The Denial Of Death

From the opening talk: “There’s a film that came out years ago. It’s a great film but it’s a sleeper, it didn’t do well at the box office. It’s called ‘Evening’.” Excerpted from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram. Recorded in Lennox Head, Australia in January 2019.

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 2019.

It's called The Denial of Death.

There's a film that came out years ago.

It's a great film,

But it's a sleeper.

It didn't do well at the box office,

So you may not have heard of it.

It's called Evening.

It's an incredible all-star cast.

Vanessa Redgrave,

Meryl Streep,

Toni Collette,

Claire Danes,

And on and on.

It's a brilliant film.

There's a scene in it.

Claire Danes has two little girls.

She's a single mom.

She's a working mom.

She's always running late.

Her life has a lot of stress and difficulty in it.

She's cooking dinner for the kids.

She's late for work.

The kids are late for a birthday party.

Everybody's stressed.

She's overcome for a moment and starts crying a little bit,

But there she is with her two little girls.

She can't really get into a big boo-hoo.

Suddenly,

She has this switch flips and she realizes she can't just lose it.

Instead,

She picks up one of her little girls.

She starts singing to her,

I see the moon and the moon sees me.

They sit down.

She takes her over to the table where the other child is because both of the kids were a little initially freaked out.

She sings the whole song to them.

It's actually a quite lovely love song for a parent to sing to a child.

I was very struck by that scene.

As we all know,

There are moments when you're just about to lose it.

Sometimes,

Mercifully,

There's a flip of a switch.

You move into letting go or surrendering to what is or you move into quiet.

You have this reprieve from the madness you were about to engage in.

You have this moment.

Now,

Some people have a life that is generally stressful.

I recommend that you move into those moments as a way of life.

Just keep moving into those moments.

If you can't reduce the stress,

If there's some sort of obligations that you find yourself in that are just inherently demanding of your mind and your body.

Of course,

The first recommendation would be to see if you can alleviate some of that.

But failing that,

If that's not possible,

Then have these moments,

These sweet moments,

The reprieves.

Give yourself the reprieve.

Move your attention.

Use your attention.

Because that's all that really happened in that scene.

Her attention was on one story that is all too much.

I can't handle this.

Right?

That's a story that her attention was on.

And then it moved into,

These are my precious life moments.

And here I am with my beautiful children.

And it's going to be always this way,

By the way.

Here you are.

These are actually your precious life's moments.

And we don't have many of them.

Of course,

We have no guarantees.

Marianne just arrived here today and formed to be one of our mutual friends is in the hospital dying right now in Byron.

We don't have many with even if we had a long life.

And it's amazing how we squander them.

And it's not to make ourselves wrong for that.

It just happens.

But it's lovely good news to know that we can mitigate the squandering of the precious moments.

How are you using your attention?

What do you do with your attention?

Whatever you're doing with your attention is giving you your experience of the taste of life.

You can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven just with your attention.

You can tell a story that spooks you and you can make it real.

You can take real facts and make it real.

And you can also move into gratitude.

That just sort of summed up what happened for me over Christmas,

Going to see my mum in Perth because I got there and realised that the minute I get there,

My stress level,

Well actually for the two weeks before I go,

My stress level is elevated.

And it's this passion that plays out every year.

And this time I had to do it differently because last year wiped me out.

I didn't have the capacity to then do that again with her.

And I recognised for the first time that every time I get there,

My brain,

My attention goes to the belief,

The thought,

I don't want to be here.

I hate being here.

I don't want to be here.

And it's on rote for the whole time I'm there.

So with that resentment of being there,

There's resistance,

The inability to be present with her.

She knows that she can feel it off me a million miles off.

So then she gets resentful and goes into her wounded child stuff.

And so it just bounces.

And this time it just,

It was not even a,

Not even a completely conscious thought.

It was just a knowing.

It was like just a light bulb moment.

Every time I think I don't want to be here,

I make it worse for myself because I'm not even allowing myself the chance of having a nice time.

