Stop Chasing Enlightenment: See What You’re Not

In this Dharma talk, we explore why the more we chase enlightenment, the further it seems to slip away. Grasping assumes there’s something to become—setting up a false framework that keeps us running in circles, missing what has never left us.

When we imagine what awakening should look like—grand, magical, extraordinary—we overlook the truth that’s already here. The practice is not about adding more, but about seeing what we are not. Each time our attention shifts away from the illusion of the separate self, reality reveals itself—ordinary, present, and free. Enlightenment isn’t something to attain; it’s what’s uncovered when grasping falls away.

Transcript

Start with a little pun. There's a young Zen student that goes to his master and he's asking his master, He says, If I work very diligently and I follow everything you tell me, What I'm supposed to be doing, How long do you think it will take for me to become enlightened? And the master thinks about it and then he replies, 10 years. The student's not real happy with that answer and he goes, Well, What if I worked really hard? What if I increased doing what you tell me to do and I work really diligently, Even more so, Then how long would it take me to become enlightened? Master smiles. He thinks about it again. He says, 20 years. So the student is clearly not happy about this. We're going in the wrong direction. But what the Zen master knows is that by asking this question, How fast can I become enlightened? How much sooner can I become enlightened? By asking how much more effort I can put in, It's really just disguising the amount of grasping that the student is doing at enlightenment. And by grasping at enlightenment, Making it further away and then also missing seeing what is already here. And so while in many, Many situations in our lives, Probably almost every situation, Working harder, Putting more effort in does mean faster success, Right? If we're, If we want to learn a second language and we study really, Really hard, The faster we will learn that second language, Right? If we want to become a great tennis player, The more time we spend practicing on the court, Hitting the ball, The faster our success. But the reason that it works for these other things is that we weren't those things to begin with. So if I want to learn a second language, I'm not bilingual to start with, Right? I have to become bilingual. I have to do things to become bilingual. If I'm not a great tennis player to begin with, I have to become a great tennis player. But in spirituality, We are not becoming anything. We are trying to see what has never left us. And this is why you cannot get enlightened, Right? You can't get into the moment. You can't get present, Right? There's nothing for us to get into, Right? This is this quote again by Paul Hederman that I've used many times. You can't get into something you're not out of. I mean, Hear that, Listen to that. You can't get into something you're not out of. And yet we spend so much time trying to get into it because we genuinely feel, We genuinely believe that we are out of it. We spend so much time lost in our stories, Lost in our thoughts, Lost in the VR headset, Right? Always thinking about ourselves and what do I need to do and what's happening over there and what do they think about me? We spend so much time lost in the VR headset that the character in the headset is who we take to be as who we are, As reality. The Meredith in the headset we take to be as reality. And Meredith needs to get into something. That Meredith, The me in the headset needs to get into something. And so spirituality is telling us what it's pointing us to is take the headset off. You don't need to become something better in the headset. Take the headset off to see that you never left this, That there was nothing here to attain. And so it's a little tricky for us because of course, Like the Zen student, We also need a certain amount of desire to come on this path, Right? To want to end our suffering. We do need a certain amount of desire for this. And then I do, I find that the practices are very helpful, Meditation and mindfulness and compassion practices and self-inquiry, That these are all very helpful things to kind of settle down all the dust in the mind, Right? To kind of clear things enough to be able to see like, Wow, I keep repeating these same thought habits over and over and over again. But at the same time as we're doing the practices, Right? We still have this grasping mind, Right? It's still in control. So we're doing the practices, But at the same time, The grasping, The ego, The separate self, The illusion kind of comes in a little back door and starts grasping at enlightenment. And how we grasp at things is through thinking, Right? That's the mechanism of grasping is thinking about it, Right? Let me think about how great it's going to feel when I'm enlightened. Let me think about how amazing it will be of how everyone will look at me when I'm enlightened, How much greater all my relationships are going to be. And then this naturally morphs into, And how is it going to happen? What is it going to look like when it happens? And of course, It's not going to be some ordinary moment, Right? It's going to be spectacular. It's going to be magical. And I think for many of us, I know here, A lot of times, Every time, Every time I would be going on a retreat, That's where the fantasy would come in, Oh, When I'm on the retreat, And we're in the meditation hall, And I'm really deep in samadhi, I'm really deep into the jhanas, And I'm feeling such bliss, And the bell goes off, And everyone else is jumping up, But not me, Right? Because I'm so, So deep in the state of samadhi, I'm so blissed out. And then as I do get up, Right, Like I'm kind of floating out of the hall, And I probably have this aura, This lightness about me that everyone is witnessing as well. And so again, Inadvertently, We're setting up all these conditions for what enlightenment looks like. It's got to be grand. It's got to be spectacular. And, You know, There's got to be witnesses, Because it wouldn't be fun if people weren't looking at me enlightened. And of course, The most important witness for us of all is me. Me, The separate self, The illusion me, Because I'm in the VR headset, Imagining me enlightened. So me, The separate self, There for enlightenment. I mean, If ever there were a clue to kind of point to, My God, If this isn't, This is not enlightenment, If the separate self is there, That is not enlightenment, But it keeps kind of weaseling its way in there, And we don't even notice it. Because the separate self, The ego, It's always, It keeps making it extraordinary, So that we won't notice it. We won't notice it, The separate self, It's kind of got its back against the wall, Like, Oh, Look how magical it is. Look at all the light show. Look at how everyone's adoring you, Right? And so we're so busy focusing on that, We don't even notice that the separate self is there. And enlightenment is the absence of the separate self. And so when we really look at what this is, The best that we can look at what this is, It's actually quite ordinary. It's just, It's you reality, Not thinking about yourself, Not lost in the illusion of separateness of being some independent, Inherently existing self, Not lost in all the drama and the stories. It's just you reality being. And it does feel, It feels a lot better, Because you're not hanging on every moment, Trying to get something out of every moment. I need them to text me back. I need this person to do this over here. I need that person to not do that over there. I need to get some recognition. I need to get some praise. I need to get the chocolate cake, Right? I need something, Right? Because it's that constant trying to fill that empty hole inside of us. And so it feels better. Yes, It feels a thousand times better, But not because it's magical, But because it's the absence of the suffering. That's what nirvana is. Nirvana, From a Buddhist perspective, Is the cessation of suffering, And the cessation of suffering due to the extinguishing of greed, Hatred, And delusion, The separate self, The ego. It's not adding something else on. It's just taking the VR headset off. So yes, It feels a thousand times better when we are not thinking about ourselves endlessly, Going on and on about ourselves, Worrying what everyone is thinking about us, What we're thinking about us. It is freeing. It is liberating. But it is not magical. Anytime we're bringing in the magical thinking, We are making enlightenment some far-off event. We are taking ourselves further from it and not seeing what is already here. So in order to avoid this mistake of making enlightenment some goal, Some destination, Some spectacular event, What we have to see, What we need, What we should be paying attention to is not what it is that this looks like, But paying attention to what it is that we are not. And I know this isn't a particularly new topic. We talk about this a lot, What it is that we're not. But I have been listening to a lot of Paul Hederman lately, And he does just keep drilling this down. Look at what you're not, Look at what you're not. And you keep looking enough times, And it really starts shifting something inside of you. You really start seeing. Every time I look for what I think this is, I turn it into an object, And then I bring the ego along with it, Right? Every time you're fantasizing about enlightenment, Right, You're bringing the ego along for it, To look at that and say, That's not me, Right? Anytime that you are trying to figure all of this out from an intellectual standpoint, Trying to, Oh, I've got to figure this out, I've got to get this, I've got to, Or I've got to, I've got to solve some imaginary problem to appease this little imaginary self, Right? And we get so fixated on that thinking, No, No, No, I've just got to get this. And