Beloved Students:

Again I greet you as you celebrate the movement into yet another season. As winter dawns for some of you, spring is moving toward summer for others of you. It is a good practice to stop and appreciate the unfailing work of Earth on Her own journey. Take note of how you count on Her to hold in place the annual flow of seasonal energies you may often take for granted. Be sure to bless Her and thank Her for both the wonder and the power of the changing seasons. Also, be sure to recognize this power in your own personal journey. What do you learn from the flow of seasons? How are you (on your own path) similar to Earth as She moves through the changes that occur to Her in just the movement of another year?

Of course, you must also recognize that the ability to appreciate (or sometimes dislike) the seasonal changes exists in your own mind. You have probably noticed by this point in your spiritual evolution that whether you like a particular season or not, it has a strong tendency to manifest anyway. In truth, whether you like or dislike rain has little to do with whether or not it falls. What does depend on your feelings about such, however, is the degree to which you suffer as a result of its presence. To the person who loves rain, rainy days are experienced as a gift from heaven. To those who dislike rain, however, those same days may be greeted with anything from mild irritation to a sense that the gods have abandoned him or her.

As you look at the situation, something becomes very obvious: the person who likes rain suffers less on rainy days than the person who dislikes rain. Now, stated in that way, the situation may become humorous. However, there is something very important in your just taking notice of such seemingly small moments. The suffering that one experiences is directly proportional to the manner in which one’s mind holds the concept. If you like rain, rainy days are good. If you dislike rain, rainy days are bad. Of course, there is nothing innately good or bad about rainy days. It is only the way one holds the notion of a rainy day that determines the felt outcome of a rainy day.

This is an appropriate point to take stock of the areas in your own life that feel either good or bad to you. Let’s start with those areas that feel “bad.” I would like to suggest that you make a list of them, so you can do some housecleaning work prior to the dawn of 2004. After all, why carry bad feelings about anything into a new year if, in fact, you have the power to change something about the way you hold those feelings.

After making a list of areas in your life that seem to be a continual source for your suffering, look carefully at each to determine how it might be like our rainy day example. The mind being what it is, will likely try to convince you that your area is somehow different. As you know, this is the way minds work. But as you investigate more deeply, you will discover like all those who have before you so discovered, that your suffering comes less from the event or condition than from how you hold the situation in your mind. If you think it’s bad to have diabetes, then you have no choice but to suffer with it (should you happen to have it). Or, you may find you have some judgment of those who are afflicted with this disease. Either way, you suffer.

If you think it is bad when someone lies to you, then you have no choice but to suffer when that happens. If you are like most people, you not only suffer when you discover you’ve been lied to, you continue that suffering by feeling you’ve been duped or tricked by judging the other person for lying, and by judging yourself for being gullible. All in all, you have a really bad time of it! Now this is pretty complicated suffering, because the mind goes into one of those obsessive phases where you seem to be unable to let go of both the situation itself, and your suffering as a result of experiencing the situation.

When you have delved into those areas of repeated suffering, take a clean look at the opposite end of the spectrum – those areas you consider “good” in your life. Here you may find yourself asking, “How could those good areas contribute to my suffering? I use them to help me manage my suffering.” Of course, there is nothing wrong with experiencing something that happens to you as “good.” Clearly, such is preferable to the other option, but your risk here is two-fold. In the first place, when you have come to count on something to happen, to make or help you feel good, your happiness may become dependent on that thing happening. When it doesn’t happen, you find yourself suffering because the mind told you it should have happened. Secondly, there is a tendency to look at the lives of others to evaluate one’s own life. When you see that good things are happening to others, but you are unable to see those same things happening for yourself, you have no choice but to suffer.

You see, the mind will tell you that you have no choice but to see things as good and bad. That is, the things that appear pleasurable are good; the things that are not pleasurable are bad. It is part of the human condition (or you might say “learning experience”) to feel very aligned with mind in such instances. It is only by having that very strong felt experience that you are able to transcend the parameters of mind. Thus, the goal is not to eliminate good and bad thinking, it is to learn to move beyond suffering. When you become deeply invested in this outcome, you discover that good and bad thinking does not serve you toward this end.

Certain things will happen in your life, whether or not you like them to happen. The real spiritual skill is in being attentive to how you hold these events, circumstances and conditions. You can become depressed about them, or angry about them, but neither really does you any good. Indeed, there are only two kinds of experiences that can happen to you: those you can do something about, possibly affecting the outcome, and those you cannot do anything about. If the circumstance is something you can do something about, there is no need for you to suffer through depression, anger, etc. You simply do what is needed to change the outcome. If, however, the situation is something about which you can do nothing to alter the outcome, then there is no use in experiencing depression, or anger, etc. Your having these feelings will not change the outcome, so why waste the energy and the life force it takes to suffer?

Please join me this month in listening to the lecture I gave in Denver on November 2 of this year. It is titled What are you Holding?, and it is my hope that it will help you see through some of the controlling machinations of your mind. As most of you know, this is the time of year to be fully considering what you want to drop from your personal process in the New Year, as well as what you would like to add. I would find it particularly delightful if many of you determined to give up suffering, particularly in those areas of repeated patterns of suffering. For those of you who always wonder what to give Me during the season of giving, I would be most pleased to receive your dedication to stop suffering.

As I am sure you can see, if everyone in the world would make this dedication for their own lives, a different kind of world would instantly appear. Now it seems to me that those who live in areas of relative comfort should undertake this as a gift not only to themselves, but to all others as well. While this is not something that is easy to accomplish anywhere in the world, I think it is somewhat easier in those areas and in those situations where individuals are not really losing sleep about food, shelter, clothing, etc. As you have discovered by now, you are powerless over how another uses his/her mind. The suffering another’s mind presents is for them what yours is for you. What you can do something about are the fixations of your own mind, and by determining to cleanse your mind of habituated suffering, you “set the bar,” as it were, for others around you; and you give hope in a sometimes otherwise hopeless world that transformation is possible. What a wondrous gift to offer to all sentient beings this giving and sharing season.

Please continue with the meditation practices I have given you, and hold fast to your spiritual awareness. Recognize that what arises in life is but a dream product, and seek in all ways to free yourselves and others from suffering mind.

May this Teaching inspire you and in some rich way, bless you. In your freedom, may you find happiness vast enough to hold the full experiencing of sentient beings on Earth. Much peace and joy to each and every one of you.

Djwhal Khul