The Good Old Days

Part of what torments us is the disparity between one's life as it is and the life we think it should have been. We wistfully compare life in the present to memories of the past, memories of the good old days that might not even be entirely accurate but yet seem far better than present day experience. But what if these are now the good old days?

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following was excerpted from a Zoom session of Dharma Dialogues,

Which was broadcast from Australia on July 4th,

2020.

It's called,

These are the Good Old Days.

I'm sure many of us have noticed that in these months of a worldwide pandemic,

And in this withdrawal from our usual affairs,

We've been left with a terrain within ourselves that is very sort of,

It's very rich ground for memories to arise,

Memories and reflections,

Almost like having a retrospective of your life in dreams and in thoughts and,

And they come unbidden.

It's not that we're trying to sit around and,

You know,

Remember things,

They just,

They just show up very powerfully.

And perhaps like,

Like yourselves,

I have found,

I've had so many thoughts about people I hadn't been in touch with in a long time that I've reached out to.

And people have reached out to me,

Which has been quite wonderful.

You know how life gallops along and you do think about your friends far flung around the place and you keep meaning to be in touch and somehow time passes,

You know,

And,

And sometimes we're,

We're hesitant to make the call because we think,

Oh,

I don't really have an hour to spend right now on catching up for the last two years or five years or whatever it might be.

But there's another component I've been reflecting on of late and in this,

These little jaunts down memory lane,

I've noticed how many eras of my life that I thought were sort of hard at the time.

Like I might be going through a breakup or a move or some stressful thing or financial difficulties when I was a poor journalist living month to month,

But that was a long time ago.

But anyway,

What I've noticed in the reflections on those times is that they were actually a lot of fun.

I wasn't fully aware of it at the time,

Too bad for that,

But,

But in hindsight,

I can see that in fact it was kind of a blast and because it was,

It was rich life and it was,

And I was younger,

Which helps,

But it was,

It was great.

And,

And yes,

I was miserable in some parts of it.

Some of it was hard and you know,

We have the phrase,

Those were the good old days,

But the insight that I've been reflecting on in this,

In this noticing is to let it inform my me that these are the good old days too.

These are the good old days as well.

These might look like the good old days very soon.

And then those can be the good old days.

In a sense,

It's sort of a choice that you make,

A way that you use your attention as you go,

Right?

Enjoying your days.

And as I hammer on endlessly,

There are so many little joys,

Little joys to be had and happiness,

Or at least a sense of wellbeing is much more accessible when your interest is in little joys rather than in big extravaganzas,

Right?

The way that we like so often when I look back at how I was as a younger woman,

I was always waiting for something like something was going to be happening and I was sort of on hold.

But now I see that in fact,

That was the,

That was the actual life I was living,

Right?

Those moments were,

That was it.

And some of those things came to be that I was waiting for and some most didn't really.

So it's a kind of a,

It's,

It's a,

A revelation,

I'd say that is a beautiful reset to really see that,

Look,

We're in a hard time.

The world is trembling.

We all have challenges in it,

But humans have had challenges in all of human history.

Most of the,

Many,

Many of the times were way harder where you're essentially in competition with wild animals for food and you were on the menu as well.

So,

I mean,

To think about what humans have endured,

The human spirit,

We've gotten a little soft in our,

In our time,

You know,

We've,

We've gotten pretty spoiled.

We've enjoyed that,

Of course,

But it,

You know,

It's an adjustment now.

It is.

One of my friends,

One of my friends on a podcast the other day,

He said something like reality is,

Does not comport with your preferences.

And it's a,

It's a lesson that especially I think we privileged in the West have not really had,

Had very clearly as a general rule,

We've basically,

You know,

Sort of like whatever you can dream it,

You can have it,

You know,

The Oprah model of reality.

And I've just been really appreciating the letting go of some other thing that's supposed to be.

I was on the phone with a friend of mine in Los Angeles.

He's actually going to be on the American call tomorrow.

And he's just adopted his second dog about a year ago,

Actually.

And they adopted a little dog from the pound who only had three legs.

So he's showing me the dog who looks like a very happy dog.

And I said,

Oh,

He only has,

Oh,

It's too bad.

And he said,

Oh,

He doesn't mind at all.

He doesn't mind at all,

Because he's not,

The dog is not thinking that it should be some other way.

I mean,

On the one hand,

Oh,

He's only got three legs.

On the other hand,

It's just his life.

It's just how it is.

And he doesn't mind at all,

According to his keeper,

His caretaker.

So it's by way of saying,

I said it last,

Last time we were all together.

Part of what torments us is the disparity between our life as it is,

With all its challenges,

And now we're in a pandemic.

And the life we think it should have been.

Right?

We that's the torment.

But this is the one we've got.

And we can find the joys these could be the good old days,

You can find.

It's all about how you're using your attention.

You could each in this very moment,

Just fall into gratitude.

Or look around in your space and,

And consider how lucky you are.

How much there is to,

To appreciate to celebrate.

