offspring of David; and the bright and morning star.” What I hope that this will prove is that Root and Offspring are not two separate entities, but two poles of the same Experiencer. The “I, Jesus” meaning I, your own I Amness – Iesous – we don’t have to go over that ground; you’re all so familiar with it – not a person from history, but the highest possible development in your Self as manifestation sees this and says: “I Am the Root and Offspring of David.” If you were thinking of this as personal history recorded in Scripture; that David is a character that lived in Old Testament history, and that Jesus is a character that lived in New Testament history over two thousand years ago, removed from David by another two thousand years, it would not make very much sense to say I Am the Root and the Offspring. But in the search for the Identity of the parentage of David, it’s told in the Old Testament, when Saul is asking: “Whose son is the lad?” Not who is the lad. I don’t give a hoot who he is. (I Sam. 17:56) Whose son is he? Who’s David’s Father. The search is always for Cause. So you, wherever you find yourself saying I, you’ve got to realize that the One who is searching for his Cause Is the Cause It Self which has fallen asleep to its Causal function and thinks of itself as the Offspring.

Now, there is nothing wrong with thinking of yourself as the Offspring, if you understand that you are the Thinker, and that you are in the process of Awakening. Now, there’s a story about a sage holding a great consultation with a fool. And the sage said that there are two sides to every question, but the question is always just one. And the fool said: “That’s very true. There are also two sides to a strip of fly paper, but it matters muchly to the fly which side he lights on.” I thought that rather appropriate because it’s well enough if you want to think of yourself as one of the created effects of One Greater Cause. The only problem is: That’s the sticky side. And you get caught there, and you find it difficult to move your footing. I’m talking of a period of history – you’ve probably never heard of a strip of fly paper. You know all about it? You don’t have to go back? Vern says, “It’s easy to put up, but hard to take down.” Because you wonder how you ever got it up. We do make use of all kinds of techniques to improve the human picture. But if we’re doing it just to improve a human picture, we’re likely to become dissatisfied very soon with our manipulations. It’s when you find out your own Identity as the Picturer, and then find the nature of the Picturer, you begin to experience those Features, and because of a change of inner experience, you make the change on the screen of space. I have said that what we are is a four story Being. It’s literal where is appears; beneath the surface of that, it’s mental where it’s understood; and deeper than that, it’s moral where it behaves; and deeper than that, it’s Spiritual where It Is. So this is perpetual reference to Four that you find throughout Scripture.

I have felt by way of Revelation is a matter of revealing to you those Four levels on which you interpret your Being. You must not eventually think of yourself as someone who can go wrong. The only mistake is in thinking of experience or effect as something separate from the Cause Who Is Seeing what It Is Effecting. I’ll make another reference to Four. I found this in the New Yorker just a couple of weeks ago. It hit me just where it needed to. It pictured a personnel office. The manager, with a sourest looking face you can possibly conceive was sitting at his desk. And right at his left side is a filing cabinet with four huge drawers labeled: “Jerks, Creeps, Losers, Scum.” Now, not one of those will define you, but if you find yourself seeing such definitions, you know that you cannot stop short of translating everything back to where the Definer is Defining them.

I want to go from that one sentence from Revelation. Here’s why David is not somebody out of history. And you’ll find this in the 8th of Proverbs, from verses 22-30. You know they keep making all these new discoveries at the time the universe came into being by the Big Bang or somewhat or when the dinosaur came, when the dinosaur became extinct, then long after all that came man. I don’t hold with that notion. In the 8th Proverb, this is David speaking: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea this decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;”

So you look up in Strong’s Concordance any reference to the word “David,” and you will find it replete with definitions of Love. You can reduce it to one word: Love – the Beloved, the object of affection. So this is the David that is the Eternal Presence of the One Who Is presenting HimSelf. When Saul asked David who his Father Is, he said, “I Am the Son of your servant Jesse.” And Jesse is defined as any form of the verb “to be.” So again, Who Is the Father of David? I Am. That’s the One.

