Let's Be Alone Together

This lecture is excerpted from the Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram, recorded in Lennox Head, Australia in February 2019.

From the opening talk: “We often hear that what a magician uses in a magic act is sleight of hand, but what a magician actually does is redirect your attention.” We can do this to ourselves as well.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from a session of Dharma Dialogues held in Lenox Head,

Australia in February of 2019.

It's called Let's Be Alone Together,

Which is a Leonard Cohen line.

We often hear that what a magician uses in doing a magic act is sleight of hand,

But what a magician really uses is redirecting your attention.

Now,

Having a good facility with your hands is very useful in that project,

But how it works is that your attention is somewhere other than what's being manipulated,

Right?

So we can perform a magic act on our own selves.

We can redirect our own attention,

And I recommend that we use this facility a lot because the mind is a minefield.

You know,

If you're not,

If you're just letting it run wild,

It's usually getting into trouble.

Not for everybody,

But for a lot of us,

Right?

It's going around and around.

It's gnawing on this and that.

It's going over old,

Depressing stories,

Future scares,

On and on.

All of the if only I had and if only I'd known and a long list of pits and pitfalls.

So just like with a magician,

There's something going on over here,

But your attention is somehow captivated to a different point.

And I recommend getting into a mind habit of directing your attention as much as needed.

Once you kind of get in the habit,

You don't have to keep directing it so very frequently because the habit gets stronger.

I kind of,

I've spoken about it before,

I kind of recommend,

I feel in my own case,

I think of it as a kind of floating awareness.

Just like you're floating in very salty water,

You're just hanging around,

Hanging there.

And even to use this metaphor slightly more,

If you're in very salty water,

It's mostly keeping you up,

But you might have to move your fingers or your palms a little bit to keep afloat.

And like that,

You might have to move your attention back as you see it going into one of the mind fields.

Now that said,

That doesn't mean of course that there aren't times when you have to think about problems that are occurring.

They require some kind of response and those might be troubling times for the mind,

But you're obliged to do it because you're a human being living in a world of entropy,

But sometimes you have to.

Unfortunately for many of us,

We're gnawing on the problems that don't really even exist in the now.

We make them up or we go over old ones that we can't do anything about.

This is unnecessary suffering,

Unnecessary stress,

Anxiety,

Depression.

When in fact you could,

With just this little bit of redirecting of the attention,

Be in this floating awareness.

And in the floating awareness,

What is occurring generally,

I notice,

Is a lot of appreciation.

A lot of appreciation,

A lot of gentleness,

A lot of ease of being.

It's very relaxed.

It's a ground of insight too.

It's a ground of insight and insights come through very strongly and powerfully.

Another component of that floating awareness is that you're actually not trying to catch the insights.

I was just speaking with Annika before you all arrived.

She knows that I'm in a writing project and she was asking me how it was going and she said it must be wonderful to be so focused and so on.

And I said,

Well,

Not really actually because writing requires a lot of thinking.

Writing requires a lot of thinking and you have to catch the thoughts.

So even when you're off at a cafe or you're anywhere else,

If you're in a writing project,

You have to be basically retrieving whatever insights or relevant material is going through your awareness in order to then get it back onto the screen when you get home.

Or if you're in my case on your writing days,

My writing days,

I might actually only be typing a couple of hours,

But the rest of the time I'm still in the writing space because I type a bit and then I have to walk around and think and figure out which direction I'm going to go according to the thinking that's just occurred and so on.

It's a lot of thinking.

When I'm not in a writing mode,

Which is most of my life these days,

But not recently,

But most of my life I'm not these days,

I don't bother.

I don't bother catching any insights.

I'm not trying to hold them for later or mind them for anything.

And weirdly,

I think that makes for a lot more to come through.

That in this kind of floating awareness,

It's a ground of genius,

Actually.

Your own genius is free to play and keeps surprising you.

Like you have a lot of aha's in that regard.

You keep being more and more mysterious to yourself.

Sometimes I suspect,

While I have no evidence of this whatsoever except my own observations with people,

That there's something we could call universal intelligence.

And that as we're drifting in the now or floating in the now,

I sense that we do sort of tap more into that universal intelligence.

And the reason I say this is that I've had these kinds of conversations with so many different nationalities,

Places on earth,

Cultures,

And I've often heard such similar insights coming through people who have had not at all similar backgrounds,

Like really opposite backgrounds perhaps.

