Part II : Don't Take Anything Personally

*Live Lovestream Recording
The book, The Four Agreements, was a pivotal teacher early in my journey of self-discovery. It's teachings deepen even further when seen through the lens of the Buddha Dharma. In this talk we'll explore how 'not taking things personally' aligns with the Buddha's teachings on non-attachment and compassion. Together, we'll look at how these agreements support us in everyday moments - relationships, work, self-talk, and inner conflict - turning ordinary life into a path of awakening.

Transcript

Thank you for everyone who's here today.

Those of you that have been here before with me,

And those of you that are new for the first time,

I welcome everyone.

And I welcome you as you are.

Just as you are.

With all your stuff and all your mess and all your non-mess,

All your emotions and your thoughts,

Just as you are.

And I invite you to bring an open-hearted base,

So that even if you're hearing things that you already know,

That's the ego mind,

The ego mind already knows everything,

So even if you're hearing things that you know,

Perhaps through an open-hearted space,

You can hear them a little bit differently,

In a new way.

Imagine what your life would look like if each time you showed up to your life,

It was the present moment,

Over and over and over again.

So even though you've been to the beach a thousand times,

Imagine what it would be like to show up and see the ocean for the first time,

Each time you see the ocean,

To put your feet in the sand for the first time,

Each time you put your feet in the sand.

Imagine.

How would your life be different if you lived in presence,

If you learned to release the past-thinking ruminating mind and the future-thinking mind and continually came back to this moment.

And then,

If you added mindfulness to that practice,

And you not only came back to presence,

Rather than living in the mind,

But you also added mindfulness,

And mindfulness is the practice of meeting this moment without judgment.

What then?

How would your life look different if you lived in deeper presence,

Embodied,

In form,

Rather than in the mind,

In the thought stream.

And then,

You didn't judge this moment.

You simply noticed what is here.

What would that do to your life,

To your life experience?

What would that do to the intimacy of your life experience?

Yeah.

So you'll notice that I ask a lot of questions,

And I pause,

And I ask questions,

And I pause.

Because this isn't about passively feeding you information.

Even though you might hear some new information,

That's okay.

But the intention is to open doors,

Plant seeds in the mind garden,

Open spaces that maybe you weren't intimate with before,

Or maybe you've just forgotten.

The questions are meant to bring you more deeply into conversation with your life experience,

As I do for myself.

So anything and everything that I offer you is coming from my lived experience.

I didn't just read it in a book,

Or listen to a podcast and said,

This would be something good to talk about and tell people about.

No,

My friends.

We need to walk the walk that we talk.

There's so much information out there,

But only when it is taken through our own system,

Digested,

Lived,

And embodied,

Only then can we offer it to others.

Does it mean that I'm perfect?

Absolutely not.

Does it mean that I have a handle on living in presence,

Intentionally,

Embodied,

In conscious awareness,

100% of the time?

No,

My friends.

And that's where we allow our humanness to come forth.

The messy human that gets caught up in conditioned patterns of thinking in our mind,

In our old emotional habits,

We all get caught up in that.

It's not a problem.

It's not a problem.

The deeper question is,

How long do we stay in that space?

How do we continually self-perpetuate suffering?

If we have anxiety,

How long do we hold on to it?

And how do we feed those anxious states?

Do we hop on social media and get caught up with more news and more horrible things going on?

What does that do to our state of anxiety?

Or do we notice the anxiety,

Take a deep breath,

Land in the body,

Bring ourselves some compassion,

And then say,

I'm going to go for a nature walk.

Because when I look up at the sky,

I remember who I am.

So my friends,

Today we're diving deeply into our second agreement,

Don't take anything personally.

And you can also check out the first agreement,

Be Impeccable With Your Word,

As a recording on my page,

And we will be doing the third and fourth agreements in the upcoming days.

So you can check that out also.

Okay my friends,

Let's go there.

Agreement number two,

Don't take anything personally.

So the reason that I named this talk Four Agreements,

One Path,

Is because really my life's journey is rooted in the Buddha Dharma,

In the Buddha's teachings from 2600 years ago.