Then, there’s a verse from II Cor. 3:4-6: “And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; (not that we’ve ever made any great thing; and as a consequence, not that we’ve ever produced any rotten thing. That’s nice to know.) our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament (that is the new comprehension); not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” So the letter, or all the words that we will be uttering during these two days are by themselves not going to do anything, if it arouses in the Thinker the point of conviction, then it has served its purpose. I had a question about a month ago, or maybe longer than that. Anyway, I know I had begun to go into these ideas, and the question was: Where do you draw the line in manifestation? That when I speak of man, I generally put a hyphen and put -ifestation after it. So you will understand that anything that appears by way of effect is Cause presenting itSelf. It’s still One Substance. But when you read in the first chapter of Genesis all about the creation of the earth, the light, the firmament, the herb bearing seed, the two greater lights, you have the seven days of creation. Then the sixth day is man. And this man has dominion over everything that is seen thus far. This man has dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air So where is it that we draw the line and say who has control over what? And one of the causes for that question was the lack of concern for the preservation of the species. The spotted owl, as an example, being considered not as important as the raping of the forests. Now, without getting into any biases, let us consider what man-ifestation is. It’s not something sent out as a proxy from the Creator. If I manifest mySelf, this is it. I have brought mySelf here. I didn’t send this to represent me. I’m here believing this is what I Am. Now, when I go home, I will not leave this here. It will go where I go as long as it’s what I believe mySelf to be.

So then, when you see that what’s defined in Scripture as Jesus:the highest human corporeal concept of the ideal man-ifestation, it’s only natural that you as that One the higher you rise, the more dominion you have over everything else you have seen in this evolving awakening. So far from its giving you the right to desecrate forests or obliterate species, what it’s giving you is this recognition that you who are saying I find it within my purview to protect everything that appears to me as external, because it is not external to your perception of it. If it were, you would not be perceiving it. If it were, you couldn’t talk with me about it. So, doesn’t that give you a feeling of where the dominion is? The dominion is with the awakening Being; it’s not to some political party that is going to disregard something that is important to you.

Your salvation is always to recognize that this is not a piece meal universe. It is not a multiverse. It is a universe. It’s One Substance.

So then, here’s a familiar one; and I know we used this last summer. But I love it because it shows the evolution from Root to Offspring; actually from Offspring to Root. It’s the 23rd Psalm; it’s all of it. You remember the story about the substitute priest that came to give the sermon and he tapped the microphone first, with no response, he said there’s something wrong this speaker. And the audience not having heard anything thought he was giving the usual (story unfinished due to microphone problems here).

Here’s this evolution from your sense of yourself as a created effect back to the One Who Is Creating such an effect. 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me (this is Lord as third person when you think of yourself as offspring) to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul (my Spiritual Sense): he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me (already moved up to a not a distant third person, but the friend, the second sense); thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy follow me shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” See how it’s moved from he, to thou, to I. And you can do that with every one of these, and you should do it just for the exercise of it, and for the joy of finding that this whole thing is about you. “I will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.” And if the House of the Lord is secret to the Lord, then the One Who Dwells there has got to be the Lord. So what is Lord to you? As you found in my new book: the first thing is the thing that constitutes Lord to you is your highest sense of Self. In a way, you can put this set up, you can parallel the whole idea, give a symbol of it as showing a film. There are four components to showing a film. You have the screen on which it appears; you have the film on which the arrangement of lights and shadows appear by spots, the arrangement of spots that makes light differentiated; then you have the reel that you thread it on to make it move, to give it action; and then you have the light without which none of it can be.

So parallel those with the four quarters of the human soul, as Blake puts it, and the light is what you are Spiritually; the reel is where It’s activated, put into motion; and what is being shown is what is arranged in the mental level where the concepts have been exchanged better for worse-worse for better; and the screen is where it’s all appearing as persons in places doing things. It makes it such a clear analogy if you can see that while there appear to be four separate components in that example, there are no separations in the depths of your Being, the degrees of deepness. They are merely that: degrees of deepness. And it does not necessarily take alot of time to deepen a conviction from a concept. It may, but it need not. It’s perfectly possible that it may take alot of time and repeated effort to develop a conviction out of what was once merely a dimly conceived concept. But if it’s seen at all, you know where it is. If you can comment on it, you know there’s nobody responsible, nobody else outside of the I that is seeing it. Exactly. Sean says it could be in an instant only or in a thousand years. You can trace what has appeared as a marvelous development, and all of the development works towards a more refined use. I can think of the very first radio that I ever saw, and my grandfather had one. And it was bigger than this table, a good deal. A good deal greater and longer, and it had a bunch of dials that would confuse the operator of a space ship. The things that you had to turn, and the most unbearable squawks and squeaks, and there was a speaker that sat on top of it, and you had to wear a pair of earphones that had to plug into it like a switchboard. And now look at the radios that you can carry in a thimble case, yet everything that was there that made the radio possible is still the same thing. They haven’t done one thing except refine the concept of it. So as you said, it could takethat has happened within my lifetime, and when we look always there Moses could have had a radio on top of Mt. Nebo, if he’d known enough, because all the elements were there – if you’re thinking of it as history. .

