The Power Of Conditioning

Catherine talks about how aliveness isn't just a jumble of thoughts, but a collection of physical experiences, and why we should delight in the power of our senses.

This lecture is excerpted from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram and recorded in Lennox Head, Australia in October 2018.

From the opening talk: “ Last week I was lying on the couch looking at the forest and the life in it, and a memory came in on the breeze. I had the sliding doors open, and it was a very powerful physical memory of being in Hawaii the first time I went there."

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 October of 2018.

It's called The Power of Conditioning.

Last week I was lying on the couch looking at the forest and the life therein.

And a memory came in on the breeze.

I had the windows,

The sliding doors open.

And it was a very powerful physical memory of Hawaii,

Of being in Hawaii the first time I went,

Which was 1972.

And of course I was quite a bit younger.

And suddenly there was a soundtrack with this memory.

The feelings,

The smells,

And a soundtrack started playing in my head.

And the soundtrack was The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic from the 70s.

I know a lot of you don't probably know that one.

But it was a big hit in our day,

Right Mark,

Right Mira?

I probably haven't heard that song or talked about it or thought about it in decades.

But there it was,

Complete with the words and the music in my head.

Some of which was quite cool actually.

I was reflecting on,

I was thinking,

I think at the time I didn't quite get this part.

But I'll remember one stanza.

The percentage you're paying is too high priced while you're living beyond all your means.

And the man in the suit has just bought a new car on the profit he's made from your dreams.

Anyway,

So I was reflecting on this whole experience and I thought,

I wonder when that song was released.

And sure enough,

It was released in 1971,

So it would have been on the radio and on the stereos of my friends in Hawaii in that era.

Turns out of course that the olfactory bulb,

Our smell,

Goes into nearby centers of memory and of emotion in our brains.

That's why smells often bring back powerful memories.

And it also goes to this recognition that we all often have,

Right?

Let yourself really sink into what it portends.

And that is that as you're experiencing your senses,

Which many of you know I emphasize quite a bit,

Your physical senses,

It's really signaling powerful experiences in your brain,

In your memory.

It's really recording very with clear fidelity.

And I propose it gives you a great sense of aliveness as you go.

This is your aliveness.

Your aliveness isn't just a jumble of thoughts.

Your aliveness is this physical experience you're having.

And it's such a privilege to be having it.

But mostly people are just thinking about things.

They're thinking about having experiences.

And even when they're having the experience,

They're just conceptualizing about it.

When the sense doors are open and there's a great quiet that's generally the case in your being,

You are having then experiences such that nearly half a century later they would be easily recalled.

So for those who are new,

This is one of my favorite themes.

It's not my only one,

But it's one of my favorites.

Just the power of living in your senses.

People talk a lot about presence and being here now.

These are pointing,

Fingers pointing to the actuality that is really wordless.

Of just simply experiencing what you're experiencing.

So,

Catherine,

I'm just wondering whether you could talk a bit about the interpretation of the experience through the senses.

So I might be able to experience something,

But then how do I interpret that?

What's that process?

Well,

I mean a lot of direct experience doesn't require interpretation.

In fact,

I recommend dropping most of the conceptualization about it.

I know the habit is strong and the habit of interpretation is compelling often.

But what I have found is that the less that I conceptualize about my experience,

First of all I'm very happy to live in the mysteriousness of it all.

And secondly,

I feel,

I think it's my own direct experience that it gets stronger.

So sometimes I rework Shakespeare's line,

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I say a rose by no name at all would smell as sweet.

And you can imagine having that experience where you forget to name it.

So I observe the animals a lot.

They're fully being and I think they're in their senses just from watching their behavior.

Like the turkeys often will,

Of a sunny day,

They'll come out onto the grass and just spread their wings out and just lay there for a while looking around.

It's so beautiful and I can sense they're kind of drying their wings and sunning themselves.

Now we are very conceptual animals and I challenge that a lot in my own case.

