What Are You?

A workshop based on going deeper into the question “What are you?” and responding from a place that is deeper than concept and storylines. Consider your own views and thoughts on this age-old question.

Transcript

So, Tomorrow is our last full day and I can feel a lot of you have sort of the momentum building and so I would encourage you to use the day well. There will be a tendency for a lot of people to, Thoughts about leaving and stuff going out there to start creeping in, But just be mindful of it, Don't fight it off. The mind is just trying to take care of you and say, Well okay, Have you thought about all that sort of thing. So don't be mean to it, But you also don't need to indulge it. So just pay attention to what's going on. Tomorrow night's Dhamma talk discussion has a lot of different possibilities. So what I wanted to check with all of you is, Is there something that's been missing? Is there some topic or some question that you wish we had spent more time addressing? Let me just open it up for a minute and see if there is anything that pops up for you. I guess a cozy ceremony might talk a little bit about carrying practice over into daily life. Yeah. We could spend some time on that tomorrow night, But we'll certainly spend some time on it in the closing circle. Can I do a little bit more on the imagination stuff? Okay, We did cut that a little short. Do we have other options? Yeah, I mean, Often times what I'll do is spend some time on the precepts, Particularly the daily ones, And how precepts are tools for mindfulness, Not commandments, And actually playing around with those. Another possibility is, What's a chapter in Buddhist math that I really like that I've never used as a Dhamma talk? It's called Thriving in Difficult Times. It's basically about Tanha and unpacking that. Another possibility, I have these six questions. I was trying to come up with just a few short statements that define the breadth of Buddhist concerns, And it seemed to me that questions actually frame those better than statements. And so my six questions are, How do I suffer? Where do I find contentment? What am I? What matters? And then from there it goes in, Because Buddhism is very practical, Is what's next and what helps to support that. And some of the groups and stuff I've been doing, We've been taking those questions and exploring those. And actually what I intend to do tonight is take that third question, What am I, And pick up where we left off yesterday and do some work around that. But there are some fun and hopefully helpful things. The first two questions, How do I suffer? Not why, But how. What's the process and where do I find contentment? That's a good topic for exploration. We could do a little bit of, This would be off the ranch, Do a little bit of channeling feedback to each other. What it is, I would set it up so that you would spend a little bit of time, Actually just a couple of minutes, With each person twice. One time you'd be in the role of guru, Buddha, Enlightened master, And the other person would be in the role of a student. And we'd do a little, Sort of quick exercises in terms of getting as much of yourself out of the way when you're in the Buddha role and just open it up and just, You know, From the heart share, You know, I'm in front of Eric, Just what comes to me. So you get this sort of wash and then only a couple of minutes and then you move to the next person and you get a wash from them, And the next person, The next person. So what did I miss? I didn't know. Wouldn't dare. I want to be with him though, Because he was enlightened last night, So I want his wash. Oh, You would get his wash, You would all get a wash from him. Are you still enlightened? I may have broken a precept. That wasn't the question. Oh I see. Subtle humor here. Got it past all of us. Actually to break the precept about speech, It actually doesn't account if it's a joke and everybody knows. There's an intention to mislead. Does it count if you don't use any words? It does, Yes. That counts a lot. Can we do that tomorrow? Which? What we're talking about. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Tonight we're going to pick them where we're at. So what I'd like to do is at the end of the evening we'll just come back and see if you have any more thoughts about it and then I'll decide from all that. Okay, Did you figure out when we were taking a picture? Yeah, Actually there's a beautiful spot right out the front door and the entrance from this side is really part of the house and it has all these statues and stuff so I think if we just kind of put ourselves there. I guess the time would have to be some kind of convenient when we're all not meditating. So it could be at the lunch bell or at the breakfast bell? Lunch bell would probably be better. And tea bell would be too dark. It's sort of situated in the shadow of the house and it might be opportune. We don't want to be in the bright sun because it ends up creating hot spots. So we'll meet there before lunch. How about I'll just ring the lunch bell and then we'll meet there and then come in and have lunch. Okay, And hope the pigs haven't broken into the house while we were gone. Let's hope not. Never mind, Never mind. This morning, Oh my God, I had an adrenaline rush. I was driving down the road and these three little piggies that I see most every morning. The pig almost hit them. It's a big bad wolf. I see these like they're going to cross the road and I'm, I yelled, Stop! I was half awake but then I was all awake. They were up the road. They were. Yeah, They must have heard my alarm and gotten there. No more pork links for breakfast. No, That's another story. So we're going to do some dyads today, This evening. But to kind of, So I'm picking up where we left off yesterday and I just want to read a couple things to you to kind of help us shift back into that and then I'll tell you how this is going to work. I'll tell you what my plan is for how it might work. We'll see what happens. A lone bird floats in the dusk light. There's a softness of fullness, A sense of completeness, Closure, A taste of grief perhaps at the waning of the day's life. To open to this moment is to be touched by the movement of life itself even as it fades. Coming home is returning out of individuality and all its frenetic energy. The loss of self which comes with peace can be sad. The hand that held on so strongly for so long aches as it relaxes its grip. The merge may seem scary. We would avoid it if we could. But at some point it seems that that is all there is to do. So we gradually let go. Love begins to penetrate the aching. The boundlessness of the sea that has been waiting patiently for so long. The hurt softens and dissolves. How could I have stayed away from this for so long? Yes, This is home. Home. And to come at the same topic with a slightly different mood, This is from Chuck Lorre who is a writer, Director, Producer, Composer, Production manager. He's created a whole bunch of sitcoms including Grace Under Fire, Dharma and Greg, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, Mom. I don't