A Full Talk

This is a talk and guided meditation that I led in Acton, Massachusetts. I gathered questions from students and then gave a talk that covered my personal path of learning, and gave advice for others on the path of presence and peace. It is helpful for practitioners of all levels.

Transcript

Okay,

So for the last class,

My plate is full.

So when I began practicing meditation,

I would sit for 10 minutes once a week.

Sounds pretty reasonable.

So every Thursday night in my bedroom in college,

Told the story before,

I cut out a little square of carpet from Home Depot,

Put it in my bedroom,

Little Buddha statue of salt land,

Made myself a little meditation spot.

The only thing that happened in that spot was my meditation.

And every Thursday I would sit there and I would meditate for 10 minutes.

The very first time I ever sat there to meditate,

I thought,

This feels good.

It's different,

And it's weird,

And it's exciting.

And it feels good.

It felt good.

It felt clarifying.

Something changed by sitting there.

It felt good.

So that was more or less my meditation practice.

But just because I kept that going,

You know,

Of course,

Maybe I'd be outside and it would be like a nice day and I would sit down on a bench and I would just meditate.

You know,

Whenever it tickled me fancy,

As they say,

Whenever I just felt like,

Oh,

This is a nice feel good.

Let me just sit down and meditate.

I would.

When I'm waiting for something,

When I was in the airport.

You know,

Just in a conducive situation that I just had time and space,

I would just sit and meditate.

And I would go to meditation classes slowly.

I went to some other weekly classes just to augment that practice and it felt great.

But only when I got to the monastery did I really start sitting daily.

And we sat early.

We sat five in the morning every day.

And I'm not an early riser by birth.

I was born at night on a Thursday night that that I like rising later and staying up later.

So waking up at five is not easy.

I didn't have many good meditations and my five o'clock in the morning sitting a lot of nodding off a lot of just kind of cloudiness in my head for years.

When I did my first retreat,

Which was,

I think,

My first year in the monastery,

It was like a four or five day meditation retreat.

We sat with a group,

Something like sat for 45 minutes,

Walked for 10 minutes,

Took a 10 minute break,

Sat for 45 minutes,

Walked for 10 minutes,

Took a 10 minute break like that.

I think all in all,

Maybe we had six,

Seven,

Eight,

Something like that meditation sessions in the day.

So pretty much,

You know,

Something like 30 hours of meditation and four days.

And that whole time I was just thinking it was like everything for my life was just flashing before my eyes.

Not when you die that happens.

It's when you're meditating.

That's when that happens.

But I started really seeing,

Okay,

Actually,

The busyness of my mind,

It's because my mind had a lot to say that there was a lot of things that a lot of feelings,

A lot of experiences,

Memories that I hadn't really given enough attention to,

Enough thought to.

That I had lived my life in a kind of survival mode where I had just been pushing everything down.

And so I kind of saw the mechanism of that.

You could call that the ego,

Right?

This way of the mind trying to protect itself by finding something to do.

And I had to really go through this process.

It was kind of like any cleaning process,

Right?

If you clean your house,

If you clean the dishes,

It's like the first step is like you get a little dirty.

It starts scrubbing and scraping and all these big chunks fall off and you don't even know if it's getting better or not because it's just messy.

It gets even messier,

It seems.

Stuff goes everywhere,

Right?

And I was learning.

I was learning what to do with my mind,

What to do with my feelings.

I remember one day we had a Chinese medicine clinic,

Acupuncture and massage,

And I was massaging somebody.

This woman,

I was massaging her and she was like,

Ow,

Ow,

Ow.

Telling me it was hurting,

But I wasn't really pressing hard.

And I just started getting angry.

I remember I was getting angry.

And I had this feeling like this person's not really hurting them.

They want to play the victim role for some reason or they're getting something out of this,

But it's not really hurting them.

And I realized that it reminded me of something that,

Let's just say,

An adult did to me when I was a kid,

The way that they behaved while I was a kid.

That made me feel guilty for hurting them,

But I wasn't really hurting them.

Brought up all this anger and I didn't know what to do with it.

I went to my bedroom and I took a chair,

The chair that I sat on,

And I picked it up and I smashed it on the ground.

And then I took one of the legs from that chair and I just started beating the chair for about an hour until it just became splinters on the ground.

And I just kind of collapsed in this heaving mass on the ground.

And then one of the monks came up,

It was like lunch,

So one of the monks came upstairs after lunch and he looked in the room and he sees me lying on the floor,

You know,

With my shirt off,

Just panning with splinters everywhere,

This chair leg in my arm.

And he looks at me and he's just,

You know,

And I just staring at him and I said,

I beat the chair to death with its own leg.

And he's like,

So that's what that sound was.

Apparently downstairs they just heard this thump,

Thump,

Thump,

Thump,

Thump,

Because I was hitting this chair.

