We Are Humbled

We may have thought we were protected from many vicissitudes of life with which most people in history have had to contend. We have expected a great range of motion and plenty of things to look forward to. We now live, at least temporarily, in a smaller range and with fewer options. Yet there are those in history — Shakespeare, Socrates, Emily Dickinson, Ramana Maharshi — whose geographic range was small but whose internal range was universal.

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 19th,

2020.

It's called We Are Humbled.

I wanted to read something by Jeff Foster.

He uses the word God in this piece.

I usually translate that to the mystery,

But you can translate it any way you want.

I have found my true religion.

I studied the world's great religions.

I devoured the long,

Dense tomes of philosophers.

I did what the gods and gurus said I should do.

I was a good boy,

Yet I found no comfort,

No home,

Only secondhand thoughts from secondhand people and a brief respite from a terrible nostalgia.

In the name of spirituality,

I fell into denial.

I denied anger and called it peace.

I denied shame and called it power.

I denied sexuality and called it purity.

I denied my humanity and called it awareness.

I denied desire itself and proclaimed myself enlightened.

Now I find my home in simplicity.

I have been humbled.

I know nothing.

I see a cloud and hot tears stream down my face or the face of an old friend.

It shocks me with its perfection or a lamppost on my evening walk bowing to me with its perfect incandescent light.

All things pull me back to God.

I cannot prevent it.

I use human language,

But I am not quite human.

I am a sparrow at dawn.

My song is my home.

My body is my temple.

My altar is loss and the strange relief of grieving.

I find solace in the utter lack of solace.

I find rest in my own restless desire for life.

My love,

May I sit beside you now.

Will you share with me what's on your heart?

I am as lost as you are.

Will you give me your tears,

Your shudders and your trembling?

Shall I hold you until it stops and if it never stops,

Shall I hold you?

Will you hold me too?

Shall we look after each other as the end draws near?

Yes.

Shall we look after each other?

I have found my true religion,

Simple human kindness.

I think in this time in which we find ourselves,

We are humbled.

We're humbled because we may have thought we were immune to certain types of fear and certain types of depression and anxiety and scary pictures of the future.

And now we,

Even if that's not our daily fair and for some of us it may be,

But we also certainly know lots of people who are experiencing that around the world.

There's a lot of suffering,

Let's face it.

And we're living in a time of extraordinary uncertainty and it's humbling.

It's a lot of loss.

I spoke about it last night on the Zoom session that we have just expected a certain range of emotion.

We could just decide to take a trip and go somewhere interesting and fun and something to look forward to.

And now we can't take trips.

Some of us can't even leave the country in which we find ourselves.

And even if you can,

In the case of the USA,

You're not welcome actually in many countries now.

I think there's only 14 that will take an American arrival.

It's pretty different.

It's pretty humbling.

And there's something beautiful about that.

I love his line about the altar of loss and the relief of grief.

It strips us down to a smaller range of life.

And yet we think about some of the people whose works we really adored like Emily Dickinson or Socrates or Shakespeare or Ramana Maharshi,

People who didn't range around in a huge space.

They lived in a small area and yet they lived in a very huge space within themselves.

And that's now what is left to us to live in a big space.

Last night,

Noah spoke very beautifully about,

He's in India and he was saying how being there the last five months,

He feels almost as though his cells have more space around them.

I loved that image.

He's just living in larger space in himself.

And I think that that is,

If we let it,

That is the possibility for us in this time.

A kind of deep space.

We're not able to be in the usual mental frenzy,

Like being in a washing machine in our heads.

We don't have that list on our plates now.

The only kind of washing machine effects we might have are about future and about worry and about foreboding.

But if we really look at what our day to day life is now,

You're probably discovering it's a lot more simple.

It's a lot more simple and human as Jeff Foster says.

And let's add in kindness as well.

Because I think too that this time has also tenderized us.

It has,

In the best of cases anyway,

Tenderized our hearts.

I find myself,

I said last night,

Thinking about so many old friends and dear wonderful people who've been in my life for decades and who I haven't perhaps been able to keep in touch with.

And also when I had a life on the road,

I was barely holding onto my hat.

