It's About the Vibe

Dharma Dialogues session with Catherine called It's About the Vibe; considering the ways in which one's inner life and understaning transmits to others.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

The following was recorded in April 2017 in Byron Bay,

Australia.

It's called It's About the Vibe.

I've been noticing when I have to fill out something online that requires my birthday that I have to scroll really far back to get to my year,

Like into the last century.

I hope that they'll keep my year on for a while longer.

So one of my friends recently said to me,

Was there a quality of unreality about being this age?

And I thought about it and said yes and no.

In that,

Of course,

When you go back in memory,

It all seems very dreamlike.

You tell stories about you were here and you were there and you did this or that or you studied this or that and you had relationships and adventures of sorts,

But in a way you're telling it from memory,

Like a book you read or movie you saw.

But there's something that was very consistent throughout all of that.

There was a consistent taste that is very much present here and now.

And that pops in a very real way.

The story of my history.

I have a hard time really accessing it as a lived event.

I can say it in memory,

But I can't quite call up the exact feelings and the,

It was like I was a different person through much of all of that.

I look back,

Even last year.

But the taste of being,

The simplicity of being,

The sense of presence,

That has been very familiar all the while.

And that has had a taste of reality to it throughout all this long history.

So the answer was yes and no.

There is something very dreamlike about these passing of years running about.

But also something very,

Very bright and shining and alive and awake.

And that's very much here in this room now.

So here we are sharing this moment together,

Sitting in that simplicity of being.

That's the purpose of this kind of gathering.

Just to sort of remember that and really give it its due.

Because often we are paying attention to those dreamlike events,

You know,

That in time have just faded altogether when really the main show was this brightness of being all the while.

So this is the one not to miss.

This is the one to really sink into.

Not so much the story and the big productions,

Which after all do fade,

No matter how fabulous they were.

They're like these wispy memories.

The purpose of you being here for this,

Why?

Well why did you come?

Why are you here?

I'm curious.

I'm curious what you're doing and what you're talking about and why that to ask you why you're here.

Okay,

Fair enough.

I sometimes like to think of it as like being a conductor,

Right?

I'm just kind of keeping the beat.

So I'm not making the beat and I'm not making the music,

But I'm just helping keep the beat.

So it's like the offering in this room is,

As I just said,

To really relax into just the simplest part of yourself,

Beyond your personality,

Beyond your history,

Beyond your hopes and fears.

Just strip it right down.

Here in this evening,

We can just let all of that go.

Amazing,

Right?

Just let all of that go.

There's no need for it.

You don't have to do anything.

You don't have to prove anything.

You don't have to be anyone.

You don't have to impress anyone.

You can just relax and have a taste.

You can have a taste of that which is offered all the time in your own case,

In your own being.

But here we give ourselves full permission to just access that,

To put our attention there.

And so my so-called function in this is to just keep reminding that that's the intention for all of us.

And as a group,

We experience it very profoundly.

You can feel the quiet in this room already.

We're not learning a program.

We're not learning a meditation technique.

We're not learning any philosophy.

I often say it's much more about subtraction than addition.

We're not adding on anything.

There's enough.

We all have enough mental taxation.

And we've tried,

Many people,

If we were to add up all the collective years of striving and practice and philosophy and reading and wanting to know the answers and on and on in this room,

Just in this one room,

It would be shocking.

And yet the very thing that sometimes has eluded us is so obvious when you just allow it.

So here we're basically allowing ourselves,

We're allowing ourselves to,

As I said,

Honor,

Recognize,

Bask in,

Remember your deepest,

Deepest,

Quietest self.

That which you wake up into in the morning before you know your name,

Before your to-do list arises,

Right?

Those moments when you're connected,

You feel connected without having to tell yourself you're connected.

You just are.

Those many,

Many moments in a life that sneak up on you like that,

It's my experience that you can become more prone to those moments with just the lightest of intention.

And so in a gathering like this,

It strengthens that intention.

And I like to remind people how easy it is and how habitual it can become.

As you rest in this,

As you steep,

Right,

It gets stronger.

I often use the example for all these many years of sharing these kinds of events,

25 years of doing that.

I have typically brought urns of tea with me.

I make the tea before I come.

I let the tea bag steep for about four minutes.