And the fact that we can have this conversation with friends all over the world.

I'm very,

Very grateful for that.

And I don't take it for granted.

Who knows if that'll hold?

And if that if it doesn't,

Then also,

We enjoy while it's here in the good old days of this phase.

And maybe I was also reflecting on how much time I've spent in places that are considered the third world.

And and how they those times live so vividly in my memory,

Like things that happened 45 years ago,

Hold big chunks,

Not even that happened,

Just me being in certain places are so strong in my memory,

Sort of just bizarrely so.

And I was,

I was thinking the other day,

Just you know,

What was it about it?

And I think it was that there was a sense of timelessness.

There was everything was slower.

And that's another thing I've been noticing about this phase is this feeling of timelessness and slower.

I know everybody's everyone's talking about it being the pause and it is it has been that.

But also,

There's some other way that it's slower.

It's like it's slower in my own,

My own demands of production,

My own ambition,

My own desire for travel,

Or a sense that I'm looking forward to when I go there and when I go there and you know,

That's all off the table.

And so it's actually a lot quieter in my own head.

A lot slower.

So all these ways,

We can allow this time to be very rich,

Not really see it as a deprivation.

There are some things we can't do can't have.

Yes,

That's all true.

But you can frame it that yes,

Some things you can't do and have now.

And there's lots of things you still can.

So mainly what you've got is your own,

Your own experience of life.

Hey,

Catherine,

Um,

I've really got a question about time and becoming uncoupled from time.

Like I'm just working in this other whole I mean,

I've still got a full time job,

Which is trying to anchor me to time in the 24 hour calendar and all the rest of it.

But actually,

Because we're working from home,

I'm just in this free floating dreamy time zone.

I naturally drift to my natural bodily rhythm,

Which is going to bed at five or 6am.

And then just waking up some random time.

And it's becoming a bit discombobulating.

So it's the I'm just working on some whole other mystical different time frame.

It is kind of working alright for me,

But it's not really meshing with the rest of society or my friends or,

You know,

Meeting up with people online or it's really kind of weird.

And so it feels a bit disembodied and free floating.

And I'm just wondering if you have any advice for how we maintain our own sort of different time scapes with the rest of society,

You know,

I'm feeling a bit starting to feel like I'm getting a bit disconnected,

Actually.

I mean,

My inclination and of course,

This is just how I would play it,

Is this is a time we're in a phase where you can make that experiment.

All right,

This is a good time to be able to let yourself have that.

Find your own rhythm and let your own your own bio rhythm dictate when you're going to go to bed and when you're going to get up.

I mean,

It's a great privilege to be able to do that.

And I think a lot of people are finding that in this phase.

I think I spoke on a recent one,

I was listening to someone talking about how,

You know,

Day is night and night is day.

And sometimes he,

You know,

Gets up in the middle of the night and has breakfast and his breakfast is like oatmeal with salad on top.

Like it just all the rules are gone.

And,

And who is that person?

They really,

I mean,

They tried they are my tribe,

Those people.

It was a comedian.

I'll have to remember his name and I'll let you know when I do.

Yeah,

I mean,

I guess,

You know,

I mean,

I assume that prior to this,

You couldn't do that because you had to show up at the university at a certain time.

Yeah,

Correct.

And it's like,

If you actually want to talk to people,

You kind of,

Unless you're talking to people on the other side of the planet,

You need to,

You know,

If you're talking to people in the same time zone,

You need to be roughly awake the same time they roughly awake.

Yeah.

And I've always had a problem of being a night owl,

But I've just really embraced it and sunk into it.

And yeah,

Starting to feel a bit sort of weird,

Actually,

Only because you say so only because you're you're framing it that way.

But what if you basically said to yourself,

I am a night owl,

And I'm in it,

We're in a phase now where I'm not actually obligated to be anywhere I can do things online.

Is that the case?

Like,

Are there meetings or you have to?

Yep.

You do you have to teach online?

I do.

But it's only a couple of hours a week,

And they're all in the afternoon.

So I can easily manage that.

All right.

Well,

I say enjoy.

Okay,

I shall report back,

I shall embrace and enjoy and report back.

Oh,

Good.

Excellent.

I love it.

I mean,

For all of us,

Honestly,

It's,

It's,

You know,

This is definitely the time to enjoy in any way you can and to get more and more authentic,

You know,

Because what part of what you're saying is that you have a different biorhythm,

Right?

You're stepping to a different beat here.

And so so be it.

It's very healthy for you to let yourself have that.

Yeah.

And in fact,

I've been like that since a kid and always fought against it.

So I guess I'll just be always had to fit into the other timeframes and the other time rhythms.

Yeah,

Because we have this society that really values the getting up early,

Everything's about getting up early,

And you're somehow a good and moral virtuous person if you get up early.

So has someone said to me once,

It's always early somewhere on the planet.

So planetary time,

You know?

Yeah,

Yeah,

I'm a night owl as well.