. O.K. I was thinking to draw a little more weight behind that thing of who has the power over what in all of creation, when you see that it’s all One manifesting itSelf. There a sentence in Science and Health that Mary Baker Eddy wrote over one hundred and twenty years ago. “There is but One Creator and One Creation. This Creation consists of the unfolding of Spiritual Ideas and their Identities which are embraced in the Infinite Mind and forever reflected. These Ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity. And the highest Ideas are the Sons and Daughters of God.” O.K. The highest Ideals are the Sons and Daughters of God. We see them as men and women but that doesn’t mean that they are separate things. That’s the way it is appearing, these Ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity and at the point where they are seen as real, they appear distinct, and therefore, separate in manifestation, that they never get outside of Consciousness which is indivisible. O.K. The other one that I had from the same source: “God is the Life or Intelligence which forms and preserves the Individuality and Identity of animals, as well as of men.” There’s the protection for your spotted owl, and everybody else. That Consciousness which is the final definition of God is the Life or Intelligence which forms and preserves the Individuality and Identity of animals, as well as of men. And that isn’t somebody else you’re going to have to rely on to do that. That is your own Essence that is doing it. It’s not a personal responsibility, is what I’m saying. It’s an Individual responsibility. So John 12:32: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto men unto me.” And the word “men” is in italics, which means it was added by some copyist. It is not in the original documents. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto me.” And that doesn’t mean thinking of yourself as a magnet that can get the contents of any bank out of the vault into your account. I, if I be lifted up: if my sense of Self be elevated sufficiently, it will draw all manifestation to the level that my I has been lifted. This is how we correct unsatisfactory evidences. It is not done by manipulation. And it is certainly not done by wishful thinking or much repetition. It’s done by lifting your sense of Who You Are and understanding that there is no separateness between who You Are and the way it appears to You.

. That should give you a sigh of relief, that you don’t have to do something to something to change it. Any questions before we go on to a different approach? Yes, Ron? (Can’t hear) You have to be sincere in your conviction, he’s saying. I should move this over there for you. You have to be sincere in that conviction; well surely, if it is a conviction, you honestly believe it, or otherwise, you’re just saying it wishing it were true, and that doesn’t hold much water. O.K. It’s one thing to see the logic of it; it’s another thing to start to do it and then encounter obstacles and still be able to stick with it. And, I can tell you from experience that’s not an over-statement. So here’s an example, and it goes through quite a little bit of Nehemiah. Don’t worry about where you can find this. It’s in the book of Nehemiah, the second chapter, but it will go on, off and on way on through the sixth chapter. Don’t worry about the verses, they will show up for you if you’re interested in pursuing this. I don’t demand that everybody take the Bible every day and go through all these things. It may not be that interesting to some. It’s to me like what they say Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier is to pianists. It’s their daily bread. There’s no question that searching Scripture is very profitable.

(Nehemiah 2:1-5) “And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him: and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been before time sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid. And said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire? Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found favour in thy sight, that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers’ sepulchres, that I may build it.”

Now, Judah is not just a place on the map, but this whole book is not a history of places on the map, but as I said in the forward to Passkey, Dickens’ twenty-some novels give you a map through London as clearly as if you were there, and yet it does not obtain that any of his characters ever walked the streets of London. They were personifications. Well, so are these people or names of people personifications of something that illustrates You can even look up the names that’s what got me off on that, that Judah Jerusalem is where God dwells, Judah is what God is doing. He dwells in Consciousness, and what is Consciousness doing but thinking. It is really taking cognizance of itSelf. That’s the whole of manifestation; it is what Consciousness is finding True about itSelf. And the closer you get to that, the closer you will be able to say mySelf, instead of itSelf.

(Nehemiah 2:5) “So it pleased the king to send me; . (Neh. 2:12-16) And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem: neither was there any beast with me, save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night by the gate of the valley,

(Nehemiah 2:13-16 continued) even before the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire. Then I went on to the gate of the fountain, and to the king’s pool: but there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass. Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned. And the rulers knew not whither I went, or what I did;” Isn’t that a recognition that there is no mentality apart from the One Who Is Doing It All? The rulers knew nothing about this; even the people I had sent. “neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work.” . . (Nehemiah 2:17) “Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.” There are four gates to Jerusalem: north, east, south, west, or physical, mental, moral, Spiritual. These are the gates of the habitation. .

. (Nehemiah 2:18) “Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king’s words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.” What kind of strengthening exercises do you go through to see that your hand or your applied understanding is equal to the task? That’s what it’s all about. You first of all have to have an attitude that says “I can do it.” .