it's like, No, That's not you, That's not you. All of that thinking up there in the VR headset, That's not you. All of that, That worrying about the past, The fearing the future, That's not you. None of that is you. And so, Yes, I do think use your practices, Use self-inquiry, Use mindfulness, Use self-compassion, Use the tools for you to see what you are not, So that you can really keep catching the ego as it keeps inserting itself in here. The ego is not going to be here for enlightenment. It can't be here for enlightenment. So in any way that it keeps inserting itself, You're just keeping the illusion going. But there's also this kind of belief that we have that somehow, I've also got to fix the ego first. I've got to, You know, If I just, You know, Because it's always feeling in some way, It's feeling taken advantage of in some way, It's feeling I'm not enough, Like there's always some problem with the ego. And we just think, But no, If I can just fix it in some way, If I can just help it feel satisfied, Then I can let it go and move on to enlightenment. But the ego is never going to be satisfied. That's its whole MO, Is dissatisfaction. That's what it feeds off of. That's what it thrives off of. And it's never going to get this. You're never going to fix the ego. But this is what kind of tethers us to the thoughts, To the stories, But, But, Ah, I just, Oh, I just, I need to know what that person thinks about me. I just, Oh, I need to know that I wasn't really dissed back there. I just, I need to know what's going to happen next. Like it's always this, Like, But I just need this one thing. It's, It's really about seeing, Like, No, You don't need to know that one thing. Let it hang unfinished. That story, Let it hang unfinished. Just see, That's not you. Keep looking at it and just noticing, That's not me. And every time you do that, Then notice what it is that opens up. Notice how you feel every time you recognize it, Right? Not to say, Oh, What I became, But it was just the absence of it. And then a couple of minutes later, Okay, It comes back again. No problem. But you notice how quickly we go, Oh, But it's back again. That also, Not you. That's not you. That's the separate self. That's the ego. That's not you. So you keep every time you get lost in that illusion. And we do know it comes with the contraction. It comes with that feeling that something's not quite right. And we so desperately want to fix it. We so desperately want to get in there and feed it. It's just simply to see, That's not me. You didn't have to fly halfway across the world. You didn't have to take two weeks off holiday, Off work. You didn't have to spend $5, 000. You just had to see, In this moment, That's not me. Because in the absence of that, What's revealed? Oh, I never left. Reality was always here. It's just the attention. Your attention was gone and you were believing in something, Right? You were believing in this illusion of a separate self. And then in the seeing that that's not who you are, In the absence of that is reality, Is being. Not some extraordinary magical event. I mean, There is, To some degree, Especially if we're really wound up in our suffering. And in that moment, There is that kind of really, Ah, Right? Because we're so wound up. And then there's such a release that, Yes, There can be, In different times, There can be a lot of like, Oh my gosh, It was so blissful, Because of all the unwinding of the separate self. But we also have to recognize, Don't get attached to that. That just kind of came because of the conditions of being so wound up. But all the little moments, All the little moments throughout the day, Right? We just, We get a little lost and we kind of, Ah, Not that, Right? You're still kind of just going about your day, Doing your things, Right? It doesn't look particularly extraordinary. It doesn't, In fact, It looks very ordinary. Right? It's the, Ah, The Zen saying, You know, Before enlightenment, Chop wood, Carry water. After enlightenment, Chop wood, Carry water. I mean, It doesn't, It very much looks the same. What's different is how you're feeling inside. You're not caught up in all this drama and all these stories, And you're not believing you have to get somewhere, Right? It's such a dangerous thing, Thinking that this is so far off from me. You are so much closer than you think, So much closer that you couldn't, You cannot be separated from this. That, But that is how compelling, That is how compelling the illusion is. And I, I just, I do think, I agree with Paul Hederman a thousand percent. The more that we focus on what we're not, The more that we keep catching the thief when he's entered the, The house, That's our best way, You know, Catching the thief. Once it's out, You're free again. There's no suffering, But there is no fixing the separate self, There's no bringing it to some state of, Of contentment, No state of satisfaction. It doesn't mean that, That all of a sudden everything changes in the outside world, It doesn't. I mean, You might still get a big bill, You might trip and fall and hurt your knee or your back or something, And someone might be very unkind to you, Like, Yeah, All those things still happen. The difference is you're not feeding on it all day long, Right? And of course, All of the suffering, That all of the things that aren't happening, 95% of the things that are not happening, That we're just imagining in our heads happening, Right? And then when we're not imagining about all the problems, Imagining how great it's going to be when I get enlightened. Just another massive trap, Another trap for us. Right? I mean, We often hear, You're already enlightened. And to some degree, I feel like when you hear that, It's, It's not particularly helpful because we are so lost in the illusion, Right? So people say, You're already enlightened, There's nothing to do. I do think, Excuse me, I think there is something to do. But I think we just have to be very aware of all these pitfalls, Of all these shadow sides within spirituality, Within the word enlightenment itself, Right? To be very clear that we're not trying to get anywhere, We're simply trying to see what it is that we're not, Because what it is that we're not is what's getting all of our attention. We walk around all day long with the VR headset on, Right? When we go to sleep at night, We go to sleep at night, And maybe you had a scary dream and you wake up and you go, Oh, Thank God, That was a dream. And then you put the headset on, Back to another dream. And now what's my day look like? And this is going to be a nightmare. And oh my gosh, I'm so unhappy. Wouldn't this be great though, If I were enlightened, Right? Just another part of the daytime dream. So we have to be very careful of the magical thinking, The very magical thinking of enlightenment. It's very, In many ways, Very ordinary. And for most of us, And what I would say is the experience, Experience in quotes, You know, Here, It doesn't necessarily happen in one fell swoop where you're, The ego is knocked out completely. It's, You have, It kind of comes and goes. But the more that you catch it, The more that you catch it, And you're just back, And it's not a problem that you lost it. Doesn't matter. Oh, It was gone for a bit. Now it's back. You know, Gone for, Sorry. My attention had gone to something else for a minute. And then I saw that that was a dream. That was an illusion. And I came back by seeing what I wasn't. Oh, No problem. Nothing to beat myself up about, Nothing to think, Oh, You know, Get better at this next time, Right? That's just, Again, It coming back in another back door, Beating us up. Whatever it is, The thinking, The thinking about ourselves, Right? It's always taking us away from reality. And it doesn't matter what it is. Don't try to find a solution for it. Don't think, Well, I'm going to double down on my efforts, Right? Which again, This is where there's just so many paradoxes because, And in Buddhism, Part of the Eightfold Path is right effort. But the right, The right part on the Noble Eightfold Path is meant, It's really meant to be the right amount, The balance. Doing enough, Not doing too much, Not grasping at it, Not getting attached to it, But not doing nothing, Not allowing the ego to take this to say, Well, You just, You don't have to do anything then. You're already enlightened. There's nothing to do because the ego will run with that as well. And we have to be careful of that. So finding that balance of, Yeah, This, You know, Reality, What it is that we're, You know, What it is that we're looking for has never left us. And the most clearest way that I kind of see it, Is it's just that our attention leaves, And we just start believing what's on the screen in the VR headset, Instead of seeing, Oh, The screen's always here. In fact, The movie couldn't even play without the screen. And so it's just that it's seeing that, Oh, All of our attention is on the movie that's playing. We've forgotten that the screen is there. And so it doesn't mean that we can't have thinking any longer. It doesn't mean that there can't be planning any longer, Because yeah, Sometimes we do, Sometimes we need to do that. But there's a not getting lost in it, That there's a me behind that, A separate, Solid, Independent me behind that. It's just thinking, No thinker. Doing, No doer. Planning, No planner. Meditating, No meditator. Right? We're not making a thing anywhere along this, Because there are no things, In quotes, Like so to speak, Right? It's just things coming together, And changing, And shifting, And changing. Like we used the analogy a few weeks back about the shifting sand, Just changing, Just constantly changing. And so to not make any things, Right? We're always implying there's a thing behind us that's thinking, Right? But there is no thinker. It's just something that we have, Because we're thinking, We just assume there's a thinker. And we don't question it, Right? And so