And I'd move from one place or go from one community that I'd just been spending a few months having Dharma dialogues with and then onto the next.

And it would be very hard to keep up with all those beautiful people from the place I just left.

And that's also been true with how many times I've actually moved and now moved country.

It's been a kind of swirl of experience and friendships and,

You know,

Deep connections and then hard to maintain them.

Well,

I'm really appreciating being more local and maintaining the current relationships in my local place.

But also it's allowed me to have more of a reach out to old friends and people who have,

Who have,

I've walked side by side in other times.

And I've also been reflecting,

As I said last night,

On a lot of people who've passed away and who were such huge influences in my life.

So in other words,

Yes,

This time is humbling and it's clarifying what the priorities are and what the deep,

The deep currents of our beings really are.

So that we don't end up kind of,

You know,

At the last moments or the last day thinking,

Wait a minute,

I had so many other things to reflect on other than this,

This list of illusions of busyness and things that seemed important at the time.

But didn't turn out to be.

Hello,

Katherine.

What you said in your opening really spurred something that's been on my mind.

We talked about our lack of being able to travel and do the things that we want to do.

And something that I'm working with is friends who do still do things that they,

I kind of think they aren't supposed to take flights to visit people and go on group trips that we were going to go on together.

And they still go and stay in condos and drive together and spend close time.

And so a couple issues come up with that.

One is,

You know,

Being left out,

Which I think a lot of people I've talked to relate to in different ways during this time.

You know,

Losing some connections.

You've talked about keeping more connections in a way,

But in some ways we lose some connections.

So I feel like that I'm kind of out of the little gang a little bit,

Even though I still see people and we still ride our bikes together and just in smaller groups and kind of different ways.

But I try to keep in contact with each of them to keep that friendship.

But so there's a little bit of loss and feeling like I'm getting out of the group.

And then there's the,

They shouldn't be doing that,

Which,

You know,

I know to focus on what I can control,

Not what I can't control.

And,

But it does bother me.

And I,

I,

Before I see them,

I always gear myself up not to make sure I don't say anything or judge them or whatever,

Because that's going to,

My goal is at the end of this to have them as the dear friends that they are and not to say something that's going to turn up for friendship.

So I guess if you could speak to that,

Just the changing in our changing dynamics in our relationships and,

And when people aren't doing what we think they should be doing and some of those issues.

Well,

One thing I will say is that time is on your side in terms of people realising that your way is the more wise path.

Unfortunately,

The lesson that's going to get delivered and seems to be hard to believe how slowly people are realising it in the US.

Of course,

Because of the misinformation that has been perpetrated on the populace.

But even apart from the misinformation,

There's plenty of information that is showing that this is extraordinarily dangerous behaviour to just act as though this pandemic is over when it's barely begun.

So at some point,

There's going to be so much evidence about that,

That it will be undeniable.

Unfortunately,

There's going to be a lot of death,

I predict,

And a lot of illness.

And this disease,

In many cases,

It's turning out that it can be a very dangerous disease.

It,

In many cases,

It's turning out that it gets hold of you and it doesn't really let go.

It,

It attacks your organs.

Here in Australia,

Our science teams are basically saying that it leaves long term disability in a lot of cases.

So they're,

They've been very clear with us here.

Even so,

People are going around,

So you know,

It's all completely open now and hardly anyone wears masks in my rural area,

My beach area.

So I would encourage you to continue on the path you're on,

You know,

Just find quiet in those conversations and let your own example be your message.

You don't have to really convince anybody.

Of course,

There's an,

There is an incredible impulse to speak up because you sense they're in danger,

Right?

You sense that this,

This belief system that is poo pooing this is actually could lead to their demise,

Honestly.

So of course,

There's a feeling of I just need to tell them I need to warn them.

I love that you're saying you would like to still have all those people in your life as friends,

You know,

As with whatever turns out.

And it's a challenge.

It's again,

Back to the humbling.

It's a challenge when you feel that you know something based on really good evidence.

And yet you have to hold your tongue,

Even in a case where there's danger that is really hard.

And yet,

One has to be humble in it and just say,

Okay,

I can only do so much.

I can live my life and be an example.