think I've seen any of them. I've seen a few snippets. But I gather that at the end of some of these shows, It's like as the sitcom fades, The camera moves back and as it pans back there's just a couple minute commentary that comes over as the sitcom closes down. This is one of them. Sometimes I have conversations with people who are not there. Not out loud conversations. No Thorazine yet, Thank you very much. But I definitely catch myself having spirited debates and heated arguments with folks who exist only in my head. Which doesn't stop them from speaking forcefully in a time eloquently on their own behalf. On occasion they are people I know. Other times they are purely fictitious creations brought into existence to question my thinking, My action or just piss me off. Because there are not enough real people pissing me off, I've got to mix them up. Anyway, The reason I thought this worth discussing is that I am fascinated by what I like to call the bifurcated self. Consciousness that has split itself in two in order to create its own suffering. Because there's not enough real suffering going on, We have to make some more. But recently I've become fascinated by the idea that there is no self at all. That the solution to bifurcation is not reuniting warring selves, It's dropping the entire concept of self. The memories, Emotions, Thoughts and attitudes that combine to create the self are finally recognized as nothing more than ripples on the surface of a pond. And the truth of what we are collectively and individually is the pond itself. That which silently embraces the endless dance of form. Deep, Clear, Still, Reflecting the infinite and eternal while receiving with equanimity both the beauty and the ugliness that falls into it. Even the critical inner voice which is talking to me right now, Excuse me while I respond, Shut up, I am too a pond. So tonight what I'd like us to do is to look into some of the particulars of what it is we consciously or unconsciously think of as ourselves and then work with these a little bit. What this will look like is you will have a partner and these aren't going to be dialogues, They're going to be just sharing and witnessing like we were doing the other night. One of you will have a card and the first question will be, What are you? And it's like the diagram on the sheet I passed out last night with the me with all the attributes, Body, Talents, Feelings, Memories, Etc. Etc. So the question is what are you and you'll be speaking about the various things that are important to you about what you are. And your partner will be writing down just a note about each one of them. It's not going to be writing down all you're saying but just a flag for each. So when you are witnessing that's what you'll be doing. And the one speaking that's allowed when you are functioned as the scribe are to ask clarifying questions. They're not leading questions or what about this if you have to think that but if you just don't quite understand you can just ask something and make sure you have it clearly. And then when we do that I have, I'm not sure we'll do one or two rounds like that, We'll see. Then when we go on with the rounds from there you'll have these sheets. In fact I can pass these around now. And we'll be doing the sharing and witnessing again. And when you are sharing what you'll do is you'll get your card and you'll take one of those qualities that you think of as you. And there's a whole bunch of questions here. You don't have to answer all of these, They're basically just prompts. And you can look through those and see which ones resonate with you or would be interesting to talk about. So for example you would look at one of those qualities or attributes. Is it really true that it's part of who you are? How did you learn that? How does it affect you to believe that? Who would you be without it? What's an opposite quality or attribute that feels genuinely part of who you are? What happens when you hold those opposites in the mind at the same time? So you will be sitting there in front of your partner and you will just, You know there will be two or three minutes for this and you can scan down and just pick one of those that strikes you and talk a little about it with your partner. And then when you run out you can pick up another one and just go back and forth a couple times. So if you can see what I'm doing, I'm not trying to lay out a map of specific things I want you to get to. I just want you to take that in and just have some way of just playing with it. The second list has a list of qualities and attributes that are not part of who you are. I was doing this with one of my groups at home, Erica was a part of it. What she had found and for other people was that sometimes it's not just what I think is part of me but things that I think are definitely not part of me. So if you end up with any things that are not part of you, This is a parallel set of questions but they're slightly different to accommodate that. Okay does that seem clear what I'm asking? So what you will write on the card is you will be in front of your partner and the first round we're not going to have these questions. So the first round is actually the first question, Who are you? And so you'll be talking about, You know, I'm a guy, I'm a male, Kindness is very important to me, I like teaching Dharma, I like cats, I've got this body, Warranty pins are starting to wear out. And so it would be… So is it water who I'm on? What? What am I on this… Yeah it does say who, I'm still in the process of sorting out how I'm going to… It says what? Well it says what are you at the top and the first bullet says who are you. So it's a work in progress. And then the one that I hope you'll work with somewhat are opposites, So those can be really important. So for example, I say you know kindness is very important to me, What is an opposite of kindness that I also think is very important? So for example, Fierceness. So there are some way of posing qualities but there are ones that are very important. Openness is very important to me. And what's an opposite? Focus. Boundaries. Yeah. So are you going to kind of follow us through all this as we go through? Yeah I will go through as we get to each phase and I'll say a little bit about what it is and make sure it's clear. I was just trying to give you the overall sense so it can help settle in a little bit. So what I'd like you all to do first, This will sound like a 60's encounter group, But I want you to get up and just walk around, Sort of mill around a little bit and pay attention to people and just see what happens inside you when you see various people. We'll just do this all night. Okay now find a partner and kind of spread out across the room and find a place to sit down together. We need a card. Yeah. You got one for your partner too. A pen? Yep. Here are a couple cards. You want a pen or pencil? One for two? Yeah. Well you could probably share them. So find a way to sit comfortably. If you'd rather have a chair it's okay to move those around. Give us a string of cards. The first task and the hardest one is to