Not quite to that to the point you are but even when I'm so tired in the afternoon,

Like if I don't get a little nap,

Right,

And I think,

Okay,

I'll go to sleep early tonight.

It doesn't happen.

I'm a night owl as well.

And I I'm surrendered to it.

So I like to arrange my life so that I can accommodate it.

I shall report back.

Okay,

Good.

I love it.

Hi,

Lovely to meet you.

And when you were talking earlier,

I cannot remember what you said,

But I wrote down three words.

And it was happiness versus well being.

And I felt an immediate relief when you said that it was I don't think I said versus,

But I think I said or.

Maybe or versus was probably me.

Yeah,

Well,

Let's take the probably out versus was me.

And so when Kaz was talking about night,

And then I could see all of my thinking about what that means.

I was then thinking about the question I had for tonight,

Which was,

Which I'm really grappling with.

Because I hear people talk about love.

Yeah.

And I really don't understand what it is.

I and and then when it was,

You know,

Love or well being.

It was some sense of relief there that I didn't need to be something that I'm grappling really,

I just don't know what love is or how to do that.

I mean,

I wonder if,

You know,

The word is charged,

It's overloaded.

And probably what it means is so unique to each of us.

And maybe,

Maybe that word doesn't apply to your experience.

You know,

The way that it's just a finger pointing to the moon.

It's not the moon,

Right?

It's a word that we throw around.

And perhaps for you,

There is an experience that,

That lights your heart,

That gives you a sense of belonging and a sense of connection.

However,

It shows up and doesn't have to have a form or a particular formula.

And maybe that word isn't isn't your word,

Right?

It's a word for you.

Yeah.

Well,

Maybe there's no word.

Or maybe no word even better.

Yes.

Yeah,

Maybe no word.

I mean,

We say the word and it's so universally,

At least in our English language,

That particular word.

People say it and we think we know what it means.

We only know what it means to ourselves.

It's just,

You know,

Just just like,

You know,

What I see as the color yellow,

May not even be what you're seeing.

You know,

You may be,

Yeah,

You might say,

Yes,

That's yellow.

And we'll both agree that it's yellow.

But who knows if we're both seeing the same thing.

And I think that's true.

I think we're so uniquely made,

Right?

By,

Yeah,

We're,

We're,

We're warthogs.

And,

And,

You know,

We do our best with language to describe the indescribable.

But yeah,

I would just say,

Let yourself off the hook on this one.

And,

And that story is kind of scary.

To say,

I don't know what love is,

And I can't experience it,

Or I can't feel it.

That's kind of a scary story to tell yourself.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Another frame is you're experiencing the mystery,

And you're having all these different moments throughout your life.

And just as Kaz was saying about her bio rhythm,

It may be that your experience of being here has more of an aloneness quality.

Like that,

That it isn't,

It isn't the cozy thing that you might see that other people do have.

And you might project that that's what a love,

A love filled life looks like.

But if you're made differently,

And if your own taste of beauty and of joy and wonder and of connection is,

Is different,

Like Kaz's bio rhythm,

Right?

It's just different.

Then I like,

I like to say this line,

Dignify your life.

This is what you are,

You didn't grow you,

You're experiencing this manifestation that auld wendy and,

And just enjoy best you can,

Right?

Yeah,

Boy,

The quirks of it and the the uniqueness of it.

And if you happen to be someone who relishes aloneness,

And is okay with it,

And does have some kinds of appreciation,

And things do sparkle your mind and heart.

Call that love if you want,

Or don't have to name it.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Thank you.

It's like when you said,

When you and I both might see yellow and agree that it's yellow.

And I heard my mind going,

Yes.

And I might experience it differently.

So the experience of yellow to me might be different to your experience of yellow.

Neither right or wrong.

Sure.

Yeah,

Just experience.

Yeah.

I say something.

Yeah,

I say something often.

And I usually say it in retreats,

Because in retreat,

It's so obvious and experience.

But I often say,

Paraphrasing Shakespeare,

A rose by no name at all would smell as sweet.

That is the experience we often have in retreat.

We start,

We drop language.

We're having really direct experience without having to name anything.

Yeah,

Yeah.

It's the naming where I get,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tripped up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If I don't name it.

Oh,

Good.

Well,

That's easy.

Thank you.

Hi,

Great to see you.

I don't know where to start,

Actually.

But I want to start,

I guess,

By thanking you,

Catherine,

For the lovely book that you wrote.

Catherine wrote this novel called A Crack in Everything,

Which I read in one day last week.

And I was reduced to sobbing,

You know,

Every 30 minutes,

Every 40 minutes.

And it was really a wonderful gift and great to just blather it all out.

I've been bottled up here in my apartment in Berlin since March 8.

And with the exception of just two weeks of work that I had last month.

And there's just so much from everything that I've heard today.

Everything that's going on is going on with me too.

You know,

With Kaz,

I have a friend,

Colleague.

We've toured all over the world.

And sometimes that,

You know,

We're in Asia somewhere.

And I'm having some issue at five o'clock in the morning.

And I know,

Yeah,

I can go to Jana.