And so I'd catch myself thinking it now and then I'd just have to cut it and then just go and do something to help her,

Which then just pulled me out of that.

Beautiful.

Amazing.

Beautiful.

And I wasn't delighted to come home again.

And fair enough.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

But it was a lot less painful than what the usual trips are.

Sure.

And we connected more than we have before.

So.

So happy to hear that.

Yeah.

Yes.

What you were saying,

It was,

It is that.

My attention couldn't keep going like that.

Couldn't keep staying in hell.

No,

No.

I don't want to be where I am.

Because it perpetuated,

It created hell.

The thought that I was in hell created the hell.

Sure.

That's how it works.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Yeah.

Now,

Of course,

That's not to say there aren't inherently awful situations.

Oh,

God,

Yeah.

In prison and all kinds of terrible things that could happen,

People harming you and so on.

And it's very,

Very hard to transcend those and to tell any kind of other story.

It just is painful and you just hope it ends soon.

Yeah.

But in most ordinary circumstances that we're beating ourselves up in,

You know,

That things aren't quite to our liking and we're fixated on that element.

Right.

Then we're just living in a kind of resistance.

You know?

Yeah.

So,

I mean,

Again,

With the movie,

I loved the image.

The dinner was literally boiling in the pot and going over the pot a bit.

And her attention was just in these perfect moments with the children.

Right.

Yeah.

So it's like that.

You can keep directing your mind.

Right.

You have the facility.

Yeah.

To move your attention.

Not everyone has it,

But almost everyone does.

Yes.

Everyone has the facility and not many people use it.

But that's the difference between a life that is being consciously lived.

Right.

There's nothing fancy about it.

I don't,

As you know,

Believe in anything like enlightenment or anything.

It's more that you begin using your own attention intelligently.

That's it.

And I realize also some of that can sometimes depend on an emotional maturing.

But then it also transcends that as well and it just becomes a clear knowing.

Yes.

So it's no longer dependent on an emotional state or an emotional manipulation.

Correct.

Or any decision on your part.

Yes.

Except for the decision to stop the story.

Well,

What's really good to begin to use your own nervous system as a barometer.

Yeah.

And you,

I think,

Are pointing to that whereby when you're in a way self-inducing a distressed state,

You notice it immediately because your body is giving you the signals that you're uncomfortable inside because you're mentally uncomfortable.

Yeah.

And you're causing neurochemistry now to kick up in your system.

So you begin to let that be an ally as a wake-up call,

A Dharma bell.

It's saying,

What am I doing with my mind?

What story am I telling right now that is creating a hell?

Right.

And often when you ask yourself,

What's the reality in my very,

The immediacy of now,

What is the actual reality?

Almost always,

Especially in our privileged lives,

It's pretty okay.

Right.

Not horrible.

Pretty okay.

You know?

Yeah.

So you start living in the pretty okay,

Not bad.

And even,

You know,

Thank goodness.

Yeah.

Pretty,

Pretty beautiful.

Lots of the time.

Not always,

But lots.

Yeah.

Don't miss it.

You're welcome.

Last year in November,

Probably the busiest and most stressful day of my life,

My year.

I organized some events and I was the main,

Like the buck stopped with me.

And somewhere in the morning while we were setting up,

I heard that something had gone wrong that I had organized.

And it was at a point in time where I could not rectify it anymore.

And I realized I left out one piece of communication that could have prevented the whole thing.

And I went in this spin,

Oh my God,

How could this happen?

Why did I not think of this?

And then I,

Like within a minute I went like,

Whoa,

I do not have time for this today.

And I'm one that goes like,

Okay,

I'll just go to sleep on this.

I'll just keep beating myself up.

And then at some point I'll try and face the music and confess to the people involved what happened and why it didn't happen the way it should have,

Et cetera.

And I was like,

No,

Can't do that today.

I have things to do.

I have responsibilities.

I have people that I need to show up for.

So I stopped and I actually got in touch with the people involved and then I was like,

Okay,

Let's get on with the day.

And it was really good actually.