figure out who's going to speak first and who's going to be a witness scribe first. Okay, So who's going to speak first? Okay, Okay we're there. So close your eyes for just a moment and if you're speaking just let your awareness move into your selfness and if you are going to be witnessing, Let me just say one thing about the witness. I'm going to encourage you as the witness not to be a helpful active listener but to just be a presence. When I was in college there was a friend of mine who was doing some research around operant conditioning training rats to go through mazes using rewards and stuff like that and he undertook this experiment with his roommate which was that every time he moved his hand towards his ear he would smile. Just a little bit so it wasn't obvious. And within about two or three days his roommate had developed this habit of pulling on his ear. So we are very, Very social creatures. We are very sensitive to social cues. So if you are smiling and nodding etc. , Etc. , That will end up maybe inadvertently guiding your partner. But if you are just there in an open hearted full presence they will get your presence. And when I was doing this sometimes what I ended up doing when I'm sharing is I start making jokes, Anything to get a response from my partner because usually blankness is an indication of disapproval. But hopefully you won't act up as much as I did. But you actually get it after a minute. It's not disapproval, They are just following instructions and if you can't get any response back from them then there is nothing left for you to do but go inside and see what is true for you. And that can actually be quite freeing and quite encouraging. So the upshot of all this is that when you are scribing you are basically meditating on your partner. And it's the first time you will be writing things down and you can ask clarifying questions. And what we are after on the card is not long descriptions but just a word or two that captures each attribute so that when they come to the next part they can just flag it and see what it is and they will know. Ok, Is that clear? Ok so close your eyes. And share, Get into their selfness. And the witness just really coming into that place of stillness where you are just a presence for your partner, Just a heartful presence. And then when you open your eyes the sharer will be responding to this question, What am I? What am I? What are some of my attributes? So finish up what you are saying and then close your eyes and come into silence. And then switch roles. So the sharer will become the witness and the witness will become the sharer. And of course the witness is also a scribe. And just settle into your selfness if you are about to speak. And if you are the witness, Settle into emptiness where you are just a presence. And when you are ready, Open your eyes and begin. And if you have trouble with a pen just let me know, Some of them have the lead in some of the pencils is very hard. And finish up what you are saying and come into silence. And then we are going to switch roles, We are going to do just one more round of you writing down attributes. So when you are coming into being the speaker, The sharer, Just kind of drop into your selfness. Make sure the witness is open out to that emptiness. We are going to repeat this one more time. So we are not going to the questions yet. Attributes. So you will do the same thing that you have already done once. So the question you are responding to is what am I? My sense of it is that going through it once sometimes doesn't get as much out as is useful so we will do it one more time before we switch to the next part. So the witness and scribe will be scribing. So begin again and if you are sharing and responding to this query, What are you? What are you? So finish what you are saying and then drop into silence and switch roles. And then when you are ready, Open your eyes and the new sharer responds to this question, What are you? So each have gone twice. So now we are going to move to the next phase and what I am particularly interested in, There are lots of questions, The ones that I am particularly interested in are. . . Does everybody have at least one set of those? So what you are going to be doing when you are sharing is you will have the card in front of you that your partner created of attributes. And you are not confined to what is on the card. There may be another attribute that comes up that didn't occur to you. That is ok. I just wanted to have some prompts to work with. And then just pick up one of those and then scan down some of these questions and see which one grabs you. For example, Is it really true that this is part of who you are? How did you learn that or where did you come to believe that? How does it affect you to believe that? Who would you be without that quality, That attribute? What is an opposite of that quality or attribute that may be part of you as well? What happens when you hold those opposites in your mind heart at the same time? So it is ok to have a little fun with this. Just play with it and drop into it. Is everybody clear on what the instructions are? So can we select a few of our attributes? Yeah. Or you just want us to select? No, I am going to give you some time and you can work with it as you like, What feels comfortable to you. So it is possible you may center on one attribute and spend the whole time just on that one. Or it may be that you will go through one and go through another. And you may go through the list of questions in order or there may just be a couple of those questions that you are interested in. So is the witness still just witnessing and not interacting? The witness is still just witnessing and not interacting. So the questioner asks the question. No, The witness just witnesses. You, When you share it, Will have the questions in front of you and you can decide which ones you want to respond to. So we are not asking, The witness is not asking the questions. The witness is not asking the questions. We are just doing this on our own. Yeah. We are just witnessing. Ok, Are we all clear on that? No. So you are going to be. . . What do we do with the sheet, The notes that we received? When it is your turn to share, You will have your notes in front of you and you will have these questions. And you may start by picking out one of those qualities or one of those attributes. And then just scan through some of those questions and see which one strikes you in some way. Either you like it or you don't like it or it appeals to you or something lights up. And respond. How did you learn that was part of you? Where did that come from? Who would you be without that? So you can. . . In other words, I didn't want to run everybody through those military styles. Why don't you have them all in front of you? And then just play with it. Is that clear? It seems nebulous, But that's ok. So would you like tomorrow? Sure. So kindness is very important to me. So I can look at. . . Is that really true? Yes, I think it is. It's not that I'm always kind, But I really deeply value that. How did I learn that? I don't know. I don't