what we're doing here is questioning that. Well, Who's the thinker? What's thinking? The thinking itself is not the problem. It's the belief that there's a thinker behind it. And all of this, All of these ways in which the thinking sets up these goals for us as something outside of us, Something far off into the distance, Something so extraordinary, Something magical. And it's really just to see whatever fantasy or story you're getting lost in about it, I'm not that. I'm not that. I was never that. And just to keep noticing. Notice that every time you catch it, Like what it is that's here, Being, The senses, Seeing, Hearing, Feeling, Tasting, Smelling, Presence, Not trying to get into presence, But in the absence of me thinking I'm out of it, Right? In this illusion, Presence. And in some ways, Very ordinary. It's very ordinary, Or I should at least say it's not magical. Because yes, There is kind of a bit of a, Because there is such a lightness about it, Right? You're not being burdened by the ego, Which is, I mean, Just such a terrible taskmaster, Right? Always feeling badly about ourselves, Always thinking we're in peril, Always thinking something needs to be fixed, Something needs to change before I can settle down. And there's just such a freedom and liberation in that, Right? That again, It looks quite ordinary, But there is kind of this underlying joy, You know, This underlying spaciousness, When you can just let go of the burden of always thinking about yourself. It's not you. It's not you. So the more that we grasp at enlightenment, The more that we chase enlightenment, The more we are really just lost in the illusion. And let that be a pointer for us. Great. Let that be a pointer. Oh, I'm thinking about enlightenment, Right? I'm thinking about when it's going to happen, How it's going to happen, How great it's going to be. Oh, I'm not that. And notice, Again, Just keep noticing, How does it feel every time? Your attention, Every time you stop believing in the separate self and you're instead, There's just being. Notice how your day shifts. Notice how just little moments feel when you're not burdened by it any longer. The ego is just the master of disguises, Always just hiding there with its back against the wall, Going, Look over there, Look over there, They're the problem. Look over there, Look at all the lights of how magical it's going to be when you're enlightened. And it's just sitting there hiding the whole time. And we just fall for it again and again. So constantly, It doesn't matter what it is, You're not that. Don't try and solve it. Don't try and satisfy it. Don't try and satisfy it. Don't try and please it. It's always going to, You're going to leave it hanging on a thread, An open end of like, Oh, Something needed to get fixed. No, It didn't. You're not that. You're not that. And it's closer than you think. So much closer than you think. So hopefully we can take the story, The little pun of the Zen student grasping at enlightenment and how the master tells them it's going to take twice as long now. It's just right here. Right here, Right now. Just notice what you're not. Just notice what you're not. That's it. Not what you are. And anytime you're imagining what you are, You're turning yourself into an object again. And that's not it. So just more noticing what we're not. Okay. So I hope that was a good pointer. It was a good pointer. I know we keep pointing to this again and again, But for some reason, It's kind of, Again, These Paul Hederman talks keep kind of whacking me up the side and, And it just keep, You know, It's like, Yes, That's it. That's it. Who we're not. Yeah, Ruth. And that's, Yeah, Who we think we are is an illusion. But boy, Oh boy, There are so many times that you still get caught believing that illusion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's okay. Don't beat yourself up for it, Because the illusion is very compelling. We've been doing it for a long time and everyone else is doing it as well. So it's, It's very compelling. So just to notice as best you can, You know, When you're lost in it to just keep, Oh, That's not me. That's not me. That's not who I am. And if it comes back 60 seconds later, That's not who I am. Comes back another 60 seconds later, That's not who I am. Just to keep, Keep noticing that. And, And over time, As you, You, You, You recognize it more quickly, You're more familiar with it, Kind of, And often a lot of its tricks, You become more familiar with its tricks, Right? And that's what we often are talking about here is all the little tricks of the ego, The separate self, The illusion, Right? How many different ways it kind of keeps moving the pieces and we fall for it. It's kind of like whack-a-mole. Oh, I got it over there. And then, Oh man, It got me over here. It's like, Yeah, It's, It's very clever. It's very clever. Um, This illusion, It's very, It's, It's, It's very, Um, It just keeps hooking us in. And so the more ways that we become aware of it, Catching its telltale signs, Like we talked about last week, The itch, Oh, I got to get over there. I've got to do something. I've got to get, Um, I've got to, I've got to get, Um, Yeah, I just got to get over there. There's something inside of me that feels unsettled and I feel that itch and that being a pointer to say, Ah, Okay. Yeah. Oh, I don't need to get over there. There's something here that feels like it does. It's, I'm just assuming because I said I need to get over there. I believe that I do need to get over there. But of course I know every time I get over there, Then the, The, The mark just keeps getting moved. And so why don't I just, Ah, The itch is in fact a pointer where I can breathe and feel what's here. Oh, Okay. That's whoo, Whoo, Whoo. I believe nearly believed it. So again, Like we were using the itch as an example, We've used, Um, I mean, So many ways when we're comparing ourselves to other people, When we're judging ourselves or other people, When we're chasing the next moment, When we're resisting, Uh, What's happening in this moment, You know, All of these different ways in which, You know, When we're trying to control this moment, We're trying to control ourselves and we're trying to control someone else, All of these different ways in which it keeps coming out. And then this big massive one that I keep really putting a spotlight on is in spirituality, This, This trap of how it just morphs itself into spirituality and just kind of dresses itself up as a spiritual person and, And has to keep adding on all these things. And this is how much I meditate. And this is how many retreats I go on. This is my teacher. And this is how many, Um, Uh, This is how many initiations I've had. And, And, And, You know, All these, And I've got to look a certain way and I've got to do my hair a certain way. And I've got to get the little Om tattoo and I've got to just do all the little things, Right. And, And no judgment because I've done all of these things too. I've done them all. I didn't get the Om tattoo. I'm glad, But I used to write these Chinese characters. Like I wrote them on magic marker on my inside of my arm because I was thinking I was going to get a tattoo. And, Um, Because again, I had to keep adding on spirituality, The, The way that it, The ego keeps concealing itself. And then I've got to become enlightened. And again, It's me out there somewhere having to get enlightened something. It's something separate from me. It's something far off from me. So, So Ruth, That yes, We just keep looking at all these different ways that it, It kind of hides itself. And in plain sight, As we talked about a few weeks back in plain sight, As the one driving here, Right. The one that's in control, Right. The one that we go, Oh, Well, All those other things, But, But don't tell me that I'm not the one in control here. Don't tell me that I'm not the one making all the decisions, Right. It's like, Oh no, No, No. We grasp and we hold onto that. All of these ways in which the ego just keeps kind of just comes up a different way. And you're like, You get it in all these places and then it comes in another way. So Ruth, So, So no, You know, None of this is, And none of this is to feel badly about ourselves. Everything that I share, Everything that I share, I have done, I have done it. I mean, The only reason I don't have the tattoo is I did magic marker for about a year or I don't know, Six months or something. And who knows, I probably was doing the wrong Chinese characters, But, Um, You know, Yeah, I mean, Everything I'm sharing with you is absolutely everything I have done. And then again, Like just hitting another dead end and going, Oh man, That was not, Man, I fell for it again. And I do think there's a certain kind of laughing at it. We should have, Right. Don't get, Don't take it too seriously. Okay. That's another thing we, Oh, I've got to get so serious about this. I've got to, I've got to be so disciplined. I've got to be so rigid. And that's, That's, That's another way, Another way in which the ego is, Oh, Now we've got to be like this. No, Laugh at it. Laugh at it. I mean, It is some of the things that come out of this mouth sometimes like, Oh my God, That was, What was going on then? You know, It's like, I don't know. Something came out, You know, Didn't hurt anyone. It's embarrassing. Maybe not my best moment, But I'm not that. I'm not that. I can't get to some place where it's like, Okay, Only words that come out of this mouth are perfect. That's just never going to happen. Right. I can't get to this place where everyone's going to think I'm an amazing person and no one's going to be upset with me. And there's not going to be any disagreements anywhere like that is again, Fantastical thinking, Magical thinking. Right. We kind of think, Oh, But you know, I've got to get all these things resolved first. No, Those things are still going to, You know, There's still going to be disagreements. There's still going