Expressing Emotions In This World Anew And Askew

In this talk given to an online community at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Shefali Tsabary shares wisdom on how to experience the waves of heartbreak and heartaches with grace and kindess for ourselves and others.

Transcript

Good morning everyone.

It's another start of a new week and I know that you all are feeling a lot of things and this is normal.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and it was truly a surreal experience.

I saw the lining of empty shelves.

I saw the masked and gloved bodies and clothed faces.

I saw the empty streets and it truly hit me.

And of course things like this hit us in waves.

Nothing comes like a straight arrow.

Everything is in waves and with every new wave comes a new crash.

Sometimes the crash misses our hearts.

Sometimes the crash directly deluges our heart.

You're going to feel this a lot.

Waves of different sweeping emotions as you notice life anew,

Life askew,

Life astray.

And yesterday my heart broke and with it came tears and a true pang,

An ache,

A longing for something.

And I allowed these waves of heartache and heartbreak to rush through me.

And at first it felt like a tidal force about to overwhelm and overtake.

This is how emotions are sometimes.

They feel like a hurricane and you feel like you're going to be swept up in the tornado force of it.

The emotion feels like a dark avalanche that's just going to overtake you.

Dark,

Not because dark is bad,

But it just feels like you can't see in the snowstorm.

You can't see in the avalanche.

And it feels abysmal.

So when you go out into your town or your city or to your grocery store,

You're going to experience this paralytic shock at a world anew.

And you're going to want to have an expression of many emotions.

So I yesterday wanted to scream,

Right?

I wanted to fight.

I wanted to protest.

I wanted to tantrum.

I wanted to yell.

How can this be?

What's going on?

I wanted to just vent my frustration that what I was seeing was too shocking.

Notwithstanding noticing the constant stream of data about deaths and pandemic uprisings in different communities and people living in fear.

I mean,

All of that subconsciously seeps into you,

Yes?

And you're going to want to sometimes scream.

You may scream at your kids,

At your partner.

You may suddenly find yourself overly obsessing about socks and underwear and specks of glitter all over your carpet.

Suddenly,

You know,

If your kid leaves,

The other day my daughter left a highlighter out of place on my desk and I had a little fit.

The reason for this is because we're feeling out of control.

And when we feel out of control,

We want to fix and manage something.

We want to blame someone.

We want to use our voice so that we feel some sort of power in this powerless appearing situation.

And underneath the anger we need to understand is a heart breaking.

Our hearts are breaking.

And when our hearts break,

We feel like there's no end.

We feel like the ground is going to open and we're just going to be buried under.

This is why big feelings,

Especially with our children or in times of grief and death and mourning,

Feel so apocalyptic,

So scary,

Cataclysmic.

It's because heartbreak is really painful.

And so we cover up the pain with some sort of control.

And now we're looking for control.

We want to fight.

We want to yell.

We want to scream.

We want to go,

What is going on here?

Right?

And so we are looking for blame.

But then yesterday,

As I too wanted to blame someone who is doing this,

Where is the enemy?

We do this always in interpersonal relationships.

The other is the enemy.

Our inner children rail against the loss of control.

We want control.

Human beings want control.

And when our hearts break,

That is a time where we are exposed to our powerlessness and groundlessness as a human species,

As a species.

And that is so painful to confront that we cover it up with a desire for control.

So yesterday I was screaming,

Who?

Who?

I'm looking for the who.

But then I paused and I realized,

Who is the who?

Who is the who here?

The who is a virus.

The who is a force of life.

The who is a version of life itself.

The who is an energy.

Who?

And that's why this moment in time is so historic,

Not only in its unprecedented nature,

But also historic in its capacity to really expose to us how we need to grow emotionally.

But yes,

Very painfully.

So as I began to ask who,

You know,

Where is the enemy?

Where is the who?

As we always do when we're upset,

Who is to blame?

Who left the shoes here?

Who is not at dinner at the right time?

Who is not getting the right grades?

Who is disrupting my rise in my career?

Who is making me unhappy?

Who?

Who?

Who?

And as I began to ask who,

And no answer came,

As there is no real answer to the who,

Because the who lies outside,

And the virus is certainly not the who,

So who?

Then I realized I'm asking the wrong question.

The question is not who,

The answer will not be found in the question who,

But in some other place.

So I began to move from the who into the what.

And I began to ask what is the real problem?

What am I really upset about?

Not who am I upset about,

But what am I upset about?

So I shifted the who to the what.