know where I learned that. It just seems to go way back for me. What I also have learned over the years that I can be mean to people sometimes, But I don't like the residue that leaves in me. And it's sort of like when I try to be mean or something, I just. . . I don't like how it feels inside. But when I am kind, It's like I feel more composed. What's an opposite of that quality or attribute that feels generally part of who I am? You know, I have this thing where if I say there's some tension in somebody, Sometimes I like to just poke it in hopes that it will just sort of bring it out so they can release it. And so I get in trouble for that a lot, Because I don't poke well, But I love doing that. That can sometimes feel fierce or something if I don't do it well. Got the sense of it. So the person who's going to be sharing, You get to pick out the attribute and then you can look at what qualities. And you can stay with the same. . . We're going to do three minute rounds. And you can stay with an attribute the whole round. Or if you prefer to spend a little time with one and move on to another, Move on to another, Use it in whatever way feels intuitively would be most useful for you. So begin. So finish up and then come into silence. And switch roles. And the new sharer can look through their list of attributes and qualities and maybe find one to start with or if there's one on the list that comes up for you, That's okay too. And then when I ring the bell, You can scan through some of those questions and just respond to the question. So finish up and then come into silence. We're going to shift roles. Sharer becomes the witness, The witness becomes the sharer. And when you're sharing you can look through the list of qualities, Attributes, Things, Of you and pick another one or two. And then begin. Yes, Yes, Basically those. So finish up and drop into silence. So you've both had two rounds on this, Right? So in this final round, All rules are off. I just want to give you some time to be with a partner and just share anything you would like before we, And then we'll move from that back into the larger group. So feel free to just talk, Converse, Interrupt each other, Share whatever you like about this experience. Is there an agenda? Nope. The agenda is actually talking about what this experience was like for you. If there's something that doesn't feel like it was clarified enough, If you want to talk about that a little bit, We just do it without the structure of the shared and witnessing. If you want to ask your partner something, That's okay too. P manufacturative Pascal. So bow to your partner and let's come back into the larger circle. I was wondering why you watch me carry around so many methods. This guy is a real writer. Have you ever thought about a computer? Most of them are running out of ink too. So what happened for you? What was that like? I had a lot of access to emotional underpinnings of certain aspects. You had a lot of access? A lot of access to memories and emotions that were underlying certain things that I think are strengths or weaknesses. That's good. I would need several hours of this to get to anything. Just because I'm so used to shutting down and holding everything inside. Anything meaningful that's going to take time for me to get comfortable. I also find for myself, Emotionally, I move very slowly. It took me a while to make peace with that. Stuff just takes time. I think some people move very quickly and some are slowly. I think most women would say that about me. We're slow on the app. What was it like to feel like you needed more time to get to this? I felt like I needed more time but as it went along I got more comfortable. It gets to the point where I feel comfortable and open. Other people find it a similar type of thing. Particularly with a new exercise it does take a while to settle in and figure out what the lay of the land is. I think when you square off inside somebody's personal space. In this country our personal space is greater than in Asia. When you're front to front with somebody who you really don't know. I think there's an energetic. . . Talk about your own experience rather than everybody's. . . I get an energetic feeling in my stomach that seems to need processing. It's hard to do what you're saying. For me to be comfortable, Connected and open, It takes time. I noticed that it just took five minutes for me to feel comfortable and settled. I think I noticed between the two rounds of the quality of what I said in the first round. And then the quality that I said in the second, My partner is saying that it went deeper, It became clearer. And maybe relating to what you're also saying, That comfortability that I'm now able to access more. There's less tension. I think it does take time and it also helps to hear where your partner is coming from. Even if they're just talking about their stuff. What I find for myself is there may be something my partner talks about about them that actually resonates with me that I hadn't even seen before. It just helps to settle into that. I was surprised at how little I thought of myself. Not in terms of the attributes, I'm 75% negative. But I've been through all these things, We're all old friends in some ways. I haven't seen through the majority of them but I'm really familiar with them. I know them really well and how they work. But they're still a part of me. It was interesting when we were talking about them with fear. I could feel my energy perk up when I was talking about what life would be like without that. Which really showed me that I was still pushing it away. If only you weren't in my life, I would be free. So I'm still not allowing that to really be there. I'm not having an annoying girlfriend or something. If only you weren't here, I'd be able to go out and do this. I'd have to go shopping or whatever. But for me it showed me that I hadn't totally allowed that to exist within me. There's still a lot of aversion towards it. What if this guy wasn't here, Then my life would be perfect. Which is a fallacy of course, But for me it's just clear that it's still there. There's that delusion that can be really strong. That's really great. This side of enlightenment, We all have stuff like this. That's great. I had this experience where I was saying a lot of stuff and then I looked at the card of stuff Jordan wrote down and one of them was something I didn't say but something that I'd been exploring over the last month which was Songwriter. I wrote my first song a few weeks ago or a month ago or whatever. It was just this feeling of utter joy. I'd been seeing him! It feels like the universe is encouraging you along the way. It's really validating and awesome. I love that. Jordan just picked that up intuitively. He goes into people's brains all the time. This is a thing. I've got all of you. Sorry, We saw that down at the very moment. You thought he was just a cook. There's some secret ingredients. He's really from NASA. Part of the reason for shifting modalities is because we are so relationally wired. This meditation that we've been doing here tends to be such a solo