Not only that,

But I have the ongoing experience and have for many,

Many years of,

You know,

Reading something,

Some wisdom of old,

And knowing that I've been thinking that and saying it to myself for a very long time.

So I do sense nothing really,

You know,

Esoteric necessarily about this,

But that there is some kind of a stream of perception that crosses cultures and crosses time,

Crosses generations,

Crosses centuries,

That we can tap into that's quite available,

And we actually all probably are quite familiar with it,

That is this fresh font of wisdom and insight.

Now,

Because often our attention is usurped by just madness and stress and stories and future and past and all that,

It obscures that ground of genius.

So for me it's becoming ever more precious to be living in that.

I don't know how much longer this show is going to go on,

But to be really living in that,

Really soaking in that,

Really letting that vibrancy,

That sparkle of mind that's fresh.

And it does require this little tiny movement redirecting the attention out of morass,

Out of the darkness,

And into just this simple presence.

You know,

I'm thinking about this redirection of attention and distraction,

And I'm just curious as to what you have to say about what is it that is actually redirecting attention and what is it that allows me to know what it is that I'm redirecting my attention to,

Or from.

Because there must be a meta thinking or a meta processing,

Because it's almost like it's a thinking that causes the redirection of the thinking.

Okay,

Would you look at that thing for me for a second?

That's it,

That thing right there,

That cabinet?

Yeah.

You just redirected your attention,

Right?

Through instruction.

Yeah,

But you can be the instructor yourself.

You can basically,

So don't get too lost in the meta story.

What is that instruction?

The instruction is,

Let's say your mind has gone on to a little story of something that's very troubling to you about the past,

That you can do nothing about,

Right?

Let's say that it's going over that story and it's going around and around,

And you're feeling tense,

You're feeling anxious,

Or your story is something in the future that you can do nothing about.

There might be some things you can do something about,

In which case thinking about it might be helpful,

But I'm talking about things you can't do anything about.

They're just troubling thoughts.

Let's say you find yourself feeling fluttery inside.

There might be physical responses in connection to these thoughts.

As soon as you notice that,

Then redirect your attention out of that story and into,

For instance,

Right now,

Simply hearing these sounds of this language coming out of my mouth that is being processed instantaneously in your own awareness,

And in the background the sound of the twittering of a bird,

Right?

Or a little bit of a tiny sound of the fan overhead.

So you're right here in this awareness.

You've moved your attention out of that other story,

And it's just as simple as that.

Don't make it any more complicated if you try to say,

Well,

Who's directing it and what part of the awareness is directing it?

That's all extra.

It's just going to land you in a bunch of confused thoughts.

It's going to be as simple as when you looked at the cabinet,

Just like that.

You were looking at me,

And then you looked at the cabinet,

And then you were looking at me again,

Like that.

So you don't want to have a lot of conceptualization with this.

You want to let it be instantaneous.

There must be something that interrupts it,

That even allows me to become aware that I am observing or looking or focusing or being something.

There must be something that causes me within me that says,

Look at the cabinet.

I mean,

You did it externally,

But then it's just that aspect within me.

The aspect within you is when you notice that you are suffering something unnecessarily.

So that is your Dharma bell.

That's your wake-up moment.

Now,

If you're just floating along and thoughts are drifting through,

Then you don't need to do a lot of redirecting of anything.

You're cruising along.

It doesn't really matter if sometimes you're lost in thought or in a little mini fantasy.

We're human.

These things happen.

Or you're having a memory about the past.

That's not a problem.

It's when the mind is in stressful territory and it doesn't need to be,

That's when the direction is recommended.

That's when it's good to redirect it.

So,

In other words,

You're not doing necessarily a lot of redirecting.

It's only as needed.

And only you know when you're in those moments.

What happens in this process,

This habit,

Is that you get much more,

You get quicker at noticing.

The more time you're in the kind of relaxed mode,

The floating in awareness mode,

Right,

The less time you're willing to spend in the stressful bits unnecessarily.

So as they arise,

They are quickly seen.

You might spend a little time in them,

But you know that you're not going to spend too long.

It's a habit.

A habit that starts to develop.

And you know in my own case,

I look at how I spent a lot of my early years,

My life.

I had a really hard childhood.

It conditioned a lot of anxiety.

And I was in a story for really many,

Many,

Many years.

