Living In Reality

Excerpted from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram. Recorded in Lennox Head, Australia in January 2018. From the opening talk: “ We often operate on conditioned habits of mind. Almost everyone is just rolling along with whatever habits of conditioned mind they happen to have, without much interruption.”

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 January of 2018.

It's called Living in Reality.

We often operate on conditioned habits of mind.

Almost everyone on earth actually is just rolling along with whatever habits of conditioned mind that they happen to have without much interruption of that.

So if the conditioning required a lot of reactivity perhaps,

Then one is just going along in reactivity.

If your conditioning had been producing a lot of agitation,

Then the tendency of mind is to look for,

It's confirmation bias,

You begin to look for things that agitate,

Of which there are plenty to be had on earth.

If the conditioning is,

On the other hand,

To be in gratitude,

To find things to appreciate,

Then the attention starts to look for experiences or objects or feelings to appreciate.

These are all habits of mind and are highly conditioned.

The good news is you can recondition the way that your mind operates.

No matter how the conditioning was in childhood or since then,

It can actually be altered.

Not necessarily that the content will entirely change.

You might have,

For instance,

If you tend to grumble,

If that was the conditioning,

Kind of a complaining thing,

You might find that the thought forms will come along,

The complaints will keep coming along,

But the conditioning can change such that you're really not paying attention to them.

They're just sort of like words going by in the mind,

In the awareness.

They don't have a hook.

They don't have a kind of chemical trigger that causes more of those kinds of feelings and thoughts.

It just goes by without any effect.

And then the attention in this new way,

I like to call it being conditioned in freedom,

The attention keeps floating back into its resting spot of just being or gratitude or reflecting on things you love,

Having loving thoughts.

That starts to feel like the norm.

Now,

I know that probably everyone in this room has had situations where,

And they can just be ordinary,

They don't have to be in retreat or in some spiritual dharma context,

But just situations where maybe you are on vacation or you're just spending an afternoon at the beach and you find that your attention is somehow very different than usual,

That you almost fall into this free form of awareness,

Right?

And in those moments,

It feels very natural and you perhaps even have a wonderment arise as to,

Why don't I spend more time like this?

Why doesn't my awareness default to this more frequently?

My proposition here is that you can induce this habit.

Initially,

It takes some intentionality.

You intend to keep setting the attention to the sweet spot.

And after a point,

That starts to feel so normal that when the attention drifts off into old habits,

That's the only time you need to redirect it.

Otherwise,

You just allow the attention to float,

So you don't have to maintain this sort of intense vigilance.

It's that you've changed the habit entirely,

Or mostly,

Let's say.

You're reconditioning the awareness.

You're not just living at the effect of the old conditioning.

And it's simpler than one ever suspects.

You would think,

Naturally,

You would think that with a lifetime of conditioned habit of mind,

The old habits would be very powerful.

And they are powerful,

But the new habit can be much more powerful.

And I always point out that that's for two very simple and good reasons.

One is that this is more true,

Right?

You're not in the old nightmares.

You're in present reality,

Present awareness,

Seeing that nothing is actually sticking or training you.

And number two,

It's pleasant.

So there's a kind of entrainment of liking to feel better.

For these two reasons,

Both that it's true and that it's pleasant,

The habit of freeform awareness can actually go very,

Very strong and deeply very quickly.

I had a phase in my life.

Everything had kind of fallen apart.

The man that I was planning to marry left me for someone else.

And I suddenly went from living in extreme wealth,

His wealth,

Not mine,

But nevertheless,

I was the beneficiary of it while I was there,

To poverty.

I had no money and was living in the room of one of the spare rooms of one of my friends' houses with just nothing.

I had stopped my previous work,

Which I just didn't want to do anymore,

Being a journalist.

It was really hand to mouth.

And while I had done that for a lot of years,

I had stopped doing it when I was living with this person.

And so I had let go of all my contacts and I just was no longer doing that career.

So I suddenly had no career.

And no money.

And it was very,

If I thought about my life,

Finding myself at the age of 40,

41,

In this circumstance,

I thought,

Wow,

I have taken every wrong turn.

If I looked at the past,

I would think,

Wow,

I just took every wrong turn to land up like this.

If I looked into the future,

I thought,

I will end up being a bag lady and probably have to kill myself.

And so those were the kinds of thoughts I was having.

I was very depressed.

