Introductory Talk
Weekend Group
Bremen
23rd of February 2018
2nd in the series ‘The Clear Sky’
I’m just going to say a few words because we have some new people here, normally it’s not necessary. Usually I let the situation speak for itself without having to say anything but sometimes I make an exception, as I’m going to do now. So here’s a few words about my intentions over this weekend together, and the words are for the people whom I have not met me before and who have not met me before.
In this room where we are assembled there are twenty-two people. We’re all individuals, we all have our past and our present, and hopefully our future, and we all have our wishes and intentions and plans, and maybe destiny too, but also there’s something else which is not very well known. On the other side of the fences that we live inside there’s something else, and that is a common universal space where we are all united. It includes everybody here and everybody in the world and all living things that exist anywhere, and if you can include that in your reality then you don’t take yourself quite so seriously, amongst other things.
Now, the new people, when you begin to experience that, which I hope you will, it seems to be somewhere else other than the world that is familiar to you in your life so far, and the feeling is, well, “Even if I can move into that space then I leave my known and familiar world behind, and if I move back to my known and familiar world I leave that behind.” So it seems like an either/or situation but it’s not, because if you find the universal space then it includes everything, and you can bring that connection with the universal energy into your daily lives. But, aber – my teacher used to say that you Germans, you all go to hell on your butts (laughs), because ‘butt’ is also the bottom – but at the same time I just read recently a statement that I think is appropriate here from another teacher that I was reading about, and he was saying that to bring that energy in is like a ship docking, if the ship comes in to dock and there’s already a ship there then it can’t dock. So in other words, at the same time as they are not at war with each other, these two spaces, in order for you to allow this other ship, the universal ship, to dock, you have to make a space in you. If you manage to join them both, the individual that you are with your cosmic connection, then the individual that you are will not be the same individual – the individual can become to some extent if not to a large extent ‘cosmic’. It takes a while, it takes much exploration, but then the way that you express yourself as a human being is decided by the cosmic energy flowing into you as an individual.
For that I’ll give you a small example. You are always sitting here when I come into the room, if I don’t have a universal connection then maybe I say “Hello everybody, I hope you had a good trip here, I hope you enjoy yourselves here, and it’s very cold today, isn’t it?” Then I just talk about something which is normally the way we connect with each other and exchange whatever in conversations. But when I came in then I didn’t do that, I looked around and I looked in the corner there, I sat down and I stood up, and I moved around and didn’t move around, I sat, and so on. This was not something that actually this person, normal personality Michael Barnett, was doing. The way that I express myself or the way I am expressed, as will happen during these days together, is not coming from the normal place that people express themselves from – I’d like to apologise for that! (Laughs). You might think sometimes that I’m a very strange sort of guy.
So I guess if you’re in that space that I’m talking about you become rather unpredictable – nobody knows what’s going to happen next, including me. Sometimes I come into a session and become very active and I work with you or your energy to try and bring your energy into a more subtle and refined state, or sometimes I sit down and I sit here for a long time, and you might say I’m in meditation but I’m not. In a way I’m a meditation teacher who doesn’t meditate, but I fall often into a meditative state, I sit quietly and I’m not really regarding time at all.
So that’s a warning, you don’t know what’s going to happen next and neither do I. (Laughs).
When something like that happens, it’s not just that some stillness and silence comes to me and you all have to wait until it changes. This place that I’m in which comes from my cosmic connection, that place is also in you, and there’s a way in which you can be with me and tune in when that state awakens the same state in you. That process is known as resonance.
Going back a bit now, when I was fourteen years old and of course at school, amongst all the other subjects we did, we had once a week a music lesson. The music teacher didn’t want to do anything very much during the lesson so he would just throw something out and then sit and read his paper or something, but one day he came into the classroom with some objects. He took the lid off his desk and put one of these things there, then he went to a cupboard and he put one in there, then he put one on the window sill, and then he went to one of the pupils and he put one in his pocket. So these things were scattered all around. He had one left in his hand, he hit the one that remained on the table, and that made a sound like ‘boomm,’ and all the other ones he had put everywhere else went ‘boomm’. They were of course tuning forks. I was fourteen years old, a long time ago, and what happened then was that I started to sweat, my teeth started to chatter, my hair, which I had lots of at the time, stood up! My whole body began to tremble and I had no idea why – and about twenty-five years later I realized why, because that was my job, to be a tuning fork! (Laughter). But first I had to get the sound. I’m now used to getting the sound, and since then, before that even, I see if I can get whoever I meet to resonate in the way that the tuning forks did with the one that he struck on the table.
Of course the tuning forks that respond to the one that is hit don’t ring until the resonance is giving something to resonate with, so it’s very beautiful for me when people come and join me around most of Europe now, in the seminars, to see how when they come, some of them again and again, that this state of resonance happens very quickly if not immediately, and continues to do so and gets stronger and stronger until instead of resonating with me and my state, with the cosmic connection, it begins to happen on its own in other people – so maybe if we turn the weekend seminar into sitting here together for three months then the whole game would be over. (Laughs).
It also depends on the person, some people get it and start responding in that way very quickly, and for others who are more dull in that way it takes some time. Now, when I go around during my seminars, there’s always people there who have been with me often, and I’m very happy about that because when they start resonating very quickly then my own state takes on their resonance and grows, becomes stronger, and then it’s not just me and everybody else, but people who move into resonating themselves add to the resonance that I put out and then it becomes stronger for everybody, including me.
This is what happens, I thought I would say a few words but there’s always more. I have no control over the situation, it rolls out and then it stops.
Now – here I go again! – when you fall into that space that I have described then it brings you very much into the moment, because the mind slows up and eventually shuts up. Your mind is always taking you away from the moment, it’s almost impossible to think and be in the moment at the same time. Almost impossible. If you can do that then you’re a master, because that means that you can feel the mind moving but you’re not in the mind, and then the mind is not taking you away from the moment. There’s a nice saying, ‘If you find the moment, you find the eternal moment.’ Each moment is the same moment because there’s a place where there’s no time. If each moment is essentially the same moment then there’s no change, and therefore if there’s no change there’s no time because time measures change. When you fall into that eternal-moment-space then the past and the future disappear and there’s Just This, and now there’s just this and this and this. Then you’re with existence. There’s a difference between being with your life and being with existence, your life is different every moment but your existence remains the same from birth to death, and maybe before birth and after death too. Think about all that! (Laughs).
So something in you that is always present, no matter where your mind is wanting to take you, is your body. Well, the body, if you’re sitting quietly as you are, is not so active. You can experience what’s going on in it and be with that, which will bring you into the moment, but something that the body is always doing, which can pull you back to the moment, is your breathing. So if you’ve been travelling, if you’ve been talking with people or having a nice time and so on and your energy is going out and then you feel you want to come back to just being with yourself again, then just paying attention to your breathing can do that for you, bringing you back to the moment. When you find your connection with the cosmic energy then you can just connect again and then you’re also right back in the moment, but until you make that connection, that it’s your partner in life to be with it, then being aware of your breathing if you’ve been distracted a lot can bring you back to Just This.