Question: “What happens when you say I can’t do it, but it’s still happening anyway?”

Freedom: “What’s happening? It seems to go on and you’re saying I can’t do it. It depends upon how long you sit and listen to that. If you keep letting it say “I can’t do it” to the degree that you believe it, you won’t attempt to go any further.”

Question: “What if you don’t have any choice?” (something inaudible) Freedom: “You don’t have any choice, you say. Well, it appears that that fly has no choice on that sticky side of the fly paper, but all examples have their limitations. Consciousness does have a choice. It all depend upon how stuck you are. It’s true, how familiar you are with this circumstance. But it isn’t that is not the end of it.

. (Inaudible question) That’s not you either. See there’s the thing, it is a picture of your circumstances. It is not apart from you This is the distinction I make between states and actual Features of your Being. If a situation is so offensive to you that you want to escape it, naturally, you must realize that that is only a dramatized version made out of conceivable states. You always have a choice.

Question: “You have a choice, but you suffer the consequences of your choice.”

. Freedom: “Yes, you have a choice, but you suffer the consequences of your choice-true enough. Now, about the subject of free choice”

This I’ll want to get into. If clay could think the way Consciousness does think, and clay could shape itself as three monkeys as one saying, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” I insist that there are not three monkeys there. There is only clay in that shape. In the same sense, here is someone who says I’m in a human situation that I can’t correct. There’s nothing there but Consciousness that is in that sense of itself. So when it says, “I can’t do a thing about it,” that’s only if you’re on to this thing at all, this should be a clue to you that it is a dramatized version consisting of states. Now, states have no Identity. States have no entity, they have no reality. They’re only conceivable. Whereas, these Features of your Being, these Features of Consciousness are just like the components of clay its color, it malleable, its stickiness, its durability Those are things that make modeling clay recognizable as clay. Now, you do not have clay and three monkeys. You have clay as three monkeys. And those monkeys have absolutely no choice in the reshaping of the clay, but the clay does. I know that there is a limitation in that because as you look at clay, it couldn’t decide to reshape itself, but you, a person, could decide to exercise your creativity over it and reshape it. But, Consciousness does have the capacity to reshape its convictions. That is to say it can let go of a previously held conviction of its circumstances, and it could redefine itself in conformity with the Features it Knows to be True about ItSelf. And to the degree that it does that, and they become convictions, then the freedom that is native to your Conscious Being is illustrated in the shape its taking. I’ve said that if you have a bolt of blue wool, and you make it into a jacket, the jacket has no choice to put itself on you, but you can choose to put it on. But the jacket itself has no choice but to be whatever wool is. If wool is blue, then the jacket it blue. If wool is warm, then the jacket is warm. If wool is smooth, then the jacket is smooth. It has no choice, but you do have free choice.

Question: “Would the clay be personality?”

Freedom: “The monkeys would be personality. Yes, the stuff they’re made of could never be.”

. Question: “The personality has no choice?”

Freedom: “The personality has no choice whatever. You look at the Shakespeare characters throughout his twenty seven dramas. Not one of the characters has a thing to choose about who he is, but the author had everything to choose. And Consciousness is the author of all the shapes it takes. Now, you were saying something (question inaudible) Oh, can it be difficult to make the choice, even though you have the choice? Boy, is it ever!

. Question: “Especially when the rest of the human race is doing just the opposite of what”

Freedom: “Exactly, when you’re looking around you, and you see the overwhelming preponderance of interest in making different choices in the other direction. It can be very difficult to decide. But, if you think of yourself as a person differing from other persons, you’re going to be lost anyway.” (inaudible question) If you’re thinking of yourself as a person among other persons, you are as helpless as you can ever be. You are as helpless as those clay monkeys. They do not have the choice of reshaping. Ophelia in Hamlet has no choice to become Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Ophelia’s presence is not relevant to the theme of The Merchant of Venice. So I think sometimes in the choices we make, we try to put something that is not at all natural to a different situation, and make it evolve-try to force it into existence. And we may choose to do that and we may do it, and as Nate said, we suffer the consequences of our choice. But who ultimately makes the choice. It is not the character. It is the One defining him Self as the character. And that has infinite, limitless choice; complete freedom of choice. You have to realize where the freedom to choose rests. It does not rest with any effect. Because effect is not a different substance. That’s why. It can be in only one place, and that’s where it is saying, “I Am.”

Being one of many people makes it not only difficult but impossible. It can’t ever last.

(Inaudible question) What’s the nature of the choice I have made? Is it conducive to further awakening or is it just going to increase my sleep to my Identity? (Inaudible question) .

