Drenched In The Senses

This is a talk excerpted from Dharma Dialogues in Byron Bay, Australia. Catherine's insightful opening talk looks at the difference of being mostly a "thinking" animal to one who lives mostly in the senses - being an awake animal.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep. I'm your host, Catherine Ingram. The following is excerpted from a session of Dharma dialogues held in Byron Bay, Australia in September 2017. It's called Drenched in the Senses. We are thinking creatures. We think a lot. And we listen to our thoughts, Most of us in the world. We are quite interested in our thoughts. We even are defined by our thoughts like Descartes, I think mistakenly said. I think therefore I am easily disproven. Drenched in creatures. I was talking this morning on the phone with one of my very close friends in California. And we were talking about how when we first went to India, We didn't go together, But we happened to go at around the same time in 1975 and 1976. I went in 76 for the first time and she went in 75. And she said a line that I felt so resonant with. She said, When I got there, I felt like I was finally home. And I felt that too. I said to her, When I first went to India, I thought this is the place I will come back to die. I felt so at ease. And we were talking about what was that? What was it about that? So one thing is that it was the pace. It was slower, Way slower. And there was something very free. It was almost in the air that you could just be as you were. And we both agreed that we were really drenched in our senses there. The smells and the colors and the taste of things and the look of the night sky. I mean, All of these things are so vivid in my experience, Even all these years later, All these many, Many years later, Vivid, Vivid experiences of being, Of sensing, Of the kind of extraordinarily powerful aliveness that can come when in a way you're just not thinking about, Or let's not even say that the thoughts aren't arising, But you don't care about your thoughts. And that's the case with so many of our experiences that we treasure in life. The intensity of having a moment of self forgetting. And instead one is just in their is-ness. It's why so many activities that give us that, For instance, The pleasure of sexuality, Sometimes called in French, The little death, Le petit mort, Get a little break from the me. Makes it a very popular activity. Now is it possible to unhook from this constant thinking? So let's say you don't have to stop the thoughts. That would be a battle. That would be another version of thinking in fact. Let's say you don't have to stop the thoughts, But can you have a great disinterest? A great disinterest in most of your thoughts. You may be a very unusual person whereby most of your thoughts are very, Very fascinating and relevant. I don't know many people like that. But let's assume that you're a more normal person whereby most of your thoughts are irrelevant. Not of much use. Some of them incredibly troubling for no good reason. Can one become just generally disinterested? And start to move into, I am therefore I am. Here you are being. It requires actually not that much thinking. Some thinking. Some thinking and some people's employment relies on their thinking in the job. Having to figure things out on the job. That's fair enough. You are being employed for that purpose. But the rest of the time on your own. Isn't it strangely the case that the thinking roars on and you're listening to it. You're being battered about by it. I say this with great experience because for many, Many years I was just fascinated with my thoughts and my opinions. And my worries and my memories and my history and on and on. I took up the screen of awareness. And it's exhausting. It's wearying. It's separating. That first trip to Asia, We were gone a year. And that year changed my life. We were studying meditation in monasteries and in between being in the monasteries hanging out. It really changed my life in terms of resetting the tendencies of mind habits. Resetting it into much more of a referencing into being into feeling into sensing. And that now has become for me, I talk a lot about being an awake animal. That has become for me the most wonderful way to be experiencing this very precious life is as a sensing creature. Not a thinking animal, But a sensing animal. I'm loving what you're saying. And I'm remembering things you've said over the years. And one of the things that really struck me was this way in describing your experience, What it's like to be a realised soul is that what was very comforting to me, This idea that actually it's not so different. You still, You know, Your aeroplanes that you're riding on is going through a storm and you feel fear like everybody else. It's just that you don't have that total identification with all that fear. Or there's just a different, And it's not detachment. And I'm starting to, I feel like I'm starting to get that. And it means that in a certain sort of way nothing has changed. Yeah. And I'm still the neurotic person with all those patterns running. And I'm just as conditioned as ever. But I'm sort of not giving so much energy to it. The self-hatred is still there, But I'm not sort of giving energy to that self-hatred at all. Very good. Yes. All of the material. And it's such a subtle difference. Yeah. It is a subtle difference and yet it's the difference that makes the difference. It's the difference between a feeling of freedom in it, Right? And as opposed to a feeling of being locked into a tiny space with the