Brokenhearted

Podcast episode from In the Deep with Catherine Ingram. Excerpted from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine in March 2017 in Byron Bay, Australia.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from a longer session of Dharma Dialogues held in February 2017 in Byron Bay,

Australia.

It's called Broken Hearted.

We come together of an evening like this to tune into a certain frequency.

We don't have to go looking for it.

It just kind of occurs when we come together this way.

Very simple,

Quiet,

Doesn't require effort.

Don't have to think about anything.

You can give your mind the night off.

It'll jump around a little maybe,

But it can have the night off.

And really I've been thinking a lot about this,

That the power of community and the power of a community that loves Dharma is so sustaining.

It's so enriching in life.

So it's a kind of excuse to get together and just be and just sort of sit in what we all already know and have a particular conversation that you don't get to have sort of out and about.

In a way it's whispering all the time that conversation,

But you don't really get to sort of inappropriate even to when you see someone on the street or at the grocery store or at the market,

You're not going to kind of get into the deep,

Deep water necessarily.

But in this context we can,

We're allowed,

We can kind of float around in our deep water together.

We don't have to believe in anything,

Anything particular.

You don't have to believe.

You can have a very powerful direct experience.

And as one habituates,

One of the powers of a gathering like this is that it allows the habit to be very strong.

As one habituates,

That's the frequency one lives on much of the time.

Doesn't even have to be all of the time,

But much of the time is pretty good.

So that's another aspect of coming together this way is just to sort of soak a bit,

Strengthen the habit a bit.

It's particularly precious in our time,

In the time in which we live,

Where it feels that things are exponentially revving up in so many ways,

In every way.

A time when touching your peace stone inside,

Resting in your deep water,

Exuding calm is ever more important.

Catherine,

I really,

You know,

When we talk about words that ring the bell of truth,

You know,

You're speaking straight to my heart.

Thank you.

And one of the things that I've been feeling is,

You touched on it,

This amplification of energy in the outer world.

So watching people either getting more lost as our technology and the demands and the whirlwind increases,

And then also seeing the people that find themselves within that.

And I know that I'm meeting like-minded souls that are on the same journey that I'm on.

One of the things that's been coming into my awareness is a feeling of light versus dark.

And in the past,

My thoughts have always been,

You know,

There is only the light.

Yet I'm becoming aware of entities,

Energies,

And my feeling is that we're called to either just really surrender into that place where the light is just with us,

Or there's a whole lot of chaos going on.

And I guess I'd really love your experience of that.

I don't know if that's just my reality or whether that's something that you're also noticing.

What I am noticing is,

This is the most intense phase in my lifetime.

And I have been paying attention as best I could over the years,

Tend to be news junkie.

And it is definitely,

There is a quickening happening on the planet.

It seems to be in all directions,

As I said.

You know,

The destructive forces are roaring along,

Right?

Our planet is warming up,

It's heating up,

Literally and metaphorically,

With all the concomitant pressures that would go with that and are being seen around the world.

And as you say,

There's also this other,

As you use the word light,

That's springing forth.

And one could imagine that those polarities intensify each other in a certain way.

So this is what we're watching,

This spectacle of human existence coming to a certain interesting apex.

How it plays out is anybody's guess.

What I come to is,

I am watching this show,

Right?

And I,

As best as I can,

Try to move into a space of this too,

Okay?

And this,

Right?

So many,

Many,

Many years ago,

I had a conversation with Ram Dass about this.

It was back in the days of the Cold War,

In the 1980s,

Which now seemed like a walk in the park.

Anyway,

It was the Cold War days,

When Russia and the US had what was called mutually assured destruction.

And because both of those groups were characters who preferred life on this planet,

There was a kind of a deterrence that obviously worked.

But we weren't sure in those days,

There was always a lot of saber rattling.

And so there was this sort of wave of fear that went around the country,

In those countries anyway,

Love,

Nuclear fear.

So I said to Ram Dass one day,

Do you think we're headed to Armageddon?

Or is this the beginning of the New Age?

Is this the quickening that's going to make us all wake up?

And he said,

Well,

I don't know.

But I think if it is headed into Armageddon,

The best way to enter Armageddon is to quiet the mind and open the heart.

And if it is the dawning of the New Age,

The best way to enter that is to quiet the mind and open the heart.

