The topic for tonight is acceptance.
I just saw something on Facebook.
There was a quote from Bruce Lee and he said,
If you're ever in a room filled with your enemies,
Don't think I'm trapped in a room filled with my enemies.
Instead,
Think my enemies are trapped in a room with me.
Talk finished.
I have a good friend who was just at the Tony Robbins event in California and he was just there.
He kind of created a mantra and it's like,
I'm unstoppable during this event.
Before he was afraid of problems and now he was saying,
Come on,
Give me the problems.
I want more problems.
Give me the problems.
Go ahead.
Give me the face.
Give me the money.
I had something similar happen to me when I started looking at meditation,
Not through the lens of meditation,
But through the lens of just being present with whatever's here.
I've been seeing this more and more lately on deeper levels about how practice is just about being here.
And that's it.
We really overcomplicate it.
It's like we meditate.
We're like trying to be here,
But it's like you're already here.
It's about learning how to release the effort,
Not pile it on.
And the more that I've been kind of focusing on that point or that teaching that it's just about being here,
I've been seeing myself becoming more keen to face difficulties,
Difficult feelings in myself,
Different difficult situations.
Even right now,
I'm actually I've been sick for the past couple of days.
And even as I'm sitting here talking,
Like I feel a little bit weak.
I feel like my breathing,
It's like a little like labored or something.
I feel like a little dizzy.
And I'm really interested to to face that in the practice today that I feel like I'm almost excited when things aren't going my way in life right now.
Because now I get to see,
Oh,
Can I sit with that too?
You know,
How bad of a thing can I sit with?
Oh,
My life's falling apart.
Cool.
Can I sit with that?
Oh,
Me and my partner breaking up.
Cool.
Can I sit with that?
Yeah.
Oh,
I'm sick.
Can I sit with that?
Oh,
Unemployed.
Can I sit with that?
That really whatever is going on in our lives.
Can you sit with that?
Can you sit with that?
Can you just be with whatever is there?
Can you be as calm as a potter?
And sitting with that,
It's such a it's such a brilliant teaching because it's so simple.
Because there's nothing to do.
It's not like we have to figure something out,
Develop some kind of a strategy.
It is a practice and it is a training,
But it's like,
You know,
I play guitar and I play piano and it takes a while for that stuff to work,
To sound good,
To make sense.
And that's like practice.
Like you have to sit hours,
You know,
An hour a day to keep trying to figure it out.
And you kind of incrementally get better.
But I feel like if you just make the decision to just sit with whatever you're at,
You can kind of just do that automatically.
You don't you don't need to really train that or practice it as much as you can just do it based on a decision,
Based on just a change of intention.
And then it's just about remembering that throughout the day,
Throughout our lives,
Just just sitting with things like they are.
And and that's not a passive thing necessarily.
It's something that when we do it in our lives,
Of course,
It leads to action and movement.
It's like if you just said,
I'm going to just sit with that and I just sit here and I just keep saying,
I'm going to sit with that.
I'm going to sit with that.
You know,
Getting hungry,
Getting thirsty,
I'm just going to sit with that.
Starting to get painful.
I'm going to sit with that.
I'm starving to death.
I'm just going to sit with that.
I have died.
Right.
So.
So there's something to be said about balancing that to to know when to act and when not to act,
What you can control,
What you can.
But especially during the meditation times like this class,
It's it's really an opportunity to practice sitting with things that otherwise we would be acting upon because in our lives,
You can always kind of do something.
You can write a mail,
You can have a conversation,
Flip on the television,
Get some food.
There's a lot of distractions.
There's also a lot of ways to.
I guess that we try to control situations.
Try to get results.
But in this room,
There's nothing that we can do.
It's all shut off for us.
It's like we're in time out.
I had time out a lot when I was a kid.
My mom made me go like sit on the steps or something.
I wasn't go to your room because I had like video games in my room.
So I was like,
Sit on the top of the steps and don't.
Time out.
Think about what you've done.
You know,
And that's kind of like what this is.
Right.
Sit here and think about what you've done.
Think about what you're doing.
Building up this muscle of presence,
Of patience,
Of forbearance.
Becoming more and more comfortable with just kind of being here.
With the way that things are in any given moment.
And also really learning how to listen to yourself.
Really.
Being a witness.
To your feelings,
Your emotional states,
Your thoughts,
Your beliefs,
Your perceptions.
You know,
Sitting here and watching yourself again and again.
Feeling like you're not good enough.
Feeling like you should be something else or do something else.
You might even get solutions.
The monastery taught me,
I've told these stories before,
How to helpfully set boundaries.
I used to get really angry at somebody every day.
And I blamed them for it.
They were such a bad person to me.
And it took me about four years living with them.
Because I'm a really slow learner.
I'm really stupid.
I realized that my problem was that I wanted to say no to them.
But I didn't.
