Subjective Reality Is the Place for Liberation

In the world of systems, life is explained and measured in terms of objectivity. This reality results in the experience of division and stress. In subjective reality, there is direct feeling and experiencing of life through embodiment. Everything is met and integrated. This is the reality to be experienced, cultivated and cleared for ultimate liberation.

Transcript

So this session's been titled rewilding the mind,

So it means something like returning things to a natural state.

The natural state is regenerative,

There's vitality in it and operating chords and rhythms,

So it's not a static state,

It's rhythmic,

It's subject to growth and decay,

It's a kind of living experience and yet although items decay within nature,

Nature continues,

So clearly a single animal dies,

The species doesn't die out,

There's a regeneration.

So rewilding,

Returning to this where we can recognize aspects of our lives,

Aspects of our realities change over decades,

That thing's no longer alive,

It's finished,

This is what's coming up,

This is the new growth,

This is the green stuff and that's what we're in.

Things pass away,

New things come up,

Things that pass away we can feel grief for or nostalgia for,

New things that arise we can feel excited by or mystified by,

How do I manage this?

The human predicament is how to live in a domain which is actually still very much in accordance with nature and yet we tend to be educated consciously and subconsciously in terms of systems,

Logic,

Reason,

Decisions,

Times,

Agendas,

Achievements,

Performance,

Success,

Failure,

Do any of these occur in nature?

What do any of these,

Can any of these if you sustain them,

Success,

Failure,

Performance,

Reason,

Can any of these take you to comfortable enjoyment of the human now?

There may be one or two but the ones I've seen as far as I can recognize none of them do.

They don't move that way,

They don't take you to intimate subjective peace of mind,

They take you to say a decent career or getting sacked and the two sort of go like that,

They take you into places that you have to leave,

They take you into approval ratings that you've got to keep going on and sometimes you can't always make it,

They take you into stress they take you into a lot of explaining about the world,

Explaining about it but they don't take you into an intimate enjoyment of it,

They take you into measuring it,

They don't take you into feeling it,

Experiencing it.

So this is the systemic approach that human beings operate through and we can look around we can see you know everything is like that,

Isn't it,

Times,

Clocks,

So it's helpful for what?

For organizing people for what purpose?

To get them to run on time.

You start to think there's a hidden agenda in here,

Just actually you know the working day,

Get them all there at eight o'clock and then get rid of them at this time.

So we in fact with systems which we can operate and that's how it starts because when we can operate a system,

Oh how wonderful,

Oh look at this,

Oh I pushed this button,

Isn't that exciting,

Oh look I can do this and this light flashes,

That's how it starts and then oh the buzz is ringing I've got to do this,

Oh the light's flashing I've got to stop doing this,

Suddenly the system that you started operating is now operating you.

And it gradually becomes more dominant,

Isn't it,

Your phone call,

Oh happy to hear from you,

We're so pleased to hear from you,

Please press one,

Or press two,

Or go away.

It doesn't matter because I'm just the recorded announcement.

Please contact our website for details.

There's nobody there.

Somewhere along the line is somebody who's probably,

Oh my god,

Another one of you,

Trying to handle this thing of having grouped you know 10,

000 people together to operate in the system,

There's probably three or four agents doing it trying to manage it all.

And that's what it all comes down to,

Somewhere you come through the system however clean it is and how wonderful it is and as you dig through it you realize finally there's somebody underneath that,

You know,

Who's probably totally rattled with stress trying to keep it going.

And there's probably somewhere else somebody sitting back,

You know,

Raking off the proceeds of that,

So gains and losses.

Of course this is much more than,

But then it's that,

You know,

That kind of systemic approach is something that's so ingrained and it's not just in obvious mechanical systems but even in our perceptual systems,

That is we tend to seek models,

Stereotypes,

Because it's easier that way.

How can I place you in my vocabulary?

She's one of those,

He's one of that,

He's clearly this,

Oh he's an alpha,

He's a torus with Gemini,

He's a this,

There you are,

Your name,

Your number,

You're slotted,

Your ticket's punched,

There you are,

Now I know how to deal with you.