I challenge the need for it.

There's a certain amount of thinking that is needed and it turns out it's a tiny percentage of really how much one has to have to get by.

But there is a small amount and the rest of it is just overthinking.

And it's the preponderance of it is just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and feeling like one has to keep thinking to keep up somehow or to figure things out or to keep surviving.

I feel that it's probably very contraindicated to health,

All this thinking we've been doing and what the culture is doing at large.

And I say this from having done so many retreats over so many years,

Led retreats,

Attended retreats,

Etc.

And been with literally thousands of people doing the same and having very profound experiences,

Insights,

Realizations,

Redirections of their lives such that their lives become simpler and easier and more beautiful,

Going kind of downstream from the thinking.

So there are things that I think require and are aided by reflection and interpretation.

But there's a lot that we might have assumed we needed to interpret that we actually don't.

We can let it be mysterious or just not think about it.

Do you have a particular?

You'll think about that.

Yeah.

Well,

It's just probably you've already grokked.

Do you know that word?

It's another 70s word.

You've already grokked the message.

And now it's a matter of letting your attention drift there now and again,

Whereby it starts to work something over and then asks itself,

Does this need reinterpretation?

Now,

Obviously,

It's fun sometimes if you go to a movie and you're with your friend and you're kind of discussing the movie.

What did it mean?

What did it portend,

Etc.

There's,

Of course,

A place for conversing in interpretation,

Definitely.

But my point is simply that we are thinking animals and we're overthinking.

We're driving ourselves crazy with the kind of constant thinking that goes on.

And it's a great habit.

People have it.

We all have it.

But I'm suggesting that one can start to question it and release it a lot.

And in the immersion into direct experience,

Direct tasting.

So let's give an example.

You're drinking your coffee,

Right?

And you're really fully in the experience.

And even though thoughts are drifting through,

You are the primary experience you're having is the taste of the coffee.

And you start to live more and more your life like that.

So the thoughts become much more background and quieter.

Right?

And the experience,

The physical experience becomes predominant.

So that you're moving through your life like that.

I like to say like an awake animal.

You're in your animal senses.

Right?

All the usual senses.

But they become more and more heightened.

And weirdly,

As I said a moment ago,

Weirdly it becomes a great ground of insight.

It's amazing.

People often think that they have to be conceptualizing to have insight.

And in fact,

It arises from a quieter space.

That's why you hear the tales of,

You know,

People will say the formula came when I was walking on the beach.

Or the vision for my art piece came when I was in the shower.

Right?

It's when the mind is off duty somehow.

You're welcome.

Yeah,

I recently had an equine session where you go out with the horses.

And it was very much what you were saying.

I was really amazed to watch how the horses interact,

You know.

Particularly there was one beautiful female horse and she went up to the male horse and they were sort of grooming each other.

And then he turned around and bit her on the bum.

And she's sort of like,

Nyeh,

And he ran away from her.

And then she sort of stood away from him a bit.

And then she sort of came up and they connected again.

But he wasn't giving her much attention.

So then she came to us and we gave her a hug.

And it was just beautiful to watch how she just went for what she wanted.

And if it wasn't happening,

She moved away.

And he bit her.

She sort of forgave him.

And I was so wishing I was her.

How,

You know,

When I can be in my senses and open,

When there isn't an emotional memory in the way.

So he said that sense of how that,

How the emotions,

I guess,

Kind of create another world.

So there's the sense world and being in it.

And then the emotion can,

Whatever it may be,

Can then turn it,

Take you somewhere else.

You know,

You're adding something to reality.

Well,

I find myself adding something to reality based on what I'm holding emotionally.

And sometimes that's not a cognitive choice.

Like I can generate a story.

But sometimes that's just emotional memory based on past experience.

You know,

And the older I get,

The more strong these emotional kind of realities that I bring in are.

And I just wonder how,

What to do with that,

I suppose,

If you have any.

