Every morning.
When we wake up.
It seems like there's those first few moments where we're kind of orienting ourselves,
Where there's no thought.
And then this broadcast seems to come in.
And it's maybe thinking about what we have to do that day,
What's on the schedule,
How quickly do we need to jump out of bed,
Do we have some time.
And it's a useful broadcast.
It's helpful for us to think about what do we need to do that day.
And you would think after we then get up and we're brushing our teeth and we're showering or eating breakfast,
You would think that the broadcast would start to go quiet and that we would really be there feeling the warm water from the shower.
Tasting our breakfast,
That we would be directly experiencing the world.
We kind of know what the plan is and now we're off doing it.
But the broadcast doesn't go quiet.
Invent.
It just,
It kind of changes,
It kind of morphs.
And going from being useful information for us to interpreting and evaluating and anticipating,
We're now all of a sudden we're We're not just thinking about where do I need to be?
What do I need to do?
It's now like,
I don't want to see that person.
Oh,
If I get stuck talking to them at the meeting,
I'm going to be really upset.
Or,
You know,
What can I say to them to put them in their place?
Or why do I have to do this?
I don't want to do this.
So the broadcasting starts to take on another kind of tone throughout the day.
And now none of us.
Asked for this broadcast.
And none of us knows what the broadcast is.
Is going to be.
And yet,
We all get the broadcast.
And of course,
The broadcast for each of us is a little bit different based on our individual causes and conditions.
But the format.
Is the same for everyone.
That it's all about me.
It's what's going to happen to me.
You know,
What does that mean for me?
How is that going to affect me?
What do they think about me?
It's all about me,
Right?
We could even call it station me.
And so all day long,
Station Me is broadcasting,
It's narrating,
It's interpreting,
It's remembering,
It's anticipating,
It's evaluating.
And it's taking everything that is happening,
Did happen,
Might happen,
Never happened,
And it's imagining that all of this stuff.
.
.
Is happening to me,
That there is a me at the center of all of this experience.
So if we imagine a situation that I think we are all very familiar with.
Where we glance at our phones and then a memory gets triggered that,
Huh,
I haven't heard back from such and such for a while.
And we start thinking like,
Wow,
I texted them several hours ago,
Maybe the previous day.
And all of a sudden,
The broadcast is off,
Right?
And it's thinking,
Oh,
Did I upset her?
Is she angry with me?
What was our last conversation about?
What did I say that could have been so offensive?
Or then we start getting defensive.
And this is really rude and inconsiderate.
And what am I going to say to her when she finally does reply?
Now all of this broadcast.
Came out of one.
Unanswered.
Text.
We got a protagonist,
We got an antagonist,
We got judgment,
We got drama,
We got emotional consequences,
All of this out of.
One unanswered text.
Now the broadcast is not always drama and judgment.
Sometimes the broadcast is We're just thinking about,
Oh,
I did a really good job on that.
Someone praised me for that.
We're kind of thinking about that or looking forward to something in the future.
And thinking in and of itself is not a problem,
Right?
We do need to think.
Not all thinking is bad.
But it is this continuous narrating.
And interpreting of all of our experience in relationship to me and how this is a problem.
For me.
Because the same character.
Appears in virtually every thought.
And after a while.
.
.
That character starts to feel very real.
So all day long,
We're broadcasting.
And we're broadcasting,
Or the broadcasting's happening as though it's reporting back to something,
The character.
So it's reporting back to the character.
About what's happening to the character.
And reinforcing the belief that there is a character there,
That there is a solid,
Independent,
Separate,
Stable,
Continuous me.
That we think.
Is who we are.
But who are we talking to?
When we're when the broadcast is saying,
I'll be so happy when.
Who are we talking to?
Or when we're replaying the conversation over and over,
Wishing we had said this instead of that.
Who are we replaying?
The conversation for.
Because we are assuming.
That the thinking is reporting back.
To a someone.
And yet we never check.
That assumption.
So if we go back.
To the unanswered text example.
And we think about,
OK,
Our phone's in our hand,
Right?
We notice there's no reply.
The broadcast immediately comes in.
Oh,
She's upset with me.
She's angry at me.
The contraction,
We feel it in the body.
There's this sense of feeling there is something wrong.
Now the phone.
Did not inform any of this.
