Exercises - Only Prayer - Salt Lake City Tape 3 & 4 April 71

(*Audience participation is in parentheses--notations in brackets have been added for clarification )
[This teaching idea comes from my teacher through Donna Lancaster.
If you would like to receive her newsletter which reiterates our teacher's material, you can contact her at donnalancaster@hillsboro.net.
Meanwhile, here is some material from our teacher that I didn't have.
By the way, she's written a book "The Short and the Tall of it" , A wonderful biography

At one of the workshops, everyone was saying that nobody was working on the Teachings; so I gave them a prayer. I said that if they could devoutly say this prayer, then they would know that they were working on the Teachings.

Oh Lord if I worship thee (which is worship all of our studies and inquiring and praying and what-have-you) to gain heaven, deny it to me, and if I worship thee to escape hell, cast me in.

So that gets down to see what you're doing all this teaching for, huh? If I am worshipping thee just to gain pleasure and escape pain, take me out. So everybody began to see a little plainer-what we're all working on-the four dual basic urges on all levels. We call it love. We call it religion. We call it many things, but all it is is lust for pleasure and escaping pain on all levels-mentally, psychologically, physically.

So if I should see that the four dual basic urges (see reference under "Illustrations" on main web page) and non-disturbance is what I'm chasing; and not try to delude myself with some other motive [justification]-then you're telling yourself the truth and you're not lying to yourself.

When you quit lying to yourself, a transformation takes place. You don't have to do a thing in the world about it-transformation takes place. When we can see that all of our motives for our studying, for our efforts, for what we would call worship, is to gain pleasure and escape pain, then we're still trying to serve the senses.

Be content to just look at it-there's nothing one can do about it-you might as well see it flat-footed; and truthfully, quit lying to oneself. We tell all sorts of reasons that I do this because of my duty to God; and I do it because I love; and I do it because I admire truth; and I do it for all these fancy reasons and all we're doing it for is to gain pleasure and escape pain on all levels. When we can tell ourselves that everything we're doing is unconsciously for the four dbu's, and then you'll find that a transformation takes place.