With the passing of Nelson Mandela and myself just finding out kind of being in front

of a computer and then leaving the screen behind and sitting down and weeping and really

saying, so what is this? What's the depth of this sorrow about? For me it was the sense

of his goodness and that that's what matters on this earth. His goodness really, really

matters and his example of the awakened heart gives hope, it's hope-giving. It says here

is what's possible, here's what can live through a human being so it's kind of an example

of what's possible which is our collective potential to really wake up these hearts.

And so what I'd like to explore this week, this class and next is really what we might

call our evolutionary path to unconditional loving that we're on this path as individuals

and collectively to the awakened heart. And when we explore what we start discovering

is well what are the primary obstacles or what in some way is challenging as we evolve

and probably the main focus I'll take tonight is that we encounter fear that leads us into

aversive judgment that as we awaken these hearts, as we engage in our lives, we hit fear

and we without knowing it sometimes go right into aversive judgment. And so I'm going

to kind of spend some time exploring that and how the ways we pay attention can really

wake us up from being caught in a smaller sense of who we are than is the truth. So we'll

use evolution as a lens and because of that I'll begin with a story about evolution where a

little girl asks her mom, how did the human race appear? And the mother answer, well God made

Adam and Eve and they had children and so all mankind was made. And two days later the little

girl asked her father the exact same question. He answered, well many years ago there were monkeys

from which the human race evolved. So this little girl is very confused and he goes back to her mom and

says, you know, how come you told me the human race was created by God and dad said they developed

...