The phone did not inform that there's something wrong with us,
That we did something wrong,
That we should be angry.
The phone didn't do any of that.
All of that arrives.
With the broadcast.
And along with the broadcast.
Was the me that this is happening to the me that's angry,
The me that's upset,
The me that's feeling rejected.
Because of the unanswered text.
And it is all simply assuming that the thoughts that the broadcast is reporting back to a something.
To a me,
A solid,
Independent,
Stable,
Inherently existing me that is at the center of experience.
If we think there is a solid independent me at the center of experience.
And then we actually look.
At our experience,
What we find is in fact an infinite number of me's.
So when I'm thinking about,
I.
I'll be so happy when I meet my soulmate.
I'll be so happy when I get this project done.
There's a future me.
When I'm thinking about how embarrassed I am by something that happened 10 years ago,
Now there's a past me.
When I'm thinking about the praise that I received from someone for doing a good job,
Now there's a successful me.
And when I'm thinking about the criticism that someone gave me,
Now there's a threatened me.
Station me is not broadcasting a stable me.
It is broadcasting an astonishingly large number of versions of me.
And this is who we have taken to be as ourselves.
And yet,
Which one?
Which one of these me's is actually me?
Or even when we have.
Those moments when the broadcast isn't happening.
When we're laughing,
Maybe we're with some friends,
And we're having one of those big belly laughs,
And for a few moments,
We've forgotten about ourselves.
Or we're engaged in something or we're doing some activity that we're just totally engrossed in.
And for that period.
There is no sense of a self.
Because we're so engaged in what it is that we're doing.
So we didn't disappear in those moments.
The organism didn't go away,
Right?
Still here.
The personality didn't fall apart.
The memories didn't vanish.
We're still here.
All that changed.
Was that sense of a psychological center,
Of me at the center of experience,
That was absent.
So that sense of.
Of just that constantly having to defend and evaluate and interpret and anticipate and narrate that sense of me,
It disappeared.
For a few moments.
Only to then restart itself back up again.
So if we go back to the unanswered text for one more time.
After a few hours of torturing ourselves,
Maybe not non-stop,
But the thought keeps coming back,
It's nagging us,
Why didn't she respond?
What did I do?
I'm ending this friendship,
Right?
After a while of kind of torturing ourselves around the current broadcast that I have upset someone,
Something's wrong because this text hasn't been responded to.
After a few hours of that,
A text comes in.
And it says,
Oh my god,
I'm so sorry.
I left my phone at the restaurant last night,
And I just got it back.
I saw your message and wanted to respond immediately.
Should we still meet up later?
Right?
And in that moment,
We are so relieved.
We are so relieved the broadcast changed so quickly.
Oh my God,
I didn't upset her.
I didn't do anything wrong.
There is no reason,
There is no problem and we are so relieved.
In that moment.
We don't even notice the new broadcast coming in.
Oh yeah i was just i was overthinking it why did i do that next time y'all remember this next time It was so silly,
Right?
We're just kind of keep just talking on the right,
But the broadcast just continues.
We don't even realize it.
Station Me is still on.
Because it feels better,
Right?
The new broadcast feels much better that there was a misunderstanding.
She's not upset with me.
It feels much better.
But the conditions are going to change.
And therefore the broadcast.
Is going to change as well.
And so we keep kind of being in this yo-yo situation where we're distraught,
We're imagining this problem,
We're imagining what someone thinks about us.
And then something comes in to change that.
And we're so relieved.
But we just go to another story.
We still keep believing the broadcast.
We still keep thinking,
Oh,
OK,
Well,
Everything's OK now.
I like this story better.
And we're not motivated in that moment to check,
Who is all this reporting back to?
Is there a solid independent me in the center of experience?
So what we're doing here is questioning this.
Is questioning the assumption.
To whom do these thoughts belong?
Who is claiming ownership of these thoughts?
Who is claiming ownership of these feelings?
Who is angry?
So when we ask the question,
Instead of getting lost in the broadcast,
Now we're questioning,
Who is it that's at the center of this broadcast?
And what you find.
Is it thoughts coming and going?
Feelings coming and going?
Emotions coming and going?
Sensations coming and going?
Nothing solid.
And independent.
And separate.
Is there.
It's just different activity just coming and going and coming and going.
And so it's not just to question it.