And I began to realize this is going to drive me crazy living in these two past and future realities,

Both of which,

Well,

They weren't really realities.

They were in my imagination.

But they were so troubling.

And the only place I could rest was in present awareness.

It was the only safe spot.

So I would wrestle my mind to that spot.

I would drag the attention many times a day.

I would force myself to say,

Okay,

How is it right now?

And usually when I would ask myself that question,

I would be going on a walk with one of my old friends.

I was living near the old meditation center I had helped to found in the 70s,

Which in some ways felt like living in grandmother's attic because it felt like it was falling back into an old thing.

But actually in the real reality,

When I would say to myself,

What is it right now?

How is it now?

Like I said,

I'd be walking around a lake with one of my old,

Old,

Old friends,

Or I'd be having tea,

Looking at the snow falling.

If I really,

Really tuned into it in the immediacy of the moment,

It was always fine.

The only troubles were ever coming from my imagination.

And because of the extremity of the going either into past or future in the imagination,

It forced this habit of present awareness because it was so acute.

It just forced the habit in a really strong way for which I am now so grateful because that habit has remained quite strong for the last 24 years since then.

So I offer this by way of saying,

You don't have to land up in some acute situation where any toe step in any direction is horrible and you can only stay in the now.

You can actually,

My recommendation is to develop the habit while things are relatively calm and okay and your pictures of your future aren't so scary.

Because from when you have this habit,

Even though then you might go through quite extreme things,

You rely on the habit to see you through those extreme difficulties.

It was years later when the biggest loss of my life occurred,

The sudden death of my brother.

And this habit really saw me through that phase.

As you're speaking,

I'm going,

Well,

Yeah,

I'm pretty good at being in the moment and not getting carried away too much.

But then it was like,

Oh,

But.

A few months ago,

Something happened where I was responsible but not in control of a certain situation.

And that really got me into a head spin for quite a while.

And then this weekend or a few days ago,

I again was responsible for something and had set things up in a certain way.

And then communication break down and it fell apart,

At least to some extent.

And that really has kept me busy over the last two days.

Not constantly.

I mean,

I've been doing other things.

Mentally busy or mentally busy?

Mentally busy.

Yeah.

Also because I wasn't able to reach the person that is quite pivotal at the moment.

Fortunately enough,

I have been able to speak to him just before I got here.

And we've set things up again so that it's going to turn out okay,

Presumably.

But it's out of my control.

It's about something in Auckland.

And I just have to leave it over to other people to make it happen.

So I find it really interesting that when I am in control of a situation or think I am in control of a situation,

But where I'm involved myself,

I can get things sorted and I can just be at peace with it.

But when I'm not,

That's when the head spin still happens.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's a really good reminder that even then I can try and do what I can do and then just yeah,

Trust.

Yes.

Or trust that it will happen the way it should or that it doesn't.

And even if it doesn't and even though that might be uncomfortable to you in your particular conditioning,

That you start to trust and rely on the fact that your awareness will reset itself into the most peaceful way through due to the strong habit.

Yes,

Exactly.

It may not exonerate you entirely from any suffering.

But no,

And a few months ago it was quite strong and it was yeah,

But yeah,

That eventually settled as well.

But it took quite a bit of my time and my energy and waking up in the night and going over it.

But I didn't beat myself up over it.

It was like,

Okay,

Well,

This is how it is at the moment and I do what I can and eventually it will probably settle.

But it was very uncomfortable.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

And I mean,

We each have our own versions of our own little things,

The picadillos that bug us or that are particularly difficult or most of you have heard me speak about my tendency to anxiety.

So I just manage it the best I can.

And I know when I'm in situations that are producing the anxiety,

I don't add on to a big story about it shouldn't be happening and all of that,

But I just work with my attention.

That's all that I do.

Otherwise I don't have to bother.

I let my attention float around.

I was really touched by your story.

It was really.

And yeah,

And thank you for sharing this.

And it's funny.

I have a question who is turning around my mind since two,

Three days and it is exactement about the moment.

Okay.

In a way I'm stuck in the moment,

Like really enjoying the moment and really the orientation is under beautiful things and just really try to,

You know,

Not running,

Running with the pattern.

And then,

Okay,

Moment by moment,

But in a way I know there is only moment by moment,

But the seeker,

The seeker,

You know,

The seeker is still here.

Then I listened to all these Advaita and I'm one of the person I know.

