Dignity in Your Life As It Is

Excepted from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram. Recorded in Lennox Head, Australia in March 2017.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from Dharma Dialogues held in March 2017 in Lenox Head,

Australia.

It's called Dignity in Your Life as it is.

There's a sort of popular spiritual saying that at the end of your life,

You don't so much regret what you did do as what you didn't do.

But what if you could be freed of that one as well,

Right?

It's also this sense of,

Oh,

Things I didn't do,

You know,

Like this kind of wistful,

I mean,

It could be a long laundry list of the things you didn't do.

I went home with,

I was having lunch in San Francisco in 1990,

I think it was.

And I was having lunch with Ram Dass actually.

And I was in this lament and I was saying,

You know,

It looks like I'm not going to be able to have children,

I'm not going to have children this lifetime.

Because at the time I was,

I forgot,

What would I have been,

38 or something.

And I was with a man who had grown children and didn't want any more children.

So I'm kind of in this mopey moment of,

Oh,

It looks like I'm not going to be able to have children in this life.

And Ram Dass just flippantly said,

Oh,

There's always something we didn't do.

So,

Yeah,

There's always something we didn't do.

And,

You know,

One could argue as a comeback,

Well,

Not having children is a sort of a big one.

But if that's what it was,

If that's what came to be,

Then why not just dignify the life and say,

So be it,

Right?

There's any number of things that we don't get to do.

And to have a pressure at the last of your life about anything seems extraneous to me.

That the life was lived as it was and that the moments along the way had their own needs and flow.

You know,

Sometimes we look back and then we think,

Oh,

If I knew then what I now know,

I would have played it differently.

But you didn't.

We didn't.

So I always like to encourage each of us,

I use this phrase a lot,

Dignify your life.

All right,

Let sit in the dignity of your life as it is.

It has its own shape and its own,

You know,

Pulls and pushes and that your beautiful life,

To have any sense that you have a regret about what you did do or didn't do,

Just seems to me an imposed tyranny that is unnecessary.

Why not switch it around and think,

Oh,

I'm so grateful for all that happened,

All that I got to experience.

All the richness.

And it doesn't mean that you had to run about,

Right?

Emily Dickinson,

One of the great writers in America,

She hardly left her neighborhood.

Shakespeare,

I bet,

Didn't get around that much either.

You know,

You could have an incredibly rich internal reality and a kind of richness that experiences your daily life.

That doesn't need to be running around collecting other kinds of experiences that you think are more fabulous.

It could be that the way that your nature is,

That having it be simple was not only just as fantastic,

Grand,

But maybe even more preferred for you.

I was talking on the phone to one of my close friends this morning in San Francisco,

And she had just come back from New York City,

Where she has to go a lot for various reasons.

Her elderly mother lives there,

And she's also a well-known writer,

My friend,

And so she's often going for book meetings and things.

So she just came back from home,

But she was saying that she was remembering that I had told her when I lived in New York some years ago in the city,

I had said,

I often don't really want to be in my apartment,

I just want to be back in my apartment.

And so she said that she was having that exact experience that she was out at this Bette Midler show,

Which was really good,

But she found herself thinking it would have been just as good if I'd stayed home in the hotel.

So to really understand that your attention is what's giving you the taste of your experience,

No matter where you are,

What you're doing.

You could be just as content sitting here listening to the birds,

As being on fill in the blank,

Cruising in Venice,

Sitting at a fabulous concert,

Being in the arms of your lover,

Et cetera.

It's all about how you're using your attention and the story you might be telling or not telling.

You might not be telling any story at all.

But I'm in this case recommending,

And for those who came late,

I started with,

There's this spiritual saying that it's at the end of your life,

It's not what you did so much that you regretted,

It's what you didn't do.

And I'm saying,

Let's free ourselves from that one as well.

That's also oppressive.

And instead,

We just celebrate that we got to be here.

All right.

Okay.

If anyone has anything you'd like to discuss on these matters or similar matters,

Please feel free.

I'd like to share with the group that incredible conversation that you and I had.

I have no idea how many years ago,

Must have been eight years ago or something like that.

Yeah,

Eight or 10 years ago.

Yeah.

And we were in a restaurant and Catherine and another dear friend and I were sitting together and we were discussing parents.

And Catherine was telling,

And my parents at the time were early 80s and they live in Holland.

And Catherine was sharing how delightful it was to just spend time with her father and just even help him to put his socks on,

But have no agenda,

Just be and spend time with him.