And I was desperate to try to get a handle on it,

Which is why I threw myself into very strict mindfulness meditation for 17 years.

And also I had a lot of drama in my life in those days too.

I was always in some sort of romantic drama that went on for decades.

And you know,

And I look back at that time of my life with a kind of bewilderment as to how I survived it because it was so stressful.

It was really stressful.

And I notice I'm very averse to anything like that now.

I kind of can't handle it.

I just don't have the stamina for it.

It's partly why I really am careful with what I'm doing with my mind.

Because I find it quite stressful if it goes into crazy territory.

So it's not that heroic that I find myself in floating awareness so much.

It's that I can't bear the madness.

And I look back at how the kind of turmoil I lived in,

I think physically I can't do that now.

I think I would be physically sick in a short,

In a quick hurry.

So these are the kinds of things you begin to realize in the habit.

That it's a habit of freedom.

That it's a habit of clear awareness,

Present awareness.

A habit of appreciation.

And then when you're in the old habit,

It's a high contrast.

Yeah,

There's a part of it that sort of scares me.

Like even when you start to talk about it,

I feel this,

Like this emotion welling.

And it's,

Um,

It's hard to sort of get a sense of what that is.

Like maybe an aloneness within that silence or presence.

So,

Yeah,

It's interesting.

I find it an interesting,

And that's a bad word,

That's not a bad word,

It's not a relevant word,

I find it confronting.

Well,

It is true that there is an aloneness in it.

There is.

And you can get used to that.

In a weird way,

It makes for the possibility of great intimacy.

Leonard Cohen has a great little stanza in one of his songs.

Baby,

Let's get married.

We've been alone too long.

Let's be alone together.

Let's see if we're that strong.

You know,

Let's be alone together.

You realize in a way,

That's what's happening with everyone you're with,

No matter how close you might be.

Family,

Child,

Lover,

Long-time friend.

Because you're having an experience of this reality that is totally unique.

You can't even explain it to you,

Right?

It's such a one-off.

Isn't it true?

Sure.

So in that,

There is a lot of aloneness.

And in a way,

The deeper you go in it,

The more mysterious it all becomes.

Even to you.

So it's a good thing to come to terms with aloneness.

And to say,

Okay,

Bring it on.

Right?

And after a while,

It's also your ally.

And you don't read it as lonely anymore.

I have a chapter in my book,

A section in my book,

Passion as Presence.

Do you have that book?

Yeah,

All right.

There's a section called Majestic Aloneness.

You might want to take a look at it.

I felt that about Poonjaji.

I was really struck when I met him.

Because he was surrounded by people.

But I experienced in his company what I came to call a majestic aloneness,

Which greatly inspired me.

In fact,

I'd have to say,

All of the people that I have admired in my life,

And I really sought them out,

And as a journalist,

I had access to them.

They all had this quality.

They all had this majestic aloneness.

And yet,

They were delightfully intimate,

They were delightfully present,

Interested,

Curious,

Alive.

And yet they had that.

So you have to kind of come into a bigger place in yourself to live as that.

Right?

And you give up.

I would propose almost a childhood fantasy of the kind of coziness of me and you and you and me and me and you.

You know,

It's like all of that.

That falls away.

And then you're living in this aloneness,

This majestic aloneness,

And yet you do show up,

And if you're in a relationship,

You show up appropriately in the relationship,

Whatever the relationship,

Friendship or any other kind.

And yet you do know that your experience and her experience or his experience or their experience is all unique.

Every one.

You know,

Sometimes you hear these stories of people.

I talk about this in that section,

I think,

Of people who were together 40 or 50 years and one of them dies and then the other one dies right away because they can't go on.

And those stories have been promoted to us sometimes in a kind of idealistic way,

Right?

And I was never very inspired by them.

I always found that kind of pathetic,

You know,

That like I said in the book,

Like two trees in the forest that have been collapsed onto each other,

You know,

One of them falls and the other falls,

You know.

So one of the problems with falling in love with the Dharma is that you start perceiving things like this very differently than a lot of the other people perceive things.

But like I'm saying,

You're tapped into some kind of universal intelligence that from my point of view,

The great ones of old,

That the wise beings of old tapped into,

They understood aloneness,

Right?

There's another story.

It's from Chong-Tzu,

Who was a Chinese philosopher from many,

Many centuries ago.

And he wrote one of his poems was translated as Lao-Tzu's Wake.