And it's in the examination of the what,

As I talked about yesterday,

The what is found in the mirror.

Not looking in the mirror allows us to pretend it's a who.

Looking in the mirror makes us look at the who within us,

But the what within us.

So what is it?

And as I began to look for the answer,

I began to realize that this question,

This line of introspection,

This kind of thinking,

Moves us away from the helplessness to the courage,

From the anxiety to its transcendence,

From the heartbreak to the heart make.

And while I may still cry,

While I may still grieve,

While I may still mourn,

While I may still be in the abyss of the ache,

I am also able to make.

I am able to heart make.

And there's a lot I can do there.

So I began to make a list,

And I encourage you to do this as well.

I made a list of what.

What am I missing?

Why am I so upset?

So what is making me upset?

What exactly?

So I made a list,

And on the left side I put all the things in my form-based world that I'm missing,

And then all the things in the formless world that I'm missing.

And I put this all down.

I encourage you to do this as well.

So my list,

And I have it here,

First thing that I am aching for,

My heart is breaking for,

Are the actual physical lives lost.

And not only the physical lives lost,

But the capacity to reach out to those who have lost them in person.

And then the capacity to have funerals and mornings and shivas and sit-downs and sit-ins with these people.

A palpable physical loss.

And then there is a loss of the economical part,

The paycheck,

The actual physical job.

And then family gatherings,

And then travel,

And then gatherings,

And celebrations,

And conferences,

And restaurants,

And shopping,

And distraction,

And bars,

And revelry,

And parties.

Yesterday my daughter said,

The minute this is over,

Mom,

You're not going to see me at all.

I said,

Oh really,

Where are you going to go?

And she said,

I'm going to go to all my friends' houses,

And I'm going to have parties all the time.

And I was like,

Yeah,

That sounds great.

And we miss our religious congregations,

And we miss our religious celebrations,

And family celebrations,

And birthday celebrations.

We're missing all of this,

And I'm sure there's a lot more.

And then on the formless side of it,

The main thing I realize we're missing is our sense of control,

Is our sense of predictability,

Is our sense of certainty,

Is our sense of instant gratification.

You know,

I wanted to go,

I can go.

Now we can't go.

We can't go.

We can't get on a plane,

We can't get on a bus,

We can't go.

So this instant gratification that we had become so indulged in,

So entitled to,

This sense of predictability,

The sense that we were in charge,

All that comfort and illusion is gone.

Just taken away.

And even the virus that's taken it away is a poof.

You can't even see it.

You can't even catch it.

You can't even put it in jail.

You can't lock it up in a room.

The criminal is poof,

Taking everything away,

Poof.

And it's this sudden taking away that has shattered us,

If we allow it to.

And then it's taken away our familiarity,

Our ease,

Our comfort,

Our certainty,

Our sense of normalcy.

So when I think of these things,

My heart breaks.

I want to cry.

When I see the empty streets,

I'm immediately seeing what is not.

I'm immediately plugging into the lack.

I'm seeing emptiness and I'm equating it to loss.

I'm seeing grocery stores with people walking six feet apart.

I'm seeing faces that are covered.

And I'm seeing loss.

And I'm seeing loss everywhere.

And I'm plugging into the loss and my heart is breaking.

So here's the thing.

While we cry,

While we are experiencing anxiety,

We have to understand that maybe we're not looking in all the right places.

Maybe we're not looking where we need to be looking.

Maybe we're just being caught by what our eyes are seeing right away,

But we're not seeing behind what the eyes need to see.

So when I teach wisdom in all my courses,

I talk about the form of life and the formlessness of life.

And the form of life is what we see and sense.

And we as unconscious,

Asleep human beings,

We are so caught up in the form of life.

And we're chasing form all the time.

And I have talked about innumerable times in my courses that this form is an illusion.

It's transient.

It makes us believe it's here to stay,

But it's never here to stay.

And then we're trapped in the attachment and then we're shocked by the loss.

But really when we understand formlessness,

We enter and tap into eternity.

The formless is never empty.

The formless is never lacking.

The formless is never scarce.

The formless is never empty.

It's full.

So I began to ask,

Okay,

Where is the formlessness right here in the empty streets?

Where is the formlessness right here behind the masked faces?

Where is the formlessness here that I'm not seeing?

Just like we cannot see the virus.

Just like the virus is in the formless,

Which is why it's so hard for us to grasp because there isn't a who,

There isn't a quantifiable other that we can catch,

Imprisoned,

Locked down.