So I have held to that all these years,

That my own work,

If you will,

That doesn't feel like work,

But it's a way to open the heart.

And so I've been able to open it,

It doesn't feel like work,

But the perspective that I most resonate with is basically the same however this plays out.

Right?

However this happens,

Whatever rolls out in this crazy wild world,

And especially in its most intense time,

Our adherence to our deepest truths,

Right,

Remain the same.

And they're pretty ancient too.

You know,

It's another thing I've often talked about,

How I feel that in my own life,

My pals are,

I don't mean that I'm actually literally in conversation with them,

But I feel that my peer group,

There's a lot of dead people in it,

You know,

Like Lao Tzu and Lao Tse and the Buddha and Christ and now Leonard Cohen,

And that there's a certain reference that has been spoken through the ages,

That when you hear it,

It pings true in your heart,

Right?

So it's not like you have to remember a lot of things to get by in the world.

There's only a few really,

You know,

And they have all been saying pretty much the same few things,

And we're saying them tonight.

That when you're living in that place inside yourself,

When you're living in that inner sanctuary of calm,

Of love,

Right,

Of a kind of crystalline clarity that comes with that simplicity of being,

It just comes with it,

A package deal,

You don't even have to employ the mind.

When that is the frequency you're living in,

That is,

It's a guiding in your life,

Such that you don't have to have some gigantic strategy to get through.

You're just constantly relying on that inner guidance system.

And also,

It alleviates a lot of fear.

Not that you think all is going to go well,

Necessarily,

Or that you think everyone's going to wake up.

It's not any kind of hopeful story.

It's that you trust a certain type of surrender to what is in your own self.

And that applies in a person's life.

And that applies in a personal way as well.

You know,

As I mentioned,

There was this irony I was dealing with in these last days,

Because I was only a mile from the fire in Lennox,

And my container,

Which my belongings,

Which I hadn't seen since July,

Had just arrived.

So I had,

You know,

Friends over,

And we're all unpacking this stuff,

You know,

As I'm thinking,

Well,

It might just get burned up in the next couple of days.

And there was this part of me inside that was just sort of kind of amused by it,

You know,

I packed,

I thought I should pack a little bag,

A runaway bag.

And I was thinking,

What can I even put in it that I'm going to,

You know,

Like my computer and a few changes of underwear.

But I was looking at this house full of stuff,

You know,

And there was this,

There was this inner surrender,

Right?

Fortunately,

I also had insurance,

But but there was this little,

You know,

This whisper of,

Okay,

If this is to be,

Then it's to be,

You know.

I think one of the things I've noticed is,

Even though my mind is not necessarily quiet and still,

I can quite easily feel that strength of knowing,

And it's within grasp,

Even during the times of chaos.

You don't have to,

You know,

You don't have to be in a state of,

You know,

You don't have to ever still the mind to experience what I'm speaking about.

I always say you don't have to quiet the mind,

You notice the quiet that contains the mind,

Right?

Yeah,

You just you widen the lens.

And then the jumping monkey mind becomes rather irrelevant.

You can just let it be in the corner doing whatever it needs to do in a big room,

In a room with no walls,

As a matter of fact.

And you get used to it,

You get used to,

Like,

I often say,

Assume the mind is mad.

I really don't care what my mind is up to.

You know,

I don't,

It doesn't bother me at all.

I don't care how depraved it gets.

I don't care how petty it is.

I don't take any responsibility for it.

And I didn't do it.

I wouldn't have picked it.

You know,

Yeah.

So here it is,

I'm just at the effect.

And I'm doing,

You know,

My best to have it as a friend.

And,

You know,

So I it's fine,

Whatever it's doing,

It doesn't matter at all.

It's just very conditioned,

You know,

It's just it's just luck of the draw conditioned.

I often speak about my very delightful niece who just came into this world.

It's just sort of an angel.

She doesn't have unkind thoughts.

And her mind is like a butterfly or something just floats around and sweetness and flowers and things.

You know,

It's just a bafflement that she's that way,

You know,

Who knows how that happened.

But that's definitely not my nature.

And yet,

I have no complaints in terms of being able to taste this frequency,

Because somehow through some kind of mysterious grace,

I became interested in this subject and began just like I just said a while ago,

Habituating.

And it's very powerful to keep the attention lightly focused this way,

The habit gets strong.

And the old habit becomes more and more obvious for its limitations.

