Times Of Uncertainty

Our times feel especially uncertain and yet humans have always lived in uncertainty. We are now confronted with many of our previous assumptions of stability and the adjustment of those assumptions in contrast to what we expected. Yet, we must turn to community for a sense of stability, find courage as humans have had to do for all of history, and know that we are still experiencing the real treasure, being itself.

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 October 18,

2020.

It's called Times of Uncertainty.

I see that most of you on this call today are in America.

And as such,

You're quite aware,

As is the rest of the world,

We have an election coming.

And people are feeling uncertainty about the future,

Really no matter who wins.

Incredible uncertainty,

The pandemic,

The election,

The food lines that we're seeing in America,

And all of the other kinds of social crashes that are occurring.

There's a wave of fear and uncertainty rolling through the country.

And the waves of it are splashing around the world as well.

The thing is,

Things were always uncertain.

It feels more so now.

And maybe it has much more potential to go any wild way in terms of the unraveling.

But we always lived in uncertainty.

What's different now,

For us,

For we who are so privileged as to live in the countries we live in,

What's different now is that we know how uncertain it feels.

It's really our thoughts about it that are much more pressing.

Because we used to live in a lot more feeling,

Not entirely of certainty,

But pretty good odds of kind of knowing how things more or less roll out.

Yes,

Any individual one of us could have an accident or have a loss out of the blue.

But we had certain types of expectations along the way in our assumptions,

In our privilege.

But we never had certainty.

It was never so.

And what I would like to propose to all of us is to get comfortable with uncertainty.

If comfortableness is a bridge too far,

Just start allowing,

Just whisper,

Okay,

Inside your being.

We will be called upon to be very courageous in these coming years,

For all kinds of reasons.

We're going to need a lot of courage and a lot of steadiness and a lot of kindness to ourselves and to everyone around us.

And we're going to have to rely on that in community.

We're going to have to rely on our community and turn to those who are on the more sweet frequencies,

Frankly.

And when people get very frightened and panicked,

The worst comes out.

It's just understandable.

We know it in our own cases.

We know exactly that's how it works.

So this is the time,

While we still have some semblance of things holding together,

This is the time to double down and to not just give in to panic.

Now,

One cannot help that certain types of pictures arise,

Certain what ifs.

As human creatures,

We do the what ifs,

Right?

What if this happens or that happens?

What if there are riots in the streets?

What if?

Those are the what ifs we're living with.

What if food becomes very scarce?

What if all kinds of things people are already experiencing,

Frankly?

And people are experiencing that around the world.

They've been experiencing it a long time.

So yes,

Those thoughts will arise.

And how can they not?

And how can they not?

But here's the point,

When they do,

Maybe use your own little reminder.

One of mine is simply have courage.

Have courage.

Be ready to let go.

Be ready to let go of whatever grip you're in.

Be ready to let go of whatever grip you might have that you perceive as being taken away.

And some things may be taken away.

Then okay.

You still have the treasure,

The actual treasure,

The real treasure.

Any moment when you tune into what it is to just simply be,

Just to be.

And we so take for granted the being part.

We so take for granted the being part.

We so take it for granted.

We spend a lot of time wishing it was something else,

Wishing a different life or a new platform or new acknowledgement or a new trip,

A new house or boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever.

We spend an awful lot of time and we can't help it.

We're kind of designed to desire things.

But when you stand back and you see it clearly from a dharmic point of view,

It all sort of pops into focus.

The greatest treasure was so simple.

And it was the one we often missed.

So as long as you've got that greatest treasure,

That most beautiful treasure of your own sweet taste of existence,

Then you have reason for contentment.

You have reason for gratitude.

And the accoutrements that you live with may change.

That's true,

They may,

As it was always so in time in history.

But this fundamental experience of being until your last breath.

Like my teacher said,

Death is when the next breath does not come.

Until that moment,

Here you are in this extraordinary,

Amazing talk about a play,

Right?

And also talk about your moment of hitting the production.

Talk about the time slot we got.

We got the wildest time slot.

And we got these front row seats.

And we got these front row seats.

And we sure got to play out a lot of the things on offer.