No,

This virus is in the air.

It's in the formless.

And because it's in the formless,

It's hard to understand the beauty of it in the formless.

And I too yesterday got trapped in the form and the emptiness of form and the lack of crowd and the lack of people and the lack of bodies and the lack of faces and the lack of predictability and the lack of tangibility.

And my heart was breaking because I was looking in the wrong place.

And every time we look in the wrong place,

We are going to break our heart.

When I say that we need to look in the formlessness,

It doesn't mean that we avoid the pain of the lack of form.

It's just that we are allowed to see beyond.

And this is what wisdom does.

Wisdom is always teaching us to look beyond what the eyes can see.

What the eyes can see,

Any fool can see.

So they don't have to be wise.

You see,

You see that this is a cup,

You see that this is a glass.

But that's not where the secret of life lies because every fool can see that.

Not to call us fools,

But you know,

We're kind of foolish.

All of us can see what we can see.

But wisdom is elusive and wisdom is esoteric and wisdom is intangible for a reason.

Wisdom is cultivated and wisdom is hard to get and wisdom is something that only few minds want to seek for a reason.

Because it's not palpable,

It's not obvious,

It's not tangible.

So if you're a seeker,

You will seek it.

And what you seek is in the formless.

And when you seek in the formless doesn't mean you don't cry for the lack of form,

But you're just crying with a different awareness.

You are grieving with a different knowledge.

You are mourning with a different attachment.

Now that's wisdom.

So I began to ask,

Okay,

What am I not seeing?

What am I not seeing?

Not what am I missing?

What am I missing is found in form.

What am I not seeing is found in formlessness.

What am I not seeing?

What are my eyes not seeing?

The virus is formless.

So let me track the virus.

Let me follow what the virus shows.

And it's so clear to me what I am not seeing.

What I'm not seeing is all the things that we have that are not palpable in form.

We still have it.

We always will have it.

We will never be devoid of all the things not in form because formlessness is a huge eternal fullness in the void.

Sense of our agency.

We always have agency.

Right now you have agency.

That's never taken away.

Form didn't give it to you.

Form gave you the illusion that you had agency.

But you always had agency.

Form was elusive saying,

Oh,

I'll give you agency.

Me,

My BMW,

When you drive me,

You're going to feel agentic.

The BMW never gave you agency.

Ah,

But now you have to figure out and dig in and touch your agency without the BMW.

Before you thought it was the BMW that made you feel so great,

So rad,

So cool,

So accomplished.

You thought it was your hairstyle and your not gray hair and your fancy outfit that gave you agency.

That was not what was giving you agency.

That was a lie.

But now we have to go and look for the agency.

We have to dig and tap into the agency.

Our adaptation.

We are now going to see how we can adapt.

This is always within us.

We aren't adapting because life was comfortable.

Now we have to show up and adapt when life is not comfortable.

We always have altruism.

We can always serve every single day.

No matter where we are,

No matter how small or big our home is,

We can be altruistic.

We can still have adventures,

Just different kinds.

We can still be creative.

We can still have compassion.

We can still have care.

We can still have great joy and bliss and ecstasy.

We can have connection.

Just a different way.

There is so much in the formless.

Now because we are sitting still,

We can have stillness,

Quietude,

Solitude,

Meditative contemplation,

Insight,

Transformation,

Growth.

This is what lays behind the form.

This is always behind the form.

But form keeps us so busy in routines and schedules and organization and timetables and tasks and chores and to-do lists and things we have to do that we think that that is what gives us substance.

We think that that is the I am.

But that is not true.

And now that that has been taken away,

The lid has been taken off,

We are in heartbreak,

Crumbling to the floor,

Thinking that we have been taken away.

Thinking that when the I am and the adjective after the I am,

The role after the I am,

The definition after the I am,

When that definition,

Role,

Verb,

Adjective is taken away,

Then the entire I am crumbles.

But now we are realizing,

Or have a mayor invited to realize if you want,

That the I am is full on its own.

That is the heart make.

That is what makes the heart.

That is what makes the world turn around.

That is what was underneath,

Waiting to be uncovered.

That is consciousness rising,

Awakenedness,

Awakened self,

Awakened heart.

That is what was underneath.

All that was before.

So now we are given an opportunity to look beyond the form,

To look beyond the emptiness to the fullness in the void.

And while we cry and while we ache and while we mourn and while we grieve and while we miss and while we long,

We have to understand that we are now being given a chance to tap into something else.