So Chong-Tzu went to Lao-Tzu's Wake.

He was a friend.

They were contemporaries.

And he shouted out Lao-Tzu's name three times and he left.

But he was very dismayed when he got there because he saw all these women crying as though they'd lost their child and people renting their hair and pulling their.

.

.

There's just really a kind of scene of,

You know,

Desperate grief and big displays of emotion.

And in this translated poem,

Chong-Tzu is saying to himself,

What did he do to bind them to him so?

You know,

To cause this kind of display of,

You know.

.

.

And I loved that perspective,

Right?

There's something to be said about being light in your aloneness,

Right?

About the lightness of it,

The unbearable lightness of being,

Right?

There's something to be said about that that's quite beautiful.

Yeah,

For me it seems a lot about what aspects within my own identity and what I see I am.

I can let go of to be able to create that space for aloneness.

And that identity piece,

That I am piece,

Is I'm finding just a real struggle.

Yeah.

That is generally a struggle,

That identity,

The arising of the wanting to feel that one has worth of some sort,

Right?

But I propose to you again,

It's kind of an inside job,

Really,

You know?

It's totally an inside job.

Yeah.

I mean,

The whole thing is.

Yeah,

Yeah.

But I think for me,

That's why I'm interested in this aspect of redirection,

Because the identity piece and the I am,

What comes after I am,

Is also part of this redirection for me,

Which is then what is it that I'm choosing to redirect to,

Focus on?

And the challenge for me is it's not more doing,

It's not more reconstruction or building it to another form or another way of doing it.

It's actually a creation of space in the absence of what comes after that I am.

And that's my challenge.

And when you say creation of space,

Are you saying you don't have time in your life for that?

Or what do you mean?

I have time.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I have time for whatever.

Yeah.

It's just that I can feel it.

I mean,

If there's a hole,

I'll feel it,

You know?

If there's a space.

What do you feel it with?

Whatever I like,

You know,

Whatever's there,

Whatever I might do,

You know?

But how's that connected to the identity issue?

Because that's who I am or that's the kind of person I've been or that's what I do or that's how I've constructed my world.

And it's the redirection,

The redirection of the types of things that I even then think about.

Because if I constantly am thinking about,

You know,

My work or how do I create something new or what else am I going to do or what activity I'm going to do,

It's like a constant busyness that is where my thinking is and my construction is around how I then do that or how I make that happen or how I construct that or how I engage with other people.

But for me,

It's more how do I redirect,

I guess?

How do I slide of thought into.

.

.

It's hard to think of nothing.

It's hard to create a space.

No,

You don't have to think of nothing.

That's not necessary.

But it's hard to create the space away from something without me continually thinking about not thinking about that.

And so that's sort of,

I don't know.

Well,

Let's do another experiment.

It's one that Poonjat used to do.

So he would say,

Can you give me one second,

One second of your attention of present awareness just here,

Just this hanging,

Feeling the breeze,

One second,

Can you afford?

Yeah?

He would then say even half the second,

Half of the half,

Right,

Just a moment.

So it's possible to continue to give those seconds to yourself.

All right?

Keep it really simple,

Really,

Really simple.

Because I think there's a thought you may be having that somehow you've got to fill.

You've got to fill this I am this or I'm going to do this.

There has to be some sort of filling in the space.

When in fact,

It's much more like falling off the log into just simply being.

And that you know how to do.

And you just start being more interested in that as you go.

And pretty soon you discover that a lot of the,

There's a motor that most of us have been conditioned with,

Especially in our Western cultures.

It's not a habitual,

Totally.

Yeah,

We've been very,

Very conditioned to identify with actually what we do,

Or how others see us,

Or what is our position in society,

Or any number of things.

We are highly conditioned.

And it does take a kind of reordering of your tendencies with your thoughts to not be bothered with all of that,

To just get into simply being.

And it doesn't mean that you then end up just to bump on a log somewhere.

Actually,

I propose your own creative forces are more freed up as a result.

Your own creative juices,

Your own,

Your creativity starts to come from a different place.

It's more of a place of just generosity.

And it's,

You know,

We all know that people who hang out like that,

You know,

People with whom you just,

You can sense,

They're just hanging,

Just being.

It's very relaxing.

That's why we like being around dogs,

Right?

Or babies.

All right,

When you're with a dog or a baby,

Because they're not doing any particular identity project,

You are free to not have to do yours.