The old habit of I want,

I don't like,

What about me?

What about that thing that happened in the past?

What about my future?

All these stories,

My purpose,

All these stories that run on and on and on that are exhausting,

And for sure just lead to misery.

One begins to see them for what they are,

The conditioned thrust,

Right?

Human animals have an intense,

Intense,

You know,

It's like a hungry ghost realm,

Just constant wanting.

And a lot of what we see as the greed,

It's basically the cover for the fear that's running underneath,

Right?

So it's understandable,

We all know it in our own case.

But it's such a shame to spend these,

You know,

Precious few years left to us,

Just in conditioned mind,

Banging around from greed to fear to old stories to propping up the big me project,

Right,

That is never ending,

Propping it up with whatever sticks you can find,

You know.

You mentioned about your peers and many of them not being currently in a physical body.

How was it that you became more aware of those beings?

Because I find that as I.

.

.

No,

It's not that I think of them as beings.

It's that what they represented and what they knew and what they expressed is a frequency that I am very resonant with and that I tune into.

So I consider them my peers,

But not that they're floating around whispering in my ear or anything like that.

I don't have that belief system or experience,

But rather that I recognize both historically and in my own personal life,

My dear ones who have passed away,

That the essence of what they knew and what they spoke or what they sang or what they wrote has remained true and is a living flame,

Right,

That's passed on in a way.

Like when a candle lights another candle,

Even if the first one goes out,

The flame on the second candle is somehow sourced,

Right.

So it's like that.

It's like that.

I don't really have any kind of sense of entities.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Can you talk more about the room,

Creating the room and pushing the monkey aside?

That just caught my attention,

But I need more.

Thanks.

It's really a recognition.

You don't have to create the room.

So let's do an experiment.

Have you ever seen that little book called Zoom?

Did you guys have that here in Australia?

It kind of went around the circuit in the US,

But it starts out a picture of a person.

It's a kind of a close-up of the person.

And then the next picture,

These are drawings.

The next picture is,

You sort of see that the person's standing on some grass,

Then it goes out,

The Zoom goes out,

And you see that the grass and the lawn and the house,

But it keeps going.

And pretty soon,

You're watching it from an aerial view of the town and it keeps going.

It keeps going until you're in outer space,

Like really far in outer space.

And Earth is just this bare dot in the picture,

Right?

Zoom,

Zoom out,

Right?

So it's the recognition that these thoughts,

Because monkey mind is really some thoughts,

Which are electrical impulses that the brain is throwing off,

Right?

That's all that it is.

When you sort of sit in the room,

You're not sitting in a room,

That's all that it is.

When you sort of sit in reality and realize,

Okay,

Here's this creature and a brain is throwing off some electrical little impulses,

Right?

Thoughts.

But actually you're sitting in very big space.

There's nothing,

Often people have their crazy mind that they're locked in a closet with it,

A small closet,

Right?

You're not,

Right?

You're in infinite space.

And so it's a kind of Zoom that you do.

You don't have to create it.

You just widen your own lens of,

Oh,

You know,

Here comes that old story,

Right?

Now,

Most of the time,

If you really pay attention,

It's not interesting.

It will only be interesting to you if there's some hook that gives you some kind of identity.

So it might be,

It might be the hook is,

I've been victimized.

It was unfair.

It was horrible.

Right.

I have been victimized.

And that gives this sense of power in a sense to that self,

To that sense,

That contour of self.

And it's understandable people,

Especially if that's been well practiced over a lifetime,

That's what you know of as yourself.

I remember when I first met Poonjiji,

I went through a phase of feeling so boundaryless that it became a little uncomfortable,

Right?

It was a little bit,

I mean,

Not unpleasantly necessarily,

But just,

It was so strange.

It was like,

You know,

Some patterning had been stripped away that was familiar,

Right?

Something that would have been familiar as me was no longer there.

And I remember feeling it very much a mystery to my own self.

Like,

Where did she go?

That other one.

And so in this,

In this,

In this,

In this zoom,

What happens is you get much more,

You start to feel the,

I sometimes call it the proper identification.

Like,

You know,

When you're being asked for proper identification,

I call it the proper identification is that there's this,

This floating awareness,

Right?

This creature,

People say your name and you respond,

But really there's this creature having sensory experience,

Having brain experience also,

Mental experience,

Right?