That which the virus is in nature,

The formlessness of life.

That which we cannot see.

But once we tap into that,

Then it is full.

It is full.

Oh,

You are full of love,

Full of compassion,

Full of courage,

Full of adventure,

Full of creativity,

Full of joy,

Full of ecstasy,

Full of connection,

Full of quietude,

Contemplation,

Bliss,

Joy,

Peace,

Harmony.

Full.

Who said you are not full of that?

But you are being asked to tap into that before you were on the ventilator of that.

You were borrowing,

You were simulating,

You were distracted,

You were seduced,

You were using an accomplice,

A surrogate for the making of the heart.

And now you have to become the maker.

You are the maker.

You have to activate that power,

That agency,

That destiny,

That courage.

It's you now.

And you're falling apart.

You're like,

I can't do it.

I can't create my own ecstasy,

Bliss,

Joy,

Seduction,

Creativity,

Connection.

I need,

I need,

I need,

I need,

I need the others.

I need the others.

I need the others on the outside.

So many of us are just waiting,

Putting on,

To put on the news and wait for the aha,

It's over.

Halloween is tomorrow.

Don't worry.

Christmas is coming,

Right?

We want the same.

We want this to be over.

We want the news to say tomorrow the cure has been found.

But it will never be like that because this is not a definitive moment in time.

In terms of like yes and no,

Past and future,

It does,

Life does not work like that.

Life is eternally a cause and effect and a cause and effect and a cause and effect and a cause and effect,

Cause and effect.

And we're trying to find the answer because we want to feel control.

And we're waiting for the solution because we want to feel control.

But life doesn't work like that.

It's never aah and aah.

You know when couples break up,

One will always ask the other,

When was it?

Tell me when did you stop loving me?

And the other one goes,

I don't know.

It was a very gradual process.

And you know,

I don't know.

And then the other one will go,

What?

This has been going on for years?

And the other one goes,

Yeah,

A few.

And the other one goes,

I didn't even know?

How did this happen?

Right?

And I'm not mocking people.

You know,

I would talk exactly like this.

Give me a time.

Give me a date.

Give me a moment when everything shifted.

When was the epicenter?

What was the epicenter?

Date,

Time,

Place,

Person.

This is because we want control.

We want control over the other person's heart and mind.

Tell me,

Damn it.

And the other fool is like,

I don't know.

I didn't even know I was feeling like this till I saw the other person at the bar and then I was in bed with them.

I didn't even know because the other person is included.

Right?

You clueless,

She's clueless.

He's clueless.

Same thing.

But we're like,

Tell me,

Tell me,

Tell me.

And then they'll try to say something and they just,

I always say,

Stop,

Stop,

Stop.

Don't,

Don't,

Don't make up something because you're going to make it worse.

Do not say a few years,

Right?

Because they've just made it worse.

But the truth is,

Is that it,

What is always was.

Nothing just comes about in a moment of creation.

Right?

We want to think that we are created on day one,

Day two,

Day three,

Day four.

Sorry to say it didn't happen like that.

Really,

Really,

Really sorry.

It doesn't happen like this.

You light a candle,

Make a wish,

It goes away.

You know,

You pray,

You pray,

You pray.

It'll go away.

This is infant,

Infantile thinking.

Sorry.

You know,

The truth is it's complex.

It's huge.

It's beyond your eye and mind and we have to surrender to that huge,

Vast mystery of it all.

The cause and effect has been happening forever since the day you got married,

Since the day you met,

Since the day you were born.

Right?

So when the couple asked,

The husband asked the why,

When did you stop loving me?

Since the day I was born.

Okay.

Because the seeds were sown then.

Okay.

So this,

When was the moment?

Like don't choke me.

Right.

I don't know.

Since the day I was born,

It was my mother's fault actually,

Since the day she was born.

And only wise people can understand what this means.

It means that nothing is just in this moment.

Yes.

And,

And that we want an answer for this moment is very cute and very sweet,

But it's really childish.

Right?

So just know you can ask for it,

But it's childish.

It's happening constantly and there's so many forces and the macti factorial pressures and causes and effects beyond your eyes can see.

From your grandmother,

Beyond her,

To her ancestors,

To the tribes,

To the nations,

To the trees,

To the cheetahs,

To the lions.

This is the vast interconnectedness of life.

So as you look for an answer,

Understand it's so sweet.

It's your desire to know when Santa Claus is coming down the tunnel,

Down the chimney.

And it's very,

Very,

Very sweet,

But it's that level of consciousness.