He's up.

He's always up.

He sleeps when he wants to sleep.

He eats when he's hungry.

I have quite a stack of photographs that have really deserved my attention for a long time,

Which I had,

It was too painful for me to look at these photographs because of events in my life.

And I finally found the time to sort them all actually by date,

By year.

And it was an enormously wonderful experience to go through that history.

So for me,

I find that pandemic time to be more like a sabbatical,

A time of great fruition,

Of great progress from the little things like this week,

Making little,

What I call it a timbale of the lavender that I harvested from my garden.

Yesterday,

I made three liters of cassis from the black currants.

It will be ready around New Year's Day.

Then onto the big things like trying to tackle those big blocks that I need to get through to,

Well,

To get to the next place,

To get to whatever,

Wherever I'm supposed to be going.

My question then,

Going back to your comments,

Catherine,

About the three-legged dog.

The way I see the human condition is that we are all that three-legged dog.

We all are missing something that others can recognize for us quite easily,

Of which we're not aware because we've made a workaround.

That workaround is either spiritual or psychological or in some way,

I'm not talking about a physical impediment,

I'm talking about how we were missing something,

All of us,

And that we can't recognize it ourselves.

My question for you,

Catherine,

Is how can we come into contact with the things that are slowing us down and to work on that and to try to get past that block?

Yeah,

My way is always to go to acceptance.

I think we start with the premise that I like to say we're all the walking wounded.

To understand that whatever conditioning you've had and whatever you've suffered,

Whatever suffering you might have caused,

All of that,

It's painful to live with and it lives in our psyche.

It's very powerful to just as best you can move into forgiveness and acceptance,

To basically say yes to you and dignify your life,

Your life experiences,

Whatever you perceive as missteps or wrong turns.

One of the things that I also speak a lot about is the way that we retroactively judge ourselves for not knowing then what we now know.

Sometimes we are looking back and thinking,

If only I'd known then and I should have known then what I now know,

So clear now.

Well,

We didn't or we only knew it in a certain way,

Not deeply enough.

My own way is to assume that the wounding is there,

Just being in human form and not going to bat on the planet long enough.

To your point,

The three legged dog,

Definitely.

There's something also very beautiful about that.

There's something very vulnerable and pure about it as well.

Like I say again,

The reason I keep saying this part is that I know everyone has,

Lots of people on this call have heard me say it so many times,

So just they don't think I'm going senile,

But I only hang out with the brokenhearted.

I only hang out with the brokenhearted.

That's the truth.

All my best friends.

I would say that probably everybody is a bit brokenhearted,

But I guess what I mean by that is they're brokenhearted and they know they're brokenhearted.

They let themselves feel it just as you cried the other day multiple times.

You gave yourself permission.

It was sort of impersonal to be able to do it with a novel.

It was great.

It was great.

It felt wonderful.

I know.

I do that with movies.

I'm like such a crybaby with movies.

To say yes to you in totality and to completely give up any idea that you have to fix yourself.

It's in the deep,

Profound acceptance where you're not trying to change anything about yourself.

You basically say,

Okay,

Dear,

Warts and all,

Here we are and carry on.

In that profound acceptance where you just say,

This is how I am.

This is it.

Then something does unlock,

Something unleashes.

A transformation occurs not because you willed it or tried to make it happen or did any particular reflection or meditation or practice or anything like that.

It's all downstream.

You don't have to do any upstream swimming.

It's all downstream where you just say,

Fine,

Let it be.

Then because of that magnanimity to your own self and because that tends to spill over,

Like you realize everybody else is just doing themselves.

I guess what I'm saying is in this way that you start to perceive your own self in this sort of free way where you just say,

I'm not on a project anymore because all of that movement of thinking I've got to change,

Fix,

Fix the course.

That creates a certain tension and it's a subliminal message to yourself that you're not okay as you are.

Right?

It's a subliminal message.

You're only going to bother with it if you think there's something to be done.

If you basically say,

No,

There's actually nothing to be done.

My teacher,

Poonjaji,

Used to say,

Call off the search.

Nothing to be done.

Right?

Do nothing.

Make no effort at all.

No effort.

You can make effort in all the other domains that you like.

Right?

You'll need to keep practicing your instrument.

Right?

You'll learn how to,

Yes,

There you go.

You'll get really excellent at making kasih.

You're going to have a beautiful lavender bouquets to make.

There's all kinds of things you can apply your mental effort to,

But this one is not the one to apply it to.

This is something that I've made a great experiment with in my own life.

I began very,

Very intensive meditation practice in 1974.

I did it for 17 years in very hard Buddhist monastic circumstances where we sat multiple,

Like 10 hours a day and in silent retreats,

Very grim situations like boot camp.

I left in 1991.

All that while we were striving for various forms of,

Well,

The stages of insight leading to enlightenment.

This was a whole,

This was our soul to us as the path.

There was a lot of emphasis on practice and on doing certain things about yourself,

Like greed,

Hatred,

And delusion.

