Luminous Mind

Dharma Dialogues session with Catherine Ingram called Luminous Mind--a relaxing view of how to experience one's own mind. Recorded in April 2017 in Lennox Head, Australia.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from Dharma dialogues held in April 2017 in Lennox Head,

Australia.

It's called Luminous Mind.

It's possible to,

At any given moment,

Anytime you choose,

To experience your awareness as luminous.

A lot of times we're so caught up in some other story that what we're actually experiencing,

We're living in some kind of imagination,

We're experiencing a lot of,

Well,

Imagination is imagery.

So you're experiencing these pictures in your head.

It's like watching a movie.

Unfortunately,

A lot of the times the movie is a little scary for many people or depressing.

So it's like watching a depressing movie or a scary movie just in your head.

It's possible to simply pop into reality.

Reality is here beckoning.

It generally wins all the tests.

It generally wins all the contests.

You can just pop right in,

Visit it anytime.

It's always here and pop out of the movie playing in your head.

Now,

Sometimes people have fantasy movies playing in their heads.

They live in a kind of hopeful picture.

The imagery is maybe a little more pleasant and that can be tempting.

But from my point of view,

It's a bit of a waste of time and of your precious existence to be living in a dream and a fantasy,

However nice that fantasy may be.

And it's also quite lovely,

In fact,

To make friends with reality and with your own precious existence in truth,

Your sweetness of being in truth unencumbered by imagery.

There are moments in life that are hard and the system actually seems to be biologically designed to have a little escape hatch in those really hard,

Hard moments.

There's a way in which the awareness can flee from the present circumstance because of the difficulty of it.

That's why a lot of times when people have been through a trauma,

Often they don't quite remember the traumatic moment and even the times subsequent to it.

But those are rare.

Those are rare in the life.

Some people never experienced that at all.

They're rare.

So for the most part,

Your actual moments,

For most of us,

Your actual moments,

The actual taste of your existence is quite lovely most of the time,

Like even sitting here right now.

And yet the mind can even sitting here right now be telling a big story,

Be telling a large drama.

The mind can tell a big,

Scary story or a depressing story sitting here in this room.

You can go back to the list.

You can go back to the list of what's missing and what should have happened and what might happen and all those things,

All the problems that one can imagine sitting here in this room.

You could have that experience if your imagination kicks up and you get interested in it.

But one of the beauties of tuning the mind in this fashion is that it develops a habit.

It develops a habit of peace.

And that conditions the habit.

As the habit gets stronger and more compelling to you,

It conditions,

It calls itself to itself,

Conditions the mind to stay much more on that channel.

And when it veers off,

When it veers off into the craziness,

You notice it immediately.

It feels immediately,

You know,

You might indulge it a little while or grumble about this or that.

But after a point,

The habit of freedom is calling you back.

I like to call it a haunting,

A beautiful haunting.

Like when you're falling in love,

You know,

It's like you're haunted in this delicious way.

And that's how it is.

The quiet,

The ease of being that you've tasted and just simply hanging around in present awareness and total reality feels so nice and so true and so easy and so magnanimous and all those wonderful things,

Tender and wondrous,

That calls you back.

We all know that potentially our goal is to,

What you're saying is to reach peace and to live in this present moment,

Right?

And not to think of,

Let that story continue.

However,

Let's say you're working towards certain goals or certain things in life and these images or these stories potentially are helping you,

But potentially also damaging it.

Well,

Do you mind if I jump in there?

Of course,

Anytime.

Sometimes when we're working toward a goal in life,

Let's say you're studying a musical instrument or you're going through a university course or whatever,

It takes focus and it takes application and it even takes some projection of information into the future,

Even though it may not turn out that way,

But that's also part of the process.

It's part of the creative process.

A creative process usually has a vision,

A picture in imagination to start with and then you sort of do whatever the steps are that you think are going to get to that picture.

It doesn't always happen that way,

But a lot of times it does if one is very focused and capable and has a certain amount of luck riding with them,

Then that can happen.

So that's a different thing really.

And one can have that goal and that inspiration and that creative urge without it sort of subsuming all of your attention.

It's in its proper place in your awareness.

It's sort of just,

You know,

It's in the scheme of things.