I felt guilty if I said no.
So I always did work that I didn't want to do.
I kind of let them boss me around.
And I always just got angry and angry.
I would just sit for days.
And at the monastery,
We'd sit at the same table with everybody every day.
So it's like,
If you have a problem with somebody,
You're sitting next to this person that you have a problem with every single day.
Three meals a day.
You can't escape.
So it's like a kind of hellish environment if you don't work on yourself.
Because you're really trapped.
But to slowly realize that everybody is just a projection.
That if you really know how to handle yourself,
Nobody else should be a problem.
And when I finally realized,
Oh,
It's just about saying no.
And I started saying no.
Suddenly this person wasn't a problem anymore.
Suddenly I realized,
Oh,
This person was just a lesson for me to learn.
And there is always a lesson to learn in every moment,
In every situation.
If you're running late for class,
If nothing has worked out,
If life is disappointing.
I could list right off the top of my head when I'm disappointed.
If I ever feel disappointed in something,
I first say,
Well,
Disappointment is actually just the other side of expectation.
If you don't have an expectation,
You can't get disappointed.
Disappointment is when things don't work the way you thought they were going to or that you wanted them to.
So the projection of the future that we had was different.
In German,
The word for disappointment is Enttäuschung.
The word for discovery,
It's Entdecken.
A Decken is a blanket.
So Entdecken,
It's like to pull the blanket off to reveal something that's discovered.
Enttäuschung,
So it's Ent,
It's that same removing.
Enttäuschung means delusion.
So the word for disappointment in German,
It's actually removing,
Pulling off the delusion.
So interestingly,
When we say I'm disappointed,
It's like,
Oh,
I feel disappointed.
It's like this bad,
Heavy thing.
But if you look at the German word of disappointment,
It's actually saying,
No,
Your delusion is just being removed because you're making contact with a reality that's different than the reality that you had wanted,
Which is your delusion.
You wanted the world to be a certain way and it wasn't.
So one lesson you could learn from disappointment is,
Oh,
That was actually just because I was holding on to an expectation.
Another lesson from disappointment,
How quickly can I let go?
How quickly can I readapt,
Readjust?
Another lesson is how quickly can I not fall into the victim role but instead see what is my proactive?
What can I do proactively?
You know,
I try to get a job and I'm rejected from that job,
How quickly can I then proactively look for another job?
Or what can I learn from that rejection to help me better off?
You know,
If I feel disappointed,
Can I also just sit and just feel that feeling and feel patience and not become a pity party for myself but really just learn to sit with a feeling of heaviness and say,
Yeah,
It's OK.
I'm here for me.
I love me.
It's OK.
I'll hold me in that space too.
Right?
Or,
Oh,
This is a great time to reach out to my supportive friends and share and let other people support me.
This is a great time in allowing myself to be vulnerable,
To share with others.
That in each moment,
With every situation,
There's such a plethora of different proactive relationships we can have.
You know,
Tony Robbins,
He said,
Like,
Life is not happening to you,
It's happening for you.
And I disagree with that statement because life is just happening.
But you can choose if life is happening to you or for you.
You can choose if you're a victim of life or if every situation is affording you an opportunity to learn or to grow in some way.
And that's just a choice.
And of course it's OK to be pissed off when something happens,
To be sad and to cry.
That's called being human,
Right?
One of the tenets of positive psychology,
Permission to be human.
Yeah,
Of course I'm a human.
I'm not perfect.
I have emotions.
I've been hardwired through tens of thousands,
Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to be like this.
These things arise on their own.
And simultaneously,
What do I want to do with that?
What do I want to do about that?
What is now my active role?
What is my empowerment?
How can I be empowered in each situation?
How can I reclaim my power?
And I think that the absolute easiest way to do that is the practice of presence,
The practice of being able,
As Thich Nhat Hanh would say,
To sit as a mountain unshakable.
To sit here in such a way that nothing is really able to affect you,
That whatever is happening in you or around you,
It's just kind of the swirling of conditions.
Imagining like a big mountain and a storm comes and there's lightning and raining and it's horrible and then the storm passes and there's sun and the mountain's still there.
I remember I was leading a peace walk.
I led a peace walk through Germany.
I did two of them actually and they were five day walks through Germany.
And to plan the peace walks,
I first had to walk the routes before I could lead other people on the routes.
So I had two friends,
My friends Marcel and Adrian,
And we would walk the routes before the three of us to kind of get a feel for how far it is and where we're going to need to sleep in those nights and all this.
It was really great fun.
And I remember that we were walking and you know it would rain and then it would be nice out and then we'd be in the forest and then in the city and we'd talk and there'd be silence and it would be,
We'd be tired and we'd be awake and there'd be pains and then we'd feel uplifted and just walking for like a couple days,
Just walking and walking and walking and going through all of these different situations.