At certain points of insights,

Certain things were supposed to have fallen off.

Well,

In my case,

None of them fell away.

They were all still there.

I think that was true for everyone I knew,

Frankly.

But anyway,

It was then my life rolled into this whole other way and a whole other kind of teaching,

Which turned out to be a non teaching,

Really about being and about exactly what I'm saying to you.

Don't bother with the effort.

Let the effort go and just say yes to yourself as you are.

Just know that,

Yes,

Sometimes I make messes.

I act out of a moment of ignorance and greed or hatred.

And I say something or I do something that I have regret for,

Then the regret becomes your ally.

And in the openness and in the magnanimity to yourself,

You have a way of both feeling the regret and forgiving yourself for making that,

Having to suffer it one more time.

You forgive yourself and you have compassion for yourself.

It's not that you're letting yourself off the hook and then can go around doing whatever you want.

But rather that there's this instant feedback loop that is not,

The waters are not muddied by a project that's saying,

I've got to improve.

And there's no like the whole recrimination thing is off the table as well.

So it's a very effective,

Really effective understanding.

And when I came upon this understanding,

After all those years of practice,

I cried deeply tears of joy.

Like there was this moment in India and where I understood it very deeply.

And I,

It's still an understanding that's,

It's just,

I'm so grateful for,

Because from that time on,

I've never again bothered with any big efforts about improving myself.

And it's not that I'm,

You know,

Landed in some fabulous manifestation.

It's just that I know that my best use of my attention does not include that.

So this is counter to a lot of the spiritual trips where people are just striving and straining and wanting to,

You know,

Or psychological trips that people get into.

Now I'm not saying also that there might be certain circumstances where therapeutically you need to discuss something and you use your therapist or even your friend who's good at it to just bounce things off and to kind of process something,

Unpack it a little.

That's a sort of different category than having to somehow make yourself better as a person.

So this may take a while to sink in,

In terms of like,

It's an unusual perspective because almost all things that one gets good at require effort,

Right?

It's,

It's,

This is a different category.

It's its own.

Oh,

I'll work.

I'll work hard at not changing.

Yeah,

But anytime you feel that impulse come up of like working,

Even that,

Even that,

Like don't even worry about that.

Make absolutely no effort.

These words have gone in and now they're like a virus.

Oh God.

A good virus.

Not that.

Thank you everyone.

It's just great listening to the conversation and there's so much and I too will let it sink in cause it's exactly what I'm wanting to gravitate towards.

Thank you.

And my question is if you would say more about something you said a couple of weeks ago and it,

And it was a Buddhist notion you said about tell us,

Tell the truth,

But tell it skillfully.

And the reason I'm asking,

Let me just clarify there.

Just some people weren't on the call.

It's supposedly a quote from the Buddha and he said,

Always speak truth,

But only the truth is skillful.

Only the truth that skillful.

Thank you so much.

Because that speaks very much to what you're saying,

Like about being three legged and being a night owl and accepting all that.

That's all beautiful.

And I think in our three leggedness and being human,

I have to accept I'm very politically minded and very moved by the,

Even though we can talk about the timelessness of the human experience,

We're all born into particular moments and have particular orientations.

Mine is to be politically involved in some of the reflections that are going on that you've spoken on.

I'm looking back 40 years and seeing things arising that weren't dealt with as they need to be collectively.

And also we're on the way to needing to deal in a just way with climate chaos and change.

So I find that the qualities of listening to each other that we get here,

I don't find in the political circles that I'm involved in,

But I do feel that I've got,

I still want to be involved in that and helping that along to a better place without it being a big project.

But that was my kind of,

That's my casise making,

Which I also want to make as well.

I also use the kind of pay attention to that.

It's not as a me project.

There's so much of having to be right in political circles.

And I feel that issue about being skillful with each other,

How we find ways to work together.

And I'd love to hear you speak more about that.

Yeah,

It's a subject due to my heart because I was a journalist specialising in social activism and consciousness,

You could say,

Or empathic activism.

And of course,

When you're in the activist world,

You're dealing with injustice a lot.

That's what you're usually trying to redress,

You know.

So,

Of course,

I'm very,

Very sensitive to how it's just this razor's edge of having the passion to want to change something that you see could be changed,

That you could help do,

And yet not make,

Not have a wake of hatred,

And really bad vibes and just causing more separation in which everyone entrenches very,

Very deeply.

And when we see people who are leaders who are ignorant of that simple understanding,

Then watch everything they do just makes things worse.

It's just this unfortunate digging of a hole that everyone starts falling into.

You don't have to be perfect at this,

But when you're in a circumstance and you're feeling your anger in the circumstance,

If possible,

Wait until you're not feeling the white hot part of the anger.

Now,

Sometimes one does have to speak up because there is something,

There's like righteous outrage and you have to say something.

But again,

Maybe not in the white hot moment.

You might still say something strong,

But you can try to do it more impersonally and not make the person feel belittled.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Right.