And occasionally perhaps say something just in terms of a generic comment about the situation.

But beyond that,

We all know we can see the reaction that's coming from people who think they know and that their rights are being impinged.

And that their information they think is just as good or better than ours.

So you're just up against a wall.

And time,

As I say,

Is going to deliver the message.

So we're dealing with all forms of loss and sadness.

And it's just the time we're in.

Now,

I spoke a lot last night about how important it is to not expect a different life than the one you have,

Than the one you're living.

And that's where we get in trouble.

That's where we get tormented is that the story of this shouldn't be like this.

Right?

This shouldn't have happened.

This shouldn't be like this.

This should change quickly.

Right?

We should get a vaccine and get back to business and consumption and flying about.

That's the story in a lot of people's heads.

And it's tormenting because that isn't happening.

So here we are in our situation as it is.

And we're dealing with loss and we're dealing with change of circumstances in all kinds of ways.

Now,

We can't really make plans much other than things that are extremely local.

Can't make a plan to go on a trip or anything.

And also,

That is how it is.

And here we are.

And there's still beauty.

There's still the joys of your life,

The simple joys,

The things that light your heart.

That's all still here.

And the love that you share.

A gentle immersion in a more local reality.

Back to the basics.

Back to the priorities.

And it's safer for longevity.

I just heard you mention the tyranny of choice.

And it connected to something that I was already remembering,

Which was a snatch of conversation that we once had.

The issue was whether there was free will or not.

What I remember saying to you was,

It seems to me that you can always choose to notice your thoughts or not.

That seems to me a very basic thing.

And I heard you mention the tyranny of choice.

And what I would include in that tyranny of choice is the choice to what you want to think.

I notice it myself.

I think I said it in the last one of these that I attended and spoken.

It's almost like an octopus.

The Internet's become like an octopus to suck you into knowledge about what's going on.

All of the awful things that are going on.

All of the statistics and all of that.

And what passed through my head was,

I mean,

I'm not pretending to come up with the right answer.

I think the choice is still there.

We can,

I can,

You can.

We can choose what we think about.

It's recognizing that most of our thoughts are arbitrary delusions that infect us almost.

You know,

They're just like the bacteria that we live with.

And we're unaware of most of them at the time.

But nevertheless,

They're still circulating.

And the process of becoming clear is about noticing those thoughts.

And I think that's what's going on for me quite a lot at the moment is that I've got this huge space by myself.

I can see that I have this choice to go into statistics and what Eric Byrne would call,

Ain't it awful,

All of that.

And yet at the same time,

There's all the normal little bits of living like cooking a meal,

Having a rest and doing creative things,

Which I do.

And I know I'm really fortunate to have that.

And it hasn't changed my life in that respect.

But just that,

The tyranny of choice applies to thoughts,

It seems to me.

Yes,

Yes,

It does.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I speak a lot about mind management and about moving the attention.

So,

Of course,

Some thoughts,

Many thoughts arise on their own.

They just arise.

See,

You didn't invite them.

But you can move your attention off of them.

You can just move the attention around.

And I think that the whole path that I sort of bang on about a lot has to do with how are you using your attention?

And whatever you're doing with your attention is conditioning the very moment you're in.

It's conditioning your experience at that moment.

So you can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven in any moment.

Hello.

Hi.

Hey.

Nice to be here with you.

Are you in the Portland area?

I am.

And feeling all of the,

All of the challenges here,

You know,

Today,

I think.

There's a lot of political stuff going on here,

As you probably have heard.

And I think sometimes when you're in a city where something that's going on,

You just kind of pick up on the collective wave of it,

You know,

Like it or not.

And I've been taking news,

Hiatuses for a couple of days here and there.

And I just came off one.

I was just up in the mountains for a couple of days.

And yeah,

Looked at the news today and it was just like,

Yeah.

So,

Yeah.

Of course,

When something's happening in the city in which you are residing.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

In the airwaves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had kind of an interesting day just trying to move,

You know,

Just do the things I need to do.

And there's always so many gratitudes,

Of course.

And at the same time,

I just was finding myself throughout the day just getting just kind of,

Kind of depressed or just feeling funky,

You know,

Just feeling low energy.

