Wisdom Talk By Enrique Collazo On Cultivating A Positive Attitude

Enrique Collazo speaks at a wisdom talk at iBme's Pacific Northwest retreat in 2018. Enrique discusses how to accept oneself and cultivate a positive attitude. This talk is highly motivating and invites us to recognise and unlock our sheer power and wisdom within.

Transcript

Good evening,

Everyone.

I can see your beautiful faces.

You courageous warriors.

That's right.

I'm glad we stopped at that.

So this is the period for the wisdom talk.

I've titled this talk Positive Mental Attitude,

How to Cultivate a Positive Mental Attitude,

Or How to Cultivate Your Own Superpowers.

Through working with this acronym RAIN.

Snap,

Have you heard of RAIN?

The RAIN is an acronym that's Recognize,

Accept,

Investigate.

The N is non-identification,

Not to identify with.

Another way of putting it is letting go.

Me and some of my old drug addict friends like to say RAIL.

Yeah,

Anyways.

So,

Marty,

You're not a good starter here.

So,

Four step process that can be used in any place,

In any situation.

And I so see this practice of mindfulness,

The capacity for presence,

This what we have,

We don't need to get from anywhere else.

It's deeply within us.

That's a special thing that we,

It is our birthright.

It's also a superpower.

The capacity to,

And we can take this wherever we go,

Cut through confusion,

Stress,

And gets to the deepest truth.

What's happening right now.

So recognize.

What's happening?

So part of that for me is just like recognizing what this practice is about.

And this is one way of looking at it.

Not the way,

But one way.

He says,

Let us be perfectly clear that in order to take this mindfulness approach,

It is not necessary for you to adopt a creed,

To sacrifice your religion or transform yourself into some new person.

You simply must have faith in the possibility that understanding your suffering or your struggle can bring about a radical change in how you experience life.

In other words,

You must suspend your doubts long enough to see for yourself what you are capable of realizing.

At the same time,

You should not underestimate this challenge as it demands that you voluntarily show up for your own suffering,

Struggle with no agenda other than knowing the truth of it.

There's a quote,

This woman,

I forget her name,

But she says,

The truth will set you free,

But it'll piss you off first.

Anyone experience that?

It's like,

Huh.

And so recognizing also,

You know,

I spoke to it before and I'll briefly touch on it.

Just recognizing also is for me,

It's just like waking up.

I'm just noticing what's happening.

And it's counter to the typical sleepwalking autopilot that I'm on,

Just being pushed around by my habits and patterns and my conditioning and just kind of,

We know this experience of autopilot,

Right?

We're planning on going somewhere else,

But we're always going home.

We usually go home in this direction and we're not paying attention.

All of a sudden I'm like,

Oh,

I wasn't meant to be here.

So this way of kind of sleepwalking through life.

Diana Winston puts it this way,

Just the busyness of life.

Contemporary America,

We love fast things,

Fast cars,

Fast meals,

Microwaves,

One night stands,

Instant credit,

Overnight express,

Cable modems,

Amphetamines,

Pizza delivery.

What did we do before email?

I don't have time to write letters,

Read books,

Visit my friends,

Play with my little brother,

Kiss,

Touch,

Sigh,

Dance,

Relate,

Eat ice cream,

Make music,

Cook,

Pray,

Smell,

Meditate,

Take a long walk.

Oh my goodness,

Make it all stop.

I don't have time.

It's running out.

I'm running fast and furiously.

I want it to stop.

Ouch.

It's painful.

Why won't it stop?

Can you make it stop?

Oh my gosh,

What's wrong with this country?

We have all gone crazy.

We're insane.

We've lost touch.

We've lost touch.

We've got to stop this endless running about.

All I want to do is slow down,

Just crawl into bed,

Rock myself to sleep.

Not this craziness.

Not this.

Please somebody,

You've got to help me stop.

That's what I was mentioning,

Right?

Come here and we have an opportunity to slow down and stop and recognize what's happening.

And then this kind of,

You know,

It goes in both ways,

Right?

As we're sitting in our cushions or our chairs,

We get to kind of really recognize what's happening.

We get to see clearly.