And we sure got to check out what was here.

And while all of that was lots of fun and interesting,

But it turns out the fundamental treasure was just this simplicity of being.

Enjoy your life,

Enjoy all your little things,

Enjoy your cup of tea,

Enjoy looking out your window.

Enjoy your friends.

And be kind.

I'm definitely feeling a great inclination to be very,

Very careful in all my conversations now.

And that doesn't mean that I won't speak the truth,

But to use as thick of velvet glove as possible.

Before this session found out that a dear friend of mine who's been in kind of a meditation group with me,

Who's had ALS for a long time,

Has decided to take her life.

And she probably is doing it through the California.

You can do that legally now.

She's probably doing it now,

Tonight,

Or tomorrow.

And she couldn't anymore.

She couldn't move her hands.

So she couldn't even communicate with her board.

So there's so much.

I mean,

I'm so happy for her to be free.

But it just gets you right in your stomach.

So when you know someone you know is passing.

Yes.

It's amazing how,

Given the preponderance of evidence that this happens,

And how many times we've each personally experienced it,

There is still something about the finality of it that is shocking each time,

Right?

It's like a kind of disbelief.

It takes a while to adjust to it as a reality.

So yes,

I can feel into what you're feeling about that.

I've had friends for very similar reasons,

Take their lives.

And yes,

I feel for your friend,

Certainly.

It comes to a point,

I think,

In a situation like that,

Where it makes sense.

It frees up all the caretakers as well.

You don't just linger any longer in your own suffering,

But you also free others to have their lives back.

Yeah.

A lot of this is around our relationship to fear itself.

So much is just driven by fear.

And what I mean is people's aversion to that kind of action,

Or to the kinds of ways that that is disallowed in our society.

Fortunately,

That is changing and moving more into acceptance.

But very slowly,

It seems.

I think a lot of the fear,

Some of it is based in religion,

Of course,

But you know,

In thinking there's going to be some kind of punishment if you were to do that.

But even for people who don't have a religious indoctrination,

There's something almost encoded in the system that makes that not okay.

Even though they're happy to be able to do that for their own pets,

They will put a pet out of its suffering.

But they don't go that next step to think about one's own self.

You know,

So there is some kind of internal fear based story that makes that not allowable.

Whenever I hear something like this,

I feel nothing but relief.

I just feel good for her.

And good for the people around her.

Hi.

Hi.

So I connect to so many things you're talking about,

Getting comfortable with uncertainty.

And tonight,

Before we tuned you in,

We watched our anniversary weekend.

How many years?

29 years.

29.

We watched our wedding video.

Wow.

We were talking about the stage.

And we looked at the stage that we had 29 years ago.

That we created.

Yeah,

We created.

And the show,

You know,

And our lives and all these people,

There are 80 people at our wedding.

And,

You know,

My parents are gone.

Kenny's mom's gone.

So many of the people that came as couples are no longer together.

So many people have died,

You know.

And watching this moment,

You know,

What our life was then,

You know,

And we were about to go to,

On our honeymoon,

To Europe,

To Italy,

You know.

And just my whole life went in front of me tonight,

You know.

And now here we are.

But what you said about the people that are just not on the stage anymore is so powerful,

You know.

And your life goes on and,

You know,

You have all your,

You have those people with you all the time,

Or not all the time,

But,

And you,

That feeling when you think things are forever,

You know,

Like the friends that you have in the moment are forever,

You know.

Like my best friend forever,

You know.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So many things like,

You know,

Cherish the magic of the moment,

Cherishing the moment.

And everything that you're saying is so poignant.

That's just,

It's all there is,

You know.

Yeah,

I know.

What a visual exercise in that,

Watching that.

It's basically why I don't kind of review my old photographs and stuff.

It's just a lot of loss.

But here we are.

Here we are.

Here you are,

And congratulations.

And I hope you do something really delicious after this session tonight.

Here's some delicious food for watching this.

It was just,

It was amazing.

Oh,

Great.

Yeah,

So good to see you both.

You too.

Thank you,

Thank you.

This is just so special.

It's wonderful to be here and just wanted to see what it was all about and how your,

You know,

Zoom podcasts work.

