Welcome to In the Deep.
The following was excerpted from a Dharma Dialogues Zoom session recorded on June 6th,
2020 in Australia.
It's called Grief and the Mustard Seed.
As we all know,
It's been a rather stressful time for months.
Of course,
We've had a very dangerous pandemic running about.
And then,
Of course,
We're also dealing with a lot of social unrest in the world,
Not only in America,
In the world.
As it comes closer to the countries that we live in,
We become hyper aware of it.
It's in our news,
But it's not news to many,
Many people in the world who are living in social unrest as a way of life.
I dare say that for us,
Because we're not used to it in general as a kind of background noise,
Many of us are experiencing anxiety and some depression also,
For all kinds of reasons that it's just been a very hard few months.
One of the things that I've been reflecting on very,
Very deeply is when I really ask myself,
What is going on in my awareness?
What is going on in my attention that is triggering lots of anxiety?
It's a lot of pictures.
It's a lot of scary pictures.
And those scary images are being played out in the news.
And it's not as if one is just fully hallucinating them or anything like that.
But what I notice in my own case is that it takes a certain fierceness of attention to not keep indulging those scary pictures.
It's okay that they arise and because they're arising in the actual imagery on the news,
And also in addition to months of seeing people in hospitals and so on because of the pandemic,
We're not just making those things up,
But we might be overplaying them.
We might be overplaying them.
And I know that that's happened to me some,
And then I get quite anxious inside.
I get very fluttery inside,
Like a nervous animal.
And I have to take myself in hand and go back to basically my animal senses,
My breath,
All the ways that one learns over the many years to calm oneself down.
Use your toolbox of calming methods.
Move your body,
Go for a walk,
Take a bath,
Listen to a lovely piece of music,
Read some Dharma,
Sit quietly,
And be and feel into this beautiful privilege of being.
What we are often handicapped by,
And I talked about it recently on a Zoom session,
Is our expectations of good life,
Safe life,
Abundant life.
That's our expectation.
And sometimes when those expectations are challenged in our awareness,
It becomes this almost mental torment.
But what if your expectation was simply that you're really loving being,
Just this,
You're loving this,
Loving being.
That's all we ever really got,
Right?
I was reading some from I Am That before this call began,
And just his constant emphasis,
Nisargadatta's constant emphasis on the relaxation into I Am,
Right?
Or just Emness will do,
Or just beingness.
And that's not to block out the world,
Of course.
We can't really block out the world.
It invades our spaces.
But what we can do is manage our attention wisely,
And keep returning to what I'd like to call the eternities.
The eternities,
Meaning the deeper considerations about what is life,
What matters here,
What's your own personal experience of beauty and kindness,
Right?
Just the real basics.
Just return home.
Return home.
Now that said,
We're very,
Very lucky to have Noah on the call with us.
He's sitting in front of a runnachala in Tiruvallam,
It's there in the background.
For those of you who don't know,
This is the mountain where Ramana Maharshi went when he was 16 years old and lived out his days.
And he sat there in the mountain.
He had a cave on that mountain,
And eventually an ashram at the foothills.
I've actually never been.
But Noah happens to be there,
And happens to have a little studio apartment that has this view.
And many,
Many a seeker over decades of time has sat at this mountain.
It's a very special place in people's hearts,
Because his teaching was so pure and so simple.
And for me,
Every time I see an image of it,
And I've been lucky to have Noah on a couple of calls recently,
I'm reminded of the eternal presence.
That's it.
I'm reminded of that which is here,
When everything else kind of comes and goes.
Everything else does come and go.
So to really rest in that sanctuary,
The only one we have,
Everything is just,
You know,
The so-called sands of time are just like blowing by.
And we get caught up in our little moment of history.
It happens to be the one we're very attached to and very much embedded in.
But let's use this hour or so to let our awareness expand into bigger space and into a more timeless recognition.
So I invite us to just for a few minutes,
Let's just enjoy.
We're seeing a live image of a Ronachala,
Which is our reminder of that which isn't coming and going.
And I don't mean the mountain.
I mean the representation of being.
And let's let our breath be very relaxed.
Whatever that means to you,
You don't have to control it.
But a calming breath.
A relaxing breath.
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