A positive choice is just as much sleep as a negative choice, she says. It depends upon the nature of your choice. If you choose to illustrate something that is a Feature of your Being, that is not negative. There are no negative Features of this which Is, because if there were it would begin to Self-destruct.

SECOND PORTION OF A WEEKEND RETREAT LECTURE by FREEDOM BARRY:

TRANSCRIPT OF “FREEDOM ON THE BEACH” LECTURE PRESENTED by FREEDOM BARRY HELD AT CAMBRIA, CA on SEPT. 14-15, 1996

Freedom – This one I love because it’s such a hackneyed story. It’s told and told and told. But we’re going to telescope it. I call it: “Wiping the Slate Clean;” which is all it’s indicating to me. The way to wipe the slate clean, and it deals with Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Noah and his three sons, or in other words, with your Spiritual Being, and the moral, mental and physical modes of experiencing it. That is who you’ve got here. We’re taking this from Genesis 6, and it will go on way through Chapter 8 before you come to the end of it. I’m going to skip over a great many verses, because we don’t have all that time.

Gen. 6:5 – “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man(-ifestation, that is to say, when I’m viewing from this awakened standpoint, and I do see that I’ve missed the mark in ever so many places along the way, that is another way of saying “GOD saw that the wickedness of man) was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Gen. 6:6 – “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” So see how in your own feeling you can begin to regret some of the things you wanted so desperately and worked at so hard that you got. Then you begin to feel trapped in what you’ve made, and find the necessity for further growth. I think that’s what it’s saying.

Gen. 6:8-9 – “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” You can’t walk with God and be somebody besides God. There is no outside to God.

Gen. 6:10 – “And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.”

Well, we’ve told you… Noah is the Spiritual Essence, and the three sons are the moral, mental and physical modes of experience.

Gen. 6: 11-14 – “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.”

Gen. 6:17 – “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh.” By that term “flesh,” you may substitute the word “apparency.” If it’s made flesh, that means it is made apparent to you. “…wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.” In other words, I shall see it only as a dramatized state; I shall see these things for what they are.

Gen. 6:18-19 – “But with thee (He’s speaking to Noah) will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.”

This is always “alive” in you. This is not coming from anybody else, and there’s no… when it says everything in earth shall die because of this great flood, that means your disappointment with what you have made of it. That’s what goes. You’ve made a better choice now.

Gen. 6:20 – “Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind…” spotted owls after their kind… It all comes with thee to keep them alive.

Gen. 6:21-22 – “And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.” You get your own Self-approval, you get your own Self-acceptance. Not acceptance as a person, but acceptance of the capital Self of you.

Gen. 7:4 – “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights…” You’re getting these numbers, I hope. You get seven days of Illumination; those are your seven basic elements of Being. And then there come forty days and forty nights.

These four levels experienced both ways – day and night – illumination and forgettery. Illumination and the forgetfulness of it.

“…and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.”

Gen. 7:5 – “And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.”

Gen. 7:7 – “And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.”

This cleansing – this is merely a cleansing process.

Gen. 7:10&12 – “And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth… And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” In other words, just as He decrees, just as He says.

Gen. 7:18 – “And the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.” You’re never deluged in the deluge. You’re never the victim of the deluge. The ark goes safely on the face of the waters.

Gen. 7:21 – “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth…”

Every concept that was interpreted literally, that of itself, if that has been unpleasant to you, that dies upon the earth. In other words, dust returns to dust. You see it as merely conceivable. That is true of both “…fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.” It’s all man-ifestation.

Gen. 7:22 – “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Gen. 7:23 – “…and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Only your Spiritual Self survives, and they that remain with you are your modes of interpreting. So you’re losing absolutely nothing. What dies, in other words, is transcended in thought. You’re doing away with misconceptions.

Gen. 7:24 – “And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.” You’ve got one and five – that’s six. These are the six days before the final where there is still work to do.

Gen. 8:1 – “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;”

Gen. 8:6 – “And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened a window of the ark which he had made:”

Gen. 8:8-12 – “And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned no again unto him any more.” See these symbols: the dove – that symbol of peace, he sends it out. When it finally comes back, it extends the olive branch. You have these symbols with you all the time. The dove – when it says… when Jesus is baptized of John the Baptist, and he comes up out of the water, there is a dove descending on him from heaven. And a voice says: “This is my beloved Presence, in whom I Am well pleased. Hear ye Him.” Is that the dove? (Referring to the talking of the crow perched above us) How very timely. He says,

“I’ll be right back with the olive branch.” (Tirza Note: The crow represents to some American Indians and others a messenger of Spirit – he delivers the law of Spirit to man. So the crow is not such a bad image; he can also represent death, but death to a former sense of self with beliefs other than the Law of Spirit.)