But all the while there's a,

There's a secret ingredient of pure presence that is,

It's inexplicable.

It's,

It's a mystery as to what that is,

You know,

But here it is.

And that becomes your more proper identification.

Choose though to,

You let your awareness notice.

You could say choose.

I used to say choose freedom,

Choose peace,

But you can choose.

Try to see yourself in perspective of.

You don't even have to visualise anything.

You just sink back into,

You relax.

You don't go out looking for anything or creating another story or,

You know,

All of these words are just very clumsily pointing to something that I cannot say.

But that we can maybe sense,

You know,

That,

That when you wake up in the morning,

Before your to-do list,

Before you know your name is Cathy,

Before anything,

You wake up into beingness,

Right?

You wake up into,

Right?

And,

And it,

It slips in many times.

Sometimes in powerful moments,

Watching a birth,

Watching a death,

Being in love,

Various,

Various exhilarating moments and also difficult times as well.

And sometimes you're just taking a shower and there's this powerful sense of presence.

That can be,

As I was saying,

That can be more and more induced with habit.

By letting go the chatter.

That's right.

By,

By being disinterested in the chatter,

By being disinterested in the story,

Most of which is unnecessary for your functioning in life,

Whatever it is,

If whatever is necessary for functioning,

You will be more clearly experiencing that as you relax in this.

What comes with it is great discernment,

Is great clarity,

Is great heart direction.

So you can really rely on that.

You know,

I often say I fly by the seat of my pants.

And it's kind of literally the case that in early aviation days,

Before there were fancy instruments,

Pilots in those,

You know,

One or two seater planes,

They flew according to how the wind felt in the seat of their pants.

Right.

They flew according to that.

So it's like you rely on a certain way it feels.

And the quieter you are,

The more you're living in this habit of just presence,

Of simplicity of being,

Of being disinterested in monkey mind,

Disinterested in old stories,

Disinterested in propping up the big somebody that you're trying to show to the world to be accepted or loved or respected or whatever,

Feared,

Whatever it is,

It becomes all just impossible to maintain and exhausting.

Right.

Yeah,

I mean,

I feel like everybody's walking around in post-traumatic stress from it,

You know,

And,

And the more that you're resting in this other habit,

The more simple and clear your,

Your moves on the chessboard of your life,

And you don't have to know them in advance.

You rely a lot on instinct.

You rely a lot on a very awake intuition,

Not magical,

But an intuition born of having access to a tremendous amount of information that is unclouded by your fears and greed and old story,

Which clouds the mind and makes it so opaque,

It makes it,

Makes it impossible to even think straight.

Don't we know that?

I think you're talking about fake news.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like fake news constantly going on in your head.

Yeah.

Mm.

Thanks,

Catherine.

Hi,

What's your name?

My name's Robert.

Robert.

Have we met?

No,

We haven't.

Okay.

No.

Well,

About five years ago.

Oh,

Okay.

I like the word disinterested.

The word?

Disinterested.

Uh-huh,

Right.

And I think Nisagadatta was saying that 98% of the body runs on automatic pilot.

Yes.

And he said,

Why not try that for the mind as well?

Very good.

Because I'm sure it's perfectly capable of sorting itself out.

Yeah.

And I guess that's the process of being disinterested.

So I was wondering whether this perspective that the intensity of the world is speeding up,

Maybe just our declining ability to be disinterested.

It's a good point,

Because it is true that we're privy to so much of the news now worldwide that was unknown in previous times.

But I think what's different about our time is that we have the very real possibility of doing ourselves in entirely on the planet.

And I don't think that that ever existed really before.

I mean,

It did exist in the nuclear age,

But for most of history,

Even though there might be a famine or a plague or a drought or whatever somewhere,

One could always imagine that you could get to another place.

You could get to New Zealand or South America or somewhere.

But now,

This is getting more and more critical on this planet Earth in terms of sustainability for the 7.

4 billion people on it.

So I take your point,

I think it is true that we're probably over saturated in all the miserable news in a way that we don't really need to be in,

Or at least for those people who are watching a lot of news and being horrified.

And of course,

A lot of it goes around on Facebook that is truly fake news and on the regular news,

There's plenty of that as well.

So you're being bombarded by a lot of scary information that some of which may not be at all true.

At the same time,

We can see and know in our own direct experience that things are heating up and that it feels different than it did at least when I was a kid.

So someone referred to it as disaster porn.