fear or the self-hatred or whatever it happens to be. It's that difference. So when you were just describing about being on a plane and feeling fear, I don't like flying particularly. And when there's a lot of turbulence, I notice anxiety arising. But for me, I don't have any story that it shouldn't be there. It's just there. And there's a sense of, I sometimes use the word witnessing. It's not exactly the correct word, But you're pointing to it as well. A sense of some bigger space of awareness that's holding it, That is grander than the conditioned arising. And so I don't mind what arises in that regard. I don't have any kind of self denigration that arises concomitant with those kinds of experiences. Fear is so interesting. One of the things I'm realizing is that I've lived in fear all my life. Just everything I am more motivated by fear or have been more motivated by fear than anything else. And I've constrained my life in myriad ways through fear. Just operating continuously, Affecting my decisions. And it's very easy to say, You know, Feel the fear and do it anyway. But I'm sort of starting to do that. Like right now, I'm feeling fear. I'm feeling excruciating anxiety, The same anxiety I would ever have experienced in any sort of situation like this. But it's somehow more, It's okay in a new way. Yeah, I can feel, You know, There's almost like a spasm in the muscles in my back as I sit here. But it's like there's all sorts of physiological patterning there. Which is telling me to be afraid in this situation. But there's this bigger part that knows that this is the, Not only is this completely safe, But this is the best place to be. The best place you could possibly be in Byron Bay tonight. Yeah. Well, This is definitely a safe place to just be, You know, With whatever is happening, You know, Just and to really get used to that, Right? Just to kind of, That's really the function of an evening like this is to kind of give a kind of entrainment, A kind of, You know, A kind of deep memory entrainment of what it feels like to just sort of hang out and, You know, Not have to make a presentation, Not have to think about a bunch of things, Not have to ingest information that you might do something with to promote yourself somehow or, You know, Just dropping it all. And then really, Of course, Circumstances can trigger nervousness and, You know, We're human creatures. Which is so unique. Someone said something so cute to me the other day. We were talking about taste, He was describing something he was tasting and he said something like, I'm not going to get this exactly right, But something like, Well, It tasted good to this body, Meaning his body. And I thought that was so adorable because it's so true. Yes, To that body, It tasted good. You know, To another body, It might not taste the same exact, You know, Substance might taste completely different to a different body. And it's really like that with all of, With everything for us. You know, We're so uniquely here, Right? So unique, Each of us. Even clones, Right? Even identical twins are completely unique, Each one. Right? So there's this recognition that, Of course, With our conditioning and with what we're able to handle and what we react to and all of that is very unique. Right? And we sometimes project about how it would be to be someone who was sort of fearless. I knew someone, He died in an accident, In a kayaking accident. He was very fearless physically, Very, Very fearless. Like a world-class mountain climber and did a lot of first ascents. But he was fearful in other ways that had to do more with emotions. Right? Fear comes in different packages. And sometimes we, You know, We project about somebody who seems so together and so brave in certain ways. Yet they may have their own private fears that, You know, All of it very touching, Very human. Yeah. My position is I don't have a quarrel with these arisings. Now I don't like to be locked in a closet with them. Right? I don't like that part. And I try in those cases when I feel that, I then do a little redirecting of my attention into bigger space. One of the things I find myself reflecting on is that if you live with fear all your life in that sort of pervasive way, Then you shrink. You shrink. You actually, And I've become passionate about meditation in the last year. And I'm just noticing that one of my tasks in meditation is to sort of unravel this, This momentum of this shrinking, This withdrawing that's been happening over decades as a result of this pervasive fear. And that the, This sort of expansive expansion into just being a fully embodied person arises naturally as the fear drops away. Yes. And we can sort of help that along with meditation. Yes. Or with direct part of what you might call a kind of meditative view is the direct experience that you're sitting in vast space. Right? You're always in vast space. I mean, That's the truth of the matter. And that's something we forget. And sometimes a meditative focus can remind us of that simple fact, But one can actually start to have that in general. As you wander about in this world, You know, That you're wandering about in very big space. And that these thoughts that are rolling, Rolling through are just flickers in this gigantic space. And the fears that arise and the neurotic impulses and all of that, Then they have much less power, You know, When, When you're realizing how minuscule they are in the vast space. Right? This creature here for, You know, A very brief time, You know, Having a few thoughts and fears and, And whatever in this gigantic