It's in the awareness,

But not dominating every moment such that you're not even experiencing the one you're in,

Right?

You're so many times people are living for a future moment,

Right?

Sort of I'll be happy when and fill in the blank and sometime in the future when this other thing happens,

Right?

And so the whole reality of now is actually filtered through the goal of the future,

Which in many cases never comes,

Especially because they keep moving the goalpost,

Like they hit the one thing,

But that isn't enough.

So there's,

As soon as no sooner have they hit that goal,

Then there's another one out in front.

And we see it's part of the rapacious nature that is,

You know,

Destroying the ecosystem is this constant craving and never satisfied,

Right?

That's,

It's so toxic.

It's toxic to experience as a human being and it's toxic for the natural world that so many human beings are experiencing that.

So it's very much something to look at.

I've kind of veered off from your question a bit,

But,

But,

But I just wanted to specify that,

That goal goals in and of themselves are not necessarily a problem unless it's sort of eating up your present reality.

Thank you.

You're welcome dear.

Like in my own case,

You know,

I have certain plans of this and that,

You know,

You know,

To do with work or to do with a trip.

So there's an awareness that that plan is getting taken care of somehow,

But that certain things have to be done.

Phone calls have to be made.

Things have to be booked.

But I just sort of,

As the moment comes up,

That has to be done on that particular day.

I do it then.

Otherwise I'm really not,

I'm really not thinking about it.

Sometimes people ask me,

Are you looking forward to such and such?

And on one hand I can say,

Yes,

I'm looking forward to it in that I do think about it a little,

But I'm not looking forward to it in the sense of that's going to be so much better than this.

Yeah.

I've learned through life that that's usually not the case.

You know,

That pretty much this is how it is.

You know,

Wherever I am,

There I am.

It would just be like finding the balance between the story,

But also the reality.

Because if you're too much into the reality and right now,

Then you might lose grip on potential goals or what you need to be working towards.

Right?

That's what I was kind of with the question is,

Is it more beneficial to be a hundred percent in the reality all the time?

Or is it 50-50 where,

All right,

You know,

This is what I'm working.

I understand that question.

Yes.

And it's a good question.

It's not,

There's not much of a danger of you're being immersed in present awareness and there being any kind of necessarily a problem unless you just let everything fall away,

Then you're no longer eating or something like that.

You know?

But if you're mostly in present awareness,

What happens when you're flowing in ease is that what needs to get taken care of does get taken care of.

Right?

It's not as if you just,

Your mind can't go into any kind of planning.

It can.

It just knows that it's doing that in present awareness.

So,

You know,

Taking care of your life,

Making sure things get paid,

You know,

Going to the store when you need to,

All those things,

Or planting something at the right moment.

Right?

Sometimes you're just operating on a certain type of intelligence that is very much available to you when you're in easy flow inside.

It's an incredible intelligence you start to rely on,

You know?

And so you don't have to worry about even putting a percentage on it about how much am I in.

You can just flow,

Just flowing.

You're living in this ease of being that's mostly very much in present reality and in present reality is tracking what needs to get accomplished or not.

Sometimes one can see that you're over accomplishing in terms of a lot of extra busy work that wasn't even necessary.

You know?

A lot of people are up to that,

You know?

Just running around like mad,

You know?

And this and that and this and that.

And you look back and think,

What for?

Why?

What's all that about?

No,

Great.

Thank you.

I just want to add a point because I was thinking about that.

Is it possible to stay in that potential broadcasting frequency long term?

And not long term,

Like we're all woke beings.

But is it possible to?

Yeah.

Well,

It becomes the habit.

And I sometimes liken it to the shape shifting of a sand dune.

Okay?

So sometimes you can see you go to the beach one day,

Then the dune looks a certain way,

And you go a few months later and it has changed.

It has been blown grain by grain into a different shape,

Right?

So it's a little bit like that,

That the winds of your awareness that is continually staying with this channel is basically shape shifting the whole way of your being.

It's not though that you're never going to have a dip into neurosis.

You don't have to even expect that.

It's like what Gangaji said,

You return to calm and you do so very easily and consistently and relatively quickly compared to previous times where you might've spent days or weeks on a certain kind of mad subject.