to be challenges. It's just to notice in the, The overthinking about it and the me in there in the headset, Oh, Look who's suffering there. Oh, Right. It's like, Oh, I'm not that. I'm not that. Nothing's ever going to be fully resolved. Nothing will ever be fully resolved. I mean, We'll all die without things being fully resolved. Right. You know, No one says we'll wait until every, Every single thing is resolved. No. And that's how it is moment by moment. Nothing's like, It's not all going to be fully resolved. Things are going to be up in the air. But every time you start thinking about it and fretting about it and worrying about it and trying to fix it and trying to appease the little character in the VR headset, And you just see it and you're like, Oh, I'm not that. I'm not that. I'm not that. I don't have to fix it. And again, And just to bounce out, It doesn't mean that sometimes, That sometimes we don't recognize there's something to do. Doesn't mean that there's not ever anything to do. 99% of the time there's not. But even the more that we can see that, Like, I'm not that, And we were not so pulled into the drama of the story, That we can then a little more clearly see what does need to be done. Oh, Maybe an apology needs to be made. Maybe I, Maybe I do need to go do that. I've been procrastinating or something like, Yeah, Okay. So yeah, I mean, Sometimes there, Very, Very few times is there something to do. Most of the time we're just spinning dramas, Just spinning dramas. Sandy here. It's not just near, It's here. It's here. It's here. It's here. Just any moment that you notice what you're not. Any moment you notice what you're not. And you're very welcome, Ruth. You're very welcome. Okay. And let me go back. So Michelle, So this is Michelle in Ohio, Right? And now I just want to know if I've, Is this Michelle in Ohio? Actually, It doesn't tell me where you are. I'm just curious if it's Michelle in Ohio. Yes. Okay. Columbus, I think, Right? So, You know, Is there a separate self when planning? Not as long as you're aware that there is no planner behind it, Right? We do assume when we're planning, We assume there's a planner, Right? And that's what gives a kind of fever to our plan because at the end of the plan is going to be me, The me in the VR headset that's going to get something out of it. I'll be happy. I'll be relieved. I can finally relax. I can finally be at ease, Right? There's always something at the end if there's a planner, Which is the separate self. But if you're planning, And no problem using this prefrontal cortex, Right? That's what it's for. We can simulate different situations, Different scenarios. No problem. And then just the plan is done. It's like, Okay, Now let's see what happens. Let's see. Let's see. I always find just adding on, Let's see. Let's see what happens. Right? That's the plan. We'll see. A lot of times the plan works out. Sometimes the plan doesn't work out. No problem. I wasn't so attached to it, Right? Because there's never what, When the separate self is involved in the planning, That's when we get attached to the outcome of it, Right? Instead of, You know, We kind of miss the whole, You know, We missed everything in between. We miss each present moment because we're so attached to getting to the outcome, Right? And it's all this spent of, Oh, I got to get there. I got to get there. And then we get there and it's like, Oh my God, Thank God it worked out. Oh my God, I'm so relieved. But then because all we were doing is getting so attached to an outcome, Believing there was a me that was going to get something on this outcome, Then it just starts back up again. Okay, Now I got to get to the next plan. Now I got to do the next thing, Right? It doesn't lead to the cessation of it. It just leads to more and more of it. So just checking yourself, Checking yourself again and again, When you're planning, When you're thinking, Just, Oh, Who's planning? Who's planning? What's planning? What's planning? Oh, There was no planner behind the planning, Right? We always assume that I'm thinking about planning, And so the planner must be there, The me must be there. But before the thought, There was nothing there, Right? This is always assumed. And so the more that we question it, Oh, There was no planner. Oh, Or who, You know, Who's planning? It kind of gives us a little slap like, Oh, Wake up, Right? Planning happening, No planner. Thinking happening, No thinker. Decision-making happening. And notice how on decision-making, Oh, I've got to make the right decision. I've always got, You know, Oh, I've got to make the right decision. So, Oh, There's a decision maker somewhere here. Who's making the decision? Oh, Oh, That's right. Just decisioning happening. All of a sudden, It's a little looser. And now the decisioning that's happening is not being so filtered through greed and desire and fear, Right? Because now we kind of remove, You know, When we question it, And then the desire and the fear and the greed goes away, Right? The delusion goes away, All right? And it's just decisioning. In fact, Usually much better decisioning happening without the ego, Not through the lens of desire and fear. So, It's just to keep questioning. It's not to stop the activity. It's to stop what the activity, It's to stop what we believe, What we're assuming is the thing behind the activity. The me in the VR headset, Right? The thinking there's a me in there that's making the decisions, A me that's going to get something out of this plan that's going to feel infinitely better for a moment, For a moment. And the only reason it's going to feel better for a moment is because for a few moments, That plan or that chasing the happiness that was going to happen at the end of the planning went away. I mean, That's what we feel so good about. There's all of a sudden, The relief of that. I mean, A little bit of maybe the outer conditions, The chocolate cake, The nice conditions, Right? A little bit. But most of it is the unwinding of all that grasping there. But then it just starts back up again. It just keeps going and going and going. So, The planning is not a problem. The thinking is not a problem. The decisioning is not a problem. It's the thinking that there is something solid, Independent, Inherently existing behind it. And the best, You know, Again, I kind of just feel like it's like we have a VR headset on and we believe the character in there, The character of Meredith there is going to feel happy when she gets over there. So, If everything works, Everything gets out of my way so I can get over there, Right? Then I'll feel happy. Completely ignoring how unhappy we really feel the whole time because we're in this state of lack and grasping and craving and clinging of wanting to be over there. All of this pent up suffering to get somewhere for a moment's release, Only to keep repeating it. And so, What we're saying here is just look, You're not that. You're not that. You didn't have to wait to get over there. Just see now. You're not that. See it now. Just keep seeing it. Don't beat yourself up when it gets a little ahead of you. It's okay. It does here too. It does here too. It's okay, Right? Kind of laugh at it. You know, As I use the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, I won't tell the whole story, But kind of Mara, This character, Can kind of be depicted as the ego. You know, After the Buddha's enlightenment, Mara really tried to distract him in the end from his enlightenment. Enlightenment, I'm going to say in quotes, From seeing through the illusion and that Mara would still come and visit the Buddha after, Again, These quotes, Enlightenment. And the Buddha didn't fear seeing Mara any longer. He's, Oh, Mara, What's going on? What's going on? Do you want a cup of tea? What's happening with you today? Right? Because we kind of think like, Oh, It's got to go away. And then if it comes back again, It's like, Oh, We feel like something's wrong. And it's just like, Oh, I see you, Mara. I see you. That was a good disguise. Man, You got me. That was a good one. That was a good one. Yep. Yep. You got me. And so, Just to be a little bit more at ease with it, Right? To be a little bit more joking with it, To not take it all so seriously, Because I think that's also just more Mara, More ego, More constriction, More tightening. And just to kind of laugh at it, Like, Man, That was, You know, You got me, Mara. That was a good one. That was a good one. So thank you, Ruth, For the donation. Thank you so much for all your support. Oh, And Philippa, Yeah, You explained very well to Michelle what that is. So Alice, You're saying you like the idea of something unresolved, Looking at it as unfinished business. Your ego keeps netting that you need closure. And some things, Yeah, Life really doesn't have closure. You know, There's just conditions arising and shifting and shifting and changing moment by moment by moment, Right? Just conditions changing again and again, Right? And so again, We're trying to look, This is again what the ego thinks, Because the ego sees the world as very defined, Sees itself as solid and independent, Inherently existing, And therefore there is somewhere solid and independent, Inherently existing that I could land and then finally be satisfied. But there's nowhere to land. I mean, There is nowhere to land here. I mean, That is the beauty, And that is also what scares a lot of people going, What do you mean there's nowhere to land? Yeah, There's nowhere to land. It's all just shifting sand. But it doesn't mean you're like falling through the quick, Quicksand, Right? I would say we're kind of in the quicksand with the ego, Looking for that dust, You know, Believing that we're in the quicksand, Oh, I got to get out, I got to get out. And it's kind of saying you're not that. And you're like, Oh, Yeah, It's not quicksand. It's just shifting sand. And then it's much lighter. It's much more pleasant. It's