activity but it lights up a different part of ourselves to bring this out and actually see that. Since all of you have mature practices at this point, You've got some tools to work with this. I talk about those Tibetans in those long retreats coming down out of the caves in the village to cause some ruckus so people get mad and say something to work with. It kind of stirs all this stuff up. What we're really after in the long run is actually back in that pure, Clear, Open awareness where all this different stuff can come, Things that you like and dislike that are great and not great, And can actually see it all from some kind of distance and equanimity. I was struck by how much lighter I am about the stuff I know about myself. Even the stuff that's negative is something. There's aspects of their life that are familiar. It feels as if I fall over it as much. It was nice to play with both the positives and negatives of a supposed negative thing. A lot of the things that I am are useful in a variety of ways. Those that I am useful in ignore, I have more of a sense of humor at the bottom except on the tissue. Some of the qualities and attributes I have that are very natural, I never thought, How did you learn those? I have no idea where I learned them, But they are something that is so natural for me. What it did for me was I really feel much more confident. I have no idea where I got these skills, But they are just very natural skills. That's great. One of the reasons I like to ask where you learn that is because that's what it often times feels like, It's been here forever, But if you have some sense of this arising at some point, It depersonalizes it a little bit. It's still very valuable that they have and it's great, But you can see it from that broader. It's usually always easy to do and it isn't arduous, But still, Like you knew that I was a songwriter. He just says that for everybody. So what are some of the opposites that you ended up with? Who was that like? They slip away easily, Don't they? I guess I thought about being arrogant sometimes, But how I also grew up feeling very inferior to everyone around me. I still carry some of that with me, But there's also another thing that happens sometimes. Yeah, That's great. As soon as we get monolithic about something, We know it's probably not the whole picture. The scanning of the list, I was surprised, But it was interesting to think about the basis of a lot of the things I considered strengths or weaknesses. It was usually something that was challenging, Like the causation of, Because my childhood was like this or my relationship with my father was like this, I developed this as a coping mechanism for my identity to build around. And then the coping mechanism kind of outlives its usefulness but then it's wired in and it keeps going. And then the strength is still there if you can figure out how to use them without having the ego attached. Well, And it's also I think true in the places where we've been hurt, And there may be always a coping mechanism around, But the places we've been hurt, As you work that through and get some kindness around it, It actually remains there as a kind of sensitivity, That it's maybe easier for you to pick that same thing up in other people so it actually becomes a gift as the other side of it. So in that same vein, The survival mechanisms that I needed to learn because of my family's situation, It also became my success factors as I grew older and learned how to use those in different kinds of ways. So they were opposites but they actually became a couple of interests. But I oftentimes, In terms of looking at opposites, Any of the factors or attributes inside you that you don't like, Part of the deal is actually looking at what's the wisdom in that attribute. What does it really give you that's positive? And then if you can see that and then find some other ways to get that, Then it allows that attribute to retire gracefully. But it's sort of like if you have some quality that protected you for a long, Long time and you say, Okay I don't need you anymore, Get out of here. It's kind of invested in taking care of you and so if you find some other way to reassure it then it can subside. That I understand, But what about anxiety? I don't see the upside of that one. No, I was a great intern. He said to me, Oh, But wouldn't life be boring without it? Life's boring with it. Well without any anxiety, The next time you go across the street you might get killed. It's a warning, It's a signal. And of course the difficulty is sometimes the signals become hyper enthusiastic, But it's actually born of that mechanism. Anxiety is the basis of other strengths, Because you have the anxiety developed. Yeah, It's like without deadlines in business, Nothing will ever get done. Yeah, Some sort of forcing factor. I know for me the anxiety got me on the spiritual path, And really wanting to become someone who's more relaxed. Well I think that's definitely true. I think almost everybody comes to these kinds of practices, Serious ones, Out of some kind of suffering. It may be blatant suffering, It may be just life is feeling a little flat and looking for something else, But that's the stuff. I'm trying to remember how Utejaniya said it. It was really funny, But it was so clear. He was saying we all actually need pain and suffering, Otherwise we wouldn't do anything. It kind of gets you up and gets you going. Anxiety is really wired in as an anticipatory, It's like radar for us, When it becomes dominating for us, That it becomes destructive. And I think all of us learned that as children in a different way, Given whatever our family relationship was, We either went blank around it or we over-anticipated it. The more anxiety is probably because we had to over-anticipated what was going on. That's the fuel that we deal with. So how do you work with anxiety in meditation? I'm not asking what's the right way to do it, I'm asking what is it that you do with it when anxiety comes up? And what's worked for you and what's not worked so well? Well, I look at it and I feel it, And the sensations are needed. I can go into colors and all that kind of thing as well. And then I can do colors. Colors as well. What is the texture? Just really get a description of what it is in the body. And I can begin to ask questions about what's causing this, What's going on, What's upsetting me, What's frightening me. So I just do a whole, And I may not, And it just comes from where it goes. But the more I focus on it, The more it begins to dissolve. And so how do you work with those questions? How do I work with them? Do I have some insight? Just ask the question. And then just let it float? Just wait and see if there's an answer. Yeah, Yeah, Good. No, Because I think that part is really important. I have a master's degree in this. Well, The rest of us don't, That's why I'm asking. I'm Dr. Saya, I have a master's degree in this. Other ways of being with anxiety? I've been just sitting with it lately, And I'm realizing how that can be, It's almost like guesswork. Sometimes it works, Like it will just slowly dissolve. It