And feel stupid or feel like they're mean bad person because people won't,

It's ineffective for one thing.

I mean,

But it's also unkind.

And just as we know when we are approached by someone who is speaking to us in an insulting way,

And we think we're right and they're treating us like we're the stupid one.

We know what that does in terms of you shut down to the person.

It does nothing but make you feel like I don't want to be around.

I don't want to be in the company of this person.

So it's,

It's,

It's takes incredible sort of nuance of skill and of listening and of trying to hear underneath when someone is speaking,

Especially if you feel that their position is untenable in terms of the greater good.

It's just not good in terms of,

It's not a service of the greater good.

It's serving the corporations or,

You know,

Whatever.

I was just listening to a podcast the other day about the power of denialism and,

And how people,

People still are denying climate chaos and global warming,

Right?

A lot of the lobbyists who are promoting these ideas,

They used to work for the tobacco companies.

They used to be employed,

Denying the dangers of cigarette smoke.

And now they've moved over to this.

Now on the face of it,

You ask yourself,

What,

Who are these people who can sleep at night?

And when that's what they're doing and getting paid big money,

And it's literally causing deaths of lots of people who are,

You know,

And so there can be a way in which inside you feel this,

This rage and this kind of hatred arise,

Right?

I guess if I may,

Catherine,

I,

I,

I recognize that the challenge I feel is,

I don't feel that arising in that way.

Personally,

In doing the climate denier,

It's more within a movement how to build a kind and empathic and just movement.

So,

Oh,

Well,

What I started,

What,

Where I was going with this was that it's within each other in the way we speak to each other,

Which tends not to be the way that this conversation is held.

Do you know what I mean?

Yes,

I do.

What I was going to say though,

Is sometimes it's helpful to,

In any circumstance,

Like where you're really quite at odds with somebody's position,

To feel into,

If you can,

The fear underneath their position,

And that can actually instill empathy in you instantaneously.

Like you can,

And sometimes you can see it on their face,

Right?

You just look at their face.

And you can see,

You can see either the hardening or the,

Like I said,

The fear,

Or you can just sense it.

You can sense that this,

That this is a,

It's the position is actually a covering for the suffering and for the smallness,

The smallness in which they're living.

Oh,

The tiny crowded space inside.

And that can often open the heart a bit,

Deep listening,

Not just to words,

But to the place someone is sitting.

And do you have a sense of being able to do that in a group way?

How to create that more of an ethic of how we choose to speak with each other?

Yes.

Yes.

That's what I'm trying to move towards because I'm like agreeing with people.

But I feel the way we're going about it creates more division.

Yeah.

You know what,

That's what I mean.

Well,

The first order of business really is to just sit in your sweet spot in your own case,

You know,

In the room.

So sit,

Sit there without,

Without an urgency about making sure that your agenda is,

Is on the table.

And just be very,

As best you can just as,

You know,

Be very relaxed in yourself.

And,

And have a certain kind of trust that your,

Your intention in this circumstance is to help.

Yeah.

Okay.

And you'll,

You'll be able to,

You want,

You'll want to offer it the best you can.

And then it's out of your control as to whether or not it's accepted or how it plays out or is it fully appreciated,

Et cetera.

Yeah.

So again,

Something similar to what I said to Matthew,

You take a lot of the efforting out,

Gaining efforting,

And you,

You free up energy for the real effort,

Which is rolling up the sleeves because there may be actual things to do that are going to take,

Take your,

Your,

Your,

In fact,

Your needed energy.

Yeah.

But I've been around a lot of activists over the years in addition to,

In addition to being a journalist,

I've also moved in those circles back in the day.

And I used to live with someone who was a big funder of those things.

It's a big philanthropist.

And so he,

We always had those people at our tables and we're constantly at conferences and dealing with this and that crisis and so on.

And what I've seen is people who are moving from a lot of anger,

They burn out.

Yeah.

They really burn out and you can feel too,

When you're around them,

Even when you're on their side,

That there's this,

There's this energy that is very hard to be with very hard to be in the room with now,

Conversely,

The type of journalism I specialized in was nonviolent strategies.

And so I was always interviewing the people who really understood nonviolence and non nonviolent communication and nonviolent action and basically moving from empathy and kindness in their work.

And the vibes with them are just,

You know,

So beautiful.

And it makes you want to help them.

So it's all about the vibe.

Yes,

It surely is.

Thanks so much.

I find that there's always a sort of a contradiction between the acceptance of where I am and the achievement of my goals,

Because I always am aspiring to having different goals.

And maybe at the moment,

I think I have done a lot of things and I'd like to meet somebody,

But I always leave it to the long finger and I say,

I'm so busy doing other things and I don't really engage in that.

So I'm often in a scenario where it's a contradiction between the acceptance of all the various hobbies and the various things I do and the achievement of goals.

So that was my question the last time,

Catherine,

That I had.

And yeah,

But it's lovely to see you anyhow today.

Well,

With regard to goals,

Like I was saying to Matthew,

You can certainly have goals to achieve certain types of things,

Create things,

You might have a project you want to do,

Then there are steps to achieve those things,

Right?