And I finally just went and laid down.

And,

You know,

It's like your early,

Early,

Early teachings,

Like from way back.

So,

It taught me like,

You know,

If you're,

It's okay to like surrender to that sometimes.

And so you're going to lie down.

Yeah.

Take a nap.

Exactly.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I didn't have to push through and get this done and that done.

And,

You know,

It was just kind of a relief just to surrender.

And it's like,

Okay,

I feel,

I feel funky and maybe a little depressed at the moment.

And so it is,

You know,

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And certain times in certain situations,

That is the normal response,

Right?

Yeah.

If you're feeling you're in a situation in the city,

In fact,

Which is under so much stress and pressure,

This is Portland right now.

Then,

Yeah,

Of course,

There's a natural empathic response.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It does have sadness woven in.

So,

Yeah.

Yeah.

But again,

To what you've been speaking about here,

What is not really necessary is rage about it.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I don't,

I don't have that arising in me particularly.

So just,

Just writing.

And I don't resonate with this meme that's going around,

Silence is violence.

I just don't agree.

I mean,

I understand what their meaning is,

But I just don't agree.

Uh huh.

Uh huh.

Well,

That's,

That's encouraging to hear because,

Yeah,

You do get influenced by things or whatever.

I get influenced sometimes by seeing like,

Wow,

Should I be doing something else?

So,

But,

You know,

Thankfully,

The many years of my various cultivations with your,

Your perspective as a strong foundation of that,

You know,

I've learned to value the quiet and the peace and the stillness,

You know.

I'm just struck by how,

How very foreign and how very familiar this circumstance right at this moment is,

You know,

This thought is not.

Is there so much of,

It's so,

It's so funny how,

How little my life has changed because of the quarantine.

I don't like anybody anyway.

I don't go out anywhere and talk to people.

I just sit at home anyway.

Well,

You do have a wife and two dogs.

I talk to them occasionally.

Well,

The dogs don't care.

They come in,

They're gonna,

They're gonna get their attention.

They're gonna come in anyway.

Okay.

But,

I mean,

Obviously,

I've noticed,

You know,

There's still,

Even with all the,

There is a certain calming down,

Obviously,

There's things you can't go do.

There's a lot of recreational things we can't go do.

Fine,

We're here at home.

But this sort of,

I don't know,

Mania to get things done.

You know what I mean?

Just one thing,

One thing,

One thing,

One thing.

And it's really,

It's great to take this little vacation.

Yes.

Yes.

Even in the,

In our,

You know,

Very pared down circumstances to let all that stuff go.

Yes,

It is.

It really is.

It's a vacation from the,

The productions of self,

Of the me project,

As I call it all the time.

You know,

It's a,

It's a little break.

And maybe it's a long break.

And maybe it even induces a completely different habit,

You know,

Because a lot of a lot of the running about is this,

Is this attempt to aggrandize a sense of self.

It's like we sort of,

You know,

All of our adding on,

Whether it's a new car or a new anything or a new trip,

It's all about,

You know,

Not all about,

Some of it is just genuine enjoyment,

But some of it is about this sense of the enhancements of experience and stuff and the latest,

Greatest and when that is all off the table as even a possibility,

There's another type of stripping down that is happening.

Another kind of humbling where you're not having to prove much.

You don't have to really prove anything.

And,

And you're seeing that a lot of people who were very big improving things are also stripped down.

I saw a little clip of Oprah interviewing John Lewis who just died.

I just saw a little tiny clip of it on the news.

And she's just in her house.

You know,

On a zoom session,

It looks like.

I just thought,

Yeah,

Her life has really changed.

Though everybody's kind of hanging around the house.

Is that it?

The only other thing is the great reminder that you're giving me that you give,

You know,

And that this,

This,

This,

The song that gives is,

You know,

Like Jen was saying,

I just,

I get so angry.

I feel so much anger come up about,

You know,

The political machinations and people's just denial and I know ultimately that just hurts me,

You know,

Because you're the one feeling the anger.

No one else is going to,

You know,

Spit it out and try to make them feel,

Well then congratulations.