I will never get it.

I will never get it,

The Advaita stuff.

It's just like,

Huh?

What are they talking about?

But then why are you bothering to listen to it?

Because I think there's something there that only you don't get.

Exactly.

Yeah,

Like as I say,

You know,

I know with all my Zen teaching from Zen say,

It's the Saphu,

It's the wall and nothing else.

I know that.

And that's the base of my life.

But there is still this,

You know,

And I think there is something I must understand and then I listen,

I listen to Advaita,

But I just,

What?

What are they talking about?

And I know I'm not that and all this,

You know?

Yes,

So help.

Well let's,

Aside from the story about Advaita and the obscurity of it for you,

Let's address the seeking,

Right?

The seeking is the issue.

The belief that there's going to be some,

You know,

Mysterious combination that you're going to dial and then,

Yeah.

This is,

I think,

The issue.

That belief,

That's the veil.

And I would say probably the only veil.

And how I can drop it,

You know,

I try everything,

But it's all the time.

Really everything is part of the seeking,

Right?

It's,

You still think when you say I try everything,

You still think there's something you're going to get,

Right?

What if really you really understand this really is it?

Really?

Yeah.

What if you really saw,

And I know you've glimpsed it,

That there's nothing to get.

There is no,

This is all fairy tales that have been sold to us.

I'm not looking for enlightenment.

Anything.

I'm talking about,

Forget enlightenment,

We don't even believe in this.

No,

Anything,

Any improvement.

You don't have to change anything at all.

I know you're not believing what I'm saying.

Yes,

I know.

I know.

I know it's true.

I can feel,

I know,

I don't know.

I don't know if I know,

But I can feel it.

I can feel it.

It's completely true because it's in me.

Right.

But there is this part.

Okay,

Well let's just,

Let's,

Okay,

Well then if that arises,

That story arises,

Can you not treat it like just some conditioned misunderstanding that occasionally arises?

Like here comes that same old,

You know,

It turns out that our neurobiology is so hardwired in a certain way that we're very susceptible to believe things that we've been practicing believing.

Even when we're shown that it's not the case,

The mind will still,

The brain will still believe it.

There's a famous study,

I've mentioned it before,

In which they,

There was a university study where they went out and they asked a whole bunch of people,

Where were you when the Challenger blew up?

This is something that happened,

It was an American spaceship thing that blew up and it was a huge news story.

And I remember where I was,

I think.

But anyway,

They asked all these people right after the event and these people all gave their answers.

They went back to them something like 20 years later,

They found a bunch of those same people and asked them then,

Where were they?

And they got different answers from their original answers,

Not to the one,

But a number of people said something different than they had,

What they had originally said and insisted that the second answer was the one that was correct,

Which is hard to imagine that could be true and we don't think it is,

But they thought it was because the mind had practiced the story a lot,

Even though it was incorrect.

So in this case,

It's like an old,

It's an old knee jerk that has this sense that somehow if I could just get the right formula,

Hear the right words,

Have the right moment,

Have the right experience,

Right?

And what if you really said yes to yourself exactly as you are with no changes whatsoever?

All there is to do is relax,

Use your own smart attention as needed,

Only when as needed,

Don't otherwise have to bother,

Let it float.

What if you really knew for sure that there's nothing more to do?

That really no effort in this regard,

No effort at all.

It's only in relaxation.

You're only resting the mind.

So you think I should hang on to the moment?

Just.

.

.

I wouldn't use the word hang on.

I would say just be at ease and forget even calling it the moment,

Right?

Just be at ease and not bothered by whatever is going on in the mind unless it's causing a cluster of suffering.

But otherwise,

These are just impersonal thoughts,

Empty phenomena rolling through,

Nothing big,

Nothing much about it,

Right?

Old habits and old thoughts and old worries and all this and that and it just rolls through with.

.

.

It doesn't have to in any way really affect your moment of relaxation.

See,

Many people think that if they're having any of those negative thoughts,

Then they can't be relaxed.

But I'm proposing,

Yes,

You can.

You can be completely relaxed as they're rolling through because you're not engaging with them.

If you start engaging with them,

If you start being afraid of your thoughts,

Right?

Being agitated by your thoughts and being all,

Having it really landing in the body,

Then that's the time to intervene with redirect the attention.

Needs a little intervention,

Redirect the attention just a little tiny bit.

And that's really all there is to it.