Bernard: It thinks its the cause (referring to the crow).

Freedom: Oh, yeah.

Tirza: Freedom, doesn’t Noah’s name mean rest or to rest assured…

Freedom: You have to rest assured as Spirit, as the Whole, the Real Thing. The sons are merely modes of interpreting. Remember how I said in Passkey that we speak of the four levels and yet Spirit is not a level as such. It is what Is, and the others are levels of interpreting by This Which Is. It has ways of seeing ItSelf.

Vicki: And dove and olive?

Freedom: The dove and the olive branch… the dove symbolizes perspective, really. And the olive branch is the offering of peace. It brings back an olive branch to say the cleansing is done. And then this dove is released and sees it no more.

Tirza: Isn’t the olive the dedication; once you’ve been sent in the dedication to complete this, then… once the job is finished, it’s shown the evidence of that completion.

Freedom: Right. The oil which is the term “dedication,” “fidelity,” when you see the oil of the olive or throughout these Old Testament stories where the widow was sustained by the bottomless pot of oil; all she had was a little cruise of oil, but she lived for the whole seven years on it. When it’s seen as dedication, and not distraction…

Here’s one that I know that we’ve never used before in any of our meetings.

Josh. 8:1 – “And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai:”

Freedom: (Laughs) I don’t know… I can’t think of that Ai… I came from the most primitive wilds of the State of Maine, and there was a man there who could neither read nor write, and his name was Ai Q. Mitchell. Huh… and the County had sent out to all these farmers that had cattle… they had to take tests for T.B. in cattle. And so the man taking down paper work was from the city. He said, ” What’s your name?” Ai said, “Ai Q. Mitchell.” “Well, O.K.,” he said, “what’s the A for?” “Ai.” “What’s the I for?” “Ain’t no I.”

They fought for an hour and a half over the name Ai. What’s the A for? Ai. What’s the I for? Ain’t no I. (Laughter) Perfectly ridiculous, and it has nothing to do with this story. But I want you to realize my origins. It’s quite true, my own father never learned to read or write. It wasn’t any fault of the system, it was just that he hadn’t an inclination to learn.

Josh. 1:1-2- “…arise, go up to Ai” I might as well tell you now what that means according to Strong’s. Ai is a “ruin, crooked, false, oppressed, turned upside down.” Or in other words, go up to Ai and turn it upside down in your thought. Move from offspring to Root.

That’s what it’s all about. “I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land: And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king…” You know how the walls came tumbling down, with the blasting of the trumpet after seven times around the wall… we’ve done all that before.

Josh. 8:3 – “So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai: and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night.”

These are your three modes.

Those zeros are nothing but emphasis to the symbol of three. The symbol of three is moral, mental, physical. “…thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night…” in the ignorance of Divinity.

Josh. 8:4-8 – “And he commanded them, saying, Behold, ye shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city: go not very far from the city, but be ye all ready: and I, and all the people that are with me, will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them, (for they will come out after us) till we have drawn them from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: therefore we will flee before them. Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand. And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the Lord shall ye do. See, I have commanded you.”

And you know what this fire is. It is the… in Isaiah, it speaks of the fiery furnaces… William Blake calls that the fires of experience – the furnaces of experience – the furnaces of affliction where you burn up the misconceptions by understanding their Counterfacts. O.K. Joshua rises up early in the morning (Josh. 8:10)…. I won’t go through all that and waste our time because the other was instruction to do it, and this is their doing it. Then he takes “about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai…” (Josh. 8:12) between where God is and the ruin. Now there was a valley between them and Ai.

Josh. 8:13-14 – “And when they had set the people, even all the host that was on the north of the city, and their liers in wait on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley. And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle….”

They went out to fight. And you see here they flee and that decoy just draws them away; they’ve left their home defense-less. The ruin is defenseless when you see it as a dramatized state.

When it has no occupant, that ugly state that has been dramatized as a untenable situation for you, you’re seeing through it and it isn’t being occupied. That’s when the fire is set to it, and it ceases to trouble you. Is the symbolism clear without going on reading any more of that?

Josh. 8:19 – “And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.” That’s how it’s done. Ai. Oh! This is wonderful, I think. I’m talking from the fourth Chapter of Galatians. We’re in the New Testament now:

Galatians 4: 21-31. There will be things in there that I will read, but it won’t hurt anybody, if you’re looking it up.