Yeah,

Of course,

It's a very common thing.

And there's a place for when you've had a situation that has caused you distress in some way.

And then you have a similar situation,

Right?

Of course,

The memory of the previous distress arises.

So you don't have to expect that to be eradicated.

And to be very,

Very gentle with yourself when it does arise,

Of course.

But allowing the movement of it to flow through without a big story that you're hoping that someday it's going to not happen.

You know,

Because as I alluded to,

We are a different kind of animal in that we do conceptualize a lot and connect things to the past.

Somebody told me a joke the other day.

But he saw a comedian saying,

My dog loves me much more than my wife.

I put my dog in the trunk and sometime later came and opened the trunk and he was so happy to see me.

And I tried it with my wife and she wasn't nearly as happy.

It's like that,

The kind of way that we build up a case with previous interactions of our dear ones.

But this is very human and it can get lighter and lighter,

Right?

Where you basically when the next thing,

The next little sting happens and it's,

You're not working it.

I think also what occurs to me is the possibility that even though the emotional memory is saying this and informing you of this,

It's the possibility that you meet something different.

And I think to be able to stay in the sensory experience,

Even though the emotion is informing you.

It's like the horse,

Like she might go back up to the horse.

She's not thinking,

Is he going to bite me again?

She's just like,

Oh,

Maybe he won't bite me.

What's going to happen this time?

It can be hard with the emotions.

I find it hard to stay in the senses,

In that sensory experience.

And of course,

You don't have to be constantly,

It doesn't have to be any kind of perfection.

It's just more and more refreshing.

I know that you love that roomy line,

Come again.

Even though you've broken your vows perhaps 10,

000 times.

Yeah,

So it's that,

And it just gets lighter and easier and you're just,

You know,

You're flowing along without really even keeping track how you're doing or any of that.

I'm sitting here thinking,

You know,

I didn't have a question.

It's good that I don't have a question because I don't want to ask a question on my first time.

But then something came up when you were talking and it feels quite urgent.

Just,

You know,

That sense of you saying about being alive and really being that alive.

So what's come up for me without going into a story,

In my life,

I've had a lot of aggression directed to come out of a long relationship.

And my ex,

A lot of aggression,

A lot of projection.

And I know that that's to do with her wounding.

But my question is,

How do I be with that?

You know,

How do I be with that in a healthy way?

I don't mean in terms of interaction,

But in myself,

You know,

It's a new situation for me.

And it's been really shocking.

So I just wonder,

You know,

What you've got to say.

Are you still in that session?

No,

It's completely over.

It's gone.

Okay,

So how is it affecting you now?

Well,

I noticed that somatically,

You know,

I recently had to deal with the situation.

There was a lot of personal kind of attack.

And my body went into,

You know,

I got a crick neck and I was really in agony.

And it's sort of like,

You know,

I'm very good psychologically and I don't get into the compulsive thoughts and,

You know,

All of that.

But I just wonder what you might have to say that could help hold,

I guess,

The pain of it and the shock of it and the sort of how to be with that in the world.

You know,

Someone hating and projecting.

That is hard,

Yeah.

And also to take,

You know,

And I can think this place of not knowing how to take ownership for my part in it because I'm so in the defence and in the kind of survival.

Yeah.

So always my recommendation is to be very gentle with yourself and whatever is arising,

You know,

Is conditioned,

Basically.

You know,

Some people can handle more stress than others.

Some people can handle aggression directed at them fairly easily.

And most of us can't.

It's quite hard,

Usually.

So you're going to fall somewhere on the spectrum of that.

Again,

Just as I said to Michelle before,

You're going to let this roll through.

Without a big story it shouldn't be happening.

I shouldn't be reacting.

If only,

You know,

I were more wise about this,

Et cetera.

Keep using your attention to feel into your physical presence.

Do whatever you can to calm yourself down.