And it kind of has a truth to it,

But you know it's a truth of eternal division,

Eternal division and you come down to,

You know,

What's the common language?

Feel happy,

Feel unhappy,

Feel comfortable,

Feel not comfortable,

Feel worried,

Feel not worried,

Feel present,

Feel dislocated,

Spinning,

Feel sunk,

Feel crushed,

Feel elated,

Feel spinning out,

Feel up in the sky.

These experiences which seem so poetic are actually much more accurate renditions of what is discerned,

What is really experienced and by and large the system reality just poos that,

Poo poos it.

And this begins historically with the whole rise of objective science where we became dazzled by the ability to measure things as objects.

Rational science,

Measure things as objects,

With devices you can do amazing things and that reality,

That's what the real world is,

It's that which we can measure as an object there.

We can measure it with a thermometer or a ruler or a microscope or a telescope,

We have the resources to do that and you put it down,

You write down on paper five of these equals six of those,

It all kind of adds up in its own universe and anything that doesn't fit into that doesn't exist.

That's nice and easy isn't it?

What we can measure exists,

What we haven't got measurements for doesn't exist.

So therefore we only assemble the data that fit reality and the rest of the data doesn't count.

So you know,

You recognize even Newton or Einstein when they were measuring the cosmos was always experiencing indigestion,

Grief,

Excitement,

Inspiration,

Compassion hopefully,

Ethical sense of conscience,

How do you measure those?

What's more important?

What's more important?

Both have their significance don't they?

What's more important to you that we can now get close enough to Pluto to be able to photograph its surface?

What an incredible thing.

You can now send images back to Earth of Pluto.

We can see that far into space.

Unfortunately you can't see the stars in it because of the murky atmosphere you created and we can't see each other as fellow human beings.

We see each other according to our labels and categories and efficiencies and inefficiencies and whether you can do this or do that or whether you call it intelligence.

Then you get things like intelligence equals the ability to read or write or perform according to the system.

There's an intelligent person.

If you can't do differential equations you're stupid.

So if you can deal with objective reality in an approved way that's called intelligent.

But if you're someone who sensitively can appreciate wildlife or being present or what's happening in your own heart and mind,

That's irrelevant really.

That's not intelligent.

What kind of intelligence leads to your welfare and leads to your liberation from someone?

What kind of intelligence leads to your suffering?

What kind of intelligence?

So this is coming back and recognizing the wild domain of the non-systematic however curious and illogical it seems that is the reality that we need to be able to bear with,

Handle,

Experience for our enjoyment,

To cultivate for our welfare and to clear for our liberation.

And for that rational objective science and its methods will not only not prevail,

But will be frustratingly a frustrating obstacle as you know.

Try and reason with an emotion it doesn't work.

Try and blame a moon it doesn't work.

Try and make it fit something it doesn't work.

You have to meet it and you can meet this in the wilds,

The nature.

That's the point.

And notice how many times in say meditation practice or in Dharma practice or in fact in life where we meet these difficult places something goes oh well how do I do,

How do I,

I shouldn't feel this way.

What's it says in the book?

It shouldn't be like this because it's not reasonable.

Or I should know better than this.

I understand you know the hindrances are unworthy,

I've got that up here in my head and it's still happening.

Because head knowledge itself tells you about something,

Tells you how to name something but it doesn't tell you how to deal with it,

How to integrate it.

That has to come from the emotional base of the mind or the emotive base,

The heart base of the mind and that heart base has to be given ground and stability and support from the body base,

Embodied base,

Embodied base.

The heart itself,

That basis of mind is extremely sensitive and agile but it easily,

If it's not held properly it easily gets overwhelmed,

Blown away.

Or we spin out of that into thinking about our feelings,

Our moods and trying to solve them and that doesn't work either.

You have to learn to hold the heart in the body.

Then it becomes an exceptional source of the wisdom that leads to liberation and this in essence is the theme of Buddha Dhamma,

Perhaps put in unusual terms but as the Buddha famously said on numerous occasions,

There is no gaining or access to the deathless without mindfulness of the body.