There's a lot of hubbub made of the spiritual life,

Right?

Very complicated programs and trainings and really complicated.

And really only the simplicity is the truth.

Yes,

Poonjaji used to always say,

Keep quiet and make no effort.

I would say that those two lines are the crux of his entire message.

And keep quiet doesn't mean that you don't speak or that you don't laugh or cry or anything.

It's just allowing just this quiet sense of not striving in any direction with regard to some big self-improvement project.

That just takes you away from the essence.

I've said many times that in meeting him,

The seeking completely went away.

And it's not because I think I found something.

It was because I saw the futility of seeking.

I saw the lie of it.

I really understood the lie of it.

And it's an innocent lie.

It's one that we all get indoctrinated with.

But I really saw how ridiculous it was.

And from that moment,

I think in 1991,

I can honestly say I've not ever had another moment of seeking.

I have zero interest in improving myself.

I don't like to suffer,

So I do intervene with my mind sometimes.

But I'm not on a self-improvement approach.

I'm just alleviating mental suffering when I can.

That's it.

I used to long,

Long,

Long ago have spiritual ambitions.

And it was very wearying.

I wasn't very good at it.

I tried.

I tried hard,

As did you.

We both did.

You look happier.

Yeah,

Just talking about the redirecting your attention back to the present moment,

I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about that.

How do you actually do that?

Well,

It's really,

I mean,

Your present reality is always there,

Right?

It's actually the only real thing you're experiencing.

So when you say how,

It's really just a matter of noticing the reality in which you're sitting.

You don't have to impose anything extra.

You just fall into what is actually the case.

You take yourself out of imagination,

Right?

And into,

You know,

You're hearing the birds,

You're breathing,

You're feeling the particular quality of air on your skin,

Or some pressure in the seat where you're sitting.

You know,

You're having a very direct experience.

You're immersed in existence.

And as the awareness attunes to that,

It starts becoming much more sensitive to the particular situation,

Your particular circumstance at any given moment.

And what can happen then is because you're more awake to the moment you're in,

Or to the experience you're in,

You notice a lot more and you start to move on what might be called a heightened intuition.

But I always point out that intuition looks to be heightened because you have a lot more information that you're working with.

In other words,

When you're noticing a lot of things in any given circumstance,

You have what we might call intuition or an awake intelligence,

Born of just having more information.

Just like with any circumstance.

If you're dealing with someone who you know is extremely experienced,

Let's say a woodworker who's got 30 years of woodworking behind him,

And you come upon a problem in the woodworking,

You might well defer to his expertise because he's faced either these kinds of situations or very,

Very similar ones,

Many,

Many,

Many times.

It might look like intuition that he's trying something brand new,

But in fact,

It's born of a tremendous amount of experience,

Right?

And just like that,

When you're very,

Very awake in noticing in a very easy way in your actual reality,

Your movement through it is informed because there's a lot more information.

Thank you.

That all makes sense.

It seems to me like there's a few different qualities of awareness when you come back to the present.

Sometimes that awareness can be quite spacious.

Yes.

Like you're taking in the whole universe at the one time,

But other times that awareness,

You might have a pain in your hand and it's a very focused awareness.

Do you practice,

Like when you're bringing your attention back to the present moment,

Do you actively seek certain kinds of awareness in that present moment?

It's a good question.

It's very case specific for me.

Like if I'm dealing with some sort of chronic pain or acute pain,

A lot of the attention will be used for that,

Right?

It's grabbing the attention because it's acute.

But in those cases,

I allow my sense to feel the space around me or the pain,

Right?

So that I don't feel it.

I mean,

I'm still experiencing it very acutely,

But I'm not kind of locked down onto a tiny point of just that.

Now,

There may be circumstances where one really is,

Where the pain is so intense that it's very hard to feel the spaciousness around it.

But I deal with chronic pain when I walk.

And so I am,

That's just a part of what happens for me when I walk.

And I've noticed over the years,

My attention doesn't just fixate on that.

It's there in the scope of things,

In the bigger picture of what I'm experiencing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And sometimes there's a mental pain,

Something acute is happening in that regard,

Some specific circumstance that is going on that has to be addressed and that is really,

Really difficult.

And again,

Similarly,

I allow it to be in the awareness,

I allow it to be,

Some piece of the attention is tracking it.

But I also have the habit of kind of keeping a bigger sense of there's a lot more space around it.