And it's a great,

You know,

It's kind of what I anticipated.

It's a great conversation.

And I guess just as an introduction,

I just kind of,

As we,

You know,

From my emailing with you,

I just kind of had stumbled onto your work in the last,

I don't know,

Last month,

Right,

After reading your piece.

And that was just,

I found it for me,

It was the,

Your Facing Extinction piece was kind of a perfect compilation of everything that I've been working through and writing and talking about it.

But just the way you had kind of put it all together in that particular formulation you used was just,

I thought was the best formulation I've ever seen of everything that we're dealing with.

So I wanted to,

You know,

Reach out and see what else you're up to.

And just so I understand,

Because I'm new to the,

You know,

The Dharma dialogues,

Etc.

But Dharma is it sort of,

Is about living and telling your truth?

Is that what Dharma is really?

My definition,

And I actually mentioned it last night on our session.

My definition is that in any circumstance,

There's that a Dharmic perspective or a Dharmic inclination is to find the thread of harmony through this circumstance,

This relationship,

This difficulty,

This joy,

This death,

Right,

That there's a kind of a kind of inclining of the awareness to what is the most harmonious path through this.

So that's what I mean.

It's basically the underlying thread of harmony.

That's how I usually define Dharma.

It's a Sanskrit word.

And because I have lived with it for so many years,

Decades,

Since the early 70s,

I have my own translation,

It does get translated as the truth.

I find truth is a it's a tricky word,

Isn't it?

I mean,

Some people,

You know,

Have this sort of capitalized truth word,

Which I think is odious.

But even just a small t truth.

Anyway,

I prefer not to translate it that way.

Finding harmony is what you're saying.

Yeah,

Finding harmony,

Basically finding a stream of harmony in any given circumstance,

No matter how hard.

And sometimes it's very hard to find that stream,

Certain circumstances are so so difficult.

And,

You know,

And because we're delicate,

Tender,

Sensitive creatures,

We can at some point have the system be overwhelmed.

But still,

If the inclination is there to find that thread,

Whether you've just been diagnosed with ALS,

For instance,

Right?

Or someone's left you or something you were working on fell through or a wonderful friend just committed suicide,

You know,

Whatever it might be.

When the Dharmic inclination is strong,

What will happen is instead of the mind going into panic and getting kind of lost in panic and swirling about and being on an old conditioned track of fear,

And of freak out,

When the inclination to a Dharma perspective is strong,

The awareness will start seeking the Dharma threads will start seeking automatically the deeper stream the current that's going to go through.

So for example,

If you're for instance,

In the case of a death,

Of course,

There's the sadness,

The shock,

The difficulty in adjusting to the fact that the person is no longer on the stage,

But simultaneous to that.

Seeking understanding starts flowing in,

Like,

How did this happen exactly about him?

What are the lessons for me?

What am I feeling in it?

Right?

What am I how is my relationship?

Did it brighten his life?

Did it?

How was it in my life?

What was that last conversation we had?

And how will that affect me going forward into other conversations and into the general appreciation I have for my friends who are still on the stage,

Knowing that quite a few of them already have left and,

And that the ones still on the stage,

Some of them are going to be leaving,

If not me first.

And so,

All of that is swirling in my being,

And informing my every response to the circumstance.

I've experienced this so many times with people who passed away for any reason,

That their life then is seen by me as all of a piece.

And I see that their life had messages,

Because of who they were,

Their life left these beautiful messages,

Like,

Like messages in a bottle that land on the shores of you.

And,

You know,

And that,

And now it's a final piece,

There's no more messages that are going to come,

But that those messages become ever more powerful,

That maybe you overlooked them while the person was alive.

So that's how you're finding some of the harmony,

The thread,

And I just wanted to distinguish that it's not the same from what you're saying,

As like just being the kind of positivity,

You know,

There's a positive psychology kind of workshop stuff.

I think my brother did a bit of this stuff.

And,

You know,

As I think,

Obviously,

There's a distinguishing between being positive about every situation,

Which some situations don't really merit being overly positive about,

But having that kind of reality check and finding harmony is a little different than being overly positive.