Gal. 4:22-24 – “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory…” Now, in this, Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he boldly calls this story not Old Testament history but an allegory. These things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants: born of promise or born of bondage. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, was barren, so Abraham has a son by the bondmaid, Hagar, and that son is Ismael. Sarah says later, “You get them out of here, because that child of the bondmaid is not going to be heir with my son.” Because Sarah, at ninety, bears a son to Abraham, who is at the age of one hundred. His name is Isaac. No wonder they laughed when they got this word that Sarah would give birth. “I? At ninety?” This has nothing to do with ancient history. This has all to do with characteristics. So, this is Paul saying: “We brethren, as Isaac was, are children of the Promise.”

Gal. 4:29 – “But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him and was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.”

Don’t think it isn’t always so, because it is.

Gal. 4:30-31 – “Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”

So what I’m saying is, if you feel chained to a situation, that bondage is brought about exclusively by your acceptance of effect as an entity apart from Cause; as offspring as being something other than the other pole of Root. Root and offspring are opposite poles of the same essence, the same Being, and all bondage is brought about, I feel, by mistaking that setup and seeing it as Cause and effect, instead of Cause as effect. We are not born from the bondwoman. We are the Son of the Promise; that is to say of the Presence of Promise. This business of… Didn’t we earlier today speak of the sun and its rays. If not, I’d like to now because there again in mistaking what it is you are or where you position yourself, this is what lies behind your feelings of helplessness – that you are in bondage to something or other. If you can see that the sun, in the process of being what it is… let us say: It shines. Now, those rays of sunlight have no separate faculty for appreciating the sun. It’s just one shining; that is to say, One Self Appreciation. If that’s a good illustration, you can say: Parallel Consciousness as Son… and stop feeling that you are somebody that’s got to get ahold of an impossible end result of a really flawless understanding about Consciousness.

When you see that there’s nothing to you but what Consciousness is Conscious of Being – what it’s cognizing about itSelf – when you’ve accepted that that is the modus : that’s what’s going on, you’re then spared that impossible task of trying to get a correct understanding of God. Consciousness is in the process of waking everywhere and to the degree that you cease thinking of yourself as someone with either a good or an inadequate appreciate of God… I thought that illustration might help. The rays of the sun have no independent capacity for appreciating the sun. The sun by being itself gives us light and warmth and all of that.

Sean: Aren’t there seven elements of light; seven colors of light?

Freedom: Exactly! The prism includes seven colors, because they’re not different, are they? They’re just seen as distinct when they are appreciated.

Sean: They’re not different. They’re all from the same light.

Freedom: They’re all from the same light. One sun is making all that color. The colors taken together are not making the sun. It’s just as you said. The sun is making all that indivisible light.

Sean: Just like the seven sounds: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.

Freedom: Right, in the scale. It’s the same thing in that illustration of a drop of water. It has in it everything that the whole ocean has. Consciousness, wherever it is, is itSelf Being Conscious of something about itSelf. Fire, wherever it burns… look at the camp- fires around here. And every night, if they burn, it may appear to be multiple fires, but fire is one thing. On whatever hearth it’s burning, all of the features of fire are there. So you are not faced with the impossible task of trying to get an untarnished appreciation of Cause because what you are Is This Cause that is appreciating ItSelf.

That takes a terrific labor out of the effort. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stay focused.

Sandra: That means will have to still comb our hair and stuff?

Freedom: (Laughter) I love it. Certain things I remember of you from last summer. I love it. So I put these things down here to jog my memory, using that illustration of sun and its rays, water and its drops, dreamer and its dreams, multiple dreams but One Dreamer, and One Dreamer is the substance of every character in the dream. You may appear in your dream to be one of the characters in it, and yet when you wake, you’re faced with the necessity to admit that you were the only one there. That should help your son and his sorrow for the lady having to die with no foot. It’s a marvelous illustration.

Sean: Are we all dreaming each other?

Freedom: Are we dreaming each other? We’re all seeing each other, and it’s all in a dream… It’s all in God’s dream that He is any one of us and every one of us. But if I felt that I was a person dreaming another person, I might indeed have reason for guilt. It isn’t personal, ever, once you’re out of the dream, once you’re awake.

That belongs to the contents of the dream. Like all of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays, not one of them can say one word to the other that the author hasn’t said. That’s all Shakespeare’s thought illustrated. And there, of course, is merely itself an illustration of what’s going on. So we’ve spoken of clay and its shapes; we speak of silver and whether it’s shaped as a table knife or an ear ring or a necklace. The only thing that’s there is the stuff, whether it’s gold making those ear rings, those circles. The circles have no choice, you see. The only thing that’s there is the gold that’s in that shape. The circle is merely… You can draw a circle, you can make a paper circle, you can carve a wooden circle, but there is no such thing as a circle.