But there are contemporary teachers that offer us beautiful teachings,

Like Don Miguel Ruiz,

Who is the author of the Four Agreements,

This little book that's packed with just a ton of amazing,

Transformational guiding information.

Well,

It's more than information,

It's really a path,

A path.

And I often say he could have put thousands of agreements that we could make with ourselves,

But he only chose four.

So you better believe that these four are big ones,

And these four are transformational.

So when we embrace them and embody them and bring them into our world,

We really change our life.

Today we're diving into do not take anything personally.

So basically what that means is what other people say about you and what other people do is all about them,

Not about you.

How does that sound?

It has nothing to do with you.

And yet,

It feels so personal.

It feels so personal.

But you're going to see that this agreement really joins the Buddha's teachings on no-self,

On anatta,

The Pali word for no-self.

And hopefully in our time together,

I'm going to show you how those come together.

This agreement of don't take anything personally loosens one of the deepest causes of suffering for all of us humans.

The belief that everything is about me.

You know that story?

Everything is about me.

I believe that I have to defend myself.

I believe that there's this solid thing called me.

I have to defend against the threatening world.

But what this agreement does for us and what the Buddha taught is one and the same.

It's that what I call me,

What I call myself is not a fixed entity.

It's a conglomeration of processes.

So what that means is if I understand that I'm not a fixed thing,

Then there's nothing to protect here.

There's no solid me.

There's nothing to defend.

When we begin to understand that other people's words and behaviors and actions are arising from their own life conditions,

Their own history,

Their own pain,

Their own fear,

Then our reactivity softens.

It makes us free,

My friends.

So this agreement,

Don't take anything personally,

Is truly a path to freedom.

And even though it might sound kind of simple,

Okay,

I won't take it personal,

But for most of us,

It feels almost impossible.

Why does it feel so difficult to not take things personally?

When your partner behaves a certain way and it feels,

Oh,

That's so personal,

It's about me,

It's against me.

Or when your child,

Your teenager,

Rolls their eyes and is obnoxious,

It feels like this is against me and I have to defend myself.

Why is it so hard for us not to take it personally?

The reason,

My friends,

Is because taking things personally is not just a habit,

It's not just something we're used to,

And we are used to it,

But it's an identity.

We believe we are this fixed self that needs to be protected.

It's how the mind protects us.

This ego sense of self,

I am,

Are the strongest,

Most powerful words that we speak.

And we misuse that word,

Those two words,

I am.

We misuse them.

We say,

I am a woman,

I am a surgeon,

I am a mother.

All of those are identities,

And the ego sense of self continues to build up on all these identities and then believes that I have to protect this woman,

This surgeon,

Doctor,

Mother,

Daughter.

Do you see how these identities feel so solid?

So when something happens,

When someone,

Let's say,

Criticizes us,

Or ignores us,

Or misunderstands us,

Our mind immediately jumps to,

Oh,

This is all about me.

Does that resonate?

So what Don Miguel Ruiz,

The writer of the Four Agreements,

What he offers us is to not take things personally,

Because there is no real solid me here.

It's all just an illusion.

It's a construct of roles and identities.

But in essence,

We are not these roles and identities.

What we are is a conglomeration of processes.

What do I mean by that?

Seeing,

Hearing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

Thinking.

That's what we are.

We are a bunch of processes.

Everything else,

All those roles and identities,

We layer on top of that,

And we believe that to be who we are.

So this agreement is helping us to be free from unnecessary suffering.

It's not asking us to be numb or indifferent.

It's asking us to have the right view,

Which is what the Buddha offered us.

The right view,

The deep understanding,

The wisdom that other people's words don't define us.

That other people's behaviors don't reveal our worth.

That other people's reactions are about who they are,

Not who we are.

So we just need to stay in our lane.

We just need to stay in our lane,

My friends.

We need to take our broom or our mop,

Whatever you like,

And clean up our side of the street.

We need to work on our own suffering,

Our own anger,

Grief,

Sadness,

Our own way of relating to others in this world.

Stay in our lane.

Take the wheel and drive it and stay in our lane.