Disaster porn,

Uh-huh.

And they become addicted to disaster.

Yes.

And it's also good to remember that what is called the news most often is just referring to the bad news.

We don't really report when a friend is sitting by the bedside of one of their dear ones who's dying.

That doesn't get reported as news.

There's incredible tender mercies going on all the time.

And not just in our species,

In the other animals as well.

So that isn't counted as news even,

You know?

So it is important to counterbalance that understanding and to acknowledge it and to not be out of balance.

I sometimes have to just take a break from the news and just really not engage.

And I have a number of friends now who are doing that.

Because you actually get,

By osmosis,

You get plenty of the news without even trying.

It's in conversation.

It's in the zeitgeist somehow.

So it's not as if you're going to miss any of the big events.

But yes,

Maybe technology is making the stakes worse.

But it's also making us much more aware of the trivia of the news.

And I'm sure we've had US presidents who are just as uninspiring.

But we just didn't know the details of it.

Where now we know every single tweet.

Yes.

There's another question.

I'm not sure where it's going.

But the idea of light.

And I guess I'm always concerned about the idea of imagining images of light where perhaps my real work is to embrace the darkness.

Why not both?

Again,

To be a lover of reality.

So sometimes there's a wave of darkness that one has to surrender to.

And then there's also a wave of light.

And sometimes they stream along together.

And why not have any particular preference?

It's fair enough to have a preference for things to go well.

But in terms of your own ability to surrender and to be with whatever is happening,

Then preference is extraneous and will only get in your way.

Because for sure there is suffering in this world.

There is sorrow.

Right?

So I guess that just completes the cycle about whether the craziness I'm seeing out there,

How much of it is actually the craziness in here.

And only you can know that.

Yeah.

My premise and direct experience is the simpler I feel inside.

One of the things that comes with that is that my own personal agenda is not as predominant a driving force in my life.

And therefore it doesn't cloud my vision as much as if it were that.

And when the vision is not clouded,

You see the situation clearly.

You see the picture clearly.

Right?

I used the other day the metaphor of the game of Go.

Do you know the game of Go?

It's a grid and you place a white stone and a black stone.

One plays white,

One plays black and the idea is to control territory.

It's an ancient game,

Very big in Japan and it's very,

Very sophisticated,

Even though a simple design.

But what's interesting about it is that a Go master is seeing the board in black and white very,

Very clearly.

Whereas a novice or someone who's not a very good player can be looking at the board,

It's literally in black and white.

And they can think that they are surrounding the opponent when in fact the opponent is surrounding them.

And it's not,

And they don't know that until the last stone is put on the board and their entire territory has been taken out.

But what's so fascinating,

I find just from a psychological point of view,

Is that it's in black and white.

I mean it can't be more clear in terms.

But because of the agenda,

Because of the need to win,

Right,

Some people who are either novices or not very good at the game,

They can't see.

They cannot see what's before them.

What's great about a Go master is that they're kind of out of the way of their own agenda.

So basically they're playing in this sort of diamond clarity,

Right?

They're seeing exactly what's happening.

And that's my recommendation in terms of this quietude of the simplicity of being.

It makes more elegant your moves in life.

And another Go analogy is that a Go master can put one stone on the board and it can control a massive amount of territory.

In Go it's called a well-placed stone,

In typical understated Go language.

A well-placed stone he puts one on.

As somebody who's immature at the game,

It takes 15 stones to do the same thing.

Again,

When there's a clarity of simplicity of being,

One stone does the work of 15 stones,

Right?

One stone well-placed is very,

Very efficient,

Very elegant,

Very successful.

It's just a side byproduct.

You don't necessarily tune in for that reason.

It's just something that comes with it,

Comes with this habit.

The habit has all kinds of this package deal with lots of other little perks.

There's a likeness of being.

There's an ability to feel deeply.

Again,

When you're able to say yes to what is,

Right?

When you're more attuned to that,

Then you're not trying to control the direction so much,

Right?

You're off the hook.

Your perception is clear.

I guess it gets back to the beginning of leaving the mind to its own thing.

We don't have to work it out.

Right.

You start to get used to giving it the night off.

You start giving it the day off and the night off.

Just go on vacation.

Then it becomes a good tool because you do need the mind.

Most of us do need to use mental,

Conceptual thought unless one is incredibly wealthy and has minions around figuring everything out,

Which isn't the case for most of us.