Very much so.

No,

I'm quite allergic to that kind of positivity,

And always feels like that has a very strong undercurrent of fear in it,

People who can't really face reality and have to constantly find some happy spin about it.

Now,

I'm talking about you've got to get through the war somehow,

And you've got to find some adjustment in yourself of something that will allow you to keep going forward.

You know,

I'm talking about that level,

Like if you were diagnosed with ALS,

You're going to have to get real quiet inside to deal with that.

It's not,

You don't have to make it a happy thing at all.

You've just got to try not to go insane.

Well,

I mean,

It's really at the end of the day,

It's what we've been,

Why we're all here.

I mean,

What you wrote about in your piece,

I mean,

That's what we're living with,

Right?

So,

You can either roll over and die and just decide,

Done,

Thank you.

Or you're going to have to live with that information and figure out how to make every day worth going forward and being part of until,

You know,

There isn't another day.

That's right,

How to carry on with dignity until you've lost breath,

Whenever that comes.

And it was never a guarantee.

So,

We now live in this incredibly precarious time,

Where it is getting harder for many,

Many people,

It may get harder for us,

Way harder.

But the stability one can start to cultivate with this inclination can see you through a lot of rough patches.

I can't guarantee much beyond that,

Because I can only say in my own direct experience,

I've been through a lot of rough patches,

Had a lot of loss,

Have had a lot of grief,

Have foreboding,

I do live with that as well.

And I make my own experiments with all of that.

And I know that this is going to be a lot of mind management,

Adjusting the awareness,

Adjusting into gratitude for simple things,

Adjusting into not expecting security,

Or consistency about anything.

And being willing to let my heart be broken,

Which it is,

Is I live with that,

You know,

I live with that broken heartedness.

And somehow I keep getting up.

So yeah,

It's all of that.

And be like I said,

The outset,

Being courageous.

You know,

You and I,

And every one of us has far more courage built in.

Despite our soft lives,

Whereby we didn't get a whole lot of rough challenges,

As people did of old,

Or as many people do on earth.

Today,

We've been very,

Very coddled.

And despite that,

Despite our thin skinnedness,

Because of our circumstances,

We do have a lot of courage built in,

As just just the creatures that we are as the human creatures that we are.

And the reason I know that is I've witnessed it so much I've witnessed so many people that I've known,

Who had to find courage and really hard work and courage and really hard,

Hard situations.

And who were like ourselves,

Formerly privileged.

And,

And yet have had such bravery and not even call it bravery,

Actually,

It just becomes you just find the deeper strength when you're called to do so.

And the kindness to write and kindness to so my point is this message about relying on the strengths that you don't yet know you have,

But that are there and and a Dharma inclination,

Just constantly knowing that that's where I'm going to go.

I'm going to go to the Dharma stream.

In all circumstances,

That's where the confidence can come and where the strength actually can come.

You don't have to have the plan too far ahead.

You can kind of rely on the clarity of that moment.

Okay,

Well,

Thank you.

Yeah,

That I mean,

I feel like inadvertently,

I'm sort of,

Sort of leading that path anyway,

Which is good.

Yes,

Some people are naturals,

You know,

Naturals and that's and that is how they've lived.

I know lots of people who've never done,

Never even heard the word Dharma.

Yeah,

I didn't hear about it until I read your piece.

So yeah,

Yeah.

Well,

So nice to meet you,

Dear.

Really nice.

Likewise.

Thanks.

I would like to thank you for your teachings of the past year.

I've been listening to the Dharma dialogues and your,

Your teaching about just being is what I think really resonated with me and enabled me to begin to feel resilience and begin to accept myself as I am.

And I don't know who I would be or what I would have done over this past year,

Especially since May,

I,

I've lost two neighbors,

Two beloved pets and three beloved elders since the middle of May.

Wow.

Every few weeks someone died and.

.

.

Is that because of COVID or.

.

.

No,

Not a single one.

And who knows,

I do have friends that are sick with COVID and it's kind of touch and go right now.

Where are you located?

I'm in rural western Colorado.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I'm obviously very concerned about the election and the climate.