just, Yeah, Things just changing moment by moment by moment. Just constant change. So David, So when you wake up, And you're looking for a meditation for a lark, Where are you from? Are you English? Isn't that an English saying, A lark? I think it's a funny saying. Australia. Oh, Australia. I should know that. I'm Australian. I should know that. Victoria. Oh, Okay. So then, Right, So you clicked on live meditations, And then here I am. Yeah. Oh, Well, I'm glad you're enjoying starting the day this way. Thanks. Okay, Let me just go back to some of this here. Oh, And Laura, Okay. So saying duality exists. So not to get too caught up in the minutiae of the language, Laura, But, And in fact, The way that I like to describe it, That makes sense here, Is there are polarities, Right? There is no way to experience this world without polarities. And that we could call like, Yes, Duality, Right? A dualism, We could call it that. I kind of prefer just not to get my words confused here. There is polarity. There's no way to experience this world without polarity, Right? Without hot, Cold, Up, Down, Black, White, You know, Pain, Pleasure, Gain, Loss, Praise, Criticism. There's no way to experience this world without polarities, Right? There would be nothing to experience. If the world were all white, We wouldn't be able to see anything, Right? If everything felt the same way there, It would be like being in one of those chambers called those desensitization, There's a name for them. When you go in and the water temperature is like the exact temperature of your skin, Sensory deprivation tanks, Like if you were to go into a sensory deprivation tank where there's no light, There's no sound, I've never done one, But, You know, And the water temperature is the exact same as your skin temperature, And I'm guessing there's no smells, There's nothing to taste. So there's nothing to experience, There's nothing to sense, Right? There's nothing for our senses, For sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, And taste to experience, Right? And so in order to experience the world, In order to experience the ride that I feel we are the ride, That we're not on, I feel like this is, Meredith is the ride, That in order to experience different things have to happen. It can't just be all one color, One note, Can't all be high, It can't all be low, It can't all be just muted along here, It's, You know, There's an experience that's happening, Right? And yet we spend 90% of our time not directly experiencing but filtering the experience, I want more of that, I don't want more of that, Right? So really coloring and distorting our experience through the grasping, Through the grasping and the aversion, Making the experience unpleasant, So creating 95% or 99% of our suffering, Right? So we're not even really directly experiencing it but if everything was just exactly the same, Then there would be nothing to experience anyway. And so the more that we're, That we recognize, I mean, I think we're the only animal that does do this, That has the duality of me being separate, Splitting myself into two, Right? I don't think any other species are thinking about themselves in this way. I always think Eckhart Tolle used to say, Probably still does, But he would say, Even the ugliest cat in the world, You know, Doesn't have self-esteem problems, Like isn't concerned about it, Right? I think we're the only species in the world that is constantly thinking about itself through this experience, Layering on really all this suffering through our experience. And so it's in seeing that, Oh, That's not me, The interpretation of me, The illusion of me, That the me in the VR headset isn't me, Dropping that out. What I think, What I think, What I know is what we find is the ups and downs are just, You know, You do want that contrast, Right? You don't want the heart attack contrast, The extreme highs, Extreme lows, Right? That's what we seem to be going to. Oh, Brooke, I'll just say real quick, That's the analogy I'm using, That like we kind of walk around all day with a VR headset on a mat thinking about ourselves, What am I going to do later? What was I just doing back there? What did they think about me? Let me rehash that conversation. And at the center there is a little character, Merida, Like I'm like the little Mario in the Super Mario game, Kind of always trying to get somewhere and I'm watching the points and I'm watching everything in the game. Where's she getting now? Oh, Look, She's scoring points. And I'm just imagining these points, Like who the heck cares about the points? Oh no, I am, Look, She's winning, She's winning, She's winning. Oh no, She's losing, She's losing. Oh no, She's winning again. Oh no, She's losing again, Right? And it's like, Take the VR headset off and you find that yes, Conditions are changing. Some are a little bit more pleasant than others, Right? Definitely some pleasant conditions, Unpleasant conditions, Neutral conditions, Right? And then we just experience them. But it's all this pushing back on it that, To your point, Brooke, Is exhausting. It's exhausting, Right? Instead of just, Instead of kind of kicking back and like we're floating down the river and going, Yeah, This is cool. What's going to happen next? I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen next, Right? There's a plan, Right? There's always, You know, We always kind of have an idea of like what's going to happen next. I had an idea this morning to be on this call at noon, Right? But last week, That was the plan as well. And then my Starlink cable finally frayed the last final bit on Sunday morning and there was no class, Right? And so it's like, Oh, Change a plan. Okay. It's all right. You know, And then I had people come and help me and it was really nice and that these people helped me to get my Starlink back on. And, But it was just, It was a change of plan this morning. I was like, Oh, Okay, Let's see. Are we going to, Is the class going to happen today? I did check my internet this morning just because of what happened last week. And I was kind of laughing as I was doing it because I'm like, Oh, There's the condition of last Sunday kind of made me think, Let me make sure my internet's up. Um, You know, And you kind of just notice that that's why I'm doing, That's why there's this checking on here right now. Not, Oh, I've got to see, Is it going to happen? Just, Oh yeah, That's right. Yeah. That new condition is just wanting a little bit of a check. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Thank you, Brooke. Thank you. Yeah. Philippa, The ego has us in the, The ego, This whole thing is the illusion that we take to be reality, That we take to be reality. Hello, Janine. Good to see you. The elephant has no mirror. The wrinkles are not seen. Yeah. We layer all this, We layer so much. And in fact, I do want to just say thank you to Michelle for the donation. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think that's Michelle in Ohio, Right? I think so. Um, So, Um, You know, We, We just, We layer so much onto this experience and it's not, It's not a benefit. I mean, If all of this was helping us, If all of this overthinking, If all of this believing there was a me in the VR headset, If it was pleasant, Like none of us would be here, We would just go, This is great. I'm just up in the VR headset, But it's not pleasant. It feels terrible. It's stressful. It's exhausting. You know, We, We live our lives in this constant, You know, One foot on the accelerator, One foot on the brake. I'm so fearful of, You know, I want the praise, But I'm so fearful of the criticism. I want the wins. I'm so fearful of the loss. I want the acceptance. I'm so fearful that they won't accept me. And just constantly going over again and again, Conversations, Relationships, Like looking for the problem. It's, It's like we, We sent, It's like the kind of sonar going out on a submarine or something or on a Naval ship. Right. And it's looking for things and we'll always find it. We'll always find something up. You know, You said that in the Dharma talk, Meredith, That wasn't exactly right. What did they think of you now? Right. You know, Oh, I can't believe I said that back there. I can't believe I did that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Oh, Can I still beat myself up for that? Right. It's not pleasant. And even again, The thinking of the good things, Like we think about, You know, Going on the holiday, Getting the praise, Getting the success, Getting the followers, Getting whatever it is, Right. That in itself is suffering. Right. Because there's that sense of lack and there's a sense of, Oh, If I could just get that, If I could just, I always find this one particularly for some reason, Because it just hit here one day, Just hit home, You know, Kind of this looking for safety, Looking for security and, And just this realizing like, But hang on, I'm completely safe now. I'm completely safe now. I have my house, I have food in the fridge. The there's a little bit of money in the bank. I'm completely safe. Now, What do I think more of something is going to bring on here? It's not, It's not bringing on a more greater sense of safety. It's, It's, It's just bringing on a greater sense of insecurity, Right? Because most of us, Most of us, Most of us here, If you can spend your Saturday and Sunday afternoon on a Dharma talk, If you have those conditions to be able to be here, You have most likely survived. And for many of us, We have the fort, The good fortune of being able to do this. Not everyone in the world does, But for most of us, We have survived. And yet we spend so much of our existence always feeling, Uh, You know, Unsafe. Oh, The next year, Even feeling that sense of, Of, So it makes me think of, Um, The TV show Seinfeld. I don't know how many of you watched that in the 90s. That was my favorite show. I love that show. And there was the episode with George where George was the