As I love the mind jar,

Is that what you call it,

Christina?

It's just like as it starts to settle,

We start to see clearly.

We start to really recognize.

But we have to give ourselves this space just to be.

What a precious gift,

Right?

Just being.

Another one.

It says,

The best adjusted person in our society is the person who is not dead and not alive,

Just numb,

A zombie.

When you are dead,

You are not able to do the work of the society.

When you are fully alive,

You are constantly saying no to many of the processes of society,

The racism,

The polluted environment,

The nuclear threat,

The arms race,

The drinking unsafe water,

The eating and eating carcinogenic foods.

Thus,

It is in the interest of our society to promote those things that take off the edge,

Keep us busy with our fixes and keep us slightly numbed out and zombie like.

In this way,

Our modern consumer society itself functions as an addict.

So what this path is asking us to do is to go against the stream.

And I heard some of that earlier this week.

It's like we're going against the status quo.

We are,

You know,

Swimming upstream and it's not easy because we're being bombarded by this culture.

It's thick conditioning.

Everywhere I look,

There's billboards and messages and magazines and media and all these things telling me a certain thing,

A message.

And basically the message is there's something wrong with you.

You're not whole.

Go back to sleep.

Don't pay attention.

You're zombie like.

And I don't know about you.

I was always,

I wasn't always.

I became a fighter in my neighborhood.

I learned to fight.

I was actually really sensitive,

Big hearted little boy,

Probably more sensitive than most.

But I learned to fight.

And it became a thing.

My weapon,

My survival mechanism.

And when I got sober and I got into practice,

Person who was mentoring me said that you can still fight,

But it's just a different fight.

Yeah.

It's a good fight.

It's a revolution.

It's the heart of the revolution.

But I take,

I find out what really matters to me and I go off on this journey and I use the weapons of compassion and forgiveness and integrity and kindness.

And I use those.

Those are my weapons now.

I'm a strong dude.

Like I can throw around a lot of weight,

But my strength has nothing to do with my physical capacities.

I believe my strength comes from my willingness to wear my heart on my sleeve and to be vulnerable.

And we wake up and we recognize that we're right where we're supposed to be.

And I was just a part of the process.

I was just a part of the process.

I was just a part of the process.

I feel like I just kept feeling I was veering off the path and what I realized that all those bumps and bruises and falling down and or just a part of the path that that was all a part of the process to get over the wall that I had to touch it.

It may be that when you no longer know what to do,

We have come to our real work.

And when we no longer know which way to go,

We have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

This last part is the impeded.

The things that seem that they're getting in the way is the chorus.

It's the one that sings.

This is a part of the path.

You know,

When I came to this path,

I was so desperate to find something real.

I was so I just didn't want to be let down one more time.

You know that I was the you know society was selling me all these things that I was I was trying.

A lot of it was through sense pleasures,

Right?

Just like feeling good.

I was on this feel good project and I was let down every time.

And I was in a sense of like I wanted to be happy and I was just really confused about how to achieve happiness.

And I just was and I tell you,

Obviously,

13 years later,

This path,

Mindfulness practice has not let me down.

And what I also was a big realization and insights,

You know,

So this happiness project that I was on was me trying to create the conditions,

Fixing the conditions,

Whether it was where I lived or who I was hanging around with or all these things and moving different places.

And in the 12 step program,

We call this like this geographic.

And it's like it's the place.

It's the people.

It's the environment that's causing my suffering.

And I move and everywhere I went,

I went with myself.

Right.

Wherever you go,

There you are.

And when I started this practice,

I started to pay attention more to my relationship to the conditions.

And what I mean by that is that I realize that the conditions aren't the cause of my suffering.

And if you sit with that for a second,

These conditions aren't the cause of my suffering.

That's how I'm relating to what's happening.

It's not the person next to me breathing really loud.

It's not the food.

It's not the I know it's hard to believe.

I know.

I know.

Oh,

That you're doing the briefs.

Yes.

I'm not suffering in my relationship to that.

Thank you for that.

Right.

So it's these things.

It's like how how am I relating to what's happening?

I'm hearing someone.

The story basically there was like I think there's on a monastery and there's this like monk that was kind of just walking along and just kind of checking in with people.