Yeah,

Then you're left with recriminations in your mind about how poorly that went.

Yes,

And how useless it was and how further away from what you wanted.

You just pushed yourself.

Totally.

So I'm very grateful for the time to time,

The reminders that will come at odd time just pop into your head or like,

Like here at this moment or it's like,

You know,

It's possible to just be a vessel,

A sort of a light for calm and non-judgment and just continuing on.

I mean,

The world is in a swirl,

But it's always been in a swirl.

Right?

So deep gravitational pull will attract whatever it attracts now or at any other time.

Yes,

Absolutely.

I love that.

Yes.

Yeah,

Your offering can be that of calm and of letting be.

And of course,

Again,

Living by example,

You'll be doing things that are safe when you go out and you'll be wearing your mask as I know you do and being careful about even where you go.

So a little bit live and let live,

Except that a lot of those of the let live are going to be in trouble,

Unfortunately.

And those lessons,

They're going to be a hard one for them.

So and it's not to say that we're necessarily free of the risk either,

But at least we'll lessen our risk.

Right.

And I know how frustrating it is when you're in a culture that is increasing the risk for everyone.

That's very frustrating and it does induce,

You know,

Anger and irritation.

But again,

You know what to do.

You're right.

Your own anger is just the poison that you ingest in the hope of getting rid of poison.

And if nothing else,

I mean,

This practice,

If you will,

Of letting it drop,

Just letting it drop.

Oh boy,

Letting it drop and drop.

It's great practice because who knows what's going to happen,

But there's a great possibility that it can only intensify.

And,

You know,

To practice now,

To get good at it now.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think that's wise.

Like putting your nuts in the tree for now,

Like the squirrel.

Yes.

Storing them away.

Well,

It's back to the whole managing of your attention and that's going to serve you in all difficult circumstances.

That you keep getting used to moving your attention as soon as you're in a thought form whereby continuing to think along these lines just hurts you.

There's no good that comes of it.

It's useless.

It's pointless.

And even though you might be right,

It's painful.

And so you start learning to just move the attention off of that and into present awareness or gratitude or focus on some little thing you're doing or go make a cup of tea and watch yourself making it and feel your senses.

And sometimes it's,

And I don't mean this in any morbid way,

But sometimes it's a good little mini practice to say,

What if this was my last day?

Just as another little interruption of a certain type of thought form.

What if this was my last day?

Right?

As you were talking,

I'm thinking,

You know,

That I'm somebody who,

You know,

I've accomplished ABC&D and,

You know,

So I had this clam and just started,

Okay,

I'm going to paint for two hours and practice a piano two hours.

Then I'm going to take a walk.

Then I'm going to read.

Well,

Needless to say,

This isn't happening.

And I've stopped,

I've actually stopped lying about it.

And I think this is such a relief.

Yes.

And actually they don't give a damn.

That's the thing.

No one's watching.

They think they're going to value about us.

Actually,

What is it?

I know.

It's the vibe.

That's all they value about us.

Yeah.

I mean,

The people who would value you for your great art.

Right.

Are they really the people that you would feel the most comfortable with?

Yeah,

Right.

Because you're basically being,

It's like,

You've got to keep doing great art or you did some great art at some point and now it was this thing that they valued you that you had done.

But what do we really love about people when we tell the truth?

You know,

When we tell the truth,

It's really about the vibe.

It's really about how you feel in their company,

About how relaxed are you?

I like to,

I often use the phrase,

I like to not have to censor my thoughts,

You know.

And with some people,

I find myself censoring my thoughts because there's something about the vibe that is making it unsafe for me to actually speak fully.

Because either they're not going to hear it or they're going to get agitated.

And so,

You know,

Who needs that?

And also to be around people who perhaps are very,

Very accomplished and they're leading with that accomplishment,

Like you feel this sort of ego curtain around them.

And even though that might be exciting in some measure because of their fame or their accomplishment,

It's not pleasant really to be in the company of it.

As you know,

Of course.

Just do whatever makes you happy.

Thank you.

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I truly feel connected to you and your message. This was my first dharma teaching from you, and I look forward to many more. So much gratitude 🙏🏻