character. He was always neurotic and always worried and always, You know, Just paranoid. And, And he could just never like, All these things are going well for him. And he's like, I just know that something bad's going to happen. Like I'm just not allowed to enjoy like the good, Good conditions that are happening. And, And that's how it is. Like we have these good conditions and we just don't allow ourselves to enjoy them. It doesn't mean that the conditions aren't going to change. They are going to change. They are going to change. They're constantly changing. But this always trying to add on to me, If I, If I'm safe now and I'm secure now, And I, I can't, And I have the idea that I'm not, Well, I'm never going to find security. There's nothing you could possibly, You couldn't put a million dollars in the bank because then I'd be like, Well, What if I lose it? You know, Better make the right decisions, Right? There's not enough money. There's not enough safety. If you are safe in this moment, There's nothing else you could possibly add on to make you feel more safe. It's just a thought created feeling of not being safe. And just as I've said, If you can't, If you can't be happy in the present moment, Then stop making plans. And you're never going to be happy because when you get there, It's going to be the present moment again. For a moment, You'll feel good because the, The planner drops away, But then it's going to start right back up again. If you can't be happy now, Stop making plans. If you can't feel safe now and you really are safe, You know, No matter what you're fantasizing about, You're never going to find more safety. You know, The illusion, The ego, You know, The character in the VR headset, How it thrives, How it exists, How it sustains itself is through lack. I mean, That's, That's, It's, It's lag. It's a bottomless pit of lack. You'll never fill this hole up. You'll never feel safe enough. You'll never feel secure enough. You'll never feel pretty enough. You'll never feel thin enough. You'll never feel fit enough. You'll never feel successful enough. You know, You'll never feel popular enough. Like it's a bottomless pit. It's never satisfied because it can't thrive in like, Okay, Well, That's good. We're safe now. Oh, That's good. You're all your relationships are good. It's no, No, Let's keep going over them. Let's find the one where it's not good. Let's find the one where we can pretend there's a problem and feed on that for a little while. Right. And then we just go along with it going, Well, Well, That's me in the game feeling like I, Like it's real. I really need to fix this. That's not you. That's not you. Yeah. Overthinking is the, Is the ego, Is the ego just at its best, Right? At its best. Yeah. And, And B, And good to see you B. I think this is BN. N, I think is comes up on your thing. So just to keep in mind, Because you're saying, How do we learn to interrupt that voice in our heads? You, You know enough to notice it after the fact, But not in the moment. You will never notice it beforehand. You will never catch it beforehand. Never. So already you've kind of set up a false premise that I have to catch it before. You will only catch it afterwards, Right? It's only when, Once it's arisen because the before is not, It doesn't, There's no, It's just, It's not, It doesn't exist. It comes into being, You catch it afterwards and it's very fast. Someone says something and you feel triggered, Right? Or you want to respond, You want to push back in some way. It happens so fast, Right? Like a nanosecond, Right? You, You couldn't catch that beforehand. You can't catch it beforehand. You can only catch it after, Right? And so knowing that B, I do find it's helpful knowing that I didn't do anything wrong by not catching it ahead of time, Right? I was never going to catch it. It's way too fast, Way too fast. But afterwards, Yeah. Ooh, I'm not that, Right? And, And then it's all the practices that we have. Mindfulness, Just recognizing it. Oh, There I was. Oh, There I was trying to get over there. Just the itch to get over there. I was going to be happier over there. Recognize it. Oh, Right. Just breathe, Feel, Feel the tension. Don't push it away, Right? Just being aware of it. Oh, Okay. Ooh, Wow. Investigate. Wow. There was a thought that I was going to be happier over there, But I was actually not, I was all keyed up because I thought I had to be over there. And now I'm seeing, Now I'm seeing this pattern. Oh, Now I'm seeing it. Because in fact, Now that I'm being with the feeling, The feeling is real. The story is not, The feeling is here, Right? It's one of the five senses. That's what's here. And I'm breathing and I'm accepting what's here. I'm allowing it. Oh, Actually I feel quite all right. I, I so believed I needed to get over there to be happy. But in fact, It was the thought that was making me so unhappy. And I was just running, Running, Running. Cause that's what I always do. The voice says, Get over there. And I, I go rushing over there. And so you start to see it and you start to, You start to trust this more. You start to trust being, You start to trust presence more than that. And that is, That is be just, You know, And I'll say this just to everyone. None of us are making this happen. There is nothing solid independent here making this happen. So the fact that we're not making this happen, It's, I mean, You know, The fact that the conditions that mindfulness even comes in sometimes afterwards, You're not making that happen. It's, It's the, The classes that you've been to, The Dharma talks, The meditation, And all of a sudden the conditions arise that mindfulness arose pretty quickly after the triggering, Sometimes 10 minutes after the triggering, But you weren't making any of that happen. And those moments when you, When you catch it and you're like, Oh, And I'm not that, Right? You weren't make, You, You weren't making that happen, Right? You, The separate self, Weren't making that happen. And, And I find there's a lot of freedom in remembering that. Oh, I'm not making that, I can't make this happen. I'm not, I'm not controlling the awakening process. I'm not controlling any of this. I'm definitely not controlling the awakening process either. And in that, I, It, It, It softens it, Right? Because the ego wanting to control it, I'm not controlling this either. It just kind of pulls it back again, Like, Oh, That's right. And you hear presence. So try, Try, I'll just, Again, Put these words, Because these are conditions, The words have an effect, Right? Sometimes more than others. And, And sometimes it's just planting a seed for some of you, And then the right time it'll come up and you'll just, Oh, Oh, I'm not controlling this, Right? And that in itself, Just kind of it all, The house of cards just comes tumbling down in that moment. And so that again, Goes back to this, Don't take it so seriously. Have a lightheartedness around this. You can't make this happen. You can't force this into happening. You know, Practice, Because I think you had said something here about, Um, Well, I'm going to say there, There's that Zen saying, There's so many good Zen sayings around this. You know, Uh, Enlightenment is an accident, But practice makes you accident prone. You know, And so then we would take that and go, Oh, I've got to practice more and more and more. No, Because that's grasping again. So a balance with our practice, Like, Yes, I do feel, I do feel here, Meditation has been a very important part of the path here. There is not as much meditating going on these days as there was in the past, But it does still happen. And it does happen every day, But it's not, It's just, There's more of a, Just wanting like, Yeah, I just, I do like to do it, But it's not, It's not a, Um, It's not to get anywhere. It's not to get anything out of it. That would be the difference. It's something I, I, I enjoy doing, But I don't, I don't do it nearly as much as I used to do it. Um, When I thought enlightenment was something outside of me. Um, And that had its purpose because that's how this is all played out. I wasn't doing any of that anyway, But I do think we, We, You know, The lighter we can be around this, The less, Uh, The more flexibility, You know, That we kind of find with our practice, With our path, Right? Like imagine, In fact, There's the joke about the, Um, The guy that's getting ready to do his loving kindness meditation. And he runs through the house telling all the kids they've got to be quiet and tells his wife, I'm going to go do loving kindness. Please be quiet. Please don't bang the pots in the kitchen. Um, You know, Please don't disturb me. And, And then he goes up into his meditation room and he's doing loving kindness and may all beings be happy and may all beings be safe. You know, May all beings be well. And he's hearing the kids start playing downstairs and they're making a lot of ruckus. They're making a lot of noise. And he's starting to get more, More upset and you know, May you be happy, May you be safe. And then eventually he jumps up and he opens the door and he screams at the kids, Shut up. I'm trying to do my loving kindness. Like, Like it's so ridiculous. We get so attached to it. We do get so attached to our meditation. Like everyone's got to be quiet. The whole neighborhood's got to be quiet. I'm meditating now. Like meditating for what? Right? To try and control more conditions. Right? So, So practice is helpful. Practice is helpful. I am a big believer in practice, But we've got to really, We've got to, You know, If you're kind of thinking, Like even just the thought where you're like, Next week I'm going to start meditating, You know, Two hours a day. You know, I really kind of lost it today. Next week I'm going to do more. Right? It's just even right there. It's kind of that grasping at it. I find there's a grasping at it. And so we've just got to be careful, Right? Sometimes that effort is disguising