Now it gets down to hours or minutes for some people,

Right?

So you're not looking for a steady state.

And I always emphasize this because it's a fairy tale that's put out in spiritual circles.

It sells well.

It's good marketing to promise you do this little technique or you follow this guru,

You do this program or whatever,

And you're going to hit this steady state.

It's often called enlightenment,

But they call it also satori as you said,

And many other things.

It's just unreasonable,

Illogical in my opinion.

Totally.

Yeah,

Good.

And yeah.

So all you need to be happy with is that the habit starts to deepen and be more consistent.

So it goes from living mostly in neurosis with a little few breaks out of sheer exhaustion into clarity.

It goes from that to mostly in clarity,

Mostly in ease with a little few breaks for old times sake into neurosis.

Yeah,

No,

Totally.

Because that's something I've been starting to realize is like as I become more in tune,

I can start holding spaces and then it's like an image that I've had with my masters.

You think of these masters like they're on this crazy samadhi frequency every hour of the day.

But then when I.

.

.

I've never seen that and I've met a lot of masters.

You kind of hear the back room gossip and you realize that isn't the case.

Well,

That's true,

Right?

Yeah.

But if you don't have that experience,

That back room experience,

Then you're going to be like,

Wow,

These beings,

They're happy every second of the day.

You're probably not seeing them every second.

You're seeing them for a little short time,

Sometimes in a room full of people.

And it's easy to project.

You're in a room and you're having a pretty nice time and you think it's about the person at the front of the room and you then project and you think that it's always like that.

But I don't think so.

And I totally agree.

That's kind of like what you said is like,

Oh,

Do these steps and you're going to reach this state and only this state.

Or you're going to reach this state and all the other states.

You've surpassed them because you're now here.

But it's kind of like you actually still dip into those other states.

So maybe many questions more than I have no idea.

But yeah,

No,

Thank you.

Yeah,

Like you said,

It's just like an image,

But yet every person's still maybe on the same frequency but dabbling in different states.

I don't know if that's coming off.

What starts to happen in this recognition is you begin to see how simple it is,

How basic it is and how all the greatest teachers have always said that.

But we heard that along the way and we didn't quite believe it.

We heard about how simple it was,

How obvious it was,

How do nothing,

Make no effort,

All those things.

But we didn't really think it could be that simple and that true.

So when you hear Jesus' line,

The kingdom of heaven is within you.

Right?

Or you hear in Buddhism,

Zen Buddhism,

The earth where you stand is the pure holy land,

Lotus land and this very body,

The body of Buddha.

Or in Sufism,

They say it is hidden in its own outward manifestation where it doth appear as veil upon veil made to cover its glory.

Right?

It's all the same thing.

You know,

Ramakrishna said,

The musk deer searches the world over for the source of its own scent.

Right?

What is that smell?

And so these are the messages coming through the ages,

Right?

That are basically saying,

This is not something you're going to attain.

This is something you're going to recognize.

And that's what begins to be strong.

You stop even naming any of this or thinking about stages or trainings or teachers or teachings.

And you just go straight into the direct experience,

You know,

Of this beingness that's so profoundly the truth of this moment,

Of every moment.

It's powerful.

Yes,

Very powerful.

I sometimes experience my own taste with a little recognition,

A little tiny visit to my deathbed.

I have like a moment of like,

That'll just slip in as a kind of reference of like how amazing to see it from that vantage point,

See this moment from that vantage point.

It's very powerful and very insightful an experience.

So you,

Yeah,

Isn't it?

Yeah.

A whole new appreciation and a whole new quality of life at that point.

Yes,

Exactly.

A whole different,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Sure.

You said earlier that something about trauma being different.

I'm wondering,

Can you either say more about that or shall I ask a question?

No,

That's good enough.

That's good.

I'd like a question.

So in the case of the traumatic experience,

There is a mechanism in our,

For many,

Many people I've been told,

And to whatever degrees I've experienced small bits of trauma,

There's a mechanism that escapes.

It's like an escape hatch for the awareness in the moments of the trauma.

There's a dissociative component for many people.

And that may be actually healthy.

That may be a time that we don't want the awareness in full present immersion.