You have to have some mental activity.

I think Eckhart calls it planning mind,

Doesn't he?

I think Eckhart totally calls it planning mind.

Yes.

Planning mind is needed.

You have to plan some things.

You have to take care of the details as they come.

Unfortunately for most of us,

And I include myself in this,

98% is spam.

Two percent of it is useful,

Functional,

Insightful,

Kind of cool,

Poetic.

But 98% of it doesn't need to be there,

But it is there.

What do you do?

When I scan my emails in the morning,

There's some way that I've been trained over all these years,

My mind,

My eyes have been trained to pick out the few that are there that are actually relevant and are not spam.

It just doesn't even see all the rest of the spam,

Which is most of it.

There's tons of spam.

My eyes don't even see it.

I only see like there's my friends,

You know?

And it's like that with your thoughts.

You become very adept at responding to the few thoughts that are necessary,

That you need to pay attention to.

And you get really good at filtering out the spam.

And that's another thing that comes with the habit of quiet.

Right?

You don't want to be bothered with the crazy stuff.

I used to,

When I was young,

I used to feel obliged to represent my opinions.

I used to feel like I was being intellectually dishonest if I didn't represent my opinions.

So all the opinions that were coming through,

Most of which have been revised over the years,

I used to battle.

I would stay up all night battling them out.

Like having debates and sometimes that would last for months with somebody or just be an argument and we're just madness.

Right?

Especially as a lot of them turned out to be wrong.

That's it.

Believing our ideas might be true.

Say again?

Believing our ideas might be true.

Yeah,

Right.

Exactly.

Right.

So,

You know,

That habit mercifully fell away.

And now I notice that I'm not,

I mean,

There are certain of my opinions,

You could say,

That I will bother to represent because I might sense that there is some good that comes of it if I do.

Right?

But I'm very judicious with that program.

And there are certain people in my life that I will represent my opinions to just because we have that kind of relationship.

So it's a very kind of close relationship in which we both know that we know the nature of the game,

That this opinion might change and that I might be wrong.

But for the most part,

I read a Gandhi quote the other day.

It was so beautiful.

Something like that having to take,

Taking a stand when it causes hurt in a relationship is too high a cost.

Right?

Sometimes you have to take a stand in certain things.

But a lot of times you really don't.

And if it's going to cause a rift in the relationship,

You know,

What's the point?

And when I look back at all the past stands over the years,

Most of them have been either wrong or irrelevant.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And sometimes had cost,

Been cost.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah,

Robert.

Yes,

Dear.

I just wonder if we're aiming for this disinterested state of mind,

Is it not in some ways shirking a responsibility?

No,

I wouldn't say that you should shirk your responsibilities.

I'm saying that most of the material running through your mind,

I can't presume your mind,

But minds in general,

Is unnecessarily wearying,

Irrelevant,

Pointless,

Just conditioned phenomena that is unneeded.

But we are thinking animals.

That's what we do.

So I feel that it's a bit contraindicated to our health that we're such thinking animals.

It worked for a while and made us very,

Very successful as a species.

But I think that it's become unhealthy.

And so when you recognize that and you recognize that a lot of the thinking is not necessary and is perhaps unhealthy,

Then you get better at parsing out what is healthy,

What is useful,

What is responsible.

And you act on those things very beautifully and clearly.

You don't shirk your responsibility.

You are more responsible than ever.

Your commitment to the greater good also gets bumped up when you're out of your own way,

When your own agenda is not the most important thing to you.

You begin to start to realize you're in a context and that you don't want to do anything that harms anyone.

Right?

And you certainly don't want to not show up when you've committed to.

So by learning how to do that,

It perhaps hones one's ability to realize what is important and discard what isn't.

Is that?

Yes.

You prioritize better.

Yes,

Indeed.

You understand that certain things are very,

Very important that have to do with,

Like I said,

Living in a context with other beings,

With other animals,

That you want to be very light on this earth.

You want to be kind and you want to come from love.

I understand that,

But I tend to be a very active,

Committed person,

Particularly regarding the environment and so on.

I find that more and more people are opting out and that there are fewer and fewer of us that are willing to share or take that burden.

Be on the front lines.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's very exhausting to constantly feel that if I don't,

Who else is going to pick up the slack?

Yes.

How do you get around that without totally burning yourself out?