I like to not feel I'm locked in a closet with a single problem that's becoming like a big boogeyman.

So there's a sense of,

Again,

Spaciousness.

And sometimes it's helpful just simply to go outside at night and look at the stars.

Just if that's what's required for you to remind yourself that you're in space,

Then actually look at it.

Because we humans really lock on to our problems and our stories and our opinions and our fears.

We really just lock on to them as though we are in a confined space,

In a tiny,

Tiny confined space with just that.

And it's actually never true.

We are in big space,

In huge space.

Thank you.

I want to ask you a question about laziness.

Yeah.

Because,

Oh,

Yeah.

I notice your influence.

I can feel your influence in my life.

It's lovely.

And there's an increased kind of tendency not to push myself to do things.

Yeah.

That's how I feel it the most.

Like I've barely meditated since I've been coming to see you.

So it's just like,

Nah.

Do you know what I mean?

There's some way I feel the push in there and it's like,

No.

And what does that mean?

It means I have this little story,

Right?

But I notice as I kind of fall a bit deeper into this,

That this is a little bit of a fear in me.

Well,

What if I just stop doing anything at all?

And maybe there's some programming in me that I am a lazy person that this might not be good.

So I'm at this sort of threshold of like,

How okay is it not to push yourself?

You know,

Do I need to do a little bit of that?

I don't know what will happen to me if I keep going down this path.

You might end up like Raman and just laying about.

I used to joke,

I used to often say that the Dharma ruins your life.

And of course it doesn't.

I think I've told you this story before,

But in the 80s,

One of my close friends,

A gay therapist specializing in gay married men's issues back in the 80s when actually many more men were in the closet at the time and the AIDS crisis was full blown.

And he and I used to always joke about how the Dharma had ruined our lives because for similar reasons,

We didn't feel the push.

We didn't have the white hot ambition that a lot of people we knew had.

Just on and on.

We would often joke about it,

Right?

And anyway,

He then later got AIDS and I had moved to California,

But I had gone back to Boston and went to see him in what turned out to be one of the last months of his life.

And when he opened the door to his apartment to let me in,

And he was very emaciated.

I hadn't seen him for quite a while and he had really gone downhill physically,

But his eyes were these bright blue orbs just blazing.

That's what I remember most was his eyes when he opened the door.

And he said to me,

I've been dying to tell you something.

And he used that phrase,

Which we both laughed at.

I've been dying to tell you something.

And I said,

What?

And he said,

The Dharma really pays off in the end.

We had a great laugh.

So,

Okay,

Let's look at it.

If your nature is such that being relaxed and at ease feels good to you,

And if occasionally thoughts are arising saying,

Hmm,

Maybe I should be doing more,

But I really don't feel like it,

Then those thoughts float by.

If the not doing starts to feel uncomfortable,

You will notice it.

If it starts to feel like it's becoming enervating and with a tinge of perhaps even ennui,

Then you'll notice.

And there will be a movement.

You just start to really rely on yourself as the barometer,

You know,

As the lab.

You really rely on your own attention to be telling you honestly.

And because of this very thing I spoke about earlier about the,

With much more information,

You notice things,

You notice the scope of what's happening.

And you have a kind of bravery in facing it,

No matter what it's going to take to address it.

So you just really trust that.

And sometimes you might make a crazy wild change.

And yet you're relying on a certain kind of quiet inside of your being that knows that,

Okay,

This feels right,

Even though it doesn't maybe make sense.

And part of what may be the case for you,

And believe me,

Michael,

This is very common,

When people start to really allow this open awareness to be more consistent.

First of all,

Yes,

It's true,

You don't have to do a so-called formal practice so much,

Only if you want to.

If you don't,

You don't do it because you think you should do it.

You only do it if you feel like doing it.

And it may be that swimming is your new whatever,

You know,

It's like,

There's no particular magic to the sitting position.

So you start to feel into this deep relaxation.

And a lot of things may fall away as a result.

I've heard this over and over and over hundreds of times.

People have changed their lives.

I've seen,

I've known so many people who have radically changed their lives,

And others who didn't change necessarily the structure of their lives,

But something in them was so different that they were able to now be in it in a new way.

Thank you,

That's a very beautiful answer.

I notice what's happening is the first choice is towards,

Like,

I can feel a push in that,

It's a no.

