and for many the beginning of spiritual awakening is to realize that there is this stream of continuous commentary in their minds and that is the thing oh that's interesting that's a thought of course but before the thought that's interesting there's the the recognition it's it's the voice in the head and the recognition is not the voice in the head although you might say it after the recognition but in the moment of recognizing there's a voice in the head that's not a thought the recognition of the recognition of thought is not a thought the recognition of thought comes through awareness or presence and awareness or presence is the higher consciousness the arising new consciousness wow so that's that is really the meaning of spiritual awakening in the by the way in this first half of our gathering i will be talking more about it in the second half we will do more experiential but even while i talk about it here i would hope that if it works for you there's already also an experiential realization of what it is i'm talking about so there's the voice there's a voice in the head and people say things like i think they don't think because thinking is not a voluntary accent for them so it's a delusion to even say i think you don't think you are being thought by thought you are created by thought this that energy field it's amazing so the master said how can i teach you then unless you first empty your cup now that's a huge demand if i'm full of clutter mental clutter how am i going to empty my cup i would be immediately enlightened if i could empty my cup but the teaching points to something it points to this the word empty and that's interesting that is an important word in buddhism and i i don't think it's a good translation who first came up with it i don't know in the 19th century the europeans started to translate ancient texts from sanskrit and one person came up with the translation of probably of the sanskrit terms sunyata and translated it as emptiness that doesn't sound so nice it sounds like a something missing or something like that so i have an alternative translation for the buddhist term emptiness so that empty is an important word so remember the zen master said how can i teach you zen unless you first empty your cup empty emptiness my alternative translation for that is spaciousness spaciousness is a dimension of consciousness in you and that is what we could call the spiritual dimension of consciousness the deeper or the higher consciousness just words doesn't matter and that is in every human it's there many don't know that it's there because the clutter is so dense that they have no realization of the underlying spaciousness and that is why i say in millions of humans that is still a dormant faculty so to speak so the most important realization in your life much more important than what you have achieved on the level of the world whether your life in worldly terms is regarded as a huge success or additional failure or for most of you probably something in between that's normal sometimes you fail sometimes you succeed and you move from gaining losing high and low up and down that's the identity for most so the clutter of your mind is there but there are moments in your life when [Music] you become aware of something spacious underneath it but you may not call it like call it that you may not call it anything it may arise for example in and oh in many humans who may not never have heard of anything spiritual they're still they're out there they don't know that a little bit of that is in them [Music] so but they don't know it this little little glances come occasionally into their lives of that dimension it's not enough to actually say that the spiritual dimension has awakened in them but little flashes come up now and then into their lives and that is enough those little flashes from the that dimension come into their lives and that is enough to keep many people sane and those slashes can come when they you might think when you go out into nature and you see something extraordinarily beautiful like a sunset for a moment you go ah or the vastness of the ocean or the sky or the elements the wind the storm and for a moment you go ah and it's a moment of intense aliveness and you feel and then you may remember that moment a little later that was such a beautiful moment why was it yes maybe what you perceived was beautiful but you felt something in that moment you felt a heightened sense of aliveness and a deep peace and connectedness with being so to speak why because that moment of sense perception of something vast or beautiful freed you for a moment from the incessant stream of thinking so the incessant stream of thinking is let's say you see this vast this incredible sunset or whatever and for a moment you give it your complete attention and for a moment you're not thinking about yourself your problems your problematic life history or your even more problematic future and actually you're not thinking about anything for a moment the stream of thinking subsides and you and it goes [Music] and that is without knowing it you have a little flash has come up from that dimension and it's and though and then the next moment it may come up a few days later again when you look into the eyes of a baby one year old maybe just in the street or in a cafe and baby looks at you and the baby is one year old and the eyes are like the babies and you know instinctively that the baby is not thinking about you because thinking hasn't started yet the words have not accumulated yet the thoughts haven't started yet and yet there's a consciousness there and you can see very clearly there's an intense consciousness that looking through those eyes at you without judging you in any way and in that moment for just a few seconds you feel so good why do you feel so good because at that moment the baby liberated you from your stream of thinking and again a little bit of spaciousness opened up inside you and so this for those few seconds when you looked into the eyes of the baby you were not thinking and the baby wasn't thinking so the babe through the baby you you are able to be in that dimension and it felt so good spontaneously they can arise they're not recognized by people as ultimately spiritual but they are and so many people there are millions of people who experience those things briefly but that's enough to give you sense still of life is worth living and then there are others who are so burdened by their minds they cannot even communicate with a baby they cannot even perceive the beauty of nature anymore because their mind is so noisy that they never there's a total veil so they don't look at the baby like they they look at the baby oh that's a nice baby they don't really see the baby immediately it's labeled you