And up to that time,

Having lived overseas by that time for 10 years or so,

I'd been to back to Holland a number of times,

But always with family and just visiting my parents for a few hours here,

A day there like that.

And this conversation inspired me to,

From then on,

Go and be with my parents every year for two to three weeks,

Just be with them,

No agenda,

Just there.

And Catherine knows it's been the most delightful,

Precious time that I've had with them because it allowed me to really bond with them.

There were no children.

They were old enough that they didn't need to come.

Not even Linda came twice with me,

But it was so beautiful.

And this is one that I actually,

I'm so glad I have done.

Yes,

Yes,

Of course.

That there are no regrets that I have done this and that I possibly would have regretted not doing it.

Yes.

I think that some of those are the exceptions,

Of course.

What that phrase usually refers to is things that you wish you had done,

The trip around the world or go to Bhutan or climb some mountain.

Often it's those kinds of adventure type things that it refers to.

No,

I certainly think that showing up for your loved ones is something that is very important and very sustaining to oneself and especially after they're gone.

Yes,

Yes.

And my father died last year.

And I think from the moment I moved overseas,

I was at peace with whatever was going to happen whenever they were going to die,

If I was there or not.

I knew that I was,

The love between us was so pure that it was absolutely fine,

Whatever would happen.

But having said that,

I'm so grateful that I have done this.

And having done this,

I have not gone to Machu Picchu.

I have not gone to the Grand Canyon.

Things like that,

That I would have loved to have done.

And at the moment,

If I go there,

I go there.

If I don't,

I don't.

And it's fine.

Good.

Beautiful.

Yes.

So I'm so grateful still for that conversation.

You've told me so many times I love that.

And I love that one simple conversation like that can really make such an impact.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is a big one.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Regrets.

It's very current for me because I'm in the process of coming,

My relationship after 15 years is severed at the moment.

So I'm in a lot of grief.

So there's a lot of reflection happening about,

A lot of giving on my part and it wasn't,

Well,

My perception is that it wasn't mutual,

But I still hung in there.

So I'm oscillating at times in the grief process of celebrating the life that we had for 15 years,

But also the,

Why did I,

Not why,

But how did I stay there and not give myself what now I feel like.

So I'm seeing this play of the tyrant,

Of saying,

Or the parent or whatever,

Of why didn't you see that earlier?

Why didn't you?

So regrets and then sort of saying,

Well,

But you need to celebrate.

So there's an incredible competition internally about who's camp or what camp I should be on.

So it's certainly a time of being in that duality rather than the non-duality of the experience.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

Well,

It might be helpful to just realize that the emotions that you're now experiencing are part of the wisdom process,

Right?

That is like you didn't know then what you now know.

You just didn't.

None of us did.

You just go back a little ways in one's life and you realize,

Oh,

I know a little more now than I did then because you've lived a bit more life.

And especially when you've had a very powerful emotional loss in life that often promotes tremendous reflection as to how it happened and what happened and all the ways that you played a role in it and that that other person did.

And so to really take this as,

I like to use the word as an ally,

Right?

To really see,

Okay,

Lesson learned,

Right?

Got it.

For the most part,

You may have to revisit.

You might have to have a refresher course on some of the components.

But basically you've learned a lot.

You've learned a lot in this process about how to play it.

And to allow yourself the grieving.

Grieving comes with loss.

When I use the word celebrate,

I mean in a very general sense that celebrate your life,

The wholeness of life.

There may be moments in life when you're in grief that you don't feel like it's very celebratory and that's fair enough.

You can actually have though a kind of undercurrent of general appreciation to be alive,

Right?

In the midst of all of this,

You wouldn't want a terminal diagnosis on top of it,

Right?

So you're happy to be here,

Happy to experience the basic fundamentals of being alive.

So to honor that as well,

That this is your precious life.

You're living here even with this loss.

And yeah,

I mean,

Loss is huge in this life,

Huge.

I just had a dream about my brother who died in 2002.

Only once in a while do I have a dream like this,

But it happened to be a strong one.

In it,

He was somewhere and I was trying to call him and I couldn't get through for some reason.

There was some problem,

Some technical problem.

And I was having the hardest time reaching him and I was getting more and more and more this sense of urgency.

I haven't talked to my brother in so long and I started realizing in the dream I haven't talked to him in years.

And I was in almost a panic inside in the dream.