feels like a really inefficient way to do it, So I think getting more direct, More skillful, I feel like I can be more skillful about it. Yeah, Well, So ultimately it is about sitting with it and those questions. What's important in looking at it is that if you look at anxiety through anxiety, It probably won't go very far. But if you can look at anxiety through spaciousness or kindness or some wholesome qualities in the mind. Pushing it well instead of pushing it away. Right, Right. So did I talk about this here, If you have a wholesome and an unwholesome quality in the mind at the same time? Yeah, So you've had a wholesome and an unwholesome quality in the mind at the same time. Over the long run the wholesome wins, Right? So we don't have to get rid of the unwholesome qualities, That's the most important part of this. What we have to do is cultivate wholesome ones and just awareness, Mindfulness is an incredibly wholesome quality. Rick Hansen, The neuropsychologist says that those things that wire together, They fire together wire together. So what's the opposite of anxiety? That's part of your question. Yeah, Yeah. So what's the opposite of anxiety? What are some opposites? Contentment. Confidence. Trust. I'm getting kind of relieved, It's still too hard. Yeah, It's a relief. Aquanimity? Yeah. Aquanimity. You know I'm intrigued if there's enough spaciousness for that energy, That anxious feelings are a lot grosser than, You know on retreat I feel like there's a lot more spaciousness and wholesome qualities and it moves through a lot more fluid, But when I'm churning out the day to day at work and you know presentations and meetings and stuff, It's just getting up, You know like there's less wholesome qualities and it's more dominant and I find it a lot more challenging. That's why I like to go on retreats. But I find that the more meditating that I get in situations like this, That's extremely important, And the more you meditate, Particularly in this style, The six R's begin to kick in. And the difficulty with anxiety in a lot of those is we tend to get hooked into the storylines and the storylines are usually not capable of resolving it because they have actually, Storylines have very little energy. Storylines have about that much energy. I mean, I'm not sure if that's the right word to say, But I think it's a good way to get hooked into the storylines. If you can just feel the anxiety energetically, Bodily, Etc. And just a part of you, Even at work, Even for just a moment, Wow, I'm really anxious, But just, It's sort of like that thing we were doing the other day with the dropping. You know, If you can just, For a moment, Just actually drop it to get clear and then it may kick right back in because everybody's screaming for the reports or something like that, But even just to break the trance of it for a moment to get a little bit of space, It begins to set something going inside that will help untangle it. I've been working with executives in particular, Begin to develop all kinds of tricks. So, One trick is before, You're sending emails all the day, Before you send an email, You pause and you have a phrase or a word or something that you've decided on to just take a moment to reflect, Take a breath, Notice your body, And then send the email. So that you want to find triggers. Every time you're going to get ready to make a phone call, You pause. So you use devices that interrupt the anxiety generating, Where it starts to accumulate over and over. And so there's all kinds of little tricks like that that interrupt. Like Pat gave me this thing called a pause on my wrist, So every hour it just slightly pauses to remind me, And I have a phrase that I just sit back for a moment and take a breath, And then I go on. So it's just trying to interrupt that unconscious generation that we do to ourselves. When I had a staff, I would go into the office about half hour early, Light up my computer, And I would just meditate for the next twenty or twenty-five minutes, And then the staff starts trickling in and all of a sudden the data is just happening. And they think you're working on a computer all of a sudden. You know, It's like, No, No, No, Absolutely. I'd be an ajana, Honestly. So the idea there was, That became my meditation space, It came out of need because I came back from a retreat and I just went, I'm not going to live this way anymore. I'm in this office with these crazy people. So I just went in there and it just became my thought. And as it went on through the months I kept doing that. And even my CFO came in one day and went, You know Jordan, It's really been nice working with you. I really enjoyed it. And it's like, It just, And instead of taking that from home and going to this place, I actually kind of transformed that chair into that space and it really transformed that. And also I made sure I got that 20, 25, 30 minutes of practice in the morning. And maybe by 5. 30 it was worn out, But boy it stayed a lot of the day. And every time I sat in that chair it was like jauncy, You know this is a rocket ship to the fifth jaunner or something. I mean, It's a great idea. So the companies that are bringing mindfulness in, One of the basic things besides teaching the person, Every meeting they stop and everybody just for a minute or two just centers and gets mindful and then proceeds with the meeting to break again that activity thing that we all get caught into. Now, They're going to create a virtual reality system that you put the goggles on and all day long you walk around here with a wonderful watch. Do you read my email? No. Right here, Right? And so to take all that, Because I think all those mechanisms are helpful and the simplest one of them all, This is about taking it back out there, Is just as often as you think of it, Just pay attention to what the qualities in the mind heart are at that moment. And what that does, And then you can have grosser mechanisms that help break in when you've just been off for a long time, But brings the mindfulness in more often and you can't sustain it. So what's actually more important is just come back lightly and do as much as you can because if you try too hard to do it, You just burn out all your energy and wear out and the whole thing collapses. So just keep on doing that lightly and then building other mechanisms, Etc. That help. Okay, So it's getting on towards 8 o'clock. Any final comments? Do you want to sing a song? Yeah, Yeah. So, You know, You asked at the very beginning about tomorrow night. Right. Kind of as we've talked about this, What is, You know, We're doing the meditation, But the goal, If you will, Is this awakening. So what are the characteristics, The process, The movement of working with that awakening in our daily lives? Seems to me that that might be really useful as we go back on the retreat. Yeah, Yeah. Other thoughts about tomorrow? Just integration in daily life for people who aren't going to be awakened within 24 hours. I have a separate question not related to tomorrow. It's just psychological problems in general. Which ones can't be solved through meditation or some sort