And you may or may not achieve them.

There's no guarantee when you even take every step perfectly,

It doesn't mean that it's going to all work out perfectly.

But nevertheless,

Those all have a kind of path to them.

Whereas what I'm speaking about in terms of beingness,

That doesn't require a path to it.

It's already happening.

And it's just a matter of relaxing into yourself.

Feeling really whole and fine as you are three legs or two legs,

You know,

What?

Wounded,

Suffered,

You know,

Was abused,

You know,

All of it.

It's here you are being and get into the real simplicity of that as your home base.

And get used to that.

And don't you don't have you don't have to be on an improvement project about that.

And then you use your great,

You know,

Mind and ability to plan and figure things out for things that actually have a possibility of a result.

Right?

This frees up your energy tremendously,

To not think that you have to contort in any way,

Who you are,

Into some glorified version in your head.

Right?

So,

So,

You know,

Alan Watts has a great phrase,

Which I love.

He says something like,

We're all just divine rascals.

So I love,

I love that understanding of both the divinity and the rascality.

You know,

That's the truth of the matter,

Isn't it?

So,

You know,

So to really own it and,

And,

And then yeah,

If you want to figure out how to manifest this or that,

There are probably steps to,

That would be the intelligent steps to take for that possibility.

But on another level,

Catherine,

You'd say,

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah,

I would say that.

I do say that.

Yeah.

And it's what I am saying in this very call,

That a lot of our dreams,

Dare I say,

Are currently not possible.

And we don't really know if they will be possible,

The ones we used to have.

Right?

And now,

So when you don't have all those looking forward to this or that,

Some big list,

Like Debrae mentioned,

On one of the recent calls,

You know,

Her list of what lights her heart,

Right,

Is down to very simple joys,

Very simple things.

So when all those other big plans and projects and future tripping are not possible,

Then are you just going to like gnash your teeth and pull out your hair and scream and kick or have,

You know,

Mope into depression and,

You know,

Or are you going to let your spirit be lit as is?

Right?

You said something interesting when you were looking at your photographs,

Catherine,

You said there's all the different regrets that we have or the different,

And they don't really,

Because I think I would have one or two regrets,

But I would have so many things I'm very proud of that I did too and all of that.

And you just said there,

At times I look back and I didn't realize that I should have been happier then.

But when I was seeing you in Dublin a long time ago,

And we were all sort of,

It was fabulous because it wasn't really happening before that in Dublin much.

And when you arrived on the scene and people were just suddenly,

It was just like a paradigm shift in one's thinking and where am I wrong and how am I wrong?

And you just changed things so much.

So it was such an early days in Dublin.

It was,

I think I first went in 1995 and there was such a stronghold of Catholicism that everyone had been conditioned in,

But there was this whole sort of mystical free crowd who were really ripe for something different.

And those are quite halcyon days that we had there.

They were fantastic.

It was just like you arrived just at the right time.

It was like the timing and everything was impeccable and were wonderful days.

Beautiful days,

Absolutely.

And there's a person there who probably would like to join the two is Leonard McCormack.

I don't know if you remember him.

And I have to give him the link and let him kind of join as well.

And people like that,

That I remember would love to see you again,

Catherine.

But that's nice.

And thank you for your time now.

Thank you.

So I'm also in a paradise,

Even though I'm in America.

And I was walking just yesterday and I lost my best friend a few years ago.

He died suddenly in his sleep unexpectedly.

And I never really went into a mourning about it because he's really stayed with me.

We were friends for so long and shared so many experiences.

And yesterday,

And I don't even remember the event.

It might have been a song in my headphones.

It might have been something I saw,

But something happened where I felt and thought about him so strongly.

It was like he was there and we had a laugh together.

And then I just started to cry.

And in that moment,

It just went through my heart so quickly.

I went,

This is what love is.

And it made me so happy.

And then that too was fleeting,

Which you have to let go when it passes.

But I just realized listening that the splash out from America is making me cry a lot.

That's also love.

Yes,

Absolutely.

It is.

Sure.

It's connection.

It's suffering with true compassion,

Suffering with.

And it's our moment in history right now.

This is what we've got.

And in the quieting of ourselves,

And I know you know this from retreats,

You become much more like this big clearinghouse for feelings and just exactly what you described,

Where a wave goes through you and there's no resistance.

There's no extra.

It's just the purity of the grief in that moment connected to the love that you shared with your friend.

It's just the purity of it.

It's like the real thing.

And it doesn't have extra stuff.

It's just that.

And I feel that in the deepening in this understanding,

That happens a lot.

As we know,

It just happens a lot.

Some people have,

And in some systems,

They have this idea that you're going to get to some sort of equanimity where you don't feel too much on any end.

You don't feel too much joy.

You don't feel too much sorrow.

But that isn't,

In my experience,

That isn't what happens in the deepening.

In the deepening,

You feel more and you're just a very fine instrument that's picking up lots of messages and lots of little vibrations in the air.