It's like how you doing?

And if someone says cool,

You know,

They know he's like cool.

And he's kind of he's I imagine that is the Yoda because he's kind of the chuckles and kind of walks away with this cane and he comes up on someone.

He's like,

How you doing?

Checking in with them.

And he's just like suffering.

And he said,

Must be attached and like walked away.

Must be attached.

It's like,

What am I holding on to?

Now,

It's a it's a bold statement.

Right.

It's heavy.

But when you really look at it,

It's just like as when I and I will I will distinguish a couple of things.

Pain and suffering pain unavoidable.

But the pain of being a human being,

I'm going to get sick.

We're going to have we have a nervous system.

It's going to hurt.

We're going to be met with things that we don't like.

We're going to lose things that we do like and love.

That's the pains of being a human being unavoidable.

The extra layer is not accepting those things.

It's needing those things to be other than what they are.

So when I say suffering,

That's what I mean.

There's a story also about the two arrows.

So it's like one arrow is the first.

It's the unavoidable pain.

I get shot with this arrow.

Ouch.

But if I'm not paying attention,

If I'm just kind of moving through with these same habits and patterns,

I continue to stick myself with arrows.

Why is this happening?

Shouldn't be happening.

Why me?

The staying ticket,

Whatever it is,

All this might my kind of the mundane parts of life.

I get a ticket.

I aligned.

Whatever the person not doing what they want them to do.

I do that a lot,

Too.

I rest my happiness on the way other people act.

Right.

And when they do that,

That happiness on that.

And when I do that,

I'm screwed because no one ever acts right.

In my mind,

In my mind,

No one ever really acts right.

So it's really becomes really empowering when I think,

Oh,

I am not going to let you be in charge of my happiness.

I take that power back.

That's the superpower.

Right.

That's right.

Bathing and telling the story.

Anyway,

So I'm going to do it.

So it's a sad story.

It's a samurai.

Walks in the forest and think about like,

You know,

1400 years ago,

Whatever,

Walking through and comes up along this little monk.

And the samurai,

You know,

Things about samurai are just like warriors tough.

And he goes sees this little monk and he's just like,

Teach me about heaven and hell.

The monk is just like,

Teach you.

I'm going to teach you shit.

Look at you.

Your sword is rusty.

Your armor is all messed up.

And if you know anything about samurai culture,

That is super disrespectful.

And they don't deal with this effectively well.

So he goes to pull out his sword and chop this little innocent monk's head off.

And in that moment,

This monk says,

This is hell.

And in that moment,

The samurai realizes that this little monk just risked his life to teach him something.

And he releases.

And the monk says,

This is heaven.

He's like letting go.

This is a way of like the anger,

The violence,

The needing things to be different.

You see now,

I don't see them as external.

I see them as internal states.

All right.

Pay attention to my time here.

OK.

Acceptance.

Just accept it.

Ever heard of that?

Just accept it.

Fuck you.

Just accept it.

That's just like one of the hardest things ever to be done.

Right.

It's just like,

It's not easy.

Just accepting it.

That's just not the way it works.

The first step to change is accepting your reality right now.

Honoring your process.

Compassionate self-awareness leads to change.

Harsh self-criticism holds the patterns in place,

Creating a stubborn and defensive basic self.

Be gentle with yourself as you would with a child.

Be gentle but firm.

Give yourself space to grow.

So we're being asked to,

So in the context of our mindfulness practice,

OK,

Recognize.

You recognize what's happening.

We accept it.

And another way of accepting it is allowing it.

Can I,

We've been using this phrase and we've been talking about this all week,

Right.

So can I allow what's happening to exist?

Can I just allow it to exist?

One of my teachers has,

He talks about envisioning himself as the bouncer at a club.

And he's like,

You know,

He's got the velvet rope.

Anyone ever been to those kind of clubs?

Is that just an old school thing?

Maybe.

Anyway,

So you guys are here.

Just imagine it.

Maybe you've seen it in movies.

Anyway.

So it's just like this bouncer at the club.

He's like,

OK,

You can come in,

You can come in,

You can come in,

You can come in.

No,

No,

No.