Pick up the broom and clean up our side of the street.

Don't worry if your neighbor has a whole bunch of leaves that they haven't raked.

Look at your own leaves.

Tend to your own garden.

But do we do this most of the time,

My friends?

And the answer is no.

Usually what we do is we confuse other people's worlds with our own identity.

So when you behave a certain way,

Whoever the you is,

I define myself by that.

If you are rude to me,

I take it personally and I start judging.

And then I add on expectations.

Well,

You shouldn't be rude to me.

Do you see how this is a tiny little snowball that just grows and grows and grows?

So our suffering,

My friends,

Is created by attaching to this false sense of self,

Not having the right view,

Not having the deep wisdom and understanding that there is no me here and understanding that the deepest suffering that comes to us in this life is because we identify and cling to I,

Me,

Mine.

Right?

When you were one year old,

Was there any of this?

Did you have a sense of I,

Me,

Mine?

No.

You were just moving through the world.

Eating,

Drinking,

Smelling,

Tasting.

You know those videos of the babies tasting lemon for the first time and making the faces and tasting ice cream for the first time and making the face.

That was you.

That was me.

There was no sense of I,

Me,

Mine.

So this concept of I,

Me,

Mine,

This concept of self,

That there's a solid me that I need to defend here,

Is at the root of all of our suffering,

My friends.

And the Buddha taught that the suffering arises because we are constantly defending this false sense of self.

We cling to it.

Why?

Because it feels safer.

Because the ego is trying to protect us.

Because when we were young,

7,

8,

9 years old,

Life didn't go the way we wanted.

And it was scary.

And maybe our caregivers didn't have all the tools,

The emotional intelligence to raise us like a Buddha.

So we began to connect to different conditioned habits of mind.

We began to build identities.

I'm the good girl.

I'm the smart girl.

I'm the athletic girl.

I'm the beautiful girl.

I'm the pretty girl.

Or whatever applies to you.

And we started layering and layering and layering these identities.

And as we become adults,

Those identities don't go away unless you show up to a platform like this where we're having these heart openings and opening these spaces for you to consider these layered identities that you've added to yourself.

But otherwise,

They don't go away.

And we live our life defending the I-me-mine,

The sense of separate self.

So what creates our suffering,

My friends,

Is attaching to the sense of who I am.

So it doesn't mean that you don't exist.

Some people say,

Wait a minute,

So you mean I don't exist?

I'm nothing?

No thing?

It means that there is no fixed,

Solid,

Permanent you that can be attacked or defended by somebody else.

So if someone speaks harshly to you,

In that moment,

That's arising from their conditioning,

Their mood,

Their history,

Their causes and conditions,

Their own pain,

And their own unmet needs.

And it's the same thing for us.

We behave from our own conditioning,

Moods,

History,

Pain,

Unmet needs.

So the only place where we have true agency,

Yes,

My friends,

It's on our own side of the street,

Taking care of our own mind garden,

Taking care of our own pain,

Our own unmet needs,

So that we don't spill them over onto others.

So we learn that phenomena in life arise and fall away,

Arise and fall away.

Nothing is personal.

Life just is.

And this is the core of Zen Buddhist teachings in particular,

Which is simply be with reality.

Life just is.

Because if you fight reality,

My friends,

How often are you going to win that game?

Tell me,

How often are you going to win the game?

It's a losing battle.

So here we are,

Knowing,

Learning,

Open-hearted,

Open-minded,

Showing up,

Truly showing up to transform ourselves.

This is what I mentioned in the beginning.

We can show up for entertainment.

Oh wow,

This is fun to listen to.

Or we can really chew on this wisdom,

On these Dharma talks,

On these ancient wisdom teachings that have been for thousands of years.

And we can boomerang them back to ourselves and say,

How is this supporting me in my life?

So what do we do?

How do we not take things personally?

Well,

You're not going to be surprised that I'm going to point us back to the ABCs of Soul Surgery.

So those of you that have been with me before in our prior 14 love streams,

If you want to put the ABCs of Soul Surgery in the chat,

That'll support those of us that are new here for the first time.