show, This gigantic, Mysterious existence, You know, You start to have the, It then is put in its proper, It has its proper weight, Which is not much. Thank you so much. I could, I'd love to explore. I feel I want to pass this on to someone else. Okay, Dear. Okay, That's very, That's very considerate of you, But so lovely. Thank you so much. So great to see you. I love you. It's really great. Yeah, After you were no longer kind of running the place at the, At the meeting place there in Hampstead, It was, It was a very different experience going there for me. It was always so wonderful when, When you were, I just, I don't know if I ever properly thank you for all those, Those great times there in London, But thank you. Catherine I had a very similar experience today to this gentleman. I was helping a friend choose a flute. So we went to a flute shop and she played and I made some notes and listened. And I thought, You know, There's something else on today that I'm tremendously looking forward to and it's the satsang. And it isn't just the satsang coming here. It's actually the whole process of knowing that I'm coming and getting ready to come. And I've got a 60 kilometre trip to get here and I absolutely love the drive. Oh, How amazing. And I lost my car in the flood and I've got this brand new spanking little car that I absolutely love. That worked out well. I was going to say, My mother died fortuitously at about the same time. Not my mother dying, But she actually left money. So amazingly the money that she left covered, You know, Replacing the car. And I'm a bit of a hop foot driving here. But today there was somebody in front of me who was actually taking it very slowly. And there was a great joy and actually staying behind and realising how much I actually enjoyed taking my time to get here as well. So it was just a beautiful experience. Yeah. And I was reminded of a dream I had many years ago in which I was shown a beautiful pristine lake and a voice spoke to me and it said, Selma, If people only knew that whenever they needed to access this beautiful lake and the joy and the presence they would get from this experience. Yeah. And I feel when I come here that I'm drinking from this fountain, This beautiful, Beautiful lake. Just the immense presence of even the quiet time beforehand. Yeah. It's very precious. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful. Beautifully said. Yeah. It's always my sense that it's like a kind of home calling that's happening, You know, That it's, It's that, You know, That you, You came here to be with you in that lake, Right? That that's really what's, What's calling you is that part of yourself that loves being in that. And that's really, That's really the primary way that this deepens is that you just love it and you start noticing how much you love it. And then it deepens kind of on its own, You know, That that becomes much more your priority in life. And not only that, Catherine, We, The lower level of the house was flooded in the flood. So we had all our crystal, We have a crystal showroom down there. And I came back from Perth because of my mother's death to, To mayhem really, Apparently on the outside, It appeared like a war zone. And my husband had almost drowned in the flood trying to bring things up. But people were visiting to say, You know, Can we still buy crystals? And the whole crystal room was destroyed. And saying, How are you? You know, They were prepared to commiserate. And when I really turned into how we were, I was feeling tremendously joyous. There was an inner sense of the rightness of what had happened. There wasn't an argument. I wasn't trying not to argue, But there was actually absolutely no argument and an immense sense. And not only that, I was upset that I hadn't been there to actually experience the flood. Truly, Because, And not just the excitement, Which I think I would have also enjoyed, But to actually participate in life on a level that I'd never had to participate in it before, Because we came from Perth and they don't have floods over there. And so there was an immense sense for the six or seven weeks it took us, You know, To clean up crystal and clean up and gradually get the lower levels back to normal of an immense, I hate to say gratitude, But there was an immense gratitude for the experience. And even what is unfolding now, There's an immense sense of enjoying the whole process. And that includes a breakdown of the lower level of the house at the moment, They're rebuilding and everything else that's happening at the same time. That's wonderful. Really wonderful. Really great. Beautiful. Yeah. You know, I've often said that, You know, Yet another spiritual mistake or misunderstanding is that if you kind of get yourself tuned right, Things will go your way, Right? This kind of magical belief that, You know, You just, You get lined up and then you have the secret that things will go your way. But really it's that when there's that attuning in the being, In that great relaxation, You go the way of things, Right? You flow with what's happening. So a flood happens and you flow with it, You know, Or there's a death or whatever it is, There's a diagnosis, You know, Whatever it happens to be, That there's a, There's a gracefulness through it. That's the freedom. Not this babyish belief that, You know, Wish it and it will be so. Even the horror of, You know, The mud and the mess and everything else, But at the same time, The birds, There is so much birdlife there. And we would sit up in the upper balcony before the day's work, Which we had our days