Stand as the awareness that you call yourself I amidst this experience of whatever is unfolding.
We are interested in the truth,
Ourselves,
Peace.
Let the world go by closing your eyes.
Be disinterested in what is happening out there and be interested in what is happening in here.
Let your body be still for a few minutes,
Although there is no active movement of your body.
Become aware of the various sensations happening all over.
Drop the labeling,
Drop the categorization.
Be interested in this moment as it is,
Without superimposition of any visual lines,
Shapes,
Forms or concepts.
Notice the sensations of breathing.
The quieter your mind gets,
The larger is the experience of the sensations of breathing.
From your nose,
To your chest,
To your belly,
To your back,
To your butt,
Shoulders,
Thighs.
Take a few deeper breaths.
Have a few deeper exhales.
Notice that the instruction of being still in your body applies to conscious movements.
Just because we are still doesn't mean our body,
Our experience of our body is still.
Our experience is purely of the one of moving sensations.
And even within these sensations,
See if you can notice some movements that are happening,
Fidgeting that is happening.
Maybe you are sitting more upright.
Maybe you are slouching more after my instruction to be still.
Maybe your tongue is moving in your mouth.
Maybe your jaw is tightening or loosening.
All these tiny movements that are happening,
They are all reactions to certain sensations in our body.
I'm sure you have seen people who shake their legs or click with their fingers.
And they have no idea about those movements that are happening in their body.
I'm sure some of it is happening right now.
So although we deem that we are living a free life,
We are in a constant mode of reaction to the sensations.
These sensations that get triggered on their own when they come in contact with either a thought or a perception,
A sound,
A sight,
A smell,
A touch.
And most of these reactions have been automated.
Our facial expressions of rolling our eyes,
Checking out,
Saying something rude,
Maybe resorting to violence.
All this is happening unbeknownst to us.
It's like the sensation and the subsequent reaction to that sensation has taken control over us.
The chemistry in our body has taken over the biology,
So to speak.
And we are lost.
That's why you'll notice that no matter how many books you read,
No matter how many talks you listen to,
At the time when it is needed the most,
The habit takes over.
Fear,
Anger,
Anxiety that gets triggered by some thought of the future,
Some person,
Some wrongdoing,
Some news,
Some email,
Triggers something and the habit kicks in.
That's because these sensations are running the show of our life under the threshold of our awareness of them.
Most of our suffering happens in avoidance.
That's why we try to avoid situations,
People,
As a coping strategy of people from our past that have said something,
Done something,
Or people who remind us of people from our past.
Situations from the past or the situations that remind us of situations from our past.
Smells are the same way.
Certain phrases.
So it's either suffering in avoidance of suffering,
Of happening,
Or suffering in the form of explosion to the happening.
All because of these sensations that are running the show,
We have become too insensitive to sense them.
Even the sensation of boredom happens so sneakily that we reach to our phones and start scrolling without knowing.
We are full while eating but we are so lost in our thoughts that we are insensitive to the signals that are coming to our brain to stop eating.
The best way to expose these habits would be to do the opposite and to see how these sensations raise their hood.
If you are a coffee person,
Skip a cup of coffee.
That's how entrenched our freedom has become with these sensations.
So what I am proposing here today and in this entire series is the exploration of these sensations,
Chiseling our body,
Letting the deeper layers of sensations reveal themselves.
Some are shy,
Some are angry,
Some have been suppressed by neglect or by violence.
And no matter what has happened,
What has precipitated these sensations to act this way,
It doesn't matter.
What matters is the freedom in the moment that we have been practicing,
Familiarizing rather,
To observe objectively.
The more time we spend,
The longer we sit,
The deeper sensations feel comfortable coming out as long as we don't react,
Suppress,
Judge.
But allow them to bubble up and be released to the atmosphere.
What I am asking is to sit in fire with the confidence that you won't get burned.
These sensations are not you.
They arise in you.
They have been buried in you.
The transparency can only happen when the sensations are allowed to roam freely.
In the process,
The reactivity that we experience in our everyday life that makes us suffer and makes us spread our suffering will start eroding,
Dissolving.