It's a variation of what you're saying,

But it's also that like,

No,

I'm not playing this game.

Well,

It's another variation,

Which is one of my favorite topics,

Which has to do with letting go,

Which seems to me the primary mode of existence lately.

It's getting to be a lot about how facile is one in letting go of that which leaves,

Of that which didn't work out,

Of whatever pictures of your dreams,

Of whatever stories of people,

Whether they die or whether they go on a different path or in terms of friendships or relationships or just how something breaks,

Right?

Just something is ruined.

It's like all of those,

Just all of it that we live in this constant impermanency of everything.

And we search for a permanent happiness,

But often we misplace any possibility,

Not that we can have a permanent happiness since we are also impermanent,

But that we are constantly clutching onto things that are destined to leave us.

Experiences and everything.

And so one of my,

As I said,

Favorite themes that I live with on a daily basis is just the sense of just all of it just washing through,

You know?

And I notice at any of the sticking points,

Which I do sometimes get stuck in,

It just hurts.

Something's gone.

Something's ruined.

Something didn't happen.

Something doesn't seem to be working out,

Whatever.

You know,

My railing,

You know,

Shaking my fist at the sky.

It just hurts.

So it's a theme that I notice in small and big ways,

You know?

Yeah.

As you know,

My father just died six weeks ago.

And that was,

I know you've lost a parent as well.

And that it's,

You know,

It's a crossing over not only of the loss of the person,

It's a loss of a certain type of one's own history in a way that someone who knew your history,

That all kinds of components come with the loss,

Other kinds of losses.

And they all wash away,

You know?

And I've been noticing a kind of readjustment in the sense of who I even am,

Right?

Because part of who we think we are has to do with a little crowd that's around us that's our tribe.

And so one of the members of the tribe,

One of the most elder of the tribe,

One of the most consistent of that tribe now is gone.

And there's an adjustment in the place holding.

And another one of my themes that you know well is this understanding of the mystery of the self,

You know,

That how we define ourselves,

How we think of ourselves,

The stories we tell about ourselves of who we are,

Gets more and more amorphous as we get older or wiser.

Right?

It becomes more mysterious and more,

Less solid.

You know,

Less cohesive,

Less.

Right?

So all of that letting go,

Again,

Sends you in this experience of self that is very fresh,

Of course,

And mysterious and less substantial.

Maybe that is the theme of the moment because before I came here,

I was doing some things that I thought I would check my Kindle to see what books I had.

And what opened up I was reading the sentence I read was,

Give away the good and give away the bad,

Like give it.

And I didn't actually finish reading it.

And it's fitting for me at the moment because I struggle.

The good I can give away as an offering and a sharing.

For myself,

I find that when I'm struggling with something,

I'm sort of like a dog with a bone.

And so my mind gets very active,

Is not prepared to.

And it's a continual coming back and being in the present.

But it does go on and on.

And it's quite exhausting,

That type of activity.

So that's my theme at the moment also,

What you're talking about.

Yeah,

Well,

It's useful.

And you are noticing that it's exhausting.

It's useful to notice that piece of it.

I always say that when we're in those kinds of stressful moments,

Neurotic moments,

Fear moments,

Especially if the fear is imaginary,

Which we tend to do,

Notice exactly how it feels.

Start noticing that and that sometimes will be the catalyst to know that I need to move my attention,

Rather than it sort of just drifting along and you're just sort of in a soupy unconsciousness about it just sort of enduring.

Just start instead actually saying to yourself,

Wow,

This is so uncomfortable.

And conversely,

Notice when the release happens,

When the movement of the attention goes off of the subject,

Like taking off a too tight shoe.

Sometimes you're walking and you're wearing something,

Maybe not a shoe,

Maybe something else.

You're wearing something tight.

And you take it off.

And it's like,

Oh,

You realize you were just enduring and some part of your attention was just enduring,

Even though it wasn't entirely unaware of it.

So it's good to notice in both cases,

It starts to condition the attention to move as needed.

And then once the attention has started to get used to being in a more of a free flow,

And in more of an ease of being,

You don't have to keep saying,

Okay,

Stay here.