So that happens when people are in an accident or being somehow abused or in all kinds of circumstances where the attention just flees.

And perhaps even sometime after the experience such that they don't even remember clearly.

It's a way that the awareness has sort of protected itself by not being fully there for the full brunt of the horror.

But what I was saying is that there comes a point that has now diminished in terms of the dissociative thing that happened,

That the awareness comes back into embodiment.

And at that point,

One can then work with the attention and keep it mostly floating in the okayness.

Even though there's been trauma and there may be as a result of the trauma,

A kind of strain of anxiety that arises.

That can be worked with.

And that is to be understood if that's what's happening.

Some people have more,

Some less after trauma experiences.

But it's certainly understandable that some anxiety would be there.

And also sometimes as time goes,

More of the memory of the trauma comes in and is experienced.

Again,

In this habit of freedom and in this habit of ease,

And in this habit of feeling the luminosity,

It's easier for things to get healed.

It's easier.

It doesn't mean they're going to get entirely healed.

But it is easier.

And there are certain types of experiences in life,

In childhood especially,

That may trigger a lifelong propensity to have more anxiety than other people might have.

And that's just,

It doesn't have to impede your experience of freedom.

You just work with it as it arises.

So,

Go ahead.

You just,

Yeah,

What I find hard is having had sort of long term,

A mental sort of type of trauma as a child that was then continued as an adult.

The source of it's not there anymore now.

But it has,

It's left a sort of lifetime inheritance of anxiety and mistrust.

And I'm capable of experiencing immense joy and love amongst people.

I can go to these contrasts.

But my general being,

Often wandering around the world,

Is consumed with an enormous level of anxiety.

It's like this thing I'm sucked back into when I'm not actually connecting with people.

And I can,

During a day and a time with meditation,

With awareness,

I can come to places of quite a lot of peace,

A lot of happiness,

A lot of connection.

It's wonderful.

But it's very easy for some small thing to then suck me off back into that place.

And the other thing is that I often find after sleeping I wake up in that place and it feels like,

I might go to sleep feeling very fine and at peace and even quite happy.

And then something happens during sleep and I wake up in an extremely dark place.

And there's this immense sense of powerlessness and it's very difficult to then drag myself out of that again.

Yeah.

And does it wake you up in the night or just in the morning when you wake up you're saying it?

I can do a bit of both.

It's worst in the morning.

Yeah.

And it just feels like when I'm wandering around during the day,

I can work with my mind.

When I'm asleep,

It's yeah.

Harder to control.

Yeah.

And it's sort of that image of that Greek figure pushing that rock up the.

.

.

Sisyphus.

Yeah.

So what comes to say as you're speaking is that just be really gentle with yourself and take care of yourself as best you can and know that because of whatever you've experienced,

You have a certain amount of anxiety that arises as a result.

And not to have an expectation or a demand of yourself that this has to be gotten rid of all at once or even ever.

And that the way through is a gentle,

Kind hand to yourself.

And to understand that there are circumstances that trigger you.

And if you can avoid them,

Then do.

And if you feel that there's a certain cost to avoiding them and that sometimes you feel a bit asocial and you'd like to be more social,

Then you make little experiments that work for you.

And it doesn't have to look like what you think it should look like.

You may not be someone who likes to go to parties.

I don't.

I don't like to go to parties ever.

And I don't like to go to big gatherings.

And even when I was young,

Like when I was young,

I would have never,

Ever gone to like Burning Man.

Never.

I was always in meditation retreats and monasteries and all through my twenties,

I've spent like in silence.

And even when I was in the teens,

You know,

And we were very into,

It was the sixties,

You know,

And we were into rock and roll and I loved music and I loved great music.

And sometimes big cool concerts would come to my town and I'd go see them.

Led Zeppelin and all kinds of people,

You know,

Pink Floyd and everybody.

And even though I loved,

Loved,

Loved the music,

I really didn't.

I didn't like being in those crowds.

So,

You know,

That's how I'm made is like that.

That's how nature and conditioning made me.

I'm kind of a nervous creature and I have to just manage it the best I can.

But I don't have a quarrel with it.

That's the thing.

I don't,

I don't have,

It doesn't,

I don't feel unfree in it.