Such that it kind of woke me up,

Kind of into a hazy realization that,

Oh,

No,

My brother's dead,

Right?

And this is 15 years ago that he died,

Right?

So we're very sensitive beings and we love deeply.

And I personally have no use for spiritual programs that deny and try to transcend that and try to skirt it and try to sort of tell spiritual stories that try to get you off the hook or find some kind of methodology whereby you're not going to even feel.

I don't resonate,

Don't encourage and don't see any good that comes of that.

So then you're facing it in a kind of raw way and going through it,

Going right through the fire.

The only way out is through.

And it's powerful and it's beautiful.

And meanwhile,

Your own life goes on,

You know,

Your own life,

Your friendships.

You start to turn more to the people who do still stand left in your life who are your dear ones.

And suddenly their value goes way up,

Their stock goes up.

Right?

Isn't it?

And then also you are more empathic when you suffer like this.

It's tenderizing,

Right?

It's a doorway to empathy.

You will now know when you sit with someone who's going through this,

They will feel comfortable in your company because you will know exactly what they speak of,

Whatever the loss,

Whatever the loss might be.

And so to take those gifts in addition to the wisdom that has been hard won that you've now won,

Right?

And to dignify this experience.

You experienced a love relationship.

It ended as many do,

Right?

They end either because they separate or somebody dies.

They pretty much all end.

All of the love affairs of history have ended.

You're in a huge company.

And to really get it that,

I mean,

I don't want to spiritualize this statement,

But it was so true for me as a direct experience that I can say it in that kind of confidence,

Which is that you start to have a love affair with life,

With not just your own life,

But life itself.

You start to feel the privilege and the extraordinary luck actually of being here.

And I think another thing that comes though with when a spousal type of relationship that is a love relationship of a romantic nature ends,

One of the components that it often has with it is self-doubt.

That can be really troublesome.

It's like not only the loss,

But the way that one can become self-recriminating or embarrassed in oneself.

And this too has to be seen through,

No matter what your behavior or what your words that you spoke or whatever,

To just know you were playing with your full deck of cards that you had at the time,

Right?

And so not fair in a way to judge oneself from today's understanding.

So then you dignify your life along with this loss.

This loss will be part of your life.

It will have its own effects.

It might have some very beautiful effects that you can't yet see.

There may even come a moment when you say,

I'm so glad that actually happened.

It needed to happen.

The story Mary-Anne was telling kind of sparked something for me.

And from what Mary-Anne was sharing,

It sounded like she had and has a healthy relationship with her parents.

So it just reminded me of coming back from overseas,

Looking after my mother many,

Many,

Many years ago.

And it was a difficult relationship.

And of course,

I was very much younger and she died young.

But challenging to be there as a young woman in my 20s,

Feeling full of resentment and a lot of expectations on me and so forth.

So I mean,

What Mary-Anne is sharing is kind of like the ideal and how fortunate she could have that with aging parents.

They're challenging to do and there's a whole lot of stuff there and results.

But of course,

Again,

What you know now is very different than what you knew as a 20-something year old when you're in full stride in life and probably had a list of 100 things you'd rather be doing back in those days and complicated also by a relationship that wasn't so smooth.

So of course you had those feelings.

Of course you did.

Nevertheless,

You did show up.

So I would say to that young girl that you were,

You did your best.

You did your best,

Hon,

With what you were working with and what you knew at the time.

Right?

Like I said before,

It's unfair to apply what we think we should have known back then because we now know it,

But we didn't know it back then.

And part of going through all those experiences is how we know it now.

And it's the lesson in my mind to take from any of these is about going forward.

Right?

It's about going forward into other situations where you can show up and perhaps be easier inside in the showing up,

Even if it's hard,

Even if showing up is hard.

But as you spoke earlier about regrets,

So there's like a regret of that unfinished business and not being able to,

Because my mother didn't live longer and I didn't grow up and mature and so forth.

But yeah,

I mean,

I accept it now.

It's just kind of popped up into my head from Marianne's beautiful story.

So,

You know,

Graham does tell us a story also about spending time with his father as he was ageing.

And I mean,

That's wonderful if you have those opportunities to clear things.

There are lots of things in life,

Dina,

That we regret.

I had one recently,

A big remorse,

This someone I had been estranged from,

My long ago lover died suddenly.

And I was just at the point,

I mean,

Just within probably months of wanting to reach out and connect with him again and not liking that we had this bad feelings between us.