The ABCs of Soul Surgery,

Let me backtrack a second,

Were created to help us in moments of overwhelm,

Moments of anxiety.

And in order to be able to use them in moments of overwhelm,

We need to use them in moments of ease.

It's kind of like training to run a marathon.

We don't just get up and go run a marathon.

It wouldn't be possible.

We wouldn't even know where to start.

But if we,

On a daily basis,

Train for the marathon,

When that big event,

When that comes,

We'll be prepared.

We'll have all our tools.

It's the same with these ABCs of Soul Surgery.

It's a practice.

It's a practice that we do every day,

On a daily basis,

On a regular basis.

And when we do that,

When the big event comes,

Like the marathon,

The big event of an overwhelm,

An argument with someone,

An upsetting situation,

We'll be able to bring the ABCs in sooner.

So we don't have to sit in that pain,

That anxiety,

That overwhelm,

That grief,

That sadness,

For any longer than necessary.

So let's get into it.

What are the ABCs?

Take a deep breath with me first.

We've done a lot of talking,

And a lot of listening and engaging.

Let's take a deep breath.

I call these One Breath Meditation.

Just with one breath,

You can notice how the tone of my voice has deepened a bit,

The cadence of my voice has slowed down.

Do you notice how that one deep breath calms the nervous system?

So on a daily basis,

We want to practice.

Because anything you want to get good at,

Including freeing ourselves from suffering,

And loosening the sense of self,

Of I-me-mine,

And not taking things personally,

All of those things,

We need to practice to become adept at it.

Otherwise we have autopilot.

The autopilot mind just takes over.

It's too quick.

It's too conditioned.

So practicing the ABCs of Soul Surgery is a practice that helps us to become free of this overwhelmed mind,

The overthinking mind.

So the A is Awareness.

Awareness is always the first intervention.

Always.

Every single time.

We can't do anything,

Go anywhere without awareness.

If we're stuck in the loop of overwhelm,

Overthinking,

Anxiety,

Grief,

Sadness,

Identifying with our pain,

Whatever our loop is,

If we're stuck in it,

We're not aware.

We're stuck.

We're in the muck.

So awareness is the first step.

We become aware of what is here.

And we name it.

Sadness is here.

Overwhelm is here.

Anxiety is here.

B,

The breath.

Over and over we return to our breath.

Our breath calms the nervous system,

Takes us out of sympathetic overdrive,

Fight or flight,

Relaxes that cortisol surge of the sympathetic nervous system,

And brings us into presence.

Because we can only notice this breath in this present moment.

And our bodies are only ever in present moment time.

So first,

The A,

We become aware of what's here.

We'll just use an example.

Sadness is here.

We go to B,

Breath.

We take a deep breath.

And it could be that one breath meditation.

Take it with me nice and slow,

Remembering to lengthen that exhale.

Because it's the long exhale that stimulates our rest and relax and restore nervous system,

The parasympathetic drive and the vagus nerve.

And even yawning can do that for us,

Can stimulate the vagus nerve.

So it's okay if you take that deep inhale and you yawn with it.

And then you do a long exhale.

So let's come to the breath in this moment.

Do it with me,

My friends.

And just check in and notice how that feels.

Just that one breath.

And then we go to the C of the ABCs of Soul Surgery.

Compassionate contemplation.

So first we bring in the self-compassion.

A hand on heart,

Perhaps a self-hug,

Reminding us,

Hey,

Sweetheart,

You're going through a tough time right now.

It's okay.

It's okay.

You're doing the best you can.

You're taking care of yourself with this ABCs of Soul Surgery.

And you go to the contemplation.

The contemplation is that self-inquiry,

The investigation of,

Let's say we were working with a sadness with,

Huh,

So sadness is here.

Isn't that interesting that sadness often comes up when such and such happens or when I engage with this person or when these thoughts come up for me.

So we dive deeper into whatever it is that is happening.

Because now we have awareness about it.

We've taken our breath.

We've calmed our nervous system.

We've given ourselves some self-compassion.

And now we're ready to dive deeper.