It arises.

Anxiety arises for me as well in certain circumstances.

And I'm just experiencing it like indigestion or something.

That's how I experience it.

Just like I would experience indigestion.

And whereas when sometimes people have a story,

Especially about anxiety,

They think it's something they should control more.

Whereas they don't have that story if they have indigestion.

Right.

And when you're having indigestion,

You might say yourself,

Well,

I'm never going to eat hot tamales and ice cream together again.

But when you're having it,

You're not saying it shouldn't be there.

You're realizing it's there for its own reason.

And the same with anxiety.

If it's arising and if it's not just you gnawing on something that's driving you crazy,

It's just arising because of some trigger.

You can just see it,

Okay,

Let's wait this out,

You know.

And do what you can to self-soothe in that moment,

Whatever it might be,

Whatever it is for you.

So if you have,

Say,

Anxiety and say you're trying to make a decision about doing something,

Would you,

I don't,

It's sometimes hard to know whether to let the anxiety make the,

Whether the kind thing is to let the anxiety make the decision in this case.

What would be an example of that?

Well,

I don't go to music festivals either,

But say I did want to,

But I also knew that,

Or some equivalent where there'd be a lot of people and I knew that my anxiety would be very triggered.

But on the other hand,

Another part of me wanted to go to something where I'd say my friends were going or I'd be going with my mind.

What I would do with that is I would give myself an out.

I would go if I so wanted to go.

I'd go,

But I would understand that I may not be able to stay.

Right.

And so I would arrange for either a ride or an Uber or something or just drive separately,

You know,

To basically give yourself permission that you don't have to stick with the original plan if it's turning out to be not true for you.

So it's like that.

You start to just manage,

You just manage it.

You know,

I said recently in Dharma dialogues in Byron Bay,

If you were to adopt a dog from the pound who had been very mistreated and you then observed this dog has certain habits and certain reactions and certain behaviors that you can sense come from that mistreatment.

An anxious dog,

A nervous dog.

Probably if you're a loving person,

Your response to the dog would be to just be as calming and sweet and kind and understanding,

Right?

To the poor animal that's experienced this.

And in that calm,

Loving sweetness,

Often we see with dogs and cats and all kinds of creatures,

They become more trusting,

Right?

They become more trusting and more loving and they can calm down a lot,

Maybe not entirely,

But you don't love them any of the less,

Right?

Maybe even more.

So,

You know,

You watch this,

You watch this evolution in a sense that's happening all through ease and love and kindness.

That's really all you have to remember and,

And to your own self in particular,

That only you know what you've been through.

Only you know all those moments and only you understand how much you've overcome,

Right?

In just getting around and so to just be very easy and just say,

Okay,

Dear,

You know,

It's time to,

Either it's time to do something sweet for myself,

Some sort of something that brings joy,

Real joy to you,

Even if it doesn't look like what anybody else is into.

And if you need to leave the party early or not go,

So be it.

All the best parties I've ever been to are silent retreats.

Really are.

So many people have said it's like their best times of their lives.

So many people have told me who have been coming regularly,

Especially to my Italy retreat,

That they're sure that at the end of their life,

When they think about when they're,

When they have that kind of look at life,

That those moments in that place in retreat just are standouts,

You know,

They're just like,

And there's nothing much hanging,

Nothing much doing except hanging around.

That's all we're really doing there.

But we're hanging around in the luminosity.

And then it also happens to be in a spectacularly beautiful place with great food.

But,

But that that kind of awareness can be actually in your ordinary life as well.

And I'm happy to say it's that that way in mine as well.

I just feel so lucky.

You know,

You cultivate that sort of that you get in a retreat,

You cultivate also in your ordinary life.

Yes.

You said in the beginning about sometimes it being a kindness or a good thing that awareness sort of vanishes for a while if something's too hard is happening.

And I sort of wonder if at some point,

When I sort of discovered awareness and meditation,

And I started bringing it to different aspects of myself,

If sometimes I did do a disservice to myself sort of bringing awareness to things that weren't ready to have awareness to like,

Is it is it still kind to just sometimes not be aware to just opt out?

The way to play it is to let let things arise in the awareness in an organic way.