Yeah.

It's a subject I've looked at a lot over the many years.

Well,

First of all,

It's very important for activists to take time for themselves or they do burn out.

They just get exhausted and burn out and then there are another body on the pile to take care of.

Your own self-sustaining joy and calm is number one on the list because that's what will allow you to give back.

It's only when your own well is full that it starts spilling over.

You can't be just trying to drain it out and wring out the rag trying to get a little drop here and there.

It's when the well fills up and there's a certain kind of trust you can have that when people are letting their well fill up that then they do have more energy to give back.

Now,

Not everybody is so inclined and if that's frustrating to you,

That's going to be kind of a drain for you.

I understand it.

Particularly given the situation the way it is now and like things that have been fought so hard for so many years are just being cut out from under our feet.

I know.

At such a frightening rate.

Yes,

I know.

And so you're in the position that it's now the time to step back.

Can I really afford to step back and fill my own well now?

I would say yes.

Because when you allow that,

You don't know how you will then be used.

And it might be that it's becoming,

It will become like that perfect placement of that go stone that right now you can't see how that will be,

But that there may be something,

Some way that you're used in a different way than you imagine.

And I believe me,

I have tremendous respect for people on the front lines,

You know,

And who are trying and trying and have been trying for decades.

I understand.

It was my world for many years as a journalist,

That was what I specialized in actually,

Is activism and consciousness.

And I met a lot of fabulous activists,

But a lot of them did burn out or were operating at half speed and half clarity because of just being exhausted and being often angry and weary and depressed.

And you know,

It's like what Ram Dass said,

Quiet the mind and open the heart and then see,

Then see how you'll be used.

You might be a shade tree,

You might be a comfort to someone who goes out and just rocks all over the place,

You know,

In terms of getting things done or changed or whatever.

You might be a quiet inspiration,

You know,

You just don't know how that will be.

But like I said,

Your own guidance system gets very,

Very clear when you're topped up,

When you're rested,

Right?

When you're rested,

When you're at ease,

When you're at peace.

And it also exudes,

It exudes with everyone you meet.

Everyone who comes into your orbit will be a little bit freshened up.

They may not even realize why,

But there'll be a little transmission of okayness,

Which God knows we need,

Right?

So I love that you're asking about shirking of responsibility because I don't resonate at all with sort of spiritual transcendence and none of this is real and karma.

I just don't resonate with any of that.

Right?

I understand that this,

We are all very privileged here.

There's a lot of people,

You know,

As we're sitting here,

A lot of people are in miserable circumstances.

A lot of them are very,

Very hungry.

And I mean,

Literally hungry.

And to not acknowledge that,

To kind of live in denial about that or just want to shove it away or feel that there's just their problem.

I mean,

There's either a kind of heartlessness or just a deep inability to face,

Just a deep deep,

Deep fear,

You know?

So yeah,

That's not the way to go,

In my opinion.

But to,

You know,

It's like that image of if you take a stringed instrument and you tighten,

You're tuning it and you tighten the string too tight,

The string breaks.

But if it's too loose,

It doesn't play right.

Right?

So there's some fine balance for the musical instrument in terms of the tuning.

There's a fine balance of the right amount of tightness and looseness.

Right?

So only you're going to know that.

You're going to know if you're getting too tight,

Too tightly wound,

Getting agitated,

Getting angry.

You know,

Humans are so stupid,

Right?

All of that.

It's,

You'll know because your energy starts being drained.

It's like,

It's like there's a siphon.

There's like a siphon out of,

Like the blood is draining out.

Yes,

Grace.

I've been sitting with something for a while that I don't know how to manage.

And in a way,

It quite relates to what Vivi was just talking about.

And what we've been talking about this evening in terms of the pain and suffering that are very tangible on the planet at the moment.

And that pain and suffering,

Particularly for groups of species and for groups of people who are very powerless in that situation,

Breaks my heart.

Yes.

So I feel it as a physical pain in my heart,

Which seems to be gathering.

And I've tried various strategies with this.

I've tried sitting with it and being with it.

I've tried looking to say,

Well,

Is there something I can do in this situation?

I'm not an activist,

But if there's something in front of me that I can do,

Then I need to be doing it.

You know,

I seem to find stray dogs a lot.

But this,

I guess,

This sense of helplessness is growing as well.

And it doesn't seem to be related to thoughts.