But in the,

I both enjoy not doing,

But it does leave a little trail of like,

A little bit of a,

There's a little bit of a wagging figure.

You're being a bad boy.

Yeah,

Like a little trail of wagging fingers,

Kind of collecting around there.

Yeah.

And I don't feel like necessarily investigating them or getting lost in them.

But I'm,

So so it's like a little.

.

.

Just noticing.

Yeah.

And that could just be conditioning,

You know,

That's conditioning.

You know,

We live in cultures and we were reared in cultures where you were valued by a lot of productivity.

And I really challenge this.

I challenge it not only in a dharmic position,

I challenge it also from an ecological point of view,

That all of this productivity that we have been entrained to believe we should be up to is actually raping the earth.

And the,

You know,

And it is the eco system,

The entire,

The living world on which we all depend,

Including all the other creatures,

Is being destroyed by the greed and the push and the ambition and the proving and the extraction and the productivity.

So even on that basis alone,

I would argue,

To step out of the maelstrom of more,

More,

More and do and show and be and go and,

You know,

It's a madness that,

It's a sickness that almost all of us in Western cultures have.

Now there are cultures,

Certainly older cultures in history,

And also even in modern time,

There's still a few cultures left which are living closer to the earth,

Which are living in more contentment,

And many of those cultures have a lot of free time in the day.

You know?

They have a lot of time of hanging out time.

They go slower.

Maybe they don't move in as big a circumference as we do,

But they're having a pretty good old time,

You know?

In simpler ways.

And isn't it interesting when we go to those places,

Which we have the privilege of having done,

How something just shifts inside of us,

Right?

The expectation for speed and efficiency changes,

Right?

I notice when I go to,

You know,

A more slow culture,

I do have a bit of an adjustment because of the expectation of speed and efficiency in which I am normally living.

You know,

I'll have this little agitation sometimes that this doesn't work and that doesn't work and the phone doesn't work and you can't get on Wi-Fi.

But after a little while,

You know,

The slowing up and the kind of going at the speed of nature,

At a much more humane speed,

I would argue,

Slowness rather,

There's a beautiful sense of the pace feels more commensurate with how I want to go.

So part of this also requires a kind of being willing to be stepping to a very different beat than your conditioned cultural overlay.

And it's hard in a way because everybody else is in agreement about that.

And the sense of becoming,

Do you know what I mean?

Like I can feel,

Like as I take my hands off that a little bit,

The sense is like the groundlessness almost.

Like,

Well,

You know,

This is just all it's ever going to be.

You know,

It's sort of like.

.

.

What's going to become of you?

But yeah,

No,

I hear you.

As you're speaking,

I can just feel the poetry in it.

And I must be feeling the poetry to be drawn to it anyway,

But it's a good reminder,

You know.

Yeah,

No,

I think you do feel that poetry very loud and clear.

And that,

You know,

Also what's coming to me to say is that it's getting more and more clear to me as I go that the only things that actually are going to matter in my life and at the end of this life,

And I would suggest that it's probably true universally,

It's just the love that you're sharing along the way.

You know,

I think there's really nothing else,

Even though we get seduced into thinking,

You know,

That we should leave some mark behind other than that.

But I seriously doubt it.

You know,

I really doubt it.

Yeah.

And if that's the case,

Then the more you relax,

The more loving you feel,

And the more loving people feel toward you.

You know,

So it's like it puts you,

You know,

Square and center in exactly the spot that's the most high priority anyway.

You know.

Good to be reminded,

Though.

It is,

Yeah,

It is.

It really is,

Yep.

Poonjaji really,

He was not seduced by any of the trinkets that were offered of the world.

His legacy was not in things.

It wasn't even in teachings,

Per se.

It was actually in the spark that he lit in so many people.

That's a kind of great love,

Actually,

You know.

And so to really understand that your life,

Your existence on this earth,

That the value of it is really just the sparks that you leave behind or that you initiate while you're here,

You know,

That's really all that's going on here.

So as far as I get,

The rest of it is a lot of madness.

You know.

I know so many people,

Even in spiritual circles who are so ambitious,

You know,

You just feel it's just this homage to ego.

And where does it lead?

You know,

What's it for?

What's the point?

Again,

It's something that when you surrender to this way of understanding and being,

You're stepping out of the normal stream.

You've just got to be willing to do that,

You know.

Can you just speak a little bit about how to manage the tension with that,

That comes with that stepping out of the normal stream?