So as things arise,

As feelings arise,

As memories arise,

You can work with them then and and self soothe in those arisings,

But you may not need to go looking for and calling up.

And if if if even in the arising of these memories,

It starts to become uncomfortable.

My position is,

Don't suffer it,

Distract yourself out of it,

Get into reality again.

And even if it means turn on a movie,

Read a book,

Turn on a Dharma talk,

Put on your favorite music,

Dance,

Go walk on the beach,

Whatever,

Whatever you want to do or need to do.

If you're starting to collapse into,

You know,

Fear and pain and sorrow,

Then fair enough to pop out of it.

Because the neurochemistry,

It solidifies on certain like the neurochemistry when you're in say,

A depressing phase that's going over and over depressing thoughts or scared thoughts.

It solidifies,

It's it's not that it stays stable,

But it it calls a lot more of those kinds of thoughts,

The chemistry itself,

The biochemistry starts working against you.

That's what it feels like.

Exactly.

And you know,

It was always a mystery to me.

But when I would hear teachers in the old days say,

Go into it and do this and go in and call it up and relive it and do this and that.

And inside,

I was always going no.

Why?

And I loved it one time when Poonchichi said it's like digging through the garbage and picking every piece up and going,

Oh,

Oh,

That smells bad.

Oh,

Let me get another one.

Oh,

Let's go.

That one's awful also.

You know,

And it's like just digging through the muck,

You know,

And I always sensed that,

You know,

And I think a lot of I mean,

I know that the re blowback about what I'm saying,

But a lot of the therapeutic stuff,

I just feel that that neuroscience has proven it absolutely incorrect,

That you do not just keep reliving it and go calling it up and awareness and all of that,

That it's just you're basically reinfecting the wound.

And now that's not to say you deny it,

If it's arising on its own organically,

You have memories,

You have feelings,

And they bring anxiety and making a specific distinction here that you work with,

You know,

When it comes up,

You release it or you go,

You peer through it or you basically say,

You know,

Have compassion for yourself for having suffering,

Suffered it then and suffering it now.

But one doesn't have to,

You know,

Splash around in it.

So,

So give yourself full permission to treat this creature yourself,

As you would an animal who you've adopted who's been abused with full love and care and kindness and you know,

You say if you're probably who's chewing up the furniture,

Honey,

Let's go for a walk.

You know,

Like that just you're you're you're in that kind of flow and ease with your own self,

Even with all this crazy stuff that right arises.

See for myself,

I always I've been saying for 25 years,

Assume the mind is mad.

Let's start there.

Right?

Assume the mind is mad,

Especially some some minds have been conditioned in a tough way.

And so they're really,

Really wild.

And,

You know,

And so you just you deal with it.

It does not mean you can't be free with it.

Some people are able to be free within relatively calm mind lucky them.

Some people have great freedom with a monkey mind.

It's just that the monkey mind no longer dominates.

The monkey mind is in a corner being a monkey.

They're not flying off the ceiling and bouncing off the walls.

They're not in charge.

That's right.

Yeah.

Thank you.

This has been in the deep.

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Reviews

Dear Catherine, if possible I would give you five stars every time I listen to your talks..... you're always feeding my monkey with the right "drugs" to calm down. Thank you from my heart 🙏❤🙏

Felt like i met a kindred spirit in Catherine. Highly recommend this conversation. So many talking points to pick up on. Tqvm

Very informative. Much appreciated.

Just what I needed.

Always helpful, wise and calming 🌹👍thank you

Very grateful to have stumbled upon this talk. One of the most profound talks I've listened to thus far.

Great talk for any on-the-path spiritual seekers still bugged by how neurotic our mind can be--still.

Love Catherine’s simplicity. I have moments of grace listening to her. “Evolution through ease, love & kindness”

So much wisdom & so practical. Namaste

Very validating and encouraging --- listened 2x and took notes to keep in my pocket as a reminder, thanks

Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.

Wonderful. I want to go on one of your retreats!! ♥️ Thank you!!

I think I'm finally "getting it" because of this talk.

Love you! 🙏🏻🦋✨🌟💫🌸🌻⭐️❤️

Nice talk, thank you 😊