You stay out.

Right.

And what happens,

What I realize is that when you're talking about emotions,

Right,

That actually they're not going anywhere.

When I try to push certain things away,

Certain emotions,

The painful,

Difficult,

Bad that I call them,

Emotions,

I push them away and I think I'm getting rid of them.

And whatever I used to do it numbing out,

Suppressing,

Controlling,

Medicating.

And they stay there.

They don't actually go anywhere.

They just hang out.

And what the thing is that they're just actually waiting for us to allow them in and tend to them.

Have you ever watched Family Guy?

Old episodes.

Yeah.

Where Stewie was just like,

Lois,

Lois,

Mommy,

Mom,

Mama,

Mommy,

Mommy,

Mom,

Mommy,

Lois.

Like and she's just kind of trying to rest and like relax.

She's like,

What?

Yeah.

It's just like that.

It's just screaming for our attention.

She's like,

Pay attention to me.

I'm a part of you.

I'm not separate from you.

The sadness,

The grief,

The pain,

The loneliness,

That is a part of us.

You don't have to push those away.

We get to accept that as a part of this human process.

And we bring it in.

When we have the compassion muscle trained,

We get to tend to those things.

It's like,

Oh,

When we bring it in,

We allow it to exist.

And what happens in my experience,

That's the healing process.

It heals and it has its.

So when we allow things to exist,

Everything has a birth,

A life and a death.

Birth,

Life,

Death.

Everything is constantly changing.

If we allow it to,

But it can get stuck and get stuck in our bodies and it causes physical conditions.

It causes addiction.

This is in its most extreme case,

Pushing away from pain and craving for pleasure.

That's addiction.

So we allow things in.

We learn to.

Slowly but surely we learn to allow things back in.

And we tend to them.

Another thing around acceptance is,

You know,

This kind of everything changes is good news and bad news.

It's good news.

And when we realize that impermanence,

Everything changes for the hard stuff.

Right.

Good.

This is going to change.

This is going to pass.

It's not great news when you're enjoying yourself.

Right.

This is pleasant.

Right.

If anyone's ever been on retreat,

It's just like that changes.

Right.

And so we learn to accept the change.

How often can we turn a moment of pleasure into the moment of pain.

Right.

And I think about it like this.

It's like holding onto a rope that's moving and you hold on and it's rope burn.

Right.

And what we're being asked to do is have this kind of open home and walk through life really saying hello.

Goodbye.

Hello.

Goodbye.

But this is going to change.

I'm going to accept.

And this is and I know.

It's so hard.

But I get to see this is one of my you know,

Like it's like I was just at a concert the other day last month and it was like the last song at the concert.

Everyone had that experience a lot.

You're just enjoying yourself.

And it's just like,

Yes,

This is the best.

I'm seeing Eric about do and it was just so good.

And and then the last song I knew was the last song.

And I just went straight to suffering.

And that was the song was amazing.

But I was lost in the future already.

It was just like change was hadn't even happened yet.

It wasn't even the end of the song.

And I was just like and I was holding on.

But then that moment of recognition,

That mindfulness moment,

I was just like,

Oh,

You're holding on.

Let's let go.

It's OK.

That's going to change.

And I was with it and I was present and it was so juicy and beautiful and yummy and just like,

Yes,

I feel it.

Yeah,

I'm talking about the song.

Yeah,

Like it's a kid.

That's right.

And I could feel it in every cell of my being.

And it was just like,

Yes,

Deep acceptance allows me to be present for what's happening.

I'm present for a relationship,

My connection,

Present for the ebbs and flows of life.

I'm actually really well.

Let me read this.

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes the duets of wonder and grief.

The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fiber of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat.

The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I've lost in the next room,

In the next song,

In the laugh of the next stranger.

In the very center under it all,

But we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other.

It is there that I am adrift,

Feeling punctured by holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

And so we try to find the beauty in change.

We try,

We do our best.

It's not easy.

So the thing is reality,

When I fight reality and I do that a lot,

Reality always wins.

So I surrender,

I let go.

I realize that this holding on is causing my suffering,

My stress.

And I know that I,

If I'm the one that has locked me into this cage of suffering,

That I have the key.