initially, And all the birds are coming and sitting on the railings and we love the birds. So there's a whole thing of participating in that aspect of life and then getting on with just the clean up. Yes. So often with a shift of attention, And we all would know it if somebody said to you, Let's say you're in the middle of a big grumble and someone just simply said to you, Is there some way you could shift your attention so that this is not as horrible? You would know. You probably know, Yes, There is a way I could do that. I could have a different frame on it or I could go into my own gratitude for being alive and sensing, Right? You would know, But sometimes we forget to do that. So another aspect of this kind of entrainment is that it gives you such a strong reference to what it feels like to be in your ease that the other, When you're in sort of crazy neurotic madness, It's really seen for what it is. There's a contrast. There's a contrast. It becomes more and more kind of intolerable to you when you know that this is unnecessary. And the process manifests itself, I've found. Yes. It actually expressed itself. Yes. The process manifests. That's right. It's like it's on its own deepening program that you don't have to work too hard. Yes, Very good. There's something that I just want to talk about. It's like an edge of my experience. So I sometimes have the good part and I sometimes have the bad bad. It's just the edge of it. And so around purpose, Like the purpose that we're here. So I met with an ex yesterday, Which is always a dangerous thing to do. And I noticed this feeling of like, Oh, I'm not going to have that long term 20 year relationship that might define someone like that's what you did. Or I'm not going to have children. That's not how I see my life going. I don't imagine yet, Who knows, But I don't imagine that I'm going to have work that's going to change the world in some incredible way. Yeah. In fact, I've pulled out of the work that I was doing that might have made some difference. Who knows? Yeah. And I don't even see that I'm going to be enlightened in that kind of thing. Right. So but in the doing of all that and the letting go of these things, There's some part in me that's getting really happy. But then if I'm not happy, Like it's got a real downward spiral to it too. Yeah. Takes me both directions. Yes. Well, Of course I'm going to vote for the happy part. Purpose is a very manmade concept. And it has been the cause of a lot of destruction on this planet, On this poor earth, Which is weeping. You know, Largely because a lot of people thought they had some big purpose that they enacted. Right. I love Jesus's line, Consider the lilies of the field. You know, They toil not. And yet Solomon in all his glory is not as beautiful as one of these. You know, That really, You know, We're here for a brief time. And as far as I can tell, The only thing of any actual value is the love that you experience and the love that's left in the hearts of those who love you. It's the only thing I can say that seems to have any actual value. And it's not a measurable value in terms of stuff, Or some big project or whatever. And that, I don't really like the concept of purpose. I don't tend to use it. But if I were to come close to it, That would be the only one I would find of any value or relevance. You know, Mostly we're quickly forgotten after we die. You know, Even the most incredibly so-called successful people. Well, First of all, We don't know the names of most of those people from previous history. And the few whose names we know, You know, It's not as if we think about those people that much or, You know, But the people who you loved, Who've passed on, There's remnants of that experience in your heart that live in you. Even if you're not thinking about them a lot, There's a certain way that it's passed on in you. But I feel that we live in these cultures which value people by their productivity and what they do. That's a very big trance that goes on in our Western cultures in particular. And I think we can easily challenge that in our own direct experiences because we all know that the people we really love to be around are not leading with that. Right? It might be an ancillary thing about them that they have some great success in something, But it's not how, If you really are, You know, If it's a really lovely connection, That's usually not what's, That's what's leading it. And when you think about what does, You know, What is it when you're with someone and it just feels great? It's really usually, At least in my experience, That you're just able to cruise along together in an easy way, You know, That there's an acceptance and there's a lightness of being and you're not really having to censor your thoughts in order to speak. And the difference when you're with someone who is wearing their somebody-ness, Right? That's very tension producing, Isn't it? You know, It starts triggering your own feelings of, Well, Am I somebody and I need to prove that I am and, You know, It all gets very uncomfortable. But, Yeah. Thank you. It's one of my pet things about purpose, You know, And it's, It comes up a lot in these sessions. People struggle with it and because of a culture that, Whose values are skewed, Right? There are all these polls that show that, You know, When you ask kids what they want to be nowadays, Yes, Teenagers, What they want to be when they grow up and they say famous, Not famous for doing anything or helping anyone or anything, Just famous. They want to be famous, You know, And it's just a very