Of course,

I've been a biologist and a naturalist my whole life and I live surrounded by nature.

I live a life of utter privilege and I've had a hard time sort of coping with the privilege until,

Until a number of teachers recently,

Including you,

About just being just another animal.

And that's all I've ever wanted is to just be just another animal.

And.

.

.

Just discover you are.

Yes.

And you really gave me permission to discover that.

And there were many times over the past number of years where I would be sitting in my yard among the trees and the animals and I would be thinking,

Why can't this be enough?

You know?

And suddenly there you were last winter and you were last winter telling me it's enough.

And I think that gave me just a flip around in my whole mindset that has allowed me to have resilience through all this death.

And I just,

I'm just so grateful.

I'm grateful for all the little things and I'm grateful for you and your teachings and your community.

So thank you for really helping me.

Thank you for sharing that.

And I'm sure it resonates with others to kind of come from a life where there's just this constant pressure and neurotic thoughts and nothing's quite right.

And there's a kind of a squirming in your own skin to finally going,

Hey,

This is enough.

More than enough,

Actually.

I mean,

We're not only privileged by our births in privileged countries.

We're privileged to be at all.

I mean,

The odds are so minuscule.

In fact,

I've often said this on these podcasts and on these sessions,

The amount of times that every single ancestor,

Not just the human ones,

Going all the way back,

Had to thread that needle for your DNA to have gotten here.

I mean,

Against phenomenal odds of survival.

So to really understand the fact that you are here at all is astonishing.

And yeah,

It's so refreshing,

Delicious,

Relieving to finally have a feeling that,

Yeah,

This is enough.

Right?

That's as rich as you're ever going to get is to have that thought.

That's the greatest wealth you'll have.

This is enough.

It's actually more than enough.

You can't even take,

There's so much at the feast of being.

You can't actually take it all in.

I often use this metaphor as well.

You know,

You're at some fancy,

Let's say,

Indian industrialist wedding.

And there's so much food and so many exotic fruits and so many delicacies,

Things you've never heard of and so on.

And you can only eat a little tiny bit of it.

And that can apply,

For instance,

To not only your walking out among the beautiful nature of Colorado,

But a sense of your own rich lived experience,

Your own rich relationships.

That is all part of the tapestry of yourself,

Your own insights that come unbidden and for free.

All the great things you've studied that are part of how you perceive and that inform your perception.

All of that is part of the experience of you and only you know it.

Only you can even know the richness of it.

And yet,

With all that richness,

Often we can just find ourselves feeling poor in various ways.

You know,

Something's missing.

We focus on what's missing instead of what's here and thereby impoverish ourselves.

Yes,

We focus on the headache and not the not headache.

Yes,

That's right.

Yes.

I've had a lot of pain over the years and when I wake up and there's no pain,

It took me a while to begin to celebrate and notice the no pain.

Yeah,

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

Pain.

Yeah.

But I used to be terrified of dying,

Of death.

And I'm much less so now because of that richness,

Because of recognizing the wealth of the life I've lived and the life that I live every day.

And as you say,

Just everywhere I turn,

There's something amazing and rich.

And I do fear in this political climate and exactly where I live that if it gets ugly,

You know,

I could become a victim of circumstance.

And that doesn't freak me out nearly as much as it would have a year ago,

Or two years ago.

Yes.

Because of having been able to adjust my whole mindset to the gratitude and the richness.

Yes.

Yes.

I'll say one more thing that occurs to me to say,

And that is,

As I was just saying before that part of the deep commitment to a kind of Dharma stream is a willingness to make adjustments as needed and let go of something if it becomes untenable to hold on to.

So I'm not predicting anything.

And I'm not even suggesting that you should listen to what I'm saying.

But for instance,

If it started to feel dangerous in your region,

Right,

Let's just say if,

And you didn't really want to be subjected in a terrible circumstance,

You could leave.

And in this what I'm speaking about,

In this freedom in this free spiritedness,

You can let go of things you have belongings and places you've treasured or your beautiful house or whatever.

And you can let go of things you have belongings and places you've treasured or your beautiful house or whatever.

You can let go.