And then,

You know,

Eventually my teacher came and spoke to me about this and was kind of like,

Well,

Actually it's good.

You got in touch with some really deep anger and you express it and you felt it.

But that's not the,

That's not,

There's more to this process,

Right?

That was like my therapeutic expression of anger.

But then he said,

You know,

You have to really look at that and work on that because,

You know,

If there's a person who makes you angry,

Is that what you're going to do to that person?

You know,

The monk's path is one of nonviolence.

How do you want to proceed?

And I had to,

I had to go down a lot of wrong paths.

I had to,

It was a lot of learning.

I would just call it learning.

We wouldn't even call it wrong path,

It was just learning.

So I had to learn a lot and I did a lot of experimenting.

Some of those experiments were unsuccessful,

But then they slowly led me to the things that were successful.

And,

You know,

In that particular process slowly led me to learn how to set boundaries,

Not to make other people's problems my own problems,

But also to respect and understand where other people are at.

You know,

All sorts,

A whole wealth of information kind of came from that.

You know,

There's this teacher Achencha,

This forest monk,

And he was a monk for many years in the jungles of Thailand,

And he would go and sit like in the tiger tracks in the jungles,

You know,

And face death and really this tough monk.

Go and sit where they were burning the bodies and contemplate death and all of this.

One of his famous quotes is,

If you haven't cried,

You haven't practiced hard enough yet.

And it's not saying that you're supposed to,

You know,

Push yourself until you break down crying,

But it was more like,

If you haven't really started getting in touch with some of these deep things in your heart,

That you haven't started really been able to work on yourself emotionally,

If everything's not starting to come up and out to be processed,

It's like you haven't really done the work yet.

Because we have to clean ourselves out,

Right,

It's this cleaning process.

And for things to be clean,

They have to come up and they have to be expressed and we have to understand them and slowly see them.

And nobody wants to hear this,

Because it's messy,

It's confusing,

It's not convenient.

It's not a straight line,

It's not linear.

It goes all over the place.

But that was for me,

How I started my journey of emotional awareness,

Of emotional learning.

And the path of meditation is also the path of emotional learning.

They are the same.

Meditation,

It's a feeling.

What are we here for?

We're here to feel peaceful,

Right?

People say I come here because I don't want to have any thoughts.

And I say,

Yeah,

But that's like somebody going to the gym and saying,

Well,

I want abs.

And it's like,

Well,

What do you want the abs for?

Because I want to feel confident.

Oh,

So you don't care about the abs,

You care about feeling confident.

You know,

What do you want to have no thoughts for?

Because I want to feel peaceful.

Ah,

So you want to feel peaceful.

Right.

So meditation,

It's about feelings and the way to meditate.

It's a way of feelings that eventually when you're sitting here and the body starts to disappear,

You'll start to feel more peaceful.

And eventually that feeling of peace,

That feeling of wellness,

It gets so strong that it fills the mind that even the thoughts start to disappear because your mind is filled with contentment.

The mind just wants to be here.

The absence of thought is a side effect of peacefulness.

It's a symptom.

So for people that are wrestling and wrangling their thoughts,

Trying to stop their thinking,

You're going about it all wrong.

It's endless because you're thinking because you're not peaceful.

And then if you're attacking your thoughts,

It's like then you're creating more unrest within yourself and it's endless.

Right.

So understanding that what I'm looking for here is peace and pieces of feeling,

You know,

Because I practice at all these different monasteries for a lot of,

You know,

I was talking to one of my friends this morning.

He works at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center down in Boston.

I said,

You know,

There's all these monasteries in the world and some of them are really crazy.

And I mentioned that there's one in Australia and not Australia,

In California,

And it's called City of 10,

000 Buddhas.

It's one monastery.

And one of the prerequisites to stay there,

If you're a monk or nun,

You can stay there,

But you're not allowed to lie down ever.

That you can stay there,

But you have to sleep standing up.

Sorry,

Sitting.

You have to sleep sitting up.

And they come around and they check.

You can't lie down,

You have to sit all night.

And for them,

This is like this discipline and this,

You know,

And I mean,

Gosh,

Imagine you probably learn a lot about yourself,

Having to sit up every night.

I tried that.

I lasted three nights.

It didn't work anymore.

And I just thought about that.

And I said,

You know,

There's a part of that that's like,

Wow,

That's powerful.

Another part of it's like,

Man,

That's so stupid that there's a lot of people and they practice so rigidly,

So like militantly.

So many monasteries have gone to and everybody's frowning.

It's like,

What are you doing?

What is this about?

We're not here to force ourselves into some weird regiment thing called practice or meditation.

It's like you're here to be happy.

Like the Buddha taught the path towards happiness.

And there's some realities to this life.

Like if you go and you look outside,

Turn on National Geographic even,

You know,

The lion eats the zebra.

Is that zebra happy?

No,

That zebra is getting killed and eaten by a lion.

Is that nature?