The idea of the circle… the idea is the circle. The Mind makes it and is the substance of it. You shape it as a cross. All you’ve got is the substance that is in that shape, whether it be wood, paper, gold, silver or crystal. The cross is not a thing, the cross is a conception, and the only thing that is there is the substance that is so shaped.

There is nothing here or anywhere but Consciousness in the shape of what It sees ItSelf to Be, and that shape always comes in the language of persons, in places, doing things. But it is still never anything more than Consciousness, ItSelf. It can never Be there without all of Its Elements, all of Its Features, all of Its Functions full tilt.

Tirza: Only God can become all that is not and still remain All That Is. It takes All that God Is to manifest the lowest degree of sleep…

Vern: The lowest or the deepest…

Freedom: The lowest or the deepest, yes.

Tirza: You don’t lose God down there in the deepest sleep… The sense is that I have lost God or God is apart from me now that I’m deep asleep in this horrible condition…

Freedom: Yeah. Who’s dreaming that? Who’s saying that? It takes all that God Is to manifest the deepest sleep. In other words, when you read the terms: “God Is All in All,” you find that in Scripture, what it’s saying is It’s All there Is to All that appears. It’s All there Is to whatever shape It’s in.

Judith: Then why does it say that Jesus, in the end, will give up his kingdom, and then God will be All in All?

Freedom: That Jesus what?

Judith: …will give up his kingdom; give his kingdom to God, and then God will be All in All.

Freedom: He Is already, but when I do it in my thought I’ve proved it. When I’ve accepted that that Jesus is the Iesous of me, that’s when it’s the All in All in you. It already is All there is to All that appears, but it might just as well not even be at all, if I’m not Conscious of It.

Tirza: When it reaches a conviction?

Freedom: When it reaches a conviction with me, then it has indeed fulfilled that It’s All there Is to All that appears. It has been all along, but if I didn’t… That’s the whole thing in the last chapter of Revelation about I’m Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end. Well, I’ve been All that has appeared to go in between. (Inaudible question) Yeah, but if it’s interpreted as literal physicality, that’s not going to us very far.

Tirza: Isn’t that also to relinquish all personal i am; any personal sense of i amness must be relinquished entirely, and that brings all your enemies under your understanding.

Freedom: Under your understanding. This is what Ahmad was speaking about during the break. When that sense of ego is reduced to its proper perspective, then it is under your feet, its under your understanding. Your understanding controls it all.

Sandra: Your enemies are everything you do not understand? I mean, from my point of view, at this point of view, I can’t believe that there will be a time when there is everything that I understand. I mean, we’re always learning.

Freedom: We are always learning, there will never be…

Sandra: We are learning to understand to deal with what we don’t understand, too.

Freedom: The beauty of this thing is that if Consciousness shrinks in degree of keenness to reach the limit of contraction, and that limit is where you slept in your mother’s womb as man, that was the limit of contraction. Now, there is no limit, fortunately, to the expansion, because by very nature, Consciousness Is and Is therefore Infinite. That which is Infinite has no limits, has no measurement, no sides, no bottom, no top – nothing boxing it in.

Sandra: So the enemies are that which we don’t understand…

Freedom: The enemy is what I do not understand of my True Nature.

Sandra: That means Eternity has got to be under your feet then. I mean….

Tirza: There are only a certain number of states ultimately. You’re not up against…

Sandra: The states are infinite too…

Tirza: No they’re not…

Freedom: The states have no existence whatsoever; they’re conceivable. Do I make myself clear about the term conceivable? This is all they are: merely conceivable. If you can conceive of them…

Sandra: Anything you can possibly imagine…

Freedom: If you can conceive it, yes. But it has no other Identity. It has no other Essence, except the Conceiver believing that that conception is real, and to the degree that he thinks the conception is real, he has agreed to occupy it.

Sandra: The enemies is all that which you don’t understand, so is there a place where you understand everything – everything?

Freedom: Persons will never understand anything… it’s only Consciousness which understands all – that It Is All, and Is therefore All there Is to All that appears. Consciousness DOES understand All.

Consciousness understands itSelf as All. And to the degree that I admit that Consciousness Is what I Am, that is what increasingly expands my sense of awareness.

___________: So there is this other big lie that is perpetuated upon us, in the literal sense, that you cannot understand all…

Freedom: That’s right. Because you see the lie is based exclusively on that definition of you as one among many persons.

And once we see that that is all lie, then you’re still Conscious of Being, you realize that that was no more than a misconception about you the Conceiver.