And it's very relaxing.

It's very lovely.

And you start to realize that is very appealing,

Not only to you,

But to others.

But it does take,

Like I say,

Just this movement of attention,

Slight.

Something that occurred just then is,

I get distracted by the insights.

Like I go chasing them.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So I think,

Oh,

I need to write that down.

And it's definitely a distraction.

What do you say about that?

Well,

That one doesn't seem particularly troubling.

No,

No.

I just had to follow that one up.

Yeah,

I mean,

It's not what I do,

But it doesn't sound too bad a distraction,

Frankly,

You know?

And so if it's pleasant for you,

And if writing it down is sort of nice for you to revisit later,

All of those things,

It's fine in my book.

But I don't do it that way.

I can't be bothered,

Because I really love,

You know,

I've talked before about how I don't like,

I don't particularly like taking photographs.

I don't like being on social media.

I don't like any kind of interruption of my now.

So I don't even like when I'm with someone who's taking photographs,

That they want to take photographs of me,

Right?

That we have to interrupt what we're doing,

And I have to somehow be photographed.

Now,

Sometimes I have a photograph taken for some purpose of putting it on the website or something,

But mostly it's for myself.

That's why I wouldn't necessarily chase the insights,

And that's why I also find it a bit stressful in the writing process that I'm in,

Having to kind of be thinking so much and collecting what I'm thinking.

So that's just me.

Some people love all that.

They just love it.

And they love the writing process for that very reason.

It forces them to think deeper thoughts and to collect their insights.

But another thing that happens with all of this is,

And I'm really appreciating this in recent time,

Is you start to really,

To the point of the uniqueness of the creature that you are,

You start to really honor its uniqueness and its authenticity.

So you sit very strongly in your own knowing of like,

I like to catch those insights and write them down.

Twice you've said universal intelligence,

And that's,

Both times it's sort of resonated.

And there's a whole lot of things that come along with that.

But the most recent thing,

Well,

That conversation was going on.

There's something that I have,

It's so interesting,

Whenever I pick up the microphone,

I say what I'm struggling with,

And that was not my intention when I picked it up.

But it's sort of inevitable.

It's the way that my mind works when I speak.

Fascinating.

So I'll try,

I'm going to start there and then see if I can say what I actually wanted to say.

So first of all,

What was happening,

Was every time you said universal intelligence,

I was,

There's something was just resonating so deeply and so beautifully,

And a sort of touched place in me where I almost wanted to scream.

There's just such a,

And I don't know why those words particularly today,

But something just,

Just,

So I was enjoying that.

And then I had a sort of a thread of,

When you started to say,

I don't like this and I don't like that,

And how you say that with ease,

There didn't seem to be a lot of struggle going on with that.

And I'm finding that more.

And I have a lot of things I don't like.

I won't do this and I don't like that.

I find myself saying,

No,

I don't like background music.

And I don't like this and that's too much.

And I have this like,

You know,

Like keeping on finding this balance of how to best support myself to settle into universal intelligence is the word that's resonating today.

But the spot where I know there's that flow,

That connection and dropping in,

And it's sensitive and it does take quite a lot of discrimination of not that and not this and not that.

And I hear myself sometimes and I think I sound so picky and particular and it's hard,

Even for me not to judge it,

Let alone the people around me.

But it's kind of comforting to hear you and that you just like know.

I have a lot of likes and dislikes.

I don't do that.

I don't do that.

I don't like this.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I'm getting more comfortable with it because I'm trusting more that that's just what it takes.

We're human,

Right?

And we have our predilections and we have our things that we're attracted to and things that we're decidedly not attracted to that we're repelled by.

The issue comes in how much,

Let's say you're in a circumstance that you don't particularly like and you don't force yourself to like it,

But how much extra suffering are you going to put onto the thing given that you're in it,

Right?

And so that's really the point of awakening,

I'd say,

In terms of,

I find myself in all kinds of circumstances that are definitely not my preference.

And I do have to micromanage my attention a bit in those circumstances.

I have to watch it in terms of it's going into resistance and into a big story and into,

You know,

Whatever,

Making it a big hell world.

And other times when I'm in a situation where I'm not in a really difficult situation and somehow the attention moves into an okayness,

Not that it's liking it,

But that it moves into some sort of okayness and I experience a lot more flow through the difficult situation.