of internal awareness and alleviating certain traumas? Where do you find it? I can give you an example of what happens when introspection doesn't work. Say you grew up in a family where anger just wasn't handled. Maybe people blown up all the time or maybe it's completely suppressed, Etc. And so you grow up kind of afraid of anger. It's just that you're not at all comfortable with it. Well when you go out in the world you actually need access to anger. Somebody comes up and stands on your foot and says, You're on my foot. And they don't notice. Sometimes it takes some push. So if you don't feel you have access to anger, Say anger is a force that creates space, Can help move through energetic barriers, Can help connect. If you don't have that then the world becomes a pretty scary place because there's all the stuff that can come at you. And so you sit down to meditate and this anxiety comes up about how scary the world is. Or even if you're not sure it is. And you can meditate introspectively on that anxiety for twenty years without it moving. Because the problem is not the anxiety, The problem is the anger. So one of the things I do with that one when I see that is I encourage people, And it doesn't take much, To just once a day, Maybe for five minutes, Just sit down and have an internal dialogue with the anger. Why are you always scaring me? I don't like you. I'm not doing anything. I don't like you. You're really mean. And so it kind of stirs that up a little bit and you begin to feel the anger. Then when you go back into your meditation it becomes more available and it can begin to move. But just introspection alone sometimes won't get at it. So a lot of what's. . . It's sort of deep that the internal anger you've internalized is so suppressed because you're uncomfortable with it. Right. It's not that you can't be angry in day to day life. Your internal anger is just completely inaccessible because you're so uncomfortable with the idea. So if you're in a situation where it actually needs some. . . That wisdom would be a certain amount of forcefulness. If you sort of unconsciously realize that's actually not so much available to me then there's a lot more. . . The world becomes a lot scarier. But wouldn't you also say that I may not have awareness or access? Don't I need a therapist or someone that would help me begin to become aware and to see what the access points are? Right. So that's another aspect of it. That's actually relational. Some of it's your own relational stuff. And some of it is just a fair, Wise, Heartful, Clear witness that can reflect back. That's part I think in the Buddha system why the Sangha was so important. So you were talking about the internal system. And so they're saying there's a building process and that there's a movement through the psychological as part of the developmental movement toward awakening. Isn't that true? Yeah. I mean the way I think of it is that in the West we have much more appreciation of the complexity and the intricacies of the delusions we live in. But we forget that it's a delusion and the goal is actually to step out of it. In the East there's much, Often times a clearer sense that we're actually living in delusion but sometimes not appreciation of how fierce the mechanisms can be. So back to Chris' question, It becomes a psycho-spiritual dynamic of that opening. Right. And what I would say is when I look inside myself I don't see psychological and spiritual. There's just the stuff that's going on. And from the outside there are different models and different approaches that come at it. But the stuff here is just what it is. I don't think you have to but I think it's really helpful. Does meditation somehow equalize that energy without having to actually fully live it in a way? Or do you need to like… I'm a trained bioenergetic therapist that works directly with body energy and a lot of it was because I just needed it myself. I was so doled out. People that could work with a musketure and stuff had to free that up and bring it up. And so I ended up with this model that what you have to do is get the energy inside and get it and move with it and act it out, Etc. Etc. But as I went on over the years I realized that that's not actually what it is. It's the awareness. And if I have this thought that I'm angry and that can be very muted but if I'm out there whacking stuff on the tennis racket then I feel it energetically on its own terms and so it's actually the awareness of what's going on that really heals it. And those expressive therapies for people like me and stuff that were really kind of shut down can be really really helpful because if you sit there and talk quietly about it it just doesn't get at the energy. But if you're sitting in meditation and you can feel that early anger and all that stuff and you're not fighting it, You're just kind of opening it up, In a sense just relaxing into it even if it takes you for a ride for a while. That allows it to come forth and to actually release. But the human capacity, The power of what we call our imagination, The capacity to actually be fully in something when we're not actually acting out is quite remarkable. And so if that gets shut down then you need to act it out to activate that but if you can really feel the energy on its own terms. And it doesn't necessarily even mean going back into the storyline but if it's something that has very young origins then when it comes up you'll just know it has those origins. You don't have to analyze it or do anything, It just becomes really clear and allow it to move and just be with it. So that totally makes sense to me what you're saying, If you were able to experience those things just through awareness and just be with it, You can work through it, That makes sense. I noticed for me with my static dance practice it seems like certain things I've become aware of that never come up during meditation for whatever reason as I'm moving. So for those kinds of things would you say that it's just a matter of time with meditation as I go deeper those will naturally come up or are there certain kinds of things in the body that generally don't seem to come up for people at all? I think with a fully developed meditation practice all of it would come out and I think that sometimes there are other techniques that actually move a little bit faster. And so if you just want to get on with it you may find all kinds of different tools that actually help move stuff along. Got it. But as you go through full awakening everything generally will come out? Right. Totally free of it. And it's, I'm just hesitating because I'm just working with the model, Everything coming out is actually the awareness goes into everything. You know there are no more secrets even from yourself. And yeah. Well remember I mean yuriokī so that is a meditation practice when we do yuriokī and ecstatic dance is like the Jyotirvādī movement or sufi movement. Those are all meditative spaces to openness. Different body types respond to different kinds of meditative structure. I guess I was thinking of like when I said meditation I was thinking like sitting