It's a physical pain in my heart.

Got any thoughts?

Well,

I would say that being brokenhearted kind of comes with the awareness.

You know,

It's kind of a beautiful thing.

And you can bear it.

Right?

I often say,

I don't know if you've heard me say it,

But I've been saying it for many,

Many years.

I actually only hang out with the brokenhearted.

That's true.

Yeah.

It's pretty much the case that my friends are all brokenhearted.

And they're the most wonderful,

Fun,

You know,

Fabulous people I know.

Right?

Because they can really laugh and they can really cry.

They live on a big spectrum.

You know,

They live on a big wide spectrum.

At one end,

There's the sorrow.

At one end,

There's the joy.

But they're not armored,

Living in some tiny little middle with a bunch of stories.

They're seeing it.

They're seeing the rawness of this,

You know.

What I do in the case,

And I feel often very brokenhearted.

And I also,

As you,

I have a very acute sense of what's going on with the other animals who are truly innocent in this,

You know,

And the extinctions that are happening so fast.

And what I do with it is when I start to feel overcome by sorrow,

I realize that I'm out of balance,

Like the string that's being tightened too tight.

And I infuse some sort of joy in my situation.

I just make myself do something lovely,

You know.

It's time to go for a walk.

It's time to have a lovely meal or even a cup of tea or,

You know,

Listen to some favorite music or watch something I'm interested in or just anything.

Talk to a friend.

Just know that you've got to interrupt the patterning of the depression and the sorrow and the sort of freak out of what's happening and not go into the big story about the future,

You know.

And I totally am with you.

It's what we're seeing is very disturbing.

At the same time,

This is our precious life,

You know.

We lost my friend so quickly,

She just had such a little gap of time to come to terms,

Right.

But it was such a reminder,

Such a wake up call for me.

It's like,

It can just happen like that.

It's like game over,

Right.

So you don't want to postpone.

It's beautiful that you have this caring,

You know.

I love it.

I,

As I say,

That's my prerequisite in my friendships that there's an understanding because there's a tenderness then,

There's a kindness that comes with it.

There's an empathy that comes with it.

And there's a capacity for joy as well.

So it's beautiful not to try to erase it at all,

But rather to just balance it out,

Balance it out when it's starting to cripple you,

Then you know it's out of balance.

Thank you.

Yeah,

Thank you.

This has been In the Deep.

You can subscribe to these podcasts on iTunes and also access the entire list from my website,

KatherineAgroove.

Com.

We also welcome your tax deductible donations in support of the podcast production.

Just click on the donate button found in the upper right of the homepage of the website.

Till next time.

Reviews

Always a favorite.

SO Enlightening and Inspirational❣️ A perspective I would never have considered had I not listened. Thank you 🙏🏻 💕

Phenomenal. So helpful. 🙏🏻

So lovely. Everything spoken about resonates with my heart. I am also broken hearted. This talk helped me realize that there are others feeling the same way. And the advice is so helpful. Inspirational.

Awesome reminders, thx. Helpful as a "ReSet" button on a crazy news day; this talk helps clear head B4 a silent sit! Sooooo appreciated. 😀😀😀

Very insightful and grounding perspectives on a wide range of topical issues facing the world today. Thank you🌸.

Thank you, this has been wonderful! ❤️

Precious enlightenment with practical practices, wrapped in humour and compassion. I will listen again. Thank you.

This podcast was really good! So encouraging

I love her humor and sense of self, her laughter is contagious

Wonderful talk on how to deal with modern day issues! Thank you!

This is a very good talk for anyone that feels overwhelmed with worry or is preoccupied with the world situation. Who needs strength and perspective to keep going through a chaotic age.

Stunning talk. A must to listen to! Universally applicibale to our life out there; the many diverse things that move and touch me and many others in today's life were talked about with a beautiful sense of calm clarity. Calming the mind and sit with it is a great start to bring about a sense of peace, clarity and balance in our mind and heart where positive change can grow from. I will be back to listen to more. Thank you 🤗💞

Thank you for speaking to the damage that comes from living too much in brokenheartedness.💜

So very worth the listening time. Thank you.

Inspiring & refreshing. Namaste 🙏🏻

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Go for a nice long walk and listen to this 🙏💝

Yet another introduction to a wonderful new teacher via Insight Timer!! Thank you for all you do for the world! 🙏