And that's another part of the inner strength that we have as humans,

We can make adjustments that seem absolutely unthinkable from one vantage point.

And it's another vantage point.

It's the right play on the board.

You know,

I'm talking also to myself about it,

Just just as a kind of very mundane side note to this point.

I have on my property,

This massive,

Massive tree.

In America,

It's considered sort of like a banyan tree,

But it's just huge.

And it's probably 300 years old.

And,

You know,

You could drive a car through its trunk.

It's heritage protected,

Which all seemed fine when I purchased the property.

Well,

I've only just discovered that it's not insurable.

So if it hits my if it like a gigantic one of its branches,

Which are super,

Super heavy,

Falls on my neighbor's house or in my house,

Insurance doesn't cover it,

It would just be either they will sue me or I will lose part of my house anyway.

So,

So took me some days of adjusting to this idea.

As I thought about it,

It's like,

Oh,

Gosh,

I'm gonna have to live with this sort of risk.

And also,

You know,

Big hurricanes,

They call them cyclones here can come through and knock down branches,

Big branches.

But then something in me just said,

Okay,

Well,

It might be that that happens and I will be broke.

And so be it,

You know,

My option is not right now feeling to move somewhere else.

Right?

My option is basically feels right to stay and see what happens and live with that risk.

And live with that risk.

People live with risks.

And so I'll live with that risk.

And that's a very,

Very mundane example.

But it's,

It's recent for me and a willingness to say,

If that's what it means,

Then that's what it means.

If that's what it comes,

It comes to be,

Okay,

Then something else will have to happen until again,

Until the last breath.

So that's just an example of letting yourself know that you will feel into your options as you go.

Thank you.

You're welcome,

Dear.

I thank you all so much,

And you know,

Everyone for sharing and that to me,

Takes a lot of courage to share to a group.

Here's something so raw and to be so open.

And I think,

Just from the time I've been on this earth,

I have just heard from so many people that we have more courage than we'll ever know that we have.

But when you talk about death,

I just keep having this image of Ebenezer Scrooge,

And he's clicking his heels together,

And he's running through the streets.

And it's such a cliche thing.

But I think that when we're faced with a loved one's death,

Or if we're faced with our own death,

Or Ebenezer,

That's really when we get it.

And as cliche as it is,

It's something that's,

I mean,

Honestly,

It would be wonderful if we all could experience that just so that we would live the next day so differently than we lived previously.

So I just keep thinking of that image.

It's just,

We are like Ebenezer.

We might not think we are,

Oh,

I'm not stingy.

Oh,

I'm not.

But we're living,

We are living like that every day,

Going through the bills and going through the emotions and on the,

Just in the machine,

Totally like him.

And the last thing I wanted to share was I had just been on a call this week with a woman who was telling the whole group about another elderly woman who was passing,

Was dying of COVID.

And she was really,

Really much,

Much older.

So she had lived a wonderful life.

But on her deathbed,

She was given,

She had a couple days,

And she called every single person that meant something to her.

And she told every single person with not a lot of breath,

Because she was dying of this disease,

How much they meant to her and what exactly they had meant to her.

And she was telling us this story.

And I was just sitting here thinking,

It's so absurd that we don't do that.

You know,

Kind of like what you're saying,

I could just do that the next week of my life and just tell my brother and sister and tell my friends what they mean to me because we don't do that as a,

You know,

Culture or as a society.

Yes,

I know.

I know.

It's,

It's very hard in a way,

Isn't it to,

To get the profundity,

It's almost paralyzing,

If you really get it,

And you would just spend your whole,

Your whole life just telling everyone,

You know,

Calling everyone in your database.

But to your point,

Though,

Well,

First of all,

If you actually did,

If you did know you had that time,

That would be a really nice way to use it.

If you had that those last days,

And and also to your point about how if you could just get a glimmer of the truth of this matter,

You would live your day so differently.

And that's why so many of the great teachings always encourage us to use the idea of death as an ally,

Right,

As a reminder to not just go into denial about it,

Which is so easy to do.

And you're,

You're right,

We fritter away our days in just nonsense,

Just,

You know,

Going down rabbit holes on the internet and,

You know,

Getting ourselves upset about things we can do nothing about.