Yes.

Is that the way of the world?

Yes.

That unfortunately we do live in a world that things have to kill each other to survive.

Things,

Everything feeds off of something else.

We live in a world that there's sickness,

That there's pain,

That there's death.

These physical bodies that we have,

They're a bunch of nerves.

Pain on the very basic physical level is 100 percent unavoidable.

100 percent.

You will all experience physical pain in this life,

Everybody.

Now there's emotional pain.

How much emotional pain do we need to feel?

How much of emotional pain is our choice?

And how much is just the feeling?

There's a little bit more wiggle room there.

Because first of all,

If I have pain in my leg,

Do I sit here and just say,

Oh,

There's pain in my leg,

And just breathe and feel it and let it become some different sensations and it's not going to kill me,

It's OK.

Do I feel pain in my leg?

And then I say,

Oh,

There's pain in my leg.

I can't meditate.

I knew it.

This is hopeless.

My knees bum.

Never again.

It's not going to work.

So are we compounding physical pain with stories and emotional pain?

And then there's other kinds of emotional pain,

Like loss,

Right?

Like you're saying loss,

Overwhelming situations,

Things that happen.

How does meditation work with that,

You said,

Right?

How does that work together?

There's.

There's clarity that comes from becoming presence.

There's clarity that comes through presence.

The more that we're just able to be present,

The more we can see things clearly.

The more you can be with something,

The more you can see it clearly.

When I would get cramps in my foot when I meditate,

When I was a monk,

I'd get cramps sometimes from sitting on my foot,

Weird or just normal for being this weird angle.

I get a cramp.

And one day I was on a treat and I tried something.

I said,

What happens if I don't move that foot?

And I got a cramp in it and it was painful.

I'm sure you all know what a cramp in the foot feels like.

It was painful.

And I said,

Go ahead,

Kill me.

Let's see.

Let's see how bad you're going to get.

And it got bad.

And it got bad.

And it got really bad,

Like on fire.

It's like when you take wasabi and it's like,

That's too much.

And I sat and I sat and I sat and it got so bad.

And then it kind of leveled off.

And then the pain disappeared completely.

And when the pain of the cramp disappeared completely,

I could feel again my foot and I could simply feel that my foot was just at a weird angle and I could just feel that the foot was at a weird angle.

And then I was like,

Oh,

Okay.

And then I just moved my foot an inch back to a normal angle and it was fine again.

And it was this amazing experience of just going right through the pain.

Again,

Like I like the wasabi analogy because if anyone ever eats like wasabi with sushi,

It's like you eat wasabi.

If you ever eat too much wasabi,

It's like,

Whoa,

And it like burns your face from the inside.

But if you actually,

If you ever take wasabi,

You can close your eyes and you take a deep breath and the wasabi will go whoosh.

And it'll burn right through you.

And then it'll be over that you just breathe into it and you just let it run its course.

And it happens quick.

The more that you resist the wasabi,

The more pain you'll be in,

The more you breathe into it.

It goes right through and it's done.

The cramp in my foot,

The more that I would resist that cramp,

The worse it would be.

When I really just let it be there and it ran its course,

It was over.

And then I could actually feel what was going on beneath it.

Anger is one of those.

Anger is a boundary setter.

Right?

When I was breaking that chair and I was angry,

I was angry and I was angry and I was angry and I was angry and I was angry.

Eventually that anger turned to me crying.

Eventually that anger turned to me crying.

Why did I start crying?

Because I had been emotionally abused as a child.

And I realized it in that moment that I had been emotionally abused,

That I had been emotionally misused as a child.

That there was somebody who unfairly treated me emotionally,

Made me feel guilty,

Made me feel like I was doing something wrong because they were uncomfortable.

And because they felt uncomfortable,

They tried to manipulate and control my emotions.

So I behaved in a certain way that they felt better.

And I realized that and I started crying and crying and crying and all of this pain came out.

It was all the sadness and this pain and the feeling of being abused.

It's a really shitty feeling.

It's a bad feeling.

But I could see that all of that anger,

That was me wanting to set a boundary for myself.

Anger is always a boundary.

Anytime you feel angry,

If you were able to create a little space around that anger and start to look a little bit deeper,

Track it back a little bit,

What's that from?

You will always see that anger is setting a boundary.

You're always trying to set a boundary.

Whether you're sad,

Whether something's unfair,

Whether something happened that shouldn't have happened,

Somebody did something they shouldn't have done.

Anger,

Frustration,

Right?

I've had enough,

Right?

That anger,

It's a boundary.

There's a boundary of anger.

Right?

So you can start to see when you really are able to hold space and just feel.

When I could feel that cramp and not move,

Eventually I could feel it's just my foot.

When I could feel my anger and really be in the anger,

But also be in it and like looking at it as I'm being in it,

You know,

Then I started to understand,

Oh,

This is actually sadness.

Oh,

This is pain.