So those,

My friends,

Are the ABCs of Soul Surgery.

And again,

I invite you to ask yourself,

What is my practice?

What is my regular practice?

We need to have a practice,

My friends.

Otherwise,

We're not going to transform.

We're going to regurgitate the same thoughts,

The same behaviors,

The same conditioned patterns of mind because they're so deeply ingrained for decades,

Right?

So we have a moment of choice when something happens and we get triggered and we take something personally.

We get to introduce that little micropause,

Even if it's brief.

We can engage in the ABCs of Soul Surgery in that moment and we can also ask ourselves,

Is this about me or is this about the other person?

So we're not suppressing our reaction.

We're not shaming ourselves because we felt hurt or we took it personally.

We just noticed,

Personalization is arising.

I am personalizing this.

I am protecting and defending this ego sense of self,

This I-me mind.

But when you bring awareness to it and you say,

Ah,

Here's what's happening.

Personalization is arising.

This is called mindfulness of mind.

And when we see what's happening,

We see that we're personalizing,

That we're taking something personally,

It begins to loosen it.

And something incredible happens when we develop this mindfulness of mind.

What forms is compassion.

And compassion replaces the personalization.

When we stop taking things personally and realizing that person's rude comment or that person that cut me off in traffic or online,

That has nothing to do with me.

The compassion arises.

Instead of,

Oh my gosh,

What did I do wrong to provoke this reaction,

We begin to ask,

What might be happening for them and also what's going on for me in this moment?

So it's not a way to excuse harmful behavior.

Absolutely not.

That's where we need healthy boundaries and we need discernment.

We need to be discerning when something is not healthy and harmful for us.

What we do want to do by noticing that we're personalizing is to remove the self-centered suffering from the equation.

We want our next words,

Our next actions to come from clarity rather than anger or hatred.

So how do we live with this agreement of not taking things personally in real life?

How do we do it?

Well,

Not taking things personally does not mean that I don't feel hurt or I don't set boundaries or I don't speak my truth.

It doesn't mean any of those things.

But what it does mean is it means that we don't build an identity out of a momentary reaction.

The stories that we're carrying are no longer necessary.

We don't need to make ourselves the center of every experience.

You know,

If your child,

Your teenager is rolling their eyes at you and answering snarkily,

That's not about me.

That's the process that's going on inside of them.

Can I leave it there?

So what we're speaking of,

My friends,

Is responding rather than reacting.

And this is liberating.

This is freedom.

So let me go back into the chat before we go into our guided meditation so that we can embody these teachings because we don't want to stay in the blah,

Blah,

Blah.

We don't want to stay in the words.

We want to actually dive deeply into knowing the truth of these teachings.

And how do we know the truth of these teachings?

By living them.

By feeling them in the body.

By having them land from the intellectual cognitive mind.

We understand.

Great.

But then it's got to land more deeply.

Otherwise,

We're just regurgitating thoughts and ideas but they're not embodied.

If all we needed to do was hear somebody talking about this stuff or read a book or listen to a podcast,

We'd all have it figured out.

But that's not how it works,

My friends.

That's a passive kind of influx of the teachings.

That's the first step,

Yes.

So it is very important to have these Dharma Talks and have these beautiful gatherings together.

And then we need to take them to the next step which is to live with them,

To embody them.

How do we embody?

By slowing down and taking them in through a guided meditation which we'll do in a moment.

How else do we embody them?

By defining our intention and by creating attention towards our intention so that we're actually living these teachings.

We're walking with them rather than just keeping them as thoughts in our head.

So,

My friends,

We have come to a moment of doing a guided meditation to help the teachings just dive in a little bit more,

A little bit more deeply to land.

So I invite you to close your eyes if that feels comfortable for you and to land in your body using your breath as the anchor to bring yourself into present moment time into the here and now the only time you're ever alive.