You only need to use the movement of the attention when it's gone down a dark alley.

You don't have to be sitting on it like a cat ready to pounce or anything.

That wouldn't be very relaxed.

And sometimes,

You know,

Because the training I had for a very long time was very,

It was mindfulness practice for 17 years,

But ending in 1991,

A long,

Long time ago,

Because I just couldn't bear to do it anymore.

Because it really was this sort of moment by moment notation that you were enjoined to do.

Mindfully noting moment by moment.

So I don't subscribe to that kind of homework.

Of course,

It's useful initially to train the mind a bit.

I'm not saying it's entirely not effective.

But once you've gotten a kind of free flow of your own going,

Then you can really just rely on your habit of ease.

And so sometimes you're spaced out a little or sometimes your daydream or sometimes you're in a fantasy or you're in a memory or whatever,

It doesn't matter.

Right?

The facility that I'm speaking about that's so useful is the one that intervenes when you're going crazy.

That's the one.

And even if it intervenes many,

Many,

Many times a day,

That's okay.

Right?

You're not keeping score.

You don't have to take any accounts.

And by the way,

No one else is either.

Right?

We don't believe in Santa Claus.

So nobody else is keeping score.

And you then just,

And that's by the way,

Very relaxing when you realize,

You know,

Because I think we were all indoctrinated coming up,

Most of us came up in some form of religion where we thought somebody was watching.

First of all,

We were told Santa Claus was watching.

The tooth fairy was watching.

God was watching.

So you felt,

You know,

I mean,

That you had to really watch your step.

And if you didn't,

You felt guilty or that you're going to get in trouble or something somewhere along the line,

You know,

It's going to go bad.

And I see this as a form of almost child abuse,

That kind of indoctrination,

Frankly.

One of my friends grew up as a Catholic,

Very strict Catholic family.

And he told me that the first time he kissed a girl,

And of course he wasn't married,

You know,

He was a young man,

Kissed a girl and fooled around.

And he said,

He just decided he was just going to plan to go to hell because he wasn't going to stop doing this.

But imagine having to have that as part of your experience.

You're having this beautiful experience,

But now you've also got this worry that you're going to pay for it by being in hell forever.

Right?

So these kinds of indoctrinations are incredibly oppressive and awful and stupid,

Actually.

But little children don't know that and we take them on.

Right?

And then sometimes we grow up and we even find our own alternative religions that are a bit smarter,

But still might have a bit of a story running that we are having to get better on the path somehow,

We better be improving.

But if all of this is released and you don't buy it,

Then it's just you managing your own attention for its own sake.

Just keeping your own instrument tuned as best you can.

You're only here,

You know,

A few minutes more.

And you're that kind of gentleness with yourself actually allows a lot more ease of the process.

Right?

So let's say you you've spent some time being either disappointed or beating yourself up about something or in a really bad,

Funky state,

Which sometimes even surprises you at your level of understanding that you can get into such a state.

Right?

And then you have the the reprieve,

You have the moment of movement moving the attention back into.

Right.

This,

Which is always welcoming.

You didn't have to pay any fine or anything to get there.

Right.

And then the rest is gone,

Like all the past.

Right.

There's no there's no recrimination.

You didn't do anything bad.

Let's assume you didn't go out and hurt anybody or say bad things to people or,

You know,

Cut someone off on the road or anything like that.

You just had some moments of craziness of your own.

And then,

You know,

It's like the old spiritual saying,

The darkness of a thousand years is lit with a single candle.

Right.

You just like the little candle and whatever was going on before us.

Now gone.

So like that,

It's just a movement of attention through the day,

Letting go or gratitude or just feeling into the the beautiful senses that we're privileged to have,

Any one of which would be sorely missed if we didn't have it.

And right.

Like that,

Keeping it so simple.

This is a key.

Keep it so simple.

If it starts to feel complicated,

Starts to feel I have got to remember this,

I've got to do that.

I've got to in terms of some sort of spiritual to do list.