And release any resistance to the fact of theorizing.

You follow that.

That the fact of the arising has already occurred.

That has happened.

And now it's a matter of just directing your attention.

This is basically mind management.

You're managing what you do with your attention.

And you don't have to be,

That doesn't have to be a very,

Like a cat on a mouse pouncing kind of thing.

You only need to do it as needed.

Mostly you can be just floating along.

Right?

In the senses.

With thoughts drifting through,

Just whispers.

I like to call them whispers in a cathedral.

Right?

Sometimes though they become troubling.

Or something happens causing reaction.

And then it might take a little intervention with your attention.

You're going to direct the attention a little more strongly.

Into quiet or into calming or into a walk on the beach or whatever is your thing.

You know,

Make a cup of tea and listen to a piece of music.

Read something you find soothing.

One of the things I caution against a lot is the ways that we project about spiritual ideals.

Right?

And spiritual manifestations.

So I like to debunk all of that.

You know,

Just be so ordinary.

And really know that you know you didn't grow you.

I quote this all the time but one of my Buddhist friends always says,

I am not my fault.

And you are not your fault.

Just as you're not beating your heart and you're not growing your hair.

And one more that is one to consider.

You're not thinking your thoughts.

They're just rolling through.

Right?

There's just a lot of conditioned stuff rolling through.

So when I was younger I used to feel obligated to pay attention to my opinions and my thoughts.

I felt I was being intellectually honest to really listen to my opinions especially.

And uphold them.

You know,

Basically lay down the sword for them.

And as I went on in life and as I had more of a relationship to,

First of all,

Observing how many of my opinions turned out later to be wrong.

That was a good observation.

But also the cost of having them as well.

You know,

A lot of times it was just causing separation for no good outcome.

And then the weariness of them.

Right?

The weariness of just constantly having to think I had to have an opinion about something or other.

And then the whole production of thinking became lighter and lighter.

So it's not that there's not much thinking going on.

Thinking goes on in a conditioned way.

But what's happened for me over the years is that I'm not listening mostly to the thoughts.

They're just sort of,

You know,

Drifting.

Most of them are just drifting by unobtrusively.

And that becomes more the habit.

I like to call it a habit of freedom.

I don't mean anything grand by that.

Not a capital F.

Right.

Just the habit of kind of free flow of attention that is mostly hanging out in the fabulous senses that we are gifted with.

And not having to live as a conceptual creature.

I was just considering what you were saying around.

It's not quite conceptual,

But I guess it probably is.

But this idea of trying to be ready for future events or going away to Italy or getting my house ready.

This sense of just kind of forward stepping.

Do you know what I mean?

If I just can do that and do that and do that and do that and do that.

So just like a little bit ahead of myself.

And it was coming to me as you were speaking,

Like if I'm just dropped back.

The first thing I made is the contraction of.

Will any of this get done?

Yeah.

Psychologically or practically.

Yeah.

So will any of it get done?

But also like a resistance to the contraction of like I'm looking for the relaxation when I'm over the other side of being ready.

Rather than sitting with just dealing with the contraction of trying to be ready.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yeah.

And so a resistance to the discomfort of the present moment.

Yeah.

When I don't feel ready.

Well,

I mean,

If there are a lot of things on the to do list that need to get done in a particular time frame,

Then that kind of agitation does come with that circumstance.

Right.

And it often is the motivating factor because one wants relief from it.

So one keeps on doing until it gets kind of done.

Now,

How intense that contraction needs to be is would be the question.

Right.

But I certainly,

I too,

Right,

Have a similar version.

Right.

I mean,

After we have this session today,

I'm going to Brisbane and getting on a plane tomorrow.

So it was a lot of,

You know,

Just many,

Many,

Many details had to happen leading up to the conversation we're having right now.

And I was aware throughout that there was a certain motor running in my being.

Right.

Certain,

Not comfortable.

Right.