skewed and misery creating, You know, Conditioning that's going on. We have to so often challenge the messages from the culture. The culture is just getting more and more mad, Headed toward destruction in every possible way, As fast as possible. And we have to really, It takes a certain, It takes a certain confidence, A certain internal confidence to just stand alone in it and say, No, I won't participate at this level. You know, So yeah, I'm going to vote for your happy being a lily of the, Yeah, To just be radiant and loving. That's really it. And I, You know, And I said recently, I don't know if you were at the session when I was talking about this, But a lot of the productions of man, A lot of the purpose driven productions, If you really strip it down in each of those cases, What you'll usually find is underneath it all, It's just some little boy or girl who wants to be loved, Who turned into a grownup who wants to be loved, But that that inner, Inner little being is just wanting to be accepted and loved and thinks that they have to go through all these gyrations and building up in order to be accepted and loved. Right. And it might come in terms of, It might come in the form of people wanting self, You know, To be respected. But under that is love, Wanting self, You know. So that's often what you, What you sense. Why not go direct? Why not, Why not skip the hard part? I just want to ask what I've been reflecting on the courage one needs to, The one needs that I need to, To stand in the me. There was something you said earlier about that and that's something I've really struggled with. Like being authentic or? Yeah, Just, And letting go of not needing to fit in or approval, Which is how many people, How a lot of society kind of works. Yeah, I just would love some kind of something there, Just something to give me more courage in that. Well one thing that comes to mind is that when you don't stand in that authenticity, It hurts. It's a drag. It's painful. It's a lot of suffering. So basically it's the willingness to not suffer your inauthenticity. That's really what it comes down to. In this particular case, It's not even bravery. It's just being tired of suffering. Yeah, I wonder how much like lack of self acceptance and self love is part of that story of standing in one and the dignity of oneself. I think that's often the case that there's a fear of not being loved and a fear of being rejected. The problem is you're being inauthentic. Is you not loving you and you rejecting you? So then you have to start there and just see how it feels to be inauthentic in circumstances and what that costs to you. It's a rejection of you by you. It can also be lonely in that standing. It can be lonely. It can be. And my position is that's better than being inauthentic. It can be lonely. It can. Yeah. It's a price one pays sometimes for that, That many, Many people have paid in life. Many people we greatly admire in history, Even also people we know who aren't necessarily known in history that we totally admire because they are authentic. And even though you can see that that sometimes costs a great price. But the alternative is worse. And as you get more sensitive, As you go deeper in this, I've said this many, Many, Many times, I'm sure you've heard me say it, The crowd thins out. And you find often you're in the position of the one being offering the understanding without necessarily being understood yourself. Or that you are operating on a certain level of sensitivity and conscientiousness that you're not going to be met in. This is how it is. Or you get used to it. You just get used to it. The alternative is worse. And you can, And occasionally you get to make that experiment again. Right? You find yourself in a situation where, You know, Sort of to your own horror, You're saying things and doing things that are not you and are not true to yourself. And you don't know why you're even doing this out of some crazy old fear or being rejected or wanting to appear a certain way, Impress someone for some reason. You know, And you make the experiment one more time. Yeah, That's kind of the dance of moving back into awareness about what am I doing, What's going on. Right. Right. So then it's going to come down to your capacity for suffering. I'm good at that. Good enough already. Yeah, But you can, Even though you've been, You know, Proven how strong you can be in that, You can get to a point where, You know, The slightest hint of it is, You're just not going to go there. And even if it means you go home from the party or the dinner or whatever, Or the friend or, You know, You go home alone and reflect on your aloneness. You know, The thing about aloneness, It gets short shrift really in that you tend to live in very deep space when you're alone. You know, It's deep and quiet and it's a ground for a lot of insight and a lot of sensitivity. And so to have a different frame on it is also really, Really recommended. This has been In the Deep. You can find the entire list of In the Deep podcasts at Katherine Ingram dot com, Where you can also book a private session by phone or Skype and see our schedule of upcoming events. If you're a regular listener, Please consider making either a one time or a recurring tax deductible donation in any amount that is comfortable for you or give us a review wherever you're getting your podcasts. Till next time.

Reviews

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

Insightful, feeling/sensing, intuitive compilation of ideas. Thank you.

All good and right on. Thank you!

This woman is just amazing