So you bring the light of awareness to your breath inhaling in I know I am breathing in exhaling I know I am breathing out and we begin to meet each other in the space between the words allowing the silence to simply be checking in with our body noticing what is here perhaps a tightness or a contraction or perhaps a gentle flow and expansion peace is this moment without judgment mindfulness is noticing this moment without judgment simply what is here and if any thoughts arise simply notice them realizing that thoughts come and thoughts go incessantly and constantly endlessly until our last breath we don't meditate to stop our thoughts we meditate to meet reality to meet the one who is meditating to meet what is here when I sit in stillness and silence perhaps we can bring a memory of a moment where I took something personally remembering how it felt when I took it personally remember the upset and the hurt that came up remembering the discomfort accompanying these thoughts of taking things personally and remembering the teachings from today's second agreement that nothing is personal that each 8 billion of us is living in our own self-perpetuated universe called the mind and our minds create a sense of security by creating the ego identity the sense that I am a solid thing a solid person and yet when we hear the wisdom teachings we remember that I am simply a conglomeration of processes that are ever changing in this impermanent world I move through life with seeing hearing,

Smelling tasting,

Touching and thinking these are all my sense processes and they all bring the world right here to me and so I begin this practice of loosening my self-identification with the ego loosening the I,

Me,

Mine mind the one that takes things personally the one that believes I'm right,

You're wrong the one that believes that we are separate selves and remembering that though we each carry our own uniqueness unique personality unique characteristics unique sensitivities and sense of humor at our core our true nature our ultimate essence is the same we come from the one love stream to return to the one love stream the one the mystery with the next breath begin to move the body a little wiggle of finger and toes or a little neck roll or shoulder roll coming back into this space with deep gratitude for meeting ourselves here in truth in community in togetherness looking to transform our own pain and discomfort looking to live from a space of truth to live with ease and joy and equanimity so that the ups are not so up and the downs are not so down flow we are going to continue continue diving in to the four agreements with a third agreement in a few days and I invite you to join us for that and then we'll do the fourth agreement a few days after that so I'd love to know what you're taking with you in your life because you know when we speak these words we bring them to life we give them life and this reminds me a little story I'll tell you real quickly that I write poetry and I also paint and draw and years ago I was at a bookstore studying many years ago for my boards in surgery many many years ago and they were setting up a little table and I was curious so I took a break from my studies and I went over they had chairs and a table and I said to the woman what are you setting up here for and she said we're setting up for a poetry reading and my heart started pumping because I'd never done a poetry reading yet I'd been writing poetry my whole life this is many years ago over 20 years ago 25 years ago maybe and she said do you write poetry and I said well yes and she said would you like to come read and I said oh my gosh I've never read out loud I'm really nervous I could even feel my heart beating just in that moment my palms getting sweaty and she said to me these words that I've never forgotten I'm sharing them with you 25 years later she said to me your poems aren't born until you speak them your poems are not born until you speak them and in a way I'm inviting that to you your intentions and to speaking your truth because when we speak it out loud we bring a new energy to our intention so what is something that you got from our time together that you can bring into your real life experience and embody it truly embody it so that it doesn't just stay up here as an interesting two hours with Dr.

Tammy Soul Surgeon it's actually wow my life is starting to transform because I'm actually doing the thing so to close up our time together I'm going to read Rumi's poem from the 13th century the poem called The Breeze at Dawn and Rumi invites us the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you don't go back to sleep you must ask for what you really want don't go back to sleep people are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch the door is round and open don't go back to sleep Om Shanti Shanti Shanti peace in your heart peace in your mind peace in our world let's share the merit of whatever benefit might have come to us from our sharing and listening today may it benefit ourselves and be of benefit to anyone and everyone we encounter and may it aid in the healing and transformation of our world thank you my friends for your time thank you for your embodied presence thank you for your attention thank you for walking this walk with me I walked alone for a long time in my life and around 18 years ago when I fell head first into the journey of self discovery I realized one of the gifts is that you don't have to do it alone don't have to do it alone and here we are,

That's why I came on Insight Timer because we don't have to do it alone we can do it together alone,

Together we still have to walk the walk our own selves and we can do it in community so thank you,

Thank you everyone wishing you all a beautiful presence filled day and I will see you here again at our next love stream and remember our words from Rumi don't go back to sleep