And just inane stuff,

Right,

Just spending our lives in inane considerations.

And yet,

There's only a few things that actually matter.

Like when you get right down to it,

Basically,

Of course,

It's the love you share the love you are,

Of course,

It's gratitude.

It's having a relationship to beauty to really let beauty be part of what fills you up and gives you strength,

Especially that we see in nature,

And,

And also in the beauty of human kindness and in the beauty of human warmth.

Just whatever beauty means,

It means different things to different people,

But to really let it in,

To really focus on it.

When something does delight you,

Stop and let it in.

Next year in Australia,

We have we we have incredible bird life like crazy,

The kinds of birds that other people would only have seen in a zoo or something that are just like these outrageous colors.

They're flying around in the sky.

They're flying around in the sky.

They're flying around in flocks in the sky.

And inevitably,

We hear like a new bird song,

Like my girlfriend just recorded.

There's a new night bird that's happening near her where she lives.

And she's put it on her phone,

She's recorded it.

And it is the most beautiful sound.

It's very gentle.

And it's only like a few notes.

And it varies the notes.

It's like a proper little song.

And it's just so enchanting,

You can hardly believe it's real,

It should just be a recording that we could all use to go to sleep by.

And she just sometimes she'll hear it and she,

She deliberately awakens so that she can just listen to it.

Right?

Things like that little things.

That these are the riches,

These are the treasures they are scattered about.

And even if things get harder.

It's like John,

Jonathan Franzen,

Who's a,

He won the National Book Award.

He's a great writer in the US.

He has a line,

Even in a world of dying,

There are new loves being born.

How would you say that in Spanish?

Muy cada día,

No nacé a la mor.

Lovely.

Hi,

Everyone.

Hi,

Catherine.

I keep thinking about something you said a long time ago in one of your video in one of your podcasts,

When you said,

All it's really going to have mattered is the love that you shared.

And I go back to that so many times in my life,

Over this past year,

Especially,

But as we were talking about people passing,

I was thinking about how I feel like,

If I was in a big auditorium,

I would be seeing it emptying.

You know,

I'm 68 years old,

And this person is gone,

And my dad is gone,

And my uncle's gone,

My best friend is gone,

My sister in law is gone.

All these people are leaving,

You know,

And we have to learn to live with that and the uncertainty and the kind of the it's an assault to the feeling of well being sometimes for me,

That experience that,

But what I finally came to is,

Is that that present moment,

If you're in the present moment,

And when you're talking about about being with the beauty,

The bird song,

And the the beauty of the tree or the hummingbird under your window,

And all of those things are so sacred,

And so strengthening.

So that,

You know,

When we started talking tonight,

You were talking about uncertainty.

And I was thinking,

Well,

What,

What do I do with the anxiety around my uncertainty?

What am I how do I take care of that?

And then I realized,

It's in that present moment.

It's in the it's in the beauty.

That's where we get the stream.

That's it.

Yes,

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You live every moment until you don't until you don't know the last breath.

Next,

The next breath doesn't come.

And and I want to go to your losses experience.

Another way to use a Dharma frame for it is allow the thought and the feeling that you're being tenderized.

Yeah.

And it may and it does make what's left very precious.

Yes,

That's absolutely true.

So those who have had a lot of loss and who have not hardened against it are the most tender of people that the most they do get that lesson about what matters,

Right?

Yeah.

So let yourself be one of those.

Yes,

Thank you.

That's a good way of holding it.

And it also makes me feel like when I'm,

You know,

Counseling my children,

And they're caught up in the intricacies of decision making that won't really matter.

I can say to them,

Oh,

Just do what you love.

Just do it right now.

This moment.

Yes,

Very good.

Good advice,

Mom.

And even if they can't,

Even if there's a resistance,

Because you know,

When I was younger,

I would hear these things,

Of course,

But I was,

You know,

Rolling on on my big plans and projects.

But nevertheless,

It goes in there somewhere,

Like it becomes a little,

You know,

A little voice in their heads.

That's right.

Like it's louder with time.

Thanks,

Catherine.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.