Those who don't fulfil mindfulness of the body,

The deathless is lost on them.

All states that are supportive of wisdom are to be found through mindfulness of the body.

In this body with its perceptions,

Consciousness and feelings is the arising of the world,

The maintaining of the world,

The passing of the world and the path to the ceasing of the world in this very body.

What is he talking about?

Clearly when we review that last phrase he's not talking about sinews and bones.

He's talking about in this body with its consciousness and perceptions,

In this very body with its consciousness and perceptions is the arising of the world,

The cosmos and the passing and the way to the ceasing of that in this very body.

Now we again have to re-figure that because by and large our experience of objectivity is so dominant that we tend to experience the body as an object.

That is it's a thing I see there.

So I see those bodies in front of me.

I can look down,

I can see this body there and I'm here looking at it.

I can look in the mirror and see that body there and I'm looking at it,

It's an object.

I can inform a viewer about it or an opinion about it,

Be attracted to it,

Disappointed with it,

Whatever.

It's an object and I want to make that object do what objects are supposed to do,

Which is satisfy me.

It's always there with objects,

Either satisfy me or get out of my way.

That's the relationship.

This is the fundamental,

A fundamental problem for human beings is objectification and rationality tends to very much enhance objectification as real,

The real thing.

This is the reality,

Objectification.

The world,

Earth spins around the sun.

You are 1.

7 meters high,

That's the truth.

You weigh so many pounds or ounces or kilos,

That's the truth.

You have this kind of liver or this kind of blood,

That's the truth.

You're an A type,

Blood type,

That's the truth.

I'm giving you very accurate descriptions of reality of your body as an object.

You say,

When I sit here,

I don't feel like an A.

I don't feel 1.

75.

I just feel like sort of slightly,

With some sort of squidgy bits happening and energies moving around.

Oh,

Don't worry about all that.

That's just the mood.

Let's get some nice clear facts down about you as an object and as you as an object,

That's not bad.

As there are,

Of course,

A numerable number of objects that increasingly numerous devices can state about this body.

We can get into genetic code,

DNA,

Proteins,

Muscle,

Sinew fibers,

Neurons,

And so forth.

It's a dazzling world of objects.

There's another world,

Subjective world.

Now this,

In this domain,

Subjectively in this body,

I don't feel no blood group.

I don't feel a chromosome.

What are you talking about genetic code?

What's that got to do with anything?

In fact,

When I'm sitting here,

I don't even feel hair or toenails.

Where did it all go?

You've been painting your toenails for the last five years and then you sit down and they disappear.

Essentially there's no body in terms of the object.

There's no body as an object.

This is objective experience and this is what,

It's essentially mobile,

Fluid,

Sensitive,

Responsive.

It trembles,

It surges,

It flares,

It sinks,

It tightens,

It tenses,

It eases,

It dances,

It moves.

And what substance is it?

It's difficult to say really.

Sometimes it's firm,

Sometimes it's soft,

Sometimes it's watery,

Sometimes it's explosive.

And so these four elements,

That about sums it up.

Fifth element is we're in space.

That's it.

Okay.

Hello,

Earth,

Air,

Fire,

Water and space.

Fellow Earth,

Air,

Water,

Fire and spaces.

How's you doing?

That's great on one level.

Useless for organizing people.

So the systemic reality is that way and then the subjective reality is this way.

Concessive reality is the place for liberation.

So you've got to recognize what you want to do and when you want to do it and how those integrate.

It's also possible to relate to these messages.

Remember the objective domain is really a series of messages about things.

And we can begin to see,

We begin to experience that as,

Oh,

That experience of shiny,

Made of plastic,

Dyed blue,

Cost 25 pounds.

That is the experience I call attraction and it feels like this.

It feels like this.

It feels like flaring,

Oh,

Reaching out.

Feels like this.

You've felt a few of those because they happen a lot.

Glowing things,

Glistening things,

Shiny things,

Colored things,

Musical things,

Bouncy things,

Whatever.

You feel that,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Nice,

Oh,

Nice.