Okay,

I see what that is.

And then I started to understand myself,

Right?

Putting this into practice,

My father passed away,

Right?

He came to my house.

Was that like a year and a half ago or so?

So my father died from ALS about a year and a half ago.

Yeah,

Crazy.

Crazy when you lose a parent,

Crazy when you lose anybody,

Crazy when you lose somebody due to a disease or unexpectedly,

Right?

And,

You know,

Grieving process,

Some days it was fine.

Some days I'd think about him and I'd just start crying.

I don't feel like I created any extra suffering on top of the situation and simultaneously allowed myself to express whatever I did feel.

If I felt sad,

I let myself cry.

Permission to be human,

Right?

Something you learn in meditation.

We're not here to become robots.

We're not here to become feelingless robots.

We're here to completely be able to accept and acknowledge our feelings and to express our feelings.

You're allowed to have feelings.

You're allowed to share and show feelings.

Simultaneously,

You need to,

You need to kind of learn how to also just leave it at that.

That I'm sad and I cry and I cry and I cry and then it's over.

You know,

And then you keep going with life and that's okay.

That you feel whatever you need to feel and then you can put it down.

So you don't repress it.

You don't judge it.

You don't try to think yourself out of your feelings.

You allow yourself to feel things.

But then also by feeling things,

You allow yourself to just let go of them,

To process them and to be done with them.

Yeah,

So going through difficult situations,

I found this is something they actually did studies with Tibetan monks.

They took a group of Tibetan monks,

You know,

Whatever,

Thousands of hours meditators and then group of normal people,

No meditation.

They hook them up to like a little,

You know,

I don't know if it's like brain monitor or like heart rate monitor.

And they say,

Okay,

In one minute,

We're going to give you a shock.

And then they measure everyone's heart rate for that minute and then they give them the shock.

They measure their heart rate and then they measure the heart rate for the next minute.

So for the average person with no meditation experience,

As soon as they say,

We're going to give you a shock,

Heart rate starts going up,

Starts going up,

Starts going up,

Starts going up,

Getting stressed,

Getting anxious.

Then the shock happens,

It's a big exaggerated kind of thing.

And then they're still like distressed heart rate,

Still like high and then slowly,

Slowly,

Slowly eventually.

So it's like it's like the shape of a like a mountain,

Right?

So it kind of like over time,

Like goes up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Gets really high and then done.

Then they measure the Tibetan monks,

Say the Tibetan monks,

We're going to give you a shock.

The Tibetan monks go,

Okay,

Heart rate,

No change.

Sit there,

Sit there,

Sit there,

Sit there,

Just hanging out.

Suddenly there's a shock.

The heart goes,

Whoa,

Goes a little bit higher than the other people.

Goes,

Whoa.

And then right away it just goes back down to resting heart.

So the average person,

The non trained mind,

Right,

We're worrying about something that's coming in the future.

Even if it's something we know is coming,

But we're worrying about something,

So we're creating distress before the actual event.

Then the event itself is distressing or stressful.

And then there's stress afterwards.

Oh my God,

That just happened.

Oh my God,

That was so horrible.

So we have anxiety up to the event,

Then the actual event itself sucks,

And then leaving the event we have like distress.

For one who practices meditation,

You can sit in the middle of a really difficult situation,

But be completely relaxed and completely present if in that one moment nothing's going on.

And then when something's happening,

You're completely present with that thing,

You react to it.

And then as soon as that thing is gone,

You again let it go and you're just present again.

I in my life have been in many difficult situations that are like longer term situations,

Whether it's like a relationship or a living situation or financial,

Whatever,

Things that are like longer term difficult situations.

But I'm not living in a constant state of stress because of that.

Yeah.

I am right now like in debt more than I've ever been before in my life because of like a trip I took for three months.

Like I don't really know where I'm going.

I don't know what I'm doing.

There's so many question marks in my physical life right now,

But I feel very,

Very happy in my life because I see all those things and I say,

I have no idea what to do about those.

I'm going to start moving towards them or I do know little steps I'm going to take and I trust it's going to work itself out and figure it out.

But I'm not creating stress about the stress.

I'm not thinking about all these horrible things.

I'm not creating,

Compounding it,

Creating extra.

And this is what we start to learn when we start to work with our minds,

Seeing our minds,

Listening to your own minds.

So important when you're in meditation,

Instead of sitting there being so pissed at your thoughts,

Start listening to your thoughts.

What is your,

What are your thoughts saying?

What is your special brand of neurosis?

Are you having arguments with people that have already passed?

Are you a planner,

A worrier?

Are you angry?

Are you trying to resolve things that have already happened?

Are you having sexual fantasies?

Are you thinking about the food that you want to eat later?

Are you thinking about a beach or something?

What is your specific form of not being here?

Are you more focused on the past,

The future,

Something you'd rather have now?

All of that stuff is super relevant.