Like that's the good news,

That we have the key.

And we can unlock ourselves out of this prison of preferences.

We begin to see the beauty.

We begin to accept also that we have no idea what we're supposed to learn from certain things.

That we think that something is happening and that this is either good or bad.

So basically there's this farmer and he's got a son and he's got this little farm and he's got one horse.

And that horse escapes at night.

Somehow just escapes and runs off.

And all the neighboring farmers are like,

Man,

You're screwed.

How are you supposed to tend to your harvest?

And the old wise farmer,

He's like,

We'll see.

We'll see if it's good or bad.

What happens the next morning is that their horse brings back a pack of wild horses.

So now they have a bunch of horses.

And then the farmers are like,

The other neighbor,

Oh my God,

You just got hooked up.

You are so lucky.

And the farmer's like,

We'll see.

We'll see if this is good or bad.

And so his son goes and tries to tame one of the wild horses and he gets bucked off.

And the son breaks his leg and the farmer,

You know what they say,

You're screwed.

Because the strong son is the one that does a lot of the work.

And the farmer's like,

We'll see.

The neighboring army comes through collecting all the able-bodied men.

The son can't go.

We'll see.

Just this attitude of just like,

We'll see.

You just don't know what we're supposed to learn,

What we're supposed to get from each moment,

Each experience.

Let's see.

Investigate.

So in our sitting practice,

We're sitting,

We're recognizing what's happening,

We're allowing it to exist,

And we're investigating it.

So the investigation part is bringing that curiosity.

It's like,

Oh,

Okay,

So we've talked about this,

This pain.

This thing I don't like,

This pain,

And this thing that feels constant also.

And I'm talking about what's made physical pain.

There's a lot of different examples.

I use the common in my own experience with the numbing of the leg or the physical sitting pain.

And we get to investigate,

And we get to kind of go into it and see what it really is and what it's made of.

And so it's tingling,

And it's vibrating,

And it's heat,

And it's actually moving,

And it's actually not constant.

And I get to see it for what it is,

And it's just sensation.

It's just unpleasant.

And I get to investigate.

I get to investigate this mind-body process,

This being human,

The nature of being human,

The breath and the body,

And all that makes up this mind and this whole process.

I get to become really curious and investigate.

And it can seem like,

You know,

As we start to investigate,

As we start to pay more attention,

Doesn't it have a flavor of like,

This is way more than I bargained for?

Anyone have that sense?

It's like,

I come here,

Maybe I was going to learn how to relax.

This is a little bit more than I bargained for.

And for me,

What I found is when I came in here,

I came in with all my old habits and patterns.

They weren't left at the door.

They came with me,

And I got to watch these things,

These things that I had been avoiding and suppressing and ignoring for so long.

And then I come in here,

And then it's like,

I'm seeing it all.

And it can feel like,

I don't know if anyone's had this experience,

But it can feel like things are getting worse.

This is actually making things worse.

Anyone feel like that?

No,

It's not making it work.

We're just shining a light on our conditioning.

And as we shine this light,

Then we can see,

It's like,

OK,

Let's pay attention to this.

Let's do some healing here.

Let's do some healing there.

Let's allow this to exist.

Let's work with that so we get to see all these things that have been hidden in the dark.

Someone puts it this way.

It says,

Mindfulness practices like a deep tissue massage for your mind.

And it just,

Over time,

Makes its way to the places that hurt.

And we are surprised by that as meditators,

That that is not what we had bargained for.

I mean,

Who would get into a practice that is like a painful massage?

But just like a painful massage,

It's an element of pleasure in that that's why people pay money for it.

That's why I love massages.

I don't know about y'all,

But I pay good money for a deep tissue massage.

There is an element of pleasure in this deep tissue massage of the mind.

This is actually the mindfulness spreading into different parts of our life.

And it's not always comfortable,

But there is some appreciation for the sense of integration that life is becoming more and more one piece.

So this is just being able to somehow,

For me,

Just find the pleasure in this painful process.

And what I mean by that is this,

Here's maybe a good example.

It's just like,

I remember the first time I really,

Really allowed myself to feel,

Like really breathe and really just be,

Like cry.