meditation but you're totally right. Yeah. Raja Nishe used to have an expressive dance every evening. So did Dharavāmza another meditation teacher and they would do your six o'clock sitting until eight thirty and then they would dance for an hour. Just reckless abandon. Stop the music and sit again. And in the book that I talked about there with the brain they say that the dance and the meditation opens up the brain in places for enlightenment almost faster than just sitting. So all those things are really important. An extra treat. Pardon? An extra treat. Dance. But it's not only dance I mean music. Music. The artists as a whole are really the music. They act the same. Part of this picture that Poonaji talks about he says meditation exercises are for normal people to become extraordinarily normal. But it's not therapy. The Eightfold Path is a sequence and meditation really starts on the fifth step with what we call harmonious practice or right effort. What are your thoughts about that? Well as I was talking about the first couple nights I don't think the Eightfold Path is for beginners. I think the beginning is turning towards understanding suffering, Recognizing the tension, Relaxing that, Savoring the neurota and then when it gets stuck then you have the whole other sets of things that helps loosen it up. But to pick up on the theme that we've been talking about a lot, The research on this stuff that people really want to move through this stuff is working with multiple modalities. Different ones work for different people but any one will have its limitations. And meditation I think again done well can take you all the way all by itself but it may not move as quickly as if you're working some other things at the same time. And the difficulty, And this is really a live issue for me in terms of what to do with retreats, I'm almost convinced I may bring my guitar in my next one and this actually brings some singing and some other things in. The difficulty comes in is that while working on different modalities can be very effective, Some don't actually work well together. The most I've example is fasting can be an incredibly cleansing. When I haven't eaten for three or four days my body energy goes way down but it's also my mental resistance and you just kind of see everything more clearly. Meditation is very, Very effective and fasting on a retreat I think is ineffective because meditation takes a lot of energy if you don't have the body. So there is something about looking at the effects of how these practices work together. But I think in terms of being out of what you do with your life and stuff you just kind of experiment and see what works. And anybody who says that they've got the practice and this is it and it's the only one that will save you, You just kind of smile and move along. I had a friend of mine that set up an introduction to Est at her house and talked me into coming. And so we sat down. Is everybody who asked you? Est is one of these high powered motivational speakers and I think of Est as sort of breaking ego with ego. And so it became landmark. It was a precursor to landmark. Yeah because Est got so extreme and so they sort of rebranded it. But this woman was talking about this practice would do something that you're not going to find anything else like it. And so I was listening to all this and kind of taking it in and said well have you ever done therapy? She said no. Have you ever taken psychedelics? No. Have you ever done body work? Well no. I went through about four or five of them and I said we haven't done anything but ask how do you know and nothing else will work. And I think all of us have different gifts and proclivities and they work better for us and so I am just a real believer in empirical trials. Try and think of that. See what works. Use your own intuitive sensing with it. And I have enough spiritual greed that if it tends to work I'll run with it for a while. What the heck. Life is short. Somebody told me once. Do you know the Reverend Heng Chu from the 10, 000 Buddhist monastery in South Africa? He did the 10, 000 kilometers of bowing. Every six steps he did. Every six steps he did. His Dharma talks. He just plays a guitar. He does occasionally, He does do some dialogue, Some talking but it's mostly transmission of the Dharma through music. So is he any good? Yeah he's amazing. I'm not that musically inclined but he's really a musician. So is he. And his name and his mind state? I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. Heng is a westerner and he was from the 10, 000 great Buddhist monastery. It's like a Chinese monastery. It's just a mine near Clearway. It'll be went through? You remember? Near Clearway? It was in LA? Yep. Is that near Los Angeles? No no it's in Northern California. Up above? I think it's in Tennessee. Yeah up near Mendocino. Is that where we saw Shogar Rinpoche? No no no. It's that big beautiful temple sitting out in nowhere. Remember? Have you been there? No but I know of it. It's kind of a private space. He had an invitation. Oh. Yeah and he went from there to LA stopping every six feet and doing prospersions. No really? To LA. Just like they do in Tibet. What are they doing in Tibet? How did I miss that? So Chris coming back to your question, My rule of thumb is getting as clear as I can of what is it that's going on in my life right now. What am I feeling? What's experiencing? I'm talking with people to say I actually know my natural next step. See I don't think there's a formula. But there's my natural step that I'm taking and the gift of this period of time we're in is that there's all these resources that are available and we've got to connect to ourselves. What is this? You know for Eric it may be now, Wow singing, Does he start taking lessons? What is it that's pulling inside you? That's where the next healing, That's where the next opening is going to come in your life. I've been a critic of all the programs because programs are saying go through this program and you'll become this or a different person. Well that program might be right for you as a next step but it's not going to fulfill all that is your path. So just what Doug is saying, Experiment but I'm saying experiment with that which is pulling you. What's pulling you is what's important. Yeah and I always think energetically there's a difference between what pushes you and what draws you. And the push usually comes more from fear and you can get hooked on that but actually feeling what the draw is. Okay, Okay, I think so let's just take a moment and just be aware of a couple of your opposites. And just sit with them and open up to those opposites together. And allow there to be a lot of space around them. They're not to be resolved, Not to be fixed, Just to be known. May all beings know their expansiveness, May all beings trust more and more deeply what draws them. May all beings know the peace that is behind all that we experience. May all beings know the freedom that comes when we don't hold so tightly to our sense of self. May all beings be free of a self. May it be so. May all beings be free of the self.