Few of those and you begin to experience the consequences of,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh.

Right,

I know that signal.

Just let's back off on that one.

Maybe so.

Maybe so.

It's easy realizing we're intoxicationable.

We're easy to get intoxicated.

Contribution feels like fun and ends like disaster.

So you start to learn a little bit.

And you learn other things like this feels kind of not very interesting,

So what,

Maybe a bit difficult.

And I can feel myself kind of pulling away from that or being pressurized by that.

And notice if I bear with it and stay present with it,

It starts to change and it lets me go.

That's interesting.

This is good,

You know,

That things that are the first hit seem to have a certain quality that is definite and real that we're either attracted to or repelled by.

You just keep your ground.

You don't make a decision,

Just keep your ground and let the thing reveal itself.

And as you do so,

You feel that groundedness,

The attractive goes,

Ah,

Ah,

Ah,

Ah.

So,

Ah,

It's that.

OK.

It's masks.

They're repugnant.

Oh,

I can't stand that.

Stand your ground,

Keep your ground,

Stay steady,

Feeling your body.

You become more autonomous.

And certain processes occur.

What occurs is deepening of the subjective resource in one way or another,

Essentially.

Subjective resource,

Complicated word,

Deepening of heart,

Deepening of mind.

What occurs if we pause and stay with rather than jumping forward or jumping back is that you don't have to come up with an answer.

You stay in your body,

In your embodied state as those signals fire.

You stay present.

Those signals subside.

And in that process,

Something new gains,

Really big gain.

You gain equanimity,

You gain truthfulness,

You gain dispassion,

You gain compassion,

You gain patience,

Big gains through doing nothing.

Apart from the big thing,

Stay present,

Stay embodied.

Doing nothing that takes a lot of doing,

Takes a lot of doing to learn to do nothing.

Because the immediate thing is I'm going to fix that,

I'm going to tell her what she's at.

She can't talk to me like that.

Oh,

Quick,

I'll do that quick now I get that done.

Otherwise I always won't hurt.

Those kind of blurred deflects.

That's where the jump occurs.

We jump out of embodiment,

Out of the integrated embodied state into something jumps,

And a very convincing jump,

Seduction.

And some seductions obviously are grosser than others or seemingly gross,

A seduction of clarity.

Well that'll sort it out,

Great idea.

What you need to do is that,

Why are they getting upset?

I think your problem is,

What's the matter with her?

I just told her where she was at.

Seduction of clarity.

And of course we do it to ourselves.

That's the nature.

Once you move into system reality,

Not only does everybody else become an object,

But you become an object too.

Right?

You've heard of the inner tyrant,

The inner critic,

Tells you where you're at and where you're not at,

What you should have done and how you got that wrong,

And you did it again after all these years.

And you're still never going to be that,

Let's face it.

And you're not worthy of it anyway.

You become an object.

And what's lost?

Compassion is lost,

Humour is lost,

Flexibility is lost,

Mutability is lost,

The wonderful interplay of the natural world,

The wonderful interplay of the natural world.

Everything is sensing itself and juggling around itself and feeding itself,

Knowing itself.

And there's amazing things in nature.

Reading,

Yesterday somebody sent me a clip of an article,

Some article,

It's about how trees communicate to each other in tree ways of course.

There's a kind of.

.

.

And I just started to get an understanding of this.

So it's probably not a complete understanding.

One way you communicate is through the root system.

So the roots go into the ground,

It's incredible detailed network of roots and rootlets and root hairs going out into the ground.

And often they accumulate fungal systems that themselves have got threads that trail through the ground.

So it's a vast underground network of interconnected fibres.

And there's chemical transfers that go along those things.

So some tree feels that another tree needs a bit of support.

Let's shoot a little bit of good juice down that fibre and it goes up.

They know each other and sense each other.

And they found you can plant a tree sort of like within a certain range of another tree that same species and it will tend to grow.

You put it too far in its own,

In the middle of a field in its own,

It doesn't grow.

It needs its friends.

It's like a child needs its parents.