Happy always to get out for it to be ending.

But that it didn't have to be such a big,

You know,

Drama internally.

Yeah,

I find myself in less struggle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And finding skillful means to be with it or flow with it or shift away from it.

And I love that you brought this up because it goes to the whole thing about authenticity and about not having to pretend to be some holy roller.

That is unperturbed by everything.

Usually people who make those kinds of claims.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Makes me shudder.

Yeah.

Right.

And often they end up in big trouble,

I've noticed.

They end up,

You know,

They're living with a gigantic shadow that they're repressing publicly,

But somehow it starts leaking out.

You know,

In their behavior.

So,

Yeah,

I way prefer to,

You know,

Be with honest people who understand their own humanity.

Right.

I find that very,

Very beautiful actually.

And especially if you also see that they can handle the difficulties without going crazy.

Just to that,

It takes a certain kind of courage and strengthen me to be true to that and not,

You know,

Try and look easygoing or,

You know,

Some idealized version of myself that people are going to like more.

Right.

I am finding I have less and less actually capacity to be that.

Good.

Me too.

I feel that that's the trajectory I'm on because I also felt that looking back,

I was so conditioned both by where I grew up and the family in which I grew up and then at a relatively formative time still in my life through Buddhism.

So always,

You know,

Turning the other cheek and not really having clear boundaries and all those kinds of things have taken me so long to learn.

You know,

And what I was just telling a friend this recently.

What I've been noticing is that having this kind of,

You know,

Deeper sense of authenticity,

You know,

Deeper sense of authenticity,

I like me more.

You know,

I actually trust that my sense of boundaries never seems to go toward harm of anyone.

So I don't speak words or at least I try not to speak words that are going to be hurtful.

But I'm also getting way better at really clear boundaries and walking away from people and circumstances that are not a fit for me at all.

And if they have a problem with it,

I have to let them deal with it on their own.

And I'm really finding this kind of strength in that that has been a great discovery.

And like I say,

It has allowed me to feel just all that much more honest in myself.

Because the cost of it when you're pretending,

Right,

In some circumstance,

It's a high cost inside that you're paying.

So a lot of why I remove myself from certain circumstances is because I don't want to be pretending in their company.

It's not to punish them.

I'm just taking care of me in those circumstances.

And that it would be inappropriate for me to be in their company and not be in their company.

To be in their company and really speak the truth of what I'm seeing.

Because sometimes you realize that's going to do no good for them.

It's just going to be causing a conflagration or a lot of feelings of separation or of harm even.

So better to just withdraw.

Well,

It's an old,

This is an,

This one,

It's just one of those things that just keeps coming around.

So the sense of,

It's like the underlying feeling of I'm supposed to be getting somewhere,

Right?

So,

But I also,

I'm also in the awareness of there's no way to get.

Like there's no way to get spiritually.

There's no way to get financially.

There's no way to get on a career level.

Do you know what I mean?

Family is not going to happen,

Which is I never really wanted that anyway.

So,

So,

But sometimes when I'm kind of just resting,

I get this feeling come up of like,

You should be doing something,

You know,

Because you're supposed to be getting somewhere in some way.

Particularly if it's not biting on a career level,

It'll be biting on a psychological or spiritual level.

Like you've got this time now,

Now use it well.

Do you know what I mean?

Whereas really my propensity is just like,

I'm very,

I'm very fond of doing nothing as we've talked about.

That's,

I'm sort of naturally there,

You know,

And it's not like some sublime,

Incredible nothing,

You know,

I'm not out touching the heavens.

I'm just sort of pottering around,

You know?

Yes,

I do.

And it's,

There's some,

I think,

Just some fear in me arises that it's bad,

You know,

There's some bad part about it.

And so,

So I wrestle,

You know,

I relax into it and then I,

You know,

The feeling just comes like I'm going to get caught out or,

You know?

Right,

Yeah.

You know,

People will,

You know,

What have you been doing?

It's like,

Well,

You know,

Pottery.

Yeah,

Not much to report.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well,

Two things are coming to mind.

One is,

Of course,

This is very conditioned kinds of feelings,

You know?

I think,

I think men have it a bit stronger even than women,

You know?

That your worth is tied up with what you do.

So that's an old conditioning.

And if I'm hearing right,

It sounds like you do spend a lot of time hanging around and being happy doing so and the conditioning arises occasionally.