And we hadn't spoken or written in four or five years.

And he died suddenly in an accident.

And I was left with feelings of remorse.

But again,

I use those for going forward.

I like to,

You know,

It's just a reminder to kind of keep things cleaned up as you go.

Right?

And if you start to feel that something needs to be said to someone,

Right,

Then try to say it.

Or do some action that you feel is needed.

You know,

The thing about that I started out this conversation with,

It was really much more on a superficial level about this in specific,

The regret of things you didn't get to do that you didn't do.

You know,

Like it's often said,

Along with that,

That little spiritual saying,

You know,

Very few people will be at the end of their life and say,

I wish I'd spent more time at the office.

Right?

That's kind of the context in which that thing is said,

Like,

It's sort of a seize the day,

Live your life,

Have fun,

Have adventures,

Etc.

But I'm saying something different.

I'm saying,

What if you free yourself of some big demand to have more experiences,

You know,

But I'm not talking necessarily about these circumstances of regret that have to do with ways that perhaps you hurt someone or that you shirked responsibility such that they were burdened.

Those kind of regrets,

Again,

Are fair enough.

And if one can acknowledge them,

Then they can have a deep and profound effect on how you behave going forward.

It just makes you a bit more sensitive,

A bit more delicate in your interactions.

And fair enough.

Lovely.

That would be the best use of them.

And I've had this kind of conversation with lots of people.

I even feel a little stuff around my own brother's death,

That there were things I could have done,

I could have,

If I had known then what I now know.

And sometimes a useful exercise is to say,

What would they have said about how you showed up?

Even though you can't really know.

But like in the case of my brother,

He would have given me an A plus.

He would have.

I was always his go-to gal and pretty much his whole life.

And no one else in the family was.

And so for him,

He would have given me top,

Top honors,

Even though I wouldn't have given me that grade.

But sometimes we have to look at it from a different lens,

Just as perhaps there are people in your life who feel they have failed you in some way.

But in your heart,

If you know they love you,

And you love them,

You're not holding that against them.

You know?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Hi.

I just wanted to share that my parents have been here for a week.

I haven't seen them for about three years.

Where did they come in from?

They've flown up from Melbourne.

And they leave,

Today's their last day in the area.

And it's been very interesting because we were estranged for a while.

And so this conversation's just been fantastic.

You know,

I've been brewing,

Going.

And I was really quite shocked at the lack of this kind of desire to have intimacy with them,

But then this kind of lack of connection at the same time.

So I don't know if that's hurting me that I've buried,

Or kind of what the process is.

But somehow,

It's all very,

The interactions are fine.

But I think there's this little girl in me that's just wanting to show them how much I love them.

But I don't know if I actually even connect to that feeling now.

So it's quite interesting,

This whole,

I'm not quite sure where I sit with my parents at the moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry.

But it's good that you're having this conversation,

Actually.

And also,

You know,

Another thing that I have,

Again,

Hard won information.

But to realize,

And I so know that impulse of wanting to be with the loved ones in the deep ways,

Right?

You know,

The real.

And some people don't hang out on that frequency,

You know?

They don't.

I don't even know if they can,

But they don't.

And so to start to release that demand in oneself,

And to know,

As I have said many times,

I think you've maybe heard it even a few times,

The deeper you go in yourself and in this process,

The thinner the crowd around you.

There are not that many people hanging out in the deep waters.

There just aren't.

There are some pretty fabulous people hanging out in those waters,

But there aren't a lot of them.

And so you just find yourself grateful when you find one.

I think everyone in the room is grateful having a moment of gratitude.

Yeah,

That's right.

But you recognize that that is not the level that most people are interested in,

Right?

I guess I'm also really confronted with,

They're older,

And they might pass at any time,

And I don't want to have regrets.

And if there is things that need to be said,

Then,

And so I'm in this kind of,

I'm in the really aware of not knowing.

I'm in the not knowing right now of how to be with them and how deep to speak.

But also maybe another way to play it as an offering of love,

That you offer the,

You meet them where they speak.

Right?

You don't demand that they find your language.

And I'll tell you a story,

True story.

A friend of mine who I haven't seen in 30 years,

But anyway,

He was a Zen teacher,

And his mother was very,

Very ill and then dying in the hospital.

And he flew from,

I don't know where to where.

I think she was somewhere in Long Island or somewhere in,

I don't know where he was,

But he had to fly half a day to get to her.

And he decided he's going to spend this last week with her as she's dying.