Because if you were able to listen to your thoughts,

You'd realize that you follow some behavioral patterns.

That the mind goes in some certain ways again and again and again.

Similar.

That some of us in this room are more habitual worriers.

Some of us are more habitual grumpy people.

Some are more habitual fantasiers.

Right?

Some people are more about desire.

Some people are more about aversion.

Yeah.

Some people are just bored and boring.

Yeah.

Somewhere in the middle.

Nothing much.

Floats their boats.

Yeah.

So really,

Instead of seeing your thoughts as like your enemy during meditation,

See your thoughts as actually,

They're like a pretty good guide to what your mind is up to,

To who you are,

To what behaviors you've built up.

Once I learned to set boundaries and I felt safe setting boundaries in my life with people through communication,

I never again had to have an argument with somebody in my head from the past.

Does anybody have that?

Does anybody find themselves rehashing old arguments with people?

Put up your hands.

Let me see.

Look around the room.

This is important.

Melissa doesn't do it.

That's amazing.

Everybody else.

Oh,

You do do it.

You probably do.

Okay.

So right there.

So everybody in the room raised their hand and said,

I rehash old arguments from the past.

Okay.

I am raising my hand and I'm saying to you,

I don't do that anymore because I feel safe speaking out.

I feel safe setting boundaries in the moment.

So I know that I can protect myself in any situation.

So my mind doesn't have to keep going back there to try to remind me,

Hey,

Seth,

You still haven't figured out how to do this.

And I don't want you to get hurt again.

Right.

This is what the mind does.

We're going back to past situations that were painful for us.

And it keeps going there in an effort to protect us that if somehow I could think about that situation enough,

I'll figure out how to handle if it happens again in the future.

This is our way,

Our ego's way of trying to get control,

Trying to feel safe,

Trying to protect ourselves.

That's what healing is about.

That once you've learned how to do the thing now and you feel safe,

Right.

They say that the bad ninja is the one who keeps a sword up all the time because he's afraid of an attack at any moment.

And that's exhausting to always have your sword up.

That's exhausting to walk through life with your sword up.

Imagine sitting at the dinner table with your family and you have your sword up.

Yeah.

The good ninja,

Right.

Good samurai.

They have their sword down because they know if something comes,

They can then lift up the sword and use it.

But they don't have to hold it up all the time.

Right.

They know how to put things down to let it rest.

And that state of rest,

If anytime you're not in a state of rest,

It's because your mind doesn't trust you on some level.

That your mind thinks that it needs to control.

It needs to hold on.

It needs to remind you.

It needs to protect you.

Yeah.

And that's through a number of things that your mind thinks it has to do something.

And that's why also meditation,

It's such,

It's a process of trust.

You have to really again learn to trust,

To trust yourself,

To trust this moment.

Yeah.

To trust that everything right now is okay.

And if something's not okay,

I promise myself that I will not rest until it is okay.

Yeah.

That's how I found my inner peace in that way.

I really had to make promises to myself and say,

Seth,

I am here for you.

I love you.

And I'm here for you.

And even if nobody else in the world will stand up for you,

If nobody else in the world will do what's right for you,

I will do what's right for you.

Because that's my job.

Yeah.

And I've started building that relationship to myself that then I can feel safe and then I can relax.

Yeah.

So I've had to build up a high level of emotional awareness of myself,

Find the antidotes to the things,

Give myself that antidote,

And then my mind became peaceful.

Right.

So I had to disarm different mental patterns,

Behavioral structures.

Right.

So all that stuff's in here.

So when we're sitting and meditating and we're relaxing and we're breathing,

Like you were saying,

Like the white noise,

That like,

Or even guided meditations like I do here,

That it's,

You know,

You use the word crutch.

I'd say it's like harsh.

I wouldn't say crutch,

Right?

But I would say it's guidance,

Right?

That right now,

Or listening to meditation music or things like this,

What you're starting to do is slowly you're becoming familiar with the state of peacefulness.

You're slowly becoming familiar with how does that feel to rest?

How does that feel to be able to let go?

Right.

And a lot of people need different things to do that.

Ultimately,

You want to be able to do that without me,

Right,

Without being guided by somebody.

You want to be able to do that without music.

You want to do that without having to sit alone in a room.

You want to be able to do that wherever you are,

Ultimately,

Right.

End goal is that you want to be able to be in a difficult situation and still be able to breathe.

You want to whenever you want to be able just to close your eyes and take some breaths and rebalance yourself.

Yeah,

You want to be able to become very like the mind to become very malleable,

Right.

You want to be able to wield the mind again like the martial arts,

Right.

Someone who's really good like a sword.

You know,

You want to be able with your mind to be able to bring your mind to whatever state you want to when you want to.

And it's honestly it's like going to the gym.

You know,

I went to the gym for the first time in a while like like I started going to a couple months ago and I could do three push ups and then I was like my arms hurt.