Be wary.

Instead,

Ratchet it down.

There's not much to remember.

And this by way of being becoming habitual serves us as we get older.

There's someone I met a few times,

Maha Goswamanda.

He's a Cambodian Buddhist teacher.

I don't know if he's still alive even,

But I heard a number of years ago that he had Alzheimer's,

But that he was very sort of chill.

And he spent a lot of time singing the Sutras,

Which he still remembered.

Here's an example of a lifetime habit of mind,

Right?

A lifetime habit of mind that even when the brain becomes dysfunctional,

The habit,

The habit takes over.

And that's really true of,

I noticed in my own case,

The habit getting stronger.

But I really don't suffer the madness very,

Very long.

I still suffer it some,

But not for as dedicated a phase as I used to give it.

I feel like you've been talking to me the whole time.

So thank you.

I think it's really timely.

I have a little girl who's two,

Who I might cry.

Tears are always welcome here,

By the way.

Thank you.

Yeah.

This is actually really relevant in terms of child rearing because I find that when my attention is elsewhere,

I have a lot of trouble with her behavior.

And when my attention is with her,

She's a dream,

Which I have to remind myself of a lot.

But like you say,

The habit is getting easier.

And I think when I've been doing this stuff for a long time,

Since I was 15,

And I think I really relate to the whole letting go of the other paradigm of the shoulds,

Because I think I run a business,

I have a two year old,

My partner's mom's disabled,

And I always measure myself against people I think are doing better than me.

Yeah,

That just really touched me today that it's my measure,

You know?

Yeah.

Sorry.

My goodness.

My goodness.

Well,

I mean,

Your measure might be a little skewed,

Actually.

It sounds like more than what would be considered even a very normal,

Full life,

You know?

Yeah,

But I mean,

Like what I know in myself is I have the capacity,

But when I compare myself to other people,

I make it much harder than it has to be.

The grace isn't there,

You know,

The flow isn't there.

And I think that's what I really just sort of been hammering at me for the last year,

Because these people I've looked up to who I projected onto them,

You know,

That they were doing better than me in all these different aspects of life.

And I keep watching them fall down and the comparison really hurt me at the time.

But,

You know,

My way is my way.

And it's the way that works for me kind of thing.

I've just been saying that over and over again,

Like,

In how we run our business and how we raise our child and,

You know,

The choices we make,

I feel like if I can get all that shit out of my head,

I'm actually,

I can do it,

You know?

Yes,

Because all of that is definitely,

You know,

If we use a computer analogy,

It's taking up a lot of RAM.

Yeah,

Totally.

And I can feel that if I'm not,

Like,

You know,

Just kind of present and in it,

Like if I'm in it,

It's fine.

Kind of what you were saying about,

You know,

If you're just doing it,

There's no space for the shit to come and attack you,

You know.

But yeah,

When I find,

You know,

I think when I was quite young,

Like sort of 19,

20,

I used to have these like great depressions and sadnesses and we were kind of talking about it in the car,

Like the God stuff and the,

You know,

Who are we and what are we doing and yeah,

I just,

That doesn't really exist for me anymore.

But I had my kind of first taste of it again last year.

And I just realised it was from the comparison,

You know,

It was not like looking for it outside instead of,

You know,

Just doing what I do.

Yes,

Exactly.

But anyway,

I just thank you for this conversation because it's been healing.

And because sometimes we understand too that due to all kinds of conditioning,

You know,

We were comparing ourselves,

But we're also wondering how people are seeing us and wondering,

Judging us in terms of how we're doing,

Right.

So that's yet another weight that we carry,

Right.

That is unnecessary as well.

Because probably most people,

As I always say,

Are not thinking about how you're doing.

They're worried about how they're doing.

Yeah,

I mean,

I think I even compare myself to me,

Like,

Which is such a silly one.

But I am,

Like I used to run,

So I'm a yoga teacher,

I used to have a yoga business and I,

By my own volition,

Chose to work in my partner's business and run it because I saw a better opportunity for our family by me doing that.