He's taken off,

Cleared his schedule,

And he thought,

Finally,

I'll be able to share the Dharma with my mother.

Well it didn't work out that way.

He got there and all she wanted to do was watch her soap operas.

And he's thinking to himself,

She's dying and she just wants to watch these soaps.

That's all she wants to do.

And he surrendered because obviously that was the thing to do to surrender.

And he just spent the week watching soap operas with his mother and then she died.

Yeah,

That is very beautiful.

That's love.

You know,

That's love.

Because one can sense when somebody has any other kind of agenda,

When they want you to understand something and you don't understand it,

Or you know,

Or there's some sense of a hope in them about how things are going to go.

And they're really not going that way.

It's not really how you're,

You don't know what to do,

You know.

And so to really,

Really know that it's a privilege to be one who does swim in the deep waters and who has thoughts that are deeply insightful about this very wild journey called life.

It's an incredible privilege.

It provides,

I say,

The deepest forms of happiness and understanding and capacity to let go.

All of the things that are useful in getting by.

And not everyone has that.

So if you're one of the privileged who does,

Then it's kind of incumbent upon you,

Right,

To be the one who meets them.

I think I'm really hearing and digesting this.

Yes,

Yeah.

I'm also,

There has been,

It feels like there is unspoken stuff between us from both sides a little bit.

And I think no one knows how to open up that space.

So I guess at this point in time,

I think I'll just hold space as opposed to open up the space or have expectations.

That's what I'm really hearing.

So thank you.

And you know,

Sometimes just the simplest gesture,

Like when you're taking them to the airport and you hug them and you just say,

I love you,

Mom,

I love you,

Dad.

Sometimes that will go a really long way.

You know,

Just simple gestures like that,

You know.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So this doing less,

Being still,

How does one know that it's healthy?

So I'm doing a lot of isolating because I'm doing less,

Not running around as much.

Are you doing less because you just don't want to do more?

Or are you doing less because you think you should be doing less?

No,

No,

There's no shoulds here.

It's just kind of.

.

.

Don't feel like going running about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'm just kind of wondering if there's a healthy and an unhealthy kind of balance there because I'm alone a lot of the time.

But is it uncomfortable?

Well,

Last night it was kind of like,

Oh,

But up until then it hadn't been.

Right.

So it was just a bit scratchy.

Yeah.

Well,

So today you came out.

You drove a good distance to get here.

Not that fun.

But is there a healthy and an unhealthy or is it just really about just tuning in and just listening?

I think that of course there can be an unhealthy depressive withdrawal from the world.

And there can also be an unhealthy running around in constant hunger,

You know,

A hungry ghost realm that's constantly trying to eat something but can never feel fulfilled.

So there are certainly healthy and unhealthy components.

But it's an individual,

It's really case by case as to what's true for you.

And to also understand that when you start to feel in your wakeful presence,

When you start to feel I've really been stuck inside for days on end,

Then shake it up.

Go out,

Go for a walk,

Go for a meal,

Go to the grocery store.

Right.

Just shake it up.

And I do,

Of course.

But it was just,

It just kind of came to me of is there an unhealthy kind of not doing,

It's kind of liberating to stop the running.

Well,

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's almost like what I do in my life is like the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and then it somehow finds the balance in the middle.

And that's good that it finds the balance.

And yeah,

Actually,

This is true in all domains,

Not just about withdrawal or engagement,

But anything that there's a trust that comes when you're resting quietly in yourself,

More and more sitting in your sweet spot,

As I've been saying,

There's a trust that comes that it will notice when there's an imbalance,

It will start to notice.

You know,

If you're thinking about some particular thing too much,

And it's starting to be really troublesome.

You're watching too much news that you can do nothing about,

But it's making you upset.

You're eating too much.

Any number of things you start to really trust that your own guidance system that you're relying on to get you through is going to kick in and say,

Hey,

This is out of balance.

And you don't have to have the formula in advance.

You really rely on a certain kind of confidence that knows that you're not going to get too far off course.

Trusting oneself.

Yeah,

Trusting one's own awake intelligence.

There are different types of intelligence,

Right?

We hear about them,

Social intelligence,

Mathematical intelligence,

Emotional intelligence,

Environmental intelligence,

Etc.

Many types of intelligence.

What we're speaking about here induces an awake intelligence,

A particular frequency.

And you rely on it to guide you in life.

I like that.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

This has been In the Deep.

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