Yeah,

But I went to the gym every day and I do 15 push ups and it still feels okay.

Yeah,

That starts to become easier.

Start to build muscle.

You start to gain momentum traction.

Meditation is the same way.

The more you familiarize yourself with presence,

The more you familiarize yourself with what it feels like to feel peaceful and good.

You're you're creating a map in your brain and your mind.

It says this is where you want to go.

This is how to get there and throughout the day like if I'm in the car and I notice that I'm thinking about something that's stressing me out.

I'll take a couple deep breaths.

Let it go right and I'll just come back to being in the car that you start to recognize.

Oh,

I'm stressed right now.

Why am I stressed?

Yeah.

And it also in that moment it takes extreme ownership.

I think I even heard a word.

It sounded like I don't know what's the word.

It was like like revolution,

Not even like revolutionary.

It's like some word.

I forgot it sounded really cool.

Something like revolutionary or extreme ownership that you have to take complete ownership and that's great to do in a monastery because you're sitting alone in a room.

You know,

I did a three month silent retreat in the room.

It's like there comes a point where you can't blame anybody else anymore.

You can only sit alone with yourself for so long before you're like,

You know what?

Like I am the one in control of this.

And you have to really fully learn to own to own yourself to own your mental states to own your place in life to understand things.

We are all connected.

Of course,

Everything's relationships.

You know,

We are all victims of many things in many ways,

Of course.

But what do you want your experience to be?

What do you want to feel?

What do you want your relationship to life to be?

And there's always something that we can do.

Even if somebody hurts us,

You can always do something.

You can speak up.

You can say,

Hey,

That hurt.

You can say like I need to need an apology or you can go talk to somebody else about it or I don't know.

Give yourself a hug.

There's always something you can do in figuring things out that that the path of meditation,

It's real.

You have to claim your mind.

You have to own your mind that when you sit here and you close your eyes,

Whatever you experience,

That is yours.

Nobody else's.

You're the one that has to experience that.

And if you ever want that to get better,

It's through your own efforts that that's going to get better.

And that's it.

You know,

The time and work that you put into it,

That's what you'll get out of it.

And I know that's difficult,

Especially with the pace of the world today.

Some of us have jobs and families and time.

And even if you have free time,

You have nothing to do.

I don't know many people that wake up in the morning and they're like click their heels together.

I can't wait to meditate.

You know,

It's honestly it's not many people's priorities.

Yeah,

Even me.

Once I left the monastery,

It's not easy.

I teach these classes for a reason.

It gives me a chance to meditate to make sure that I also practice.

Right.

That's my that's my way of being kind of like wisely selfish.

Right.

Is that like I'm going to do something for myself that also supports other people?

Yeah.

So you have to figure it out for yourself.

How do I build up the practice?

What does that mean?

What works for me?

When?

What's a good time?

Five in the morning is not the best time for everybody.

My best meditations are like at 10 in the morning if I can,

Or they're at like seven at night.

And then into the night.

Yeah.

When I tried meditating all day long in these retreats,

I would see that my my mind would be a mess all morning and then right about 10 o'clock,

My mind would pick up.

I'd have great meditations,

10,

11,

12.

Then I'd get hungry.

Crap.

Had to go eat.

Then after I ate,

Boom,

My rhythm drops.

All my energy is digesting the food.

I get really tired,

Sleepy,

Lethargic.

This is the same for everybody,

By the way.

Yeah.

Didn't want to do anything.

I would like lay around at Reed,

Just spend time in nature,

Clean.

Whatever I had to do,

I'd just do it in that time.

And then around sunset,

Something started to shift.

As the sun was setting,

I always felt my mind got more inspired.

My mind started becoming more present.

It was beautiful.

As it becomes nighttime,

The mind pulls into itself.

Everything becomes quiet.

And that's like when I wanted to sit.

You have to figure it out for yourself.

You have to make it work.

Even if it means coming to more meditation classes with whoever,

Figuring things like that out for yourself.

Or I teach like meditation mastery.

So I have an online thing that every week I put out another video on Facebook.

And you can do that.

So just something to kind of keep the ball rolling for yourself.

It's really hard.

We've built ourselves prisons,

To put it bluntly.

Right?

That the life you've created for yourself,

It's a prison.

And I mean that by if I have a lot of limiting beliefs about myself and who I am and what I deserve and what life can be,

I'll act out of that place.

I'll take a job that I don't really like.

Maybe I'll find a partner I don't like.

I'll be in a place I don't really like.

I'll do a lot of life choices.

I won't take care of my body.

I'll do a lot of life choices out of that energy.

Now let's say I come to meditation,

Right?

Or I go to a retreat.

Or I have a realization.

I realize,

Wait a minute.

Like I can create whatever life I want.

I'm powerful.

I'm actually a happy person.

I know I can create my happiness.

Awesome.