And I'm,

You know,

When I come back to that decision,

I've made the right one,

But it's like I put myself in like,

Oh,

But if I'd done this or like,

You know,

It's like I want to be somewhere else,

Even though I made a very conscious choice to be where I am.

And if you had to make it again,

It sounds like you would make it the same one again.

Yeah,

Totally.

I mean,

I know that.

So that's a really good thing to keep reminding yourself.

Yeah,

And I have to at the moment.

The choices you've made along the way seemed to be the right one at the moment.

And then you can even do the next step of saying,

And is it OK now that I've made these choices?

How did it work out?

You know,

And so.

Well,

What you said about,

You know,

Are we really like,

You know,

Am I here?

Am I OK?

Yes,

Of course I am.

You know,

And I think I'm actually like if I it's like how I glorify it was actually a really hectic time in my life,

You know,

When I was doing that stuff.

And it wasn't,

You know,

As blissful as it sounds,

I'm sure,

You know,

You know,

Holding space for people,

That sort of stuff.

It's hard work,

You know.

And now I get to spend all my weekends and spare time with my child and my partner.

And I have a lot more space for my own practice and things like this.

And so it's just,

Yeah,

But I find it really,

I guess,

Frustrating when I have to self-talk so much to get through it.

But anyway,

The habit is it's a good thing to cultivate.

And I can feel it sort of.

Yes,

And you've got the awareness on it.

So the awareness itself will blaze away.

Right.

It does.

It's just imperceptibly kind of burning off the dross,

You know,

It's like Nisargadatta who is a famous teacher in India,

Long dead,

Died in the 80s,

I think,

Early 80s,

Sally,

Anyway.

One of his great lines that I love is,

It's like a spark in a shipload of cotton.

So just having the awareness,

Right,

That basically says,

Indulging this thought that somehow I'm living the wrong life,

I'm not doing it well enough,

Others can do this multiple juggling much better than I can.

All these thoughts that are just painful,

Most of them probably not true.

As one releases these,

And it doesn't mean that you have to eradicate the arisings of them,

That would be a big fight.

As they arise,

You can just have no engagement.

Right.

It's like an old,

Just an old,

You know,

Patterned flyby.

Right.

No engagement with it.

Do you find the spiral is common?

Because that's what's been really shocking for me this year is,

You know,

Having thought I'd made a certain point in my awareness and emotional maturity,

And then it's like,

That starts the spark in the opposite direction.

Like my cotton's burning over here,

Because I've been like,

Some of the stuff that's been coming up in my head,

I'm like,

Why is this even,

You know,

Like stored away?

It's just anyway,

It's been interesting.

Oh,

I think there's an endless store of nonsense waiting.

Yeah,

You get older and you've got new,

It's like,

You know,

New ones.

You know,

So that's what I was saying before,

You're not tracking any of that.

You don't care.

You don't care if the mind is even depraved sometimes in even in ways that are revolting.

Right.

It doesn't matter what the content is.

You don't have to purify it at all.

You become disinterested.

As soon as you notice,

As soon as you notice this thought is,

Is absurd,

And it's causing me stress,

Right?

As soon as the noticing,

It doesn't matter what the thought is.

The attention can just move back to its safe haven,

To sanctuary,

To its free point,

To home base.

You don't have to worry about what the content was,

Or ever make it better.

Some people are lucky with very gentle content.

Some people have very sweet content.

Lucky them.

Lucky conditioning.

Most of us,

Well,

Maybe not most,

But a lot of us,

Especially people who come to the Dharma,

I would say,

Who've had usually a fair bit of suffering often,

Haven't had such lucky conditioning,

Right?

Have a lot of stuff that arises.

Why I keep banging on about freedom within this is that,

Is this understanding that you don't have to transform the content.

It doesn't matter what the content is.

The freedom,

If freedom,

It wouldn't be freedom,

Actually,

If you had to somehow change the content.