the grasping. And then, And we see the effort and we see this, We see this in Dharma centers, We see this in monasteries, Right? That, Um, You know, We see it where someone's just like so rigid about, You know, Their practice and kind of missing the whole point, Right? Missing it, What it is that you're doing there. And yet, Brooke, I am going to give you as well, Again, Because this is just filled with paradoxes. It is seeing the irritation while we're sitting as well. Yeah. Yeah. It is seeing that it's seeing it outside of the meditation as well. The challenge where the shadow side I find in the meditation is that, You know, We kind of go to sit to meditate as though we're a meditator and we're getting something out of it. You can be at any moment seeing the irritation because there's always a little sense of irritation, A little itch, Right? That's there. But yes, I will give you that because seeing that in the meditation is incredibly helpful, Right? When there's really no other distractions around and you really want to get up or you really don't want to sit any longer, There is a benefit to that as well. So I totally give you that great point. But it's this paradox where it becomes where we start grasping in our efforts. Again, Our efforts are masking the grasping that's happening below. And we tend to laud the efforts like, Oh, I'm so good. I'm such a good meditator. And it's just disguising the grasping. We're not even seeing how we're creating the image out of it. We're not even seeing the irritation, Right? And so again, That's where it also can have its benefit where you start to see it just in any way, In any way that it's happening, Right? So yeah, I mean, The practices, I do find the practices really do help, But they are not the end goal. They are a means. None of us should be trying to become a great meditator. That's not what we're trying to, We're not trying to become something. These are tools. These are tools for us. And we have to be careful of how the, In the example of the joke of the guy, The loving kindness meditate, You know, The guy doing the loving kindness meditation, You can see the attachment to his practice and the grasping in that, Right? Where everyone's got to change what they're doing. So I can all of a sudden be this loving, Kind person. And then even in the midst of it, Still yell out at someone that I love. It's very sneaky. It's very, Yes, It's the ego again. It's very, Very sneaky. So it's, It's a, It's something for us to be aware of on the spiritual path. That the path itself, Because again, Think about the fact that what we're saying is that we are ourselves reality. And yet the illusion, The separateness is looking for reality. Unreality is looking for reality. And so we kind of, And we even just us saying it's a path, Even us just saying it's a path kind of, Oh, There's a path that someone's got to walk, Right? It kind of implies this something out in front of us. And, And we, We, You know, Kind of draw this out into something longer than it needs to be. Because the ego loves that. The ego loves that. It's perfectly safe and secure. It loves it. Yeah, Let's take forever for this, You know? And it's, So even that it's about seeing there really was no path. And yet, And yet, Let me say this as well. And yet, In the beginning, We get very, I need, We, In the beginning, I can't imagine having, You know, Without some guidance, Without kind of thinking there was a path that I was on, Of even taking those, Those first initial steps, I couldn't have understood this. I just, There's no way I could. And I, Ego doesn't understand this anyway. But it would have all been gibberish. So I think there is, Again, With language, We have to be careful. They're, It's, They're good pointers, Right? We need pointers. We definitely, I feel we definitely need them. And we need them from, You know, People kind of, The Buddha, You know, Ramana Maharshi, Paul Hederman, You know, People like that, Like pointing, Pointing and pointing, Because they're very good pointers, But just not to get, At some point, There's a recognition of the, Of the kind of the fallacy of this path, Or the, The misleadingness, Even of the path, At some point, There's a recognition of that. And that's okay. It's kind of, It's nothing bad about it. You just kind of laugh and go, Oh, Yeah, Okay, I can see all that, Too. Right? I can see all that. Yeah. I hope that made sense. We'll see. Yeah, And that, Philippa, Think, Yeah, The more we shed the delusions and see the illusions, The less we need the tools, Or again, Where there's just an understanding, They're just tools, They're tools, Don't get caught up in them. Yeah, And Michelle, So, As you're saying, You know, That you enjoy your silent meditation practice and the guided ones, And, And that's great, Like, Yeah, And it's wonderful. But then isn't it amazing, Then all of a sudden, When you, The fact that you can see that, And you say, Wow, I hadn't realized that the path itself can create expectations and grasping. But perhaps there had to be the grasping first, For you to now be able to go, Oh, Well, And now I see that. Right? So I do think there's a little something of it, Of us going through all these shenanigans with it, And not shenanigans, But going through all this stuff that, That we wouldn't even be able to see it if we hadn't been doing it. So it would have just been theoretical if you hadn't gone through and done it. But now having gone through and done it, And then having a pointed out, You're like, Oh, Yeah, I see it. Oh, Yeah, I do. But if you didn't, You wouldn't go, Well, Okay, I don't really get that. Right? So there is, There's, It's a paradox, It's a paradox. I mean, Do your practice, Don't hold on too tightly. Go on to Dharma talks. You know, Be mindful, Do gratitude practices, Compassion practices, Like whatever it is, That's feeling that's moving. But just notice every time that that little mind movement of, I'm going to get something out of it. Right? Just noticing even, Oh, The meditator that's sitting to meditate, Oh, No meditator, Just meditation happening. Right? So, And again, We just still kind of keep doing the practices, But you'll, You'll find that there's not a grasping at it. I know here, There was a lot of grasping at my practice for a long time. But that apparently is what needed to happen. Right? That's what needed to happen. I couldn't have seen it then later. Right? So just like you're seeing it, Michelle, Like you, It kind of needed to happen in order for you to be able to see it. And in that seeing it, There's a freedom in that there's a release in that. Yeah. Yeah. So it does serve its purpose. It does serve its purpose. Yeah. Oh, Brooke, Absolutely. The ego loves the traffic because it can react. It loves the person breathing too loudly next to you meditating. Now it has something to comment on. Now it has something to get upset about. Yeah. Yeah. Without it, You know, It would still find something to get upset about. Maybe the traffic wouldn't be there. The train wouldn't be there. It'll just find some conversation from the past that it can get upset about, But definitely a sound in my meditation. I mean, This is the big joke that we laugh about in meditation that we're, We're so desperate to find the quiet place of meditation. And then the moment something starts making a noise, We get so weak down. It's like, What were we meditating for? Right. It's and yet, And yet the paradox is in the beginning. Yes. I think the conditions are quite helpful to meditate without all those additional sounds. If it is at all possible, If it is at all possible, Yes, Because there's enough stuff going on in your mind, You'll have enough stuff to deal with there. But that's not always possible. Okay. I think Monica, Hello. I'm so sorry. I didn't see you here. Good to see you. Actually, I did see you. I didn't get a chance to say hello. Yeah. And sometimes through the noise, You know, And it can be hard, But that, So I have a talk on insight timer and I think it's called meditating to Led Zeppelin. I think it might be called something like that. Um, I mean, This must have been 12 years ago now when I was camping and, Um, I was going to sit for my, This is when I would meditate three times a day. And, Um, And I do love Zeppelin too. I love Led Zeppelin, But I was going to meditate and it was around midday and my neighbor started playing Led Zeppelin really loudly. And I was doing a little stretching before I was doing a little stretching before, And I was just thinking like, Oh, How dare they play music? Like we're in a park, Right? I mean, People are, People are, You know, Playing music. They're having fun, But you know, I'm sitting to meditate. The whole park should be quiet. And I thought to myself, I'm like, I'm just not even, There's, I'm not even going to meditate. There's no way I can meditate through this. This is just, You know, This is a nightmare, Right? And, Um, And then of course, Well, I tell myself I'm not going to meditate, But I'm still just so irritated and angry at my neighbors. Like, How dare they do this? They're, They must be some kind of serial killers. I mean, Who would have the audacity to play music in the middle of the day in a park? And, And then I realized, And I, I realized I'm like, Oh my God, That the music isn't the disturbance. Me thinking they shouldn't be playing the music is the disturbance. And so then, And, And then again, Sometimes it happens like you're not making it happen. It's just that this kind of all opens up. You see, You've heard this teaching a million times. I'd heard it a million times. I would hear about Ajahn Chah talk about meditating in the forest and the villagers making all this noise. And it was, It wasn't the villagers that were the problem. It was his mind disturbing. And yet I still would get so worked up about it. And then finally, Everything just falls apart. And I see the problem is that I'm telling myself it shouldn't