You're going to walk back to your life and you're going to see all of that life has been created by old energies.

And it takes a while for us to change our lives.

Yeah,

Even when I was 18 and I started meditating,

It was really hard,

You know,

Saying no to my friends who wanted to hang out on Thursday nights and go drink and stuff.

And I said,

No,

I want to meditate.

That was hard.

Even at 18,

It was hard for me to get out of my prison to say like,

I want to start living a life that serves me.

And it was hard.

I had to separate from my friends and stuff.

It was difficult.

Yeah,

I was 18.

It was like I was just beginning my life.

So it only gets harder and more entrenched.

And the older we get,

I feel like life often it's like a like a big cruise ship,

Right?

It takes a long time to turn.

So we have to build it in little pieces.

So it's hard.

It's hard.

A lot of people,

They go on retreats.

I led this educators retreat for Wood Hill,

The middle school,

You know,

Two weeks ago.

And all the teachers,

They go back to school afterwards and they go back home.

And they're like,

Man,

I was at such a high during the retreat and felt so good.

So good to go back home.

And I feel suddenly like I don't know if you like notice,

But like you start to feel like head like right away.

You felt like a heaviness or something.

It's like,

Yeah,

Because you're going back into the life that you've built,

Not from a happy place in yourself.

You know,

It's a life that's stressed and,

You know,

Difficult.

And your goal is to now bring that heaviness back up to that peak state you felt in the retreat.

Now slowly,

I want to take my life.

Now that I became familiar with peace and happiness,

I want to start shifting my life in the direction of peace and happiness.

When you meditate and you feel happy,

I'm going to start shifting my life slowly,

Slowly in that direction.

But it takes a while.

Right.

So often we need support.

Like with Wood Hill,

I did like a retreat,

Like two retreats the other year.

And this year I did a retreat.

I'm going to be going there like next week to talk,

You know,

That keeping the contact,

Keeping it going.

That's what these classes are for.

Unfortunately,

I cannot always be here.

These classes end today.

It's the last class.

Right.

So it's like you need to find your way to stay in contact with supportive things.

Like after I went to Tony Robbins,

They had people connect to life coaches.

So,

Yeah,

Keep you need support to keep going.

If you don't have the ability to do like a daily practice for yourself,

Like find a connection,

Use headspace,

Do something to keep it moving for yourself,

Moving forward to keep the momentum by reaching out for support.

That's something meditation taught me also become humble.

Don't think I can do it.

And if I can't do it,

Then I'm a failure and swinging back and forth between either I'm a failure or I'm going to willpower myself.

And that lasts like a week and then I don't do it again.

Yeah.

Reach out to support.

I had a hard time getting to the gym until I have a friend.

He does fitness and I paid him like,

You know,

A couple hundred dollars and he gave me a fitness program.

So when I go to the gym,

I see Mondays do this Tuesdays do this through that fitness program.

It supported me and I started working out every day.

I could not do it by myself.

I couldn't.

I tried and I tried and tried and I couldn't.

I needed help.

So also just recognizing when you need help,

It's fine.

It's normal.

Somebody was sitting on chairs.

Great.

So I'm a chair.

What do I need to support myself?

So meditation again,

It really comes back to starting to understand ourselves.

You understand the mind.

You see the mind more clearly.

You see yourself more clearly.

And the more clearly you see things,

Then you start to become.

It becomes apparent how to behave,

How to act and to react,

What needs to be done.

And it's as simple as that.

Yeah.

When you collect the mind in.

Right.

Collect the mind in the mind is present so it can see things clearly.

When you see things clearly,

You understand them.

When you understand things,

You know what to do about them.

It's just that straight line.

So if there's anything you have trouble with,

Anything you're struggling with,

Sit with it.

Bring it into the meditation.

Bring yourself into the meditation.

Bring your anger,

Your sadness.

Bring it all into the meditation.

Feel stuff.

Bring your pain into the meditation.

Feel it.

Look at it.

Bring your boredom.

Bring your resistance.

Bring it all in there.

And sit with it.

Feel it.

Look at it.

Ask it questions.

Build relationships.

Does that answer all the questions?

So we have about 10 minutes left to meditate.

So make these the best 10 minutes of your life.

If I don't open my eyes and you're floating off of your cushions,

I am not passing you.

So taking this time,

Closing our eyes,

Getting in position,

Taking this time to be with ourselves,

To know ourselves,

To allow ourselves,

To feel whatever there is to be felt.

As Jack Kornfield said,

Meditation is not a path from here to there.

It is a path from there to here.

Radical.

Radical ownership.

That's it.

How can I be fully present?

Radically present,

Showing up with myself.

The eyes closed.

We take a few deep breaths in through the nose,

Filling the body out through the mouth.

And we start familiarizing ourselves again with this feeling,

Oh,

This is how to let go.

Oh,

This is how to de-stress.

Oh,

This is how to be present.