And I remember there was a moment,

Like there was also this flavor of joy.

I was so sad,

But it was also this flavor of joy because I was just,

Oh my gosh,

You are feeling,

Finally.

Finally feeling.

Because you know,

The thing about,

For me,

I think I've mentioned this,

My drug addiction,

The thing about numbing out my pain was I was also numbing out my joy.

I was also,

It was just numbing out life.

And so as I start to live life on the natch,

I experience extreme bliss and pleasures and extreme pain.

And just this both,

And this is what life is,

And it's this kind of,

And everything in between,

The sorrow and the joy.

And I get to continue to show up for that and allow myself to be a whole human being.

And what we're also investigating is our intrinsic value.

And that we're realizing,

And that I realize that there's nothing wrong with me.

And that I am wholly good.

And that yes,

I may have learned some habits and patterns that aren't so skillful.

And yes,

I may have caused pain to other people and myself.

But that pain,

Those things that I were doing were not coming from wisdom.

They were coming from confusion and pain and fear.

But underneath all of that stuff,

All the ways that I protected myself,

All the armoring that I put on this heart,

Underneath all of that is goodness.

It's beauty.

Intrinsic means you can't eff it up.

Like that's the definition,

Dictionary,

Look it up.

You can't eff it up.

But that's what it means.

No,

I'm kidding.

Intrinsic.

You can't mess it up.

You can't.

And I'm just picturing myself hearing this.

It's hard to believe.

It bounces off.

And this is the science around the mind.

It's velcro for the harshness and the negativity and the bad stuff.

Teflon for the good,

The reminders of your goodness might just be bouncing off.

But eventually you hear it enough.

I love this phrase,

As I came into recovery and I got sober,

I hated myself and I didn't love myself.

And there was this way that this kind of adage is,

Let us love you until you can love yourself.

And so you're here with a bunch of people who are unconditionally loving you.

Yes,

I'm holding lots of boundaries and redirecting and all these things,

But I love you.

I care about you.

Yes,

We're just getting to know each other,

But in your life might not look anything like mine.

You might have a lot of differences,

But what I do know is that you're a human being just like me.

That you want to be happy just like me.

That you have challenges and difficulties in your life just like me.

And I've learned to love myself.

And so because I can love myself,

I can love you.

I'm going to investigate and we become curious.

And I let go of some things that I don't really need.

There are laws of our inner world that bind each of us as firmly as gravity.

Beliefs we carry about ourselves and about life in general that we experience as true in all conditions and at all times.

A feeling of personal unworthiness is one such inner law.

One moment of unconditional love may call into question a lifetime of feeling unworthy and invalidated.

One moment of unconditional love,

Right?

That's what you're getting.

And this is hopefully calling into question a lifetime of feeling unworthy.

Investigate.

And non-identification.

Last part.

I recently went to Costa Rica to kind of learn Spanish.

I'm obviously,

Obviously,

But I'm a Latin.

My mom was born in Peru.

My dad's Puerto Rican.

I'm Latin American.

But I don't know Spanish.

I didn't learn growing up.

So I went to go learn Spanish for a little bit.

And there's an interesting thing.

Thanks.

There's an interesting thing.

It was courageous.

It's harder than I thought,

By the way.

So there's this thing that instead of saying I am hungry,

They say hunger has arisen.

Hunger is arising.

So the point I'm trying to get is like as these things arise,

Anger or sadness or whatever pain,

We like for,

How do I explain this?

It's like we become these things.

Like I am angry.

I am sad.

I am these things.

I identify as these things.

Like this is who I am.

Right?

Nice to meet you,

Hungry.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Nice to meet you,

Too.

So we're trying to let go of not identifying.

This is just what's arising.

It's not who I am.

Right?

And the story,

Big part of this is like letting go of the story of who I think I am.

I don't know about you all,

But this is the stories that I've lived with that I'm unlovable.

I'm unworthy.

I am not smart enough.

No one cares about me.

And yeah,

No one's got my back.

Like just all these stories.

Right?

And so this is these things that I identify with.

You know,

I don't know when you,

I have a roommate and she has a baby and his name is Zavy and he's two and a half years old.