It's not so oppressive that it's causing you to not enjoy your pottering time.

It used to be more oppressive.

It's getting less.

It's getting less.

So that's a good direction.

And you don't even have to demand that it go away entirely.

Right?

It can be,

It arises and you look at it and you go,

Okay,

Enough of that.

And back to what I was doing or being.

The second part,

Though,

That comes to mind is you can use some reflections to counter the entire premise about doing.

Because as you and I both well know,

The doing on the planet is toxic.

Right?

It is toxic and it is contraindicated for life.

And so you don't need to participate in that.

Right?

It's our,

It would be our greatest wish.

That a lot more people would have fallen into just being than just doing.

Right?

Through history.

That's,

And those who are really not busy building up.

Right?

And who are living more lightly and who are living in contentment.

Right?

Those are the real heroes now.

So I would just say,

Use your own reflections to challenge these impulses.

Right?

The ambitions of the ego.

Right.

They're,

They,

They.

They're sneaky.

They're sneaky and they're powerful and we can see the result.

Right?

We,

You and I both know the result very well.

And,

And,

You know,

Do you want to be part of that?

That gang?

No.

Right.

Even like I just been writing about so many of our assumptions about like,

Like there's virtually no,

Almost no activity in the realm of any form of capitalism,

Including green capitalism,

That isn't an extraction business.

Right?

Is extracting and transporting goods.

You know?

So these are the kinds of reflections that are important to counter any of those impulses with.

But best is to just sort of let them breeze by,

You know,

If they start getting gnarly,

Then use some reflections to counter them.

If you can just let them go by and just see it as this old kink in the conditioning.

Right?

I mean,

I think back to my,

You know,

My ancestral story.

So,

You know,

My grandfather and their parents came out as refugees from Russia,

You know,

And they were like,

You know,

Selling stuff on the street.

You know,

Really tough life then they got to incredibly successful,

Do you know what I mean?

As a lot of refugee Jews have done.

Pretty much everywhere.

Yeah.

And there's some way now,

You know,

It's like that's,

You know,

A life you start off with nothing and you build up,

You know.

And this life is just entirely different from the generations that have come before for me.

I know it is.

It is totally different.

You're stepping to a very different beat and you can bow in honouring that they did all of that on their own.

They did all of that hard work and you as an ancestor down the line get to live in a different way.

With a higher level of sensitivity to your own time and place and to what is needed now in this world.

Right?

So their great effort was certainly not in vain.

They may not have realised that,

That,

But if they could see with a certain type of awareness,

They would see.

And perhaps,

Well we can't speculate in the ifs,

But in any case,

You and I can understand that it was great good fortune for you.

That you do have the privilege you have and the ancestry you have.

And then using it well and using it with your own highest intelligence and your own highest good that challenges.

But those are very,

Very powerful instincts.

Truth be told almost every Jewish friend of mine has them.

Even the ones who are really,

Really good at doing nothing.

They still have that,

You know,

That conditioning.

And I have it due to the,

I didn't grow up in a Jewish family,

But I also have it because I grew up in a can-do entrepreneurial family.

So I also have it a bit.

I know the impulse.

Yeah.

It's like,

It's like,

It's like,

It's like recognising the privilege,

Which I do.

Yeah.

And getting really clear about a really good way to use this privilege is this,

Not that,

You know.

Good.

Better,

You know,

I'm wavering,

You know,

Waver.

And it's getting better,

But I'm,

But I'm,

There's movement.

Yeah.

But this is the story,

You know,

This is the story that will keep running in me.

Yeah,

Maybe.

And if it does,

It'll get perhaps with your own awareness lighter and lighter.

Yeah.

So you don't even,

Like in my own case,

I have lots of conditioned stuff that still arises,

Of course.

And I basically don't really have a quarrel with it.

You know,

I just let it come and go.

I've seen it thousands of times and here it is again and there it goes,

You know.

So again,

You know,

You've heard me say this many,

Many times.

You don't really have to undo anything.

You don't have to eradicate anything.

You don't have to engage in any form of violence.

You know,

It comes up,

It goes,

There it is again.

It gets a little boring after a while and that's a good thing.

It's a particular flavor of input you have into my world.

I think mostly everywhere else there's another sort of input coming.

So it's good to soak this one up,

You know,

The one that I resonate most strongly with.

Yeah.

Yes,

The non-doing basically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.