Woke up in the night,

Thought of all these different things that I hadn't thought about that needed to be done and so on.

So I think I've told you this before many times,

Perhaps.

I don't really mess with the program much.

I redirect my attention as needed,

But I don't.

I know that I tend to anxiety as conditioned.

You know,

I know that there's certain things I just have to endure at times.

I don't have a fight about that or any demand of myself that it need be different.

It's just that when it gets to a certain level of discomfort,

Then I use this facility of moving the attention in some way that I hope or think will alleviate the discomfort.

And it's just that.

So I'm never looking for any kind of eradication of the tendencies.

I just keep subsuming them with more and more calm and quiet around them.

Yeah,

Look,

You probably have to say that to me several more times.

I say it as often as needed.

Yes,

What it is,

Is that it's this final relaxation around who you are,

What you are,

The whole conditioning.

You just no longer mess with the program,

Except for the relaxation around it.

You're not trying to change it.

Because that's a kind of violence.

And when I come back to sense,

For me,

The way I create space around is if I come back,

It's just a feeling that I'm having.

Then it's easy to have space.

If I'm moving to try and get past the feeling that I'm having,

It's trouble.

This understanding of it's OK just to be as I am,

I'm going to keep having that over and over and over and over again,

That understanding.

Maybe it'll sink in over time.

It's sinking in.

It's sinking in.

But you know your conditioning is,

You were raised Catholic?

Jewish?

No,

Jewish.

The Church of England,

But Jewish Father,

Catholic Mother.

Yeah,

Right,

OK.

And then you've been involved in all these sort of spiritual pursuits and all of that conditioning,

All of those stories.

And also the conditioning of our culture as well.

A lot of the message is you're not quite OK.

So from the religious points of view,

It's like you're not quite OK.

You're going to have to do a bunch of things to be OK,

To be accepted,

To get your upgrade in heaven or wherever.

And the cultural conditioning is powerful,

Especially in our Western cultures,

Because it wants you to buy things and consume.

And in order to get you to want to do that a lot,

It has to convince you that things are missing and something's missing about you.

And if you could only get those things,

You'll feel better.

So all of this powerful conditioning from religion,

From society,

From our Western cultures and our poor parents who,

Of course,

Were conditioned in similar ways.

And it's been a long,

Long process of living with the idea that I need improvement.

There's a huge industry of self-improvement,

Right?

It's what it's called,

Self-improvement.

And everyone accepts that as a premise,

That is a good way to spend time,

Is to try to be improving yourself.

But what if you didn't bother?

And you just kept relaxing around you as you are.

And then you start to give everybody else a pass as well.

That's what's also great.

You should let them be.

You get to be you and they get to be them.

I sometimes say to myself about,

Let's say,

A difficult friend or someone I know,

You know,

She's just being her.

Just the simplicity of that,

You know.

It also lends itself to just a lot more quiet in the heart.

Come what may.

Yes,

Definitely.

In regard to what you're just saying,

But also with anger,

Like the news and things these days and my own conditioning of female,

You do not express it.

And even though there's been many times in life of finding ways of doing that,

I'm not comfortable with it.

And when it comes,

It comes as a surprise that and I would have thought I would have had it more ladylike way.

Yes,

Sorted and more acceptable ways of being.

And it's not.

So you're expressing your anger or you're.

.

.

It might be like just reading American news or something.

Yeah,

That'll do it.

Or something happens in the world and I kind of go like,

Yeah,

He can say that I can't and I'm putting the rules on.

But I'm also aware that I'm very uncomfortable with that,

With anger,

Rage,

Not so much.

And I do see it like rage when I know it's the truth.

I can act.

But anger when I go,

Oh,

That's not my right.

Again,

Conditioning again and often female conditioning.

I grew up in the South in America and we had very clear restrictions about what ladylike behavior was.

Right.

So there was a lot of repression,

Very much so.

And then I became a Buddhist at a very young age,

Which I did for 17 years.