Yeah.

Well,

I'll tell you how I do that.

Because I also am affected by the cultural pressures and moments of feeling like,

You know,

Moments of feeling that there's occasional feelings of some body-ness wanting to be,

You know,

Either recognized or honored or something,

You know.

And those are very uncomfortable,

Right?

So one thing I tend to do is I don't aggravate those feelings by inputting information that would trigger them.

Are you following me?

Like,

If there's certain things that you know are going to be triggering those feelings in you,

Whether it's looking at Facebook or having certain conversations or being around certain people,

Right?

If you know that that's going to be the case,

Then don't go there.

Now sometimes it comes to you,

You can't help that.

And the arising will happen,

You know,

The arising can happen.

You get triggered for a moment and you let it go.

But you don't have to go looking for it,

Right?

What about if it's family?

Yeah,

That's hard.

You know,

With family,

There's a way in which we are stuck with them.

And even people who are fully estranged from their families in that they no longer see them,

Which I understand in some cases that's the way that it has to be.

But even then it still takes up a certain amount of the mind space if it's family.

It's very hard to be – I mean,

I've had people sit in the room who have not talked to their family for 10 years,

And still there's a thing there,

You know,

It's very,

Very difficult to unhook from family conditioning.

So one has to be gentle with oneself and know that that's the case.

It's very,

Very powerful conditioning.

And you manage it the best you can,

Right?

It may be that you need a certain amount of space in terms of how much interaction you have,

Whether that means it's once a week or once a day or once a month or once a year,

Right?

You have to just be honest about how much is appropriate so that the love stays the strongest.

Because sometimes too much engagement actually causes the love to diminish,

Right?

And there's just a kind of what's so about that.

It's like putting any kind of two elements together creates a certain chemistry.

And if that chemistry happens to be explosive,

If you hold those elements together too long,

Then don't hold them together too long.

And it may be also that even within a given time space,

Like let's say you go somewhere for Christmas to be with the family,

And there you all are,

Right?

You can't just leave and go off for the few days.

Then even within that,

You just take a break of an hour or two hours,

Go for a walk or go do something that they're not doing and kind of reflect and let yourself calm down and let yourself reset into a more strong place again.

So you basically,

As with all things I'm speaking about,

Is you're managing your awareness.

Making it very simple.

You're managing your awareness.

If something is triggering you,

Something's making you agitated,

Something makes you jealous,

Something's making you feel bad about your life,

Pull your attention off of that.

Thank you.

That really speaks to me particularly the part about.

.

.

The time spent.

Yeah,

And just whatever makes the love feel the strongest.

Yes.

That is the actual overall aim.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Absolutely.

As it were,

Yeah.

Absolutely.

That kind of reduces all the rules.

All the rules and expectations and feeling like you should be doing something when in fact it's just not working.

Yeah.

Many,

Many years ago,

Probably,

Well,

Let's say it's 13 years ago about,

I was in Denmark having Dharma dialogues and my friend with whom I was staying is a very big proponent and therapist in using Katie Byron's work,

Which I like a lot.

At that time,

I was getting the idea that I wanted to move to Australia.

It was one of the first times that idea started becoming very strong,

But I was struggling with the issue of leaving my family and especially my parents who are still alive even now and of course very elderly.

I was working with the story of I'm abandoning them,

It's not loving to do this and so on.

She did a piece of work with me in that process that turned it around in which I saw that maybe it was the case that my moving to Australia,

Which I didn't manage to do for quite a few years after that,

I only moved here a year ago,

But maybe it would be the case that we would love each other even more.

I really saw the possibility of that and now I'm actually experiencing that.

I don't know if even more is exactly accurate,

But there's a sweetness to the love,

Right?

There's a real sweetness on both our sides.

I think I'm going to take that one on board with exes as well.

With what?

Ex partners.

Ex partners,

Yes.

Yes,

With everyone actually.

Also to really see that with some people,

I've often said with some people,

Your energy with them is like water into water.

It's just seamless.

With some it's like gasoline and fire.

You've just got to be honest about how it is and not make either of those elements wrong.

Thank you.

Welcome.

This has been In the Deep.

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

Com.

Where you can also book a private session by phone or Skype and see our schedule of upcoming events.

Till next time.

Reviews

Very insightful. I agree with your approach to mindfulness 100%.

Thank you for this excellent talk

Namaste

So helpful thanks