I don't know when the last time anyone's looked into a baby's eyes.

Have you ever looked into a baby's eyes?

And you know what I see when I look into that baby's eyes?

Like a bundle of love,

Like innocence,

Beauty.

And some,

And just in case,

And this baby is a reflection of all of us.

Because just in case you forgot,

Because it is easy to forget,

That's every single one of us.

That innocence,

That beauty,

That love.

But what happens?

We start to get older.

We start to get these messages.

And I mentioned society,

Maybe the people around you.

The society's messages is that there's something you're inherently not whole and you need something outside of yourself to be whole.

Maybe the people around you were telling,

Giving you messages like whatever.

You're too this or you're too that.

Too tall,

Too short.

Too fat,

Too skinny.

Your skin's not dark enough,

It's not light enough.

You're not masculine enough,

You're not feminine enough.

All just different ways of saying you're not good enough.

And if you're anything like me,

Even though I know I'm loved as a baby,

As a child,

I start to get older and I start to hear the unbombarded by all these messages and I forget.

And I look into the mirror and all I see is imperfection.

And I'm in a lot of pain and that pain spills out onto the people around me.

We talk about a place that I work about emotional balloons.

My balloon gets really,

Really full.

Like hurt people hurt people.

My pain spilled out onto the people around me.

Their pain spilled out onto the people around them.

And this is this kind of cycle of pain being passed around.

And what I believe is that we can break that cycle.

And you know how I know that we can break that cycle because of everything I saw y'all doing here this week.

Y'all have done stuff here that most people will never get to do their entire lives.

Courageous,

Powerful,

Resilient young people.

And we get to start to let go of this story.

It's just like we get to realize that we are in a movie theater.

And the story that we're in captured in is just there's a projector and there's lights and there's all these conditions that are coming together to make this story.

But we get to see it clearly and we get to step back and it's like,

Oh no,

I am way more than this story.

That I am whole and that I am good.

Right?

But there's like so much more.

And we have this capacity and we take this and we take this out.

I think about this as just like there's this personal and interpersonal and then relational.

Right?

So this practice is not just about me and my own freedom.

But once I start to get free and then I get to share that with the people around me and I get to,

You know,

It spreads.

Right?

And then not in a like proselytizing,

But we just show up and people become curious.

And when we are stressing out about the things that other people are stressing out about or whatever,

Like people like,

Why are you so chill right now?

You've got to do this mindfulness thing.

Come check it out if you want.

No pressure.

But this is where I go on Monday nights and you can welcome to join me or whatever.

It's just like they see and they watch and they're like,

Oh,

They get become curious.

They're like,

Oh,

There's another way.

It's actually another way to relate to in the world and hate and aversion and greed.

Oh,

Yeah,

There's another way.

We become little superheroes out in the world like X-Men.

Like you don't like means,

Right?

We don't like can't really tell unless you really know.

It's just like we're all out there spread out in the world doing goodness,

Service,

Healing.

And that's why,

You know,

Sometimes I can lose hope.

I can turn on media and just be like,

Fuck,

Another and again or whatever and get really overwhelmed.

But I come to places like this and it just re inspires me and it gives me so much hope.

Like you are not we cannot wait for future leaders.

You are our future leaders.

Like you are the change.

Like I travel,

I work with thousands of young people every year.

Y'all are at the forefront of social change in this country.

It means it's like y'all are the ones that are like racism,

Oppression,

Violence,

Homophobia.

You're the first ones to be speaking out around about that stuff.

But like just I see it and I'm so inspired.

And I'll leave us with that.

Reviews

One the best talks! So inspiring and enlightening. Thank you!

Enrique Collazo’s talk is the realest, live-est, most uplifting journey through life’s challenges and supports I could want. He has come to great personal power through major suffering, and he shares that power with us all—kind, generous, healing, life-affirming, helping me through my suffering too, and onward into great, great joy. I am so grateful!

inspirational. I am coming up on 4 years clean, and struggle with letting go. Thanks for the rain.

EXCELLENT. Thank you so much!

An excellent talk!!!

Such a lovely honest and frank talk. Thank you 😊