Relax,

Relax your face,

Your shoulders,

Your arms.

Relaxing down the body,

The chest,

The belly,

The back,

The legs.

Just relax.

Let go of that emotional,

Physical tension.

We're safe,

We're loved,

We're protected,

We're okay.

There's nothing that needs to be done anymore.

This is my time just to be here with myself.

This is me time.

How am I doing?

How are my thoughts?

How are my feelings?

How's my body?

How have I been?

Tired,

Awake,

Stressed,

Relaxed,

Busy,

Peaceful,

What's going on?

Be brutally honest.

Feel.

How am I doing,

Really?

At least see yourself.

If there's anything that needs to be breathed into,

Any tensions,

Pains,

Anything going on,

Just breathe deeply into it.

Physical,

Emotional,

Mental,

Just breathe deep in through the nose,

Out through the mouth,

Release it.

Allow there to be space.

There's a ground beneath you,

The earth supporting you,

Space around you.

The body sitting,

Bridging the worlds of earth and space.

Mind and material merged.

We have our breath,

This direct connection to life.

The place where air enters the body mixes with blood,

Becomes water,

Moves through the body,

Heats up,

Fire,

Becomes the body,

Earth.

We are connected to everything,

And if we are connected to everything,

That means we are everything.

It is only our thoughts,

Our perceptions,

Our assumptions that make us experience separateness.

Breathing,

Feeling,

Connecting,

Being.

Meditation is about feeling.

Enjoy it.

Smile.

Feel thankful.

This is your training ground,

Your place to find peace,

Filling your reservoir,

Your oasis.

Just relax.

Everything is good.

You're okay.

You're already doing it.

Feeling the body breathing,

Air coming in,

Body expanding,

Air going out.

Expansion,

Contraction,

Awareness,

Connection.

That's all there is.

Displayed Feeling the space around you.

Feeling yourself becoming buoyant in that space.

Feeling the space around you.

Feeling yourself becoming buoyant in that space.

Feeling yourself becoming buoyant in that space.

Smiling,

Breathing,

Letting go completely.

Just fully being here.

Feeling yourself becoming buoyant in that space.

Feeling yourself becoming buoyant in that space.

Taking three deep breaths in through the nose,

Filling the body up out through the mouth.

Merging this peace deeply into your consciousness.

This peace,

This remembrance,

This understanding,

This will stay deep in your minds.

Anytime you want to meditate,

Follow this thread,

Come back to this space.

You will remember this.

You have all of the tools you need.

You have the map,

You have the compass.

All you need to do is go.

The journey is now up to you.

It is yours.

Last deep and full breath in through the nose,

Breathing deep,

Deep,

Deep,

Deep,

Full breath,

Hold it.

Release.

Rubbing our hands together until they're warm.

Placing our hands on our face,

Rubbing our face,

Our eyes,

Our ears,

Our neck,

Shoulders.

Rubbing down the body,

The back,

The legs,

The knees.

And the eyes,

Stretching out.

So thank you all for your attendance,

Your openness,

Your willingness,

Your questions,

And your practice.

I hope that over these weeks each of you has gotten some more pieces for yourself,

Some more things that you needed,

Some more understandings.

If you want to continue to follow me,

If you go,

Again,

Either iTunes or SoundCloud,

SoundCloud,

Seth Monk on SoundCloud,

Just look for me.

I have like 160 talks like tonight's class,

So 30 to 40 minute long talks in front of classes covering many different topics as well as some guided meditations.

It's all free,

So you can just use it.

Up to you.

I have Facebook where I do a lot of events as well.

You can check things out.

And also I'm leading a trip to India later this year to the journey of the Buddha.

So starting in Nepal and then going down into India.

So that's the last week of September,

The first week of October.

So if anybody feels interested or inclined or intrigued to come on a 10,

12 day journey with me through Nepal and India,

We're going.

And otherwise,

Really just for yourself,

Make sure that you find the time to take care of yourself,

Whatever that means.

You know,

Whether it's meditation,

Whether it's taking a bath,

Whether it's telling somebody no,

Whether it's turning off your phone notifications that they don't make blibling blibling every two minutes,

That whatever it means for you,

Really just figuring out slowly piece by piece.

Right.

So we're building something,

We're building happiness,

We're building life,

We're building something that we want.

And it's piece by piece by piece by piece.

So everything is made up of other things.

Right.

Enlightenment is made up of many things.

Peace is made up of many things.

So just slowly finding the next piece,

The next piece,

The next one that's available to you.

If we can't do the big pieces,

What are the small pieces?

At any moment in your life,

There's at least a small thing you can do.

Just start with the small ones that make sense and slowly you build up momentum,

You create energy,

You create space and then you can slowly do the bigger,

Bigger,

Bigger pieces.

And that's it.

Just keep going.

So again,

Thank you all for attending and good luck.

See you around.

Okay.

Class dismissed.