Okay.

Then I take it out.

Now,

Over the years,

I've noticed that sometimes when I come home,

I forget to rinse out the urn.

I don't rinse it out until the next morning.

And in the meantime,

The tea has become incredibly strong,

Really like darkened overnight,

But it doesn't have its tea bag in it.

It's steeping in itself.

The tea is actually steeping in the tea.

And it's getting stronger,

Right?

So in this same way,

As you're sitting in this,

As you're sitting in this ease of being,

What's happening is the taste of it is getting stronger in your being.

And there's a way in which your own neurobiology starts cooperating in that regard.

Your brain,

There's this whole understanding about brain plasticity,

Right?

So what happens is,

As I say,

The neurons that fire together,

Wire together.

So in other words,

As you're experiencing this more and more frequently,

It's inducing this habit,

This habit of attention,

This habit of this ease,

This habit of kind of non-dramatic story.

It's like you're leaving aside the dramatic story.

So I just find as a young person that there's this natural inbuilt thing to strive to achieve,

To accumulate.

Well,

There's a possibility of you functioning in the world without a lot of stress inside.

It doesn't necessarily require,

It doesn't mean that you're just going to lay about.

You're not necessarily going to just go off to a cave and stare at the sky or anything,

Unless that's really your calling and your true destiny.

But if your destiny is to be in the world and to have work and to make your way or to have a creative outlet or all of those things are only going to be enhanced by your relaxation in being.

And the fragrance of those productions that come from you,

From that place,

Have a sweetness,

Right?

I went in the 1970s,

Talk about going back all the years.

I went with one of my friends,

We went to this museum in Boston and we went to see this exhibit called the Zenga Nanga.

It was landscape paintings of the Japanese masters from the 15th century.

And it was on I think the third or fourth floor of the museum.

And these paintings were so lovely.

It was like walking through a forest or looking at the moon.

And that's what a lot of the paintings were of,

Sitting by rivers or just peaceful.

A transmission from across the centuries of peace from the Japanese Zen masters.

So we left that floor and we had to go down the stairs to get to the bottom of the museum.

We walked through other floors and we came to a lot of paintings from the same,

Roughly the same era,

European ones,

Of religious iconography.

But it was mostly violent,

I have to say.

It was really quite painful and horrible to look at.

A lot of beheadings and a lot of everybody was sort of stuffed to the eyeballs with clothing and just laden,

Heavy,

Heavy,

Heavy laden of beliefs and of trauma,

Really.

You could feel it.

Like the difference,

Right?

My point being that how you are inside yourself is going to be expressed through whatever you're doing.

You can feel it with someone even if they're just driving a car.

If you're in a car with someone who's kind of aggressive and kind of agitated,

You can feel it the way they're driving the car.

I mean,

Just in the most simple of things.

So you begin to see that this channel,

I call it the silent channel in your being,

This channel that you can tune into at any moment,

It's actually the coolest channel to be operating from,

Whether you're speaking or dancing or laying bricks or painting or singing a song,

Whatever it is.

And that's often what we respond to in art and in literature,

Right?

And in any kind of work,

We respond to the vibe.

So this is about sitting in your highest vibe.

And it turns out that that's really not something you have to accumulate to get to.

It's not something you have to wear as sort of a ego cloak at all.

You know how when you're with someone who you sense they don't really have any agenda with you,

They're just hanging out.

They're just cruising along and how relaxing that is and how delightful their company,

Right?

It's basically that.

This has been In the Deep.

You can find the entire list of In the Deep podcasts at KatherineIgrim.

Com,

Where you can also book a private session by phone or Skype,

See the schedule for Dharma dialogues and retreats,

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Till next time.

Reviews

Love that feeling when you are in the company of someone and you know there's no agenda. There's a peacefulness to it, but it also requires skill in knowing the person has no agenda! Great talk. Thank you.

Healthy dose of soul.

Thank you. Really enjoyed the talk and the so called being. 😇

Unexpectedly fantastic. Thank you! The power of thoughtful, reflective words ... and silences, with connection, in a group setting. Thanks again, I look forward to more.

So enlightening ♡

Loved it! Will be subscribing to your podcast Catherine ❤️

Thank you!🙏🏻❤️💕💫👍🏻✨🦋🌸