And I think that's the mistake a lot of spiritual scenes make,

And why there's so much,

Why you see so many cases of these big gurus who are saying one thing,

But their behavior is the opposite because they're living such a huge dichotomy that it starts to drive them a little crazy,

Or a lot crazy,

Right?

So coming into a much more integrated whole with understanding your own darkness,

Your own shadow,

And not being spooked by it,

Or thinking you've got to somehow fix it,

But not being in any way beholden to it,

A slave to it,

Not having to take any kind of dictation from it,

Right?

So the fact that these kinds of comparisons arise isn't the problem.

The only issue will be how much you believe it,

How much time you're going to give to it,

How much of your sweet,

Precious life and life experience with your child and your husband and your work,

How much time,

How much effort is it going to take?

That would be the only issue.

And not to beat yourself up if some of that still goes on.

Just trusting that the awareness is,

That the spark is in the cotton.

This is more just an observation.

I'm really appreciating the view of,

I guess after what Tansa said,

That even if these thoughts are still coming up,

After all the experiences that we've had in trying to become not enlightened,

But find the mindful moments through the day,

That even when these things come up,

It doesn't mean that we're failing or anything.

It means that we're human.

And I like how you've said to just become disinterested.

And that really resonated with me because I think a lot of the work that I've been trying to do has been about identifying these patterns that come up and trying to change them and trying to flip them or trying to make them more positive or not just letting them come and go,

I suppose,

Without engaging with it.

So I appreciate the conversation that we're having so far.

Yeah,

It's a nice shift perhaps.

It is.

It's a good shift to make.

Yes,

Because it shifts it into a gentleness with yourself,

A compassion with your own self that you're dealing with.

For me,

When my old conditioning arises,

Which it does,

Which can have a very gloomy interpretation on things,

Right?

I can notice that's a particular kind of conditioning I have.

And when that happens,

It comes with a gentle compassion for me suffering that conditioning again,

Again for the millionth time,

Right?

That's the only real emotion usually that arises with it.

There's no resistance about it.

There's no shame or anything like that.

It's really just kind of a compassion that this is the conditioning and here it is again.

I told this story the other night at the New Year's Eve gathering we had,

But there's this turkey,

This big turkey.

There are many turkeys who live in this forest,

But one in particular,

The big poo bah,

The boss.

He is my buddy and he comes morning and evenings for snacks.

And so recently,

Last week,

Right after Christmas,

Actually,

I saw in the evening,

He had somehow,

My neighbors actually often don't close their lids properly and their stuff,

Their trash blows into this little forest.

But my turkey had gotten his legs into this wrapping,

This ribbon wrapping,

And it had tied up.

There was this curly ribbon stuff and it had tied up both of his legs so that he couldn't really move his feet.

And he was just shuffling like that,

Which is very dangerous.

There's lots of dogs and he couldn't probably do.

There he is.

There he is right on cue.

No,

That's not actually him.

No,

That's a different one.

It's one of the others.

Anyway,

He's very big.

He's maybe one and a half times that size.

But anyway,

So he disappeared for a few days and I called out the wires people and I was very concerned.

And one of my girlfriends was writing to me and saying,

Well,

He's probably just hiding out or trying to get it off or whatever.

And I'm saying,

No,

No,

He's probably dead.

But anyway,

Sure enough,

He shows up,

He's freed himself.

He's got them completely off.

And I just noticed with a little aha again that my interpretation went to he's dead,

Right?

It's just the way that the conditioning works for me.

And I'm used to it,

Right?

I've had it a long time.

But I also see it with a kind of slight remove as I look at it.

That was some compassion,

You know,

And also a little note to self,

You know,

That's right.

So it's like that it's a very gentle relationship with the the dark impulses and the neurotic impulses and all of that.

And a release of any idea of a steady state.

Right?

It's a fairy tale.

Some people might be in a generally easy steady state,

Because they were lucky.

Right?

And all of us who start working with our own attention can have lots more moments of ease.

But I wouldn't expect I don't expect a steady state.

And I don't need to have that.

And that has been a great relaxation about the whole production.

This is on the same thing.

It's just my individual journey with it.