When we're feeling like we've been rejected or we're feeling like our life is on the rail,
You know,
We're living the wrong life or when we feel like we're not enough,
It's not just enough to question it.
When the broadcast.
Is unpleasant.
It's when the broadcast is seemingly telling a good story as well because the familiarity of all of these broadcasts.
Of repeating this over and over and believing that there is a character at the center of all of this gives it that feeling of reality.
And the identification that we have with it so that no matter what broadcast is happening,
Oh,
I should feel terrible about myself.
Oh,
I should feel good about myself.
You know,
I'm a success.
I'm a failure.
I'm a failure.
You know,
They praised me,
They criticized me.
I'm winning,
I'm losing,
Right?
And we're just kind of spinning around on this carousel.
Just totally at the whims of all these conditions arising and the belief that there is a solid,
Separate,
Independent me at the center of experience.
One solid,
Stable,
Independent me.
And yet there isn't.
This is the illusion.
This is the illusion and so.
On a Buddhist path,
We question the illusion.
The thinking itself is not the problem.
If we question it and we see that there is nothing that these thoughts are being reported back to,
We can hear the broadcast.
But we don't have to listen to it.
And that is the difference.
It's not that we're trying to.
.
.
Um turn the station off you can't you can't it's just to notice noticing even that contraction the broadcast is happening if there's a contraction happening even when it's happening around the good things you just got praised you got um you know,
Some good conditions.
And we know that kind of,
Oh,
This is so good.
And of course,
What do we want to do?
We want to hold on to it.
I've got the good conditions,
And now I want them to stay.
So even in that,
When we question,
To whom should that praise belong?
Right?
Who is claiming ownership of this?
Right?
And we come in and we feel it.
It actually feels better because in that contraction,
Even in a good,
Even in a,
A pleasant,
A seemingly pleasant event,
That contraction doesn't feel good,
Right?
It kind of,
Oh,
I don't know what to do with this,
Right?
We can't sit and just enjoy it because it's kind of this,
Oh,
I don't know what to do,
I need to call someone,
I need to do something with it,
Right?
But when we come in and we question it,
To whom does this praise belong?
You can't find,
When you question it,
You can't find a solid center.
But what you do notice is that,
Oh,
Yeah,
But this is pleasant.
This is nice.
Yeah,
There was some good confirmation something was good.
You don't have to get caught up in it.
You don't have to make an identity out of it.
You don't have to try and hold on to it.
It's just enjoy the pleasant sensations.
Yeah.
And now you can be okay with it.
Yeah,
This actually feels nice.
And because you're questioning it now in the pleasant conditions,
Then when you're questioning it in the unpleasant conditions as well.
And seeing there is no one no one there's no solid independent stable me behind experience there is conditions arising thoughts feelings sensations emotions arising changing arising changing arising changing sentience right all of this is happening but when you don't feel this center that it's all happening to me It just gives a kind of.
It opens us up enough to be like,
Huh,
Yeah,
It's not pleasant,
The discomfort,
The bad feeling,
It's not pleasant,
Right,
But it's not gonna last.
And it's not despair,
Because it's not like,
Oh,
I had this one embarrassing situation and now my whole life is over,
Because that's the broadcast.
Oh,
You did this,
Then everything's over.
And it's like,
Yeah,
You tend to,
Have more balance,
More,
To use your word there,
Todd,
More equanimity.
Yeah,
Sometimes the waters are a little rough,
Sometimes they're very pleasant.
For so many of us,
Most of the time the waters are just quite neutral.
Quite neutral,
Not a lot going on either way.
But there's nothing to feed then,
Oh I need to feed the me that needs something to exist,
It's just nothing going on.
And that's pleasant,
It's open,
It's spacious.
So it's not,
We're not trying to silence.
The station me.
We're not trying to turn it off.
But it's just that we.
.
.
We want to see how we have mistaken the the identity at the center of this station of this broadcast for who we are because that is mistaken you are not the broadcast you are not the thoughts you are not the feelings you are not the emotions they come and they go you're not planning them you're not expecting them you're not authoring them they are just simply arising through trillions of conditions coming and and changing and coming together and changing again And yet there is a spaciousness here when there's no identification with it as a solid center that allows it all to come and go and is perfectly open to what's unfolding,
The mystery of what is unfolding in each moment.