And we also in that tradition had a lot of repression and a lot of inhibition about expressing anything like that.

You were just,

It was disallowed,

Really.

You just didn't do it.

And it wasn't until quite a lot of time later that I began to realize that there's a way to have clear boundaries.

Such that you don't want to ever have to so-called get out the metaphorical sword,

But you're willing to if you need to.

Right.

So I sometimes give the example,

You know,

A great sword master in Japan,

When he walks down the street,

He doesn't have to get out his sword.

Because people know he's a great sword master.

So it's like that.

When you're,

There's something that can sort of shift in your perception or in your direct experience,

Whereby you're seeing that you're more and more a servant of the greater good and you're included as one of the ones you're protecting.

Do you follow that?

Yes.

You're also on the list of one of the ones being protected.

Often people think it's something about self-sacrifice,

Right?

In some cases it might be.

But in general,

I'm saying that you start to realize that.

And you alluded to it when you said there are certain things that you feel,

You know,

You feel a certain righteousness about your anger.

I would also caution,

Of course,

Even with those feelings of righteousness,

Anger is a tricky energy to play with.

You have to be very careful about how much suffering is it going to produce versus how much is it alleviating.

Sometimes there is something called,

There is righteous anger and it's required to serve the greater good sometimes.

So sometimes we have to do the hard thing or it might seem mean in the moment.

And sometimes it just has to be done.

I'm not sure if I can formulate what I,

I've heard a lot of different things happening while you're speaking.

But the word confidence is,

I was thinking about it when Michael was speaking.

Like,

I love being here with you and there's just such a pull to the space here.

And it's a space that I know well and I don't really,

I don't really give it to myself to be in it as much as is possible.

And it has something to do with confidence of the space and of what I might lose if I don't follow what I'm conditioned to follow.

And there's that edge that I,

And I most often go with the outer edge rather than the,

And it's,

And I have this feeling while you're speaking,

It's almost like a really beautiful massage where it's like,

Don't stop.

Don't stop this space and you're speaking and there's like such a beautiful pull into that space.

You know,

I always say that it's only just loving the taste of this that is required.

That's all there is to it.

And that you already have that.

And it's really,

That's really that simple.

People are always saying,

How can I,

How can this be more in my life?

You know,

So just notice that you love the taste of calm and ease and this free flow of not letting,

You know,

Noticing that none of the thoughts are sticking and you just keep returning if need be.

Otherwise you're just flowing along and keeping it easy like that.

And so sometimes we go into neurosis,

Sometimes we go into fear,

Sometimes we go into regret.

Also let it be,

You know,

Let it move through.

It all moves through.

And just more and more it becomes almost like I like to use the image of like a shape shifting of a sand dune and the grains are being blown,

The sand grains are being blown one by one or ten by ten.

But suddenly your life goes from being mostly in neurotic thought and story and occasionally having these pop moments of just pure being and ease.

It goes from that to mostly just hanging out,

Cruising along.

When you're driving your car,

You're just driving the car,

You're eating,

You're just tasting the food.

Simple,

Simple.

And occasional bouts of nervousness and neurosis and all the usual story stuff.

It shifts.

And it doesn't have to shift in any dramatic way,

It just can shift grain by grain.

So trust,

It just requires a little bit of trust that you love this taste and just notice that and honor it.

And another piece of it is,

Notice too when you're in neurotic thought and when you're in big story and when you're in resistance to what is,

Notice how that feels.

Just let yourself notice that as well.

I often say that this shift for me,

There was nothing whatsoever heroic about it.

It was that I just got so tired of the suffering.

That's really it.

This has been In The Deep.

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

Com where you can also book a private session by phone or Skype or make either a one-time or recurring tax-deductible donation.

Assuming you like these podcasts,

We would also appreciate a review wherever you're getting yours.

Till next time.

Reviews

So helpful thanks so much 💖

a truly great talk