It's life at last.

Maybe what's meant by you feeling less on either end is that I know I don't feel that for people's drama.

And it's something that's created,

It's manufactured.

I can't join them in their joy or sorrow,

But the real things are much clearer.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

It feels so good.

Thank you,

Sweetheart,

For staying up into the wee hours.

So beautiful to be with you and everyone.

I've just thoroughly enjoyed listening and reflecting on how everybody's experience is my own.

And just feeling that lovely silence then together,

Actually,

Marvelling at the field that we're all in and that silence that even though we're not together in person,

That it's a tangible field that's created with this silence.

It's so beautiful.

Reminds me of the retreats that I've been on with you and longing for more of that.

And just reflecting lately too on the story.

There's a lot of story that gets somebody else was talking about before about the naming.

I'm not sleeping very well at the moment,

For example,

So I'm up at 2 o'clock,

3 o'clock.

And just noticing the story that comes up with that.

It's so interesting.

I won't be able to function tomorrow and I can't do this and I can't do that.

And just really letting that drop and being with the experience and how that can,

How that plays out in all facets of my life.

How to actually just be with the bare experience.

And I notice it's just layer upon layer upon layer of story.

It's like having a heavy backpack.

Yes.

I'm carrying around like,

Oh,

Enough of the stories.

I know.

Yeah.

Yes.

And a lot of the story is,

It should be different.

Yes.

It should be different.

I mean,

That's a torment.

That story and all its derivatives,

Which come in,

You know,

Hundreds of millions of,

You're just fighting with reality.

And,

You know,

There are certain things we can try to change in terms of we tweak them,

You know,

We help something or we have an idea,

We have a project.

But it's still a surrender to reality because each step of the way,

You're basically seeing,

Okay,

How's this?

And here's the reality we're in and here we're,

We have this vision of something,

But that's in the future,

Which doesn't ever come quite,

You know,

We're here in the now making a plan and it may or may not work out.

And then,

You know,

We go two more steps and then we're in that now.

And,

And it's that constant sort of adjustment from a previous way of life that was perhaps driven by toppling forward into the future.

I once heard Eckhart Tolle talking about,

He was standing on a street in New York City and people were rushing by so fast all around him.

He said it was almost like they were running,

Almost running around,

You know,

And he said to himself,

Where are they running to?

And his answer to himself was they're running to the future.

Now,

Obviously,

They're not actually running to the future,

But in their minds,

They're running to their idea of a future,

That where they are now is not quite as good as where they're getting to go,

Right?

That's the place to be,

Not here,

But there in the future.

And people live their whole lives like that.

They just,

They're running to the future.

So another part of this whole experience here,

And why I'm saying that a lot of our dreams about the so-called future,

Our plans and schemes are not even possible and we don't know if they ever will be again.

We don't know.

And then,

You know,

It's just a really deep surrender to basically say,

Okay,

We're going to be watching how it plays out.

And we only have our own experience of life along the way.

That's all we're going to get.

That's all we were ever going to get.

Yeah.

And I think for me too,

What I'm noticing is it's not a self-improvement project so much,

But there is something about expanding the window of tolerance to stay with my experience.

It's not actually an efforting,

But it's somehow having that in my conscious awareness.

The window of tolerance is staying with my experience is key.

Otherwise I'm toppling.

I love the way you said it,

Toppling into the future.

And that can be quite a visceral thing for me where my body feels I'm out of my body.

I'm actually disembodied.

Yeah.

I love that phrase,

The window of tolerance.

Yeah.

That's very good.

Yeah.

It just feels like that sometimes needs a little bit of calibration almost.

That's all right.

We'll just need some attention.

Maybe it's just attention to go,

Okay,

This is feeling uncomfortable.

This isn't how I'd like it to be,

But can I stay with that?

Just a little bit longer.

Yes.

Yes.

Breathe into it and just give up the resistance.

Especially to that which is,

Right?

To that which is.

As people have had to do,

As people are doing this very moment,

As we speak,

So many people in circumstances that we would think are intolerable.

Absolutely.

You're tolerating them and you would too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I often feel really,

You know,

I have that survivor guilt I do at the moment living in Perth here.

It's a paradise to most countries in the world and most places in the world.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yeah.

Very,

Very fortunate.

Of course.

I feel that very strongly with my family and most of my oldest friends are in America and it's hard.

Hard.

Yeah.

Hard.

It's a shared psychology that's hard as well.

Even if certain people's personal experience is not so terrible,

Just having to be in the vibe of the whole picture is also very,

Very hard.

We're all experiencing the sort of the splash out in the news.

So yes,

This is the what so and it is a kind of continual allowing.

Allowing.

It is.

It's the ah so.

Whenever I think of you at three in the morning.

So.

Concluding my phrase for everything.

Lots of love to everybody.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

So lovely.

I'm so grateful,

Really grateful to have this opportunity to do this together.

Feels.

Quite slubrious.

Good night.

Good morning.