be happening. So I then said, Okay, Well, I'm going to meditate because I'm, I know now where the problem is coming from. It's not coming from them. It's coming from inside. And as I sat to meditate, Every time that little thought, Oh, They shouldn't be, How rude, How terrible that this is happening. Every time it would just, It would sneak up. I would never catch it before. You're never going to catch it before, But once it would, It would just peek its little head out. Right. And then there was just a seeing it so quickly. Like it just was like cut off. I mean, It's like, Oh, I see it. And I, I just knew I'm like, That's the disturbance. That's just, That's the disturbance. And I had just a beautiful, Deeply peaceful meditation. Just no problem because I was so clear on what the disturbance was. And, And so much of the time, The disturbances in the mind, They're the ego. It's, It's always putting our attention outwards, Right? The problem's always out there or, Or the problem is me as something else. Right. And by Paul, Good to see you. The disturbances is, Is, Is I'm thinking about myself. I'm thinking about something that, Um, That needs to be fixed, Needs to be changed on the outside. And it keeps catching us off guard. I mean, This is the problem we keep. We really believe the problems out there that the problem isn't me having the thought or the thought, I shouldn't even say me or the thought. So the more clear you can be about your disturbances. And again, And it's in this, This talk on my insight timer page. After that, I came up with my top 10 playlist of thoughts. Like I just thought, I'm going to start writing them down. I mean, It was amazing when I was so clear about what the disturbance was. And I just started writing down, You know, What are the thoughts that keep most recurring here that I keep getting caught off guard by? And it was a very helpful exercise, Right? And then of course, You can also label each thought. This one's aversion, This one's chasing, This one's aversion, This one. And I had a lot more aversion thoughts than I did of chasing. Like I used to think, Oh, I'm not chasing the monetary things or the material things anymore. But there was a lot of aversion. I don't want to be bothered. I want to be left alone. I want everyone to be quiet, Right? I needed, I still, There was all this need for conditions to be a certain way. And it was very helpful to see that, Like, Man, There's a lot of aversion going on here. Because I kind of fooled myself and that, I'm kind of, I'm over the desire thing. I mean, I wasn't over entirely, But, But, You know, Desire is just the other side of the coin of aversion, Right? If I don't want something, I am desiring the peace and quiet, Right? If I don't want someone making a loud noise, I'm desiring it to be quiet. So it's just, But you can get a sense for one having a little bit more dominance, Being a little bit more predominant. So it can be a helpful exercise to write that down. Yeah. And, And, And what your teacher said to you, Brooke, Was very wise. Yeah. You're disturbing the disturbance. You know, You're, Whatever the sound is, Whatever the sight is, Whatever the, The, The feeling, You know, The sensation in the body, The taste, The smell, It's just what's arising in that moment, Right? We go, I want to be present, But I want to be present when everything's, I want to be present, Right? Me, Subject, Object with presence, That's not presence. But we kind of set up all these conditions and it's like, Presence is, This is what's arising. No problem. This is what's arising. So, Okay. I think I might've gotten to everyone's comments here. Yeah. Oh, Allison, I think we answered as well with, Yeah. Oh, Wait, Hang on. You're saying, You're outside and you hear the birds and you hear the traffic. The ego prefers the sound of the birds. The ego prefers the sound of the birds. The preference. Yes. The preference is the ego. Yeah. I mean, The ego, The, The bird sounds are no, I think depending upon the bird and those of you in Australia, You can say like, What are the birds? Is it kookaburras that have those, Like really, Or the, The, There's some, No, The cockatoos, I think, That can have these terribly grating noises. So not all birds sounds, But, But it's just sounds, It's just sounds, Right? And even the traffic, You know, When you just, When you're just hearing and there's no pushing back on it, When there's hearing, No hearer, It's just, That's what's arising in this moment. It can almost, It can be, It can be, It actually can be, I will say it can be as pleasant as the pleasant bird sounding, Like what we might prefer, What we might say is a little softer sound. It can be, The traffic can be as pleasant as a, As the soft bird sound, Or the wind shines. You know, It can be just, It can be as pleasant when you're not pushing back on it, Because you're present, Or not your present, Presence. Everything is just arising in this moment, Presence. And that feels incredibly, That feels just beautiful. There's no pushing back, There's no resistance, There's no reaching out, Just, It feels quite nice. Oh yeah, Libby, So cockatoos and plovers. Okay, I don't remember plovers from Australia, But yeah. Okay, I think I'm just going to go through and double check. Oh, So Alice, I just want to address this, You're saying is the TV headset like saying, When I play Monopoly, I'm not the top hat, I'm not the race car. Yeah, You're not the top hat, Right? You're not the race car. So if that, If that helps you a little bit, Yeah. Yeah, There's playing happening, A little piece moving along, Right? But you're not that. Okay, And Philippa, I'm sorry, You're missing some of the comments. I hope I'm not missing some of the comments. I'm sorry if I am. I hope I'm not. And if ever I don't get to all the comments, Oh, Minas, Oh, David's saying minas are the worst bird in Australia. Okay, I'll have to look that up later. And Dan Millman, And I love his books. Oh, Laws of the Spirit. I've given that book away to so many people as gifts. And I love, Yeah, Peaceful Warrior. Yeah, To be able to meditate in any situation, We shouldn't be looking for the conditions. In the beginning, It's in the beginning, I'll say it is helpful, Because the mind just has enough disturbances as it is. But you're eventually going to have to see that, Yeah, This is the disturbance, Right? If you can meditate, You should, You know, In an airport, In traffic, Standing in line, Right? Yeah. Okay, So I think we will come to an end here. And we will meet next Sunday. I'm leaving the following day to go back to Ohio for a week. So we are going to miss a Sunday. But we will be meeting next Sunday. Thank you, Alice. Thank you for the donation. Oh, And they're not showing up, Philippa. I'm sorry, I'm not sure what to tell you. Other than I would say, Are you, If you're on a laptop, Are you on Chrome? If you're ever using Chrome is the best. What do you call these? What do you call them? I can't think of the word for the internet for the browser. Thank you, Browser. Yeah, For insight timer. So I'm not sure if that's what's happening. If not, You can also reach out to they are now you just had to refresh. Okay. Yeah, There's sometimes I've had to kind of just, You know, Sometimes you have to also just do a cash dump, Right? Kind of blow out our history. Right? We kind of do overtax the computers, We stack a lot in there sometimes. So, Okay. You're very welcome, Lindsay. And you're very welcome, Philippa. And Michelle. Oh, Three Michelle's. So we've got three Michelle's. And and to David, And to Brooke, And Paul. And you see, Who else was on your Monica, Sandy B. And Kathy. And Janine. I'm very glad to start your Monday off in a good way, David. Thanks. Yeah, Thank you to all of you. And, Oh, Robert, Well, I'm glad you were here for what you were able to be here for. I will. This is recorded. And I will put this up on my insight timer page. And, And I'm going to make a few adjustments to the other one, Just cut some things out. So those will go up on insight timer. I will get to those. So. So we will see you next Sunday, Though. We'll be here next Sunday. Okay. Oh, Thank you for the donation. Thank you guys so much for the donations. I really appreciate that. And, And as always, Again, The great dialogue, Because it just it helps this I really do. You know, This helps all of us. This helps all of us. Here too. It helps as we're as we explore this and we can relate to different situations and we can you know, Just kind of hearing something, Maybe an example that you put up here, Like maybe the monopoly example will be there for me later, Alice, In some way. So thank you for that. So everything that we're sharing here is, Is so helpful and helping to other people that are on here that maybe aren't asking the questions. But, But we all know, I mean, These are whatever we're, Whatever we're experiencing through the ego, It's doing the same, You know, Mostly the same incarnations in all of us, Right? That's what makes us all so relatable. But just to take away from today's talk, Keep looking for what you're not. Try to, To see that magical thinking, Trying to think that, You know, That thinking this is something outside of us, Something far away, Something that only very special people are going to attain, You know, It's got to be something extraordinary, Spectacular. It's not. It's, It's the seeing what you're not, And the, And doing that over and over and over. Anytime you get lost, Just see it again. Just see it again. Right? So, Yeah, Just keep seeing it. Just keep seeing what you're not. Okay, Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Reviews

Such a good talk. Do you think labels that therapist give, the best example I can think of is referring to our critical thoughts as the inner Critic, is unhealthy? It seems to me labeling or naming that part of our thinking the inner critic strengthens that separate self. Gives it identity. Thoughts? 💭