So the true consciousness comes in understanding that,

Wow,

I need to really raise my consciousness.

I really need to see beyond the form.

I really need to understand what wisdom is.

I really need to understand that I'm not a child anymore.

Life is not giving me the candy I want and I can cry and I can tantrum.

But while I'm crying and I'm tantruming,

I need to also understand that there's a lot I'm not seeing.

And if I tap into all that I'm not seeing,

I'm actually going to salve,

Soothe,

Bomb,

Assuage,

Alleviate,

And find joy again.

So where am I going to look?

In all that I don't have or all that I can't see yet?

And it's when you shift into the formlessness that you begin to understand that there is so much.

That there is so much.

That there is so much.

And this so much was always there.

So whatever was is.

Oh,

Uncertainty is now.

Uncertainty always was.

Unpredictability is now.

Unpredictability always was.

Chaos is now.

Chaos always was.

Stress is now.

Stress always was.

Death is now.

Death always was.

It's just maybe a different version,

Maybe a heightened version,

Maybe a lower version.

It's just all in play as it always was.

Because the universe didn't just come to be.

And you just didn't come to be.

And you are not the most important person as you are.

Meaning we are not.

We're not.

This is just a speck on a mote of a sunbeam,

I often say.

We are speck of a speck of a speck of a speck of a speck of a speck of a grain of sand.

Sorry.

That's how irrelevant we really are.

But we're very important for this moment in time.

But we're irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

So when we understand that,

We understand okay,

Now we're in another moment in time.

And another moment in time.

And another moment in time.

And how we play it will at least,

While we are in the land of the living,

Determine how we live.

So how are you going to play it?

Are you going to be in the heart breaking or in the heart making?

Are you a breaker or are you a maker?

There is no one outside to create this reality for you.

Only you can do it for you.

So I've been reading the Tao De Jing,

Which is a beautiful book by Lao Tzu.

This is day 4 that I've been doing these courses every day here as much as I can.

On Facebook,

If you're on my newsletter,

You will get it in the newsletter.

If you're on Instagram,

It will be posted after this on Instagram.

At 12pm Eastern,

If you wish to share it with your friends,

Do so.

I also have a lot of other courses which are more intensive,

But you get a taste now of how I teach.

If you do wish for those courses right now,

They're at a huge discount.

They're 50% off and a lot of people have been buying them.

So use this time to grow.

But if you can't or don't want to,

Come here every day at 12 and I will be here.

So now I'm on verse 4 of the Tao.

The Tao is like a well,

Used but never used up.

So the Tao is the way of the way,

Of the way,

How things are truly.

And we don't know how things are truly because we never cultivated our wisdom to understand how things are truly.

So this verse says the Tao is like a well.

The way of the way of the way is like a well.

It's used but it can never be used up.

Because the way of the way of the way is infinitely expansive.

It's wise.

It just has no end to it.

That's why if you get me to talk,

I can't stop talking because I can keep talking about it because it's never used up.

There's so much to talk about.

It's endless.

It's an endlessly giving way of life because you're looking at the formless,

Not at the form.

The verse says it is like the eternal void filled with infinite possibilities.

So the void of the,

You want to call it the space,

The atmosphere,

The galaxies,

The intergalactic galaxies,

The galaxies beyond the galaxies,

The cosmos,

The great not knowing,

The great unknown,

The great mystery.

That is so vast.

It looks like a void because you can't really see sometimes.

So it looks dark because of its unseen quality.

But it is full of infinite possibility if you understand that you are to look at what you can't see as what you can see.

It is in the unseen that is the seen.

It is hidden,

The Tao says,

But always present.

You just haven't seen it.

Your eyes are too caught up in what you want to see by the sight that you can't see what the sight can't see.

And the greatest example is love,

Altruism,

Connection,

Compassion,

Those you can't see,

But you see.

How do you see love when it's not something you can see?

I don't know who gave birth to it,

Lao Tzu says.

It is older than God.

It's just is and always was and always will be.

You as energy are,

Always were and always will be.

This form may die,

But you as energy always were,

Are and always will be.

So it is with all of this.

So what you can't see with your sight,

You can see with your heart.

And when you begin to see with your heart,

That is when your heart is made.

Thank you everyone.

If you want to meditate with me,

The link is on my description up about.

I'm going to meditate right now on the other page.

I will see you there.

If not,

I'll see you here tomorrow.

Reviews

Very practical and sound advice for dealing with pandemic issues.