The walls that we have put up unknowingly and the walls that we continue to fight for unknowingly,
It's time for them to fall off.
The people we've been avoiding,
The situations we've been avoiding,
The feelings and the thoughts that we've been avoiding,
They only trigger sensations and the sensations cannot hurt you,
Cannot even touch you.
You are the space in which they appear.
Instead of proliferating our sensations,
Proliferating our suffering,
Perpetuating our suffering,
We can sit in this fire.
Let it burn everything that is not you.
Your reactions,
Your habits are not you.
The guards,
The walls are not you.
The aggression,
The violence is not you.
There is nothing to be afraid of.
Truth is not for the faint-hearted.
Peace and happiness is not for the faint-hearted.
It takes courage to behold the truth,
To explore the truth.
Unfortunately,
This work cannot be outsourced.
The mind cannot do it for you.
Knowing more,
Reading more,
Listening to more isn't going to cut it.
As my first teacher used to say,
Allow this fire to burn you so that you can come out as shining gold.
The only way out is to let this fire burn everything that is not you.
If we have to find truth,
We need to be courageous,
Willing,
Open to let go of everything that we know to be false.
All our beliefs that are holding us back from seeing the truth need to go.
Sometimes it will feel like a war has been waged within you,
The unconscious parts of you,
The resistances in you,
The buried sensations,
The walls,
The guards versus your loving,
Kind,
Objective observation,
Patience.
We have to let whatever arises to arise and let it pass through us without being afraid,
Without justifying,
Without negotiating or rationalizing,
Fighting for or against whatever is coming up as sensations,
As emotions,
Maybe it is fear,
Maybe it is anger.
Be clear that whatever arises can't be you.
You are the crucible,
You are the vessel in which everything is arising.
Endure it with wisdom.
As you sit and scan each part of your body deeply,
Patiently,
Without visualization,
Without directionality,
Without any shape,
More and more transparent the experience of your body becomes.
We have to cover all nooks and crannies,
All the depths.
As I mentioned,
This is a boot camp,
A training ground,
A yajna,
A fire,
Sacred ritual fire.
No meaning,
No rationalization,
Nothing can bring about this transparency.
Sensations have a language of their own,
Logic doesn't apply.
Just like a spider web allows a spider to know every minute movement in its web,
These sensations,
This amorphous experience of your body should be your web,
Every movement to be felt and released.
For those who suffer from anger,
Jealousy,
Anxiety,
These dense clouds which start disintegrating,
Answers don't help here.
Pinpointing the root causes only satisfies the mind,
Doesn't reduce our suffering,
Doesn't reduce our felt suffering.
The suffering from the curiosity,
The unsatisfied curiosity of the mind might be layered on top of our feeling suffering,
But getting answers only satisfies that part.
We might have to confront our habit of attributing our anger,
Our emotions,
Our feelings to the other person,
A situation or God.
Although the feeling gets triggered,
Preserving it is our freedom.
Perpetuating our suffering,
Creating suffering out of feelings is our freedom.
So when you confront this,
That someone else is creating and perpetuating my suffering,
You might be humbled.
You might notice pleasant feelings,
Pleasant sensations come up,
Which will trick us and take us into a virtual reality of thoughts.
Not everything that gets released will be troublesome.
Memories will be triggered,
Which will take you down a memory lane for minutes,
For hours.
You might escape,
Run away from the first glimpse of discomfort,
Of sensations.
This process is like cleaning your house.
Once you remove all the big clutter items,
Suddenly the smaller ones become the big ones.
As you take the bigger trash out,
The vacuum cleaner sized dirt starts popping up.
The more you vacuum,
The more you find trash.
So it's a layer by layer cleaning.
And we are not doing any cleaning,
We are just being and letting things come up and go without even wanting them to go.
Let them come and do whatever the hell they want to do.
Some might seduce you with promises.
Be patient,
Be resolute,
Be kind,
Be indifferent.
Wash your sensations clean.
Allow the transparency to happen.
Let go of the violence,
Let go of the reaction,
Let go of the interference and sit patiently.
And observe objectively.