You can't just,

Oh well go and sit in the middle of a nice place.

No,

You need that.

So trees know that.

We forget it.

So that's just trees,

You know,

And of course fish and animals flock and herd and move around and synthesise and vibe with each other and know each other.

And so there's this enormous language which we think is not a language because it isn't written down,

Therefore it doesn't exist.

You can't type it on a keyboard,

It doesn't exist.

That's that nature,

Not stupid dumb matter.

It's extremely intelligent.

Clearly,

Where did we come from?

Are thoughts just materials out of cyberspace or didn't they come out of an embodied reality where that some of that intelligence is synthesised into abstract structures.

But we should never forget the abstract structures of words,

Of language,

Of logic is purely an attempted translation of felt realities and often the translation is inaccurate and many times the translation has run away in its own intoxication with itself from what it's trying to refer to.

So we can know all the things about a human being without ever fully being one or meeting one actually as they are.

And you can see this dysfunctionality,

Dystopias.

All the things you need to know about a human being apart from how to be one,

The addictions,

The suicides,

The depressions,

The anxieties,

All the things you need to know about how to do this,

That and the other apart from how to live.

And everything you need to know about algorithms,

Economics,

You don't know how it is to live.

So this returning.

Okay.

So yesterday I was just kind of introducing to you a few exercises or movements or suggestions on how to feel this quality of intelligence in the body.

Like I was saying,

How come you managed to get that spoonful of food in your mouth every time,

Never poke it up your nose?

Something there is clearly,

Without having to think about it,

It's clearly adjusting how the hand moves towards the mouth and you don't have to think about it anymore.

We were practicing just closing our eyes and drawing our hands together very slowly to feel the sense of,

Both hands are clearly felt,

Distinct and separate.

We send the message,

Please come together and they don't miss each other.

How do they know?

They can't see.

And you do it slowly enough,

You can feel,

You can sense something tingles,

Something suddenly the rest of your body goes into abeyance and there's a sense of the big handedness or handedness.

So you know,

It's not an object,

It's a subjective experience of something dynamic happening and it begins to intensify and tingle and sense and become very acute and gradually move into touch.

Notice that.

What is it that intensifies,

That navigates,

That feels things?

We call this energetic.

So we have,

You know,

You might say in terms of embodied reality you have what can be seen objectively as the world of gross form.

But you have also a subtle form which we would call the energetic form,

But one of words.

It definitely is a form.

It's a form which where the intelligence lies,

Where the intelligence is registered in this energetic form,

It arouses,

It withdraws,

It senses,

It navigates,

It negotiates,

It tingles and trembles,

It experiences space or proximity or intimacy or caution or vigour.

It experiences these subjective qualities with extreme accuracy.

It cannot lie.

This is why it's so reliable,

Why it's really helpful to get that.

Now using two hands because this is perhaps the place that's the most easy for us because these hands are still extremely sensitive.

But as we cultivate,

I tell you that that sense,

That kind of sensitivity can occur particularly in your upper body,

Through your chest and abdominal areas in your face and it will tell you,

I'm not comfortable.

It will tell you there's apprehension.

It will tell you I'm feeling threatened.

It will tell you that and it will also,

As you come into that and you meet that appropriately,

It will resolve itself.

Ah,

Okay.

The signal has been heard and an appropriate action can proceed from there.

So this is the important checkpoint to come into before we come into action.

And even as we come into action,

If that action is just like walking,

Very simple action,

You know,

You stay with that so you're not walking according to a theory of walking.

You're not walking in order to be somebody who walks well.

You're not walking in order to get into meditation.

You're not walking in order to look like you're walking properly.

You're not walking in order to follow a system of walking.

There's nobody walking.

There's just that.

Everybody walks itself and the mind is,

Ah,

This is how it happens.

It's proper walking.

Reviews

A higher intelligence, that feels awesome. I am born, I stay a while, I die. Yet something perpetuates as humanity. That which is measured improves? How do I quantify nature. Very thought provoking. Thank you

Thank you for this guidance - so helpful 🙏🏽💖🙏🏽