Because I'm noticing it's a it's a fairly new thought along it's the same quality as all the other thoughts.

But there was a place that I was like noticing the same arrival of,

You know,

Crappy thoughts and okay,

I can change.

Sometimes I can change attention.

Sometimes I can't.

But there's a familiar rhythm with that.

I'm stuck or have to sit with this or whatever that journey is.

Right.

But I've got a new series of thoughts.

Yeah.

New plan.

Yeah.

Which is creating some panic,

Because the thoughts coming,

Maybe all those thoughts were real all along.

Yeah.

Maybe the crappy thoughts were real all along.

So I've got something that the second wave of,

Wait a minute,

Maybe this changing attention that made it's all bullshit.

And these were always real.

Yeah.

So it's the second wave of grabbing that I'm not used to.

Right.

And it starts a panic.

Yeah.

Which could be about money or love or the environment or,

You know,

Like,

It's like,

I've been,

I haven't been real or something.

I've been avoiding reality.

Yeah.

So the negative voices dress up as reality.

Yeah.

Well,

I mean,

Only you really know how much denial you were operating from.

Because let's face it,

There's a lot of hard bits about reality.

So we've got to,

You know,

We've got to acknowledge that part and start to somehow accommodate it.

But there is a lot of great sorrow in the world.

And there is a lot of,

You know,

You,

Of course,

You and I know very well,

Since we study this,

That the climate situation that we're in does not bode well for us or for life.

So there's a kind of background understanding of that,

That we have to have to adjust to,

Have to adapt to.

So if you're speaking about coming into a more deep place,

That is letting in more of what you're calling reality.

See,

I have a sense that often the experience of letting in sorrow or any kind of grief,

It has to come often in stages,

Whether it's an immediate loss,

Or it's a general understanding of the circumstance we find ourselves in.

You know,

There's the famous Ernest Becker book,

The Denial of Death,

That the whole system is operating a great deal in the denial of death.

So sometimes we do wake up to a new level of,

Wow,

This is very intense,

That as I said earlier,

We will be without a doubt separated from all that we love.

You know,

It would be paralyzing to have that full,

The full understanding of that coursing through your cells every moment.

There's some level at which we can only take a little smidgen of it at a time.

Or sometimes we get a full body blow of it,

A big dose,

And then we kind of adjust back to what we call normal life.

But I think as we go deeper in life,

There is more of a letting in the harsh reality.

At the same time,

Do you not also feel more tender?

Do you not also feel more that you could just cry when you see a beautiful sunset or stand under this magnificent canopy of stars that we get to see here or have a sweet conversation with a friend or have a moment of just simple silence?

Or all those things,

Many,

There's too many to count,

That as you're living on a bigger spectrum of existence,

Whether at the sorrowful end or the happy end,

It's just bigger and bigger,

Right?

It's in a way the price you pay for the widening of that spectrum.

You feel more at both ends and you feel,

And you can maybe try to hang out a little bit more in the middle,

But.

I like the notion of dropping layers,

You know,

To make sense of that experience where suddenly the temperature is really high.

Yes.

You know,

It's not like I've lost facility.

Right.

Something's going to another level.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

A deeper level.

Right.

I mean,

It's the Buddha's first noble truth.

And,

You know,

There's a lot of activity running away from that truth,

But it will keep knocking on the door.

And it's very powerful to,

As Blake said,

You know,

He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy.

He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise.

Right.

It's that you just can only kiss this joy as it flies and it's flying.

And right,

It's flying by.

And I like to say and think about often the reason something hurts is because the love is deepening.

Right.

That's why the suffering gets more acute is that also the love is getting stronger.

And that means that the loss will be more profound.

Do you understand?

It feels like a book somehow.

That particular thing you're talking about feels like it has many chapters.

You know,

It's a.

Yeah,

Yeah,

It does have many chapters till the end.

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Reviews

Thank you and very helpful. Also, tonight I am renting the movie. 🙏 🌹

Interesting and eye opening conversations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience.

Beautiful...so much gratitude for your talks.