And we got eventually to this place and it's called the Felsenmeer.
So Felsen is granite and mer is ocean.
So it's called the granite ocean.
But what it is,
It's the side of a mountain and the whole side of a mountain almost like in a strip going down.
It's just these boulders.
So it's just this big strip of you know maybe as wide as this room,
You know whatever that would be,
40 feet,
50 feet something.
And it was a strip this long and it just went up the mountain and down the mountain and it was just boulders,
All boulders and rocks everywhere,
Just these big boulders.
So you go and you can climb on them and you can jump boulder to boulder.
It's great fun.
It's almost like a naturally made amusement park.
And there's a big debate,
Are they naturally formed or human formed?
I mean they're huge.
I mean impossible.
They're not like a wall.
They're just there.
And we were there and we were at the Felsenmeer walking around and there's all these people there that came for the day.
And it started raining and all the people just started running down the rocks and getting into cover and running down to like the visitor center down at the bottom.
And the three of us just kind of sat down.
We put our packs down and we just kind of laid back and looked up at the rain and just let the rain fall on us and kind of looked at each other and we were just kind of laughing.
Because we'd been through it already.
We knew that the rain was going to come and it was going to go and we were wet.
And in an hour we were going to be walking again and the sun was shining and we'd dry off and it would pass and we'd be totally fine.
And it was this beautiful freedom,
This beautiful feeling of just watching everybody else scrambling for cover.
And the three of us just know the pure impermanence of this moment that you can just open up and fully take this rain in and it wouldn't do anything.
It's not going to hurt you.
It's not going to affect you negatively in any way,
If anything.
It's very refreshing.
And in two hours we're walking and the sun's beating down on us again.
We'll be wishing it was raining again.
And I really feel like I tried to meditate in that same way.
I tried to meditate in that same space.
The Buddha himself,
His first deep meditation in his lifetime,
It was very similar.
He was still a child actually.
He was at a harvesting festival.
He was like a prince in this kingdom in India.
And they had a harvesting festival where once a year they'd come out with all the plows and they'd harvest and everyone.
It was a big celebration for the harvest.
It was either harvesting or planting,
I don't know one or the other.
And he was sitting and he was watching them going by with the plows,
Turning up the earth and all of these worms kind of coming out of the earth.
And then the birds coming down and picking the worms.
And he just kind of noticed this cycle of life,
Of just birth and death and planting and newness and things getting eaten.
And it was a really hot day and he saw this tree and he sat down in the shade of the tree.
And he just kind of smiled and closed his eyes.
And he dropped into this amazing deep meditation.
And when he got older,
Just before his enlightenment,
He remembered this meditation he had as a kid.
And he said,
I think there's something to that.
And he changed his way of practicing to follow that,
To say,
I'm just going to sit here as if I'm just sitting enjoying the shade of a tree on a hot day.
I'm just sitting in the rain,
This beautiful drizzle,
Knowing that it's going to be sunny again.
This complete abandon,
This complete release,
This bliss,
Truly this feeling of bliss.
It's so blissful.
A lot of people as they're having near-death experiences,
A lot of people that almost died,
They report it's actually there's something about it that was quite blissful.
Like when they started to die,
When they're leaving their body,
It's like,
I could just let go of everything.
Or Will Smith said when he skydoped for the first time,
He's like,
It's terrifying.
You're in an airplane and they open the door and you realize I've never been in an airplane with the door open before.
He said it was horrifying.
He stood at the edge of the plane and he's like,
Oh,
You know.
And they said they count to three and they're like,
OK,
We're going to jump on three.
And they're like,
One,
Two.
He's like,
But they actually push you at two because they know if they get to three,
You're going to grab onto the door.
So he's pushed the falling,
Screaming,
You know.
And then he said about three seconds into it.
He realized as he's falling,
There's nothing I can do anymore.
I'm just now I'm falling.
And he said in this great joy overtook him and he just loved it.
It was so fun and blissful because now he already jumped.
The jumping was the hard part.
He's like,
Actually,
Now there's nothing I can do.
I'm falling.
And it's crazy because you think about skydiving and you think,
Oh,
It's so terrifying.
But actually,
People that are falling through the air,
It's completely blissful because you just surrender.
There's nothing else to do.
Your work is done.
If you live or if you die,
Nothing you can do about that anymore.
Now you're just there in the experience.
And that's all that it's about.
It's really about learning how to trigger that place and ourselves at will.
You know,
Knowing when to pick life up and to use it and to work on it,
When to put it down,
When to when to rest.
And I think that's something culturally that all of us need to kind of look at.
How do I rest?
How do I allow life to be life?
When we were farmers back in the day,
I think that when you're working together with nature,
You learn a lot.
You see that there are seasons for everything.
You see how everything takes time,
Patience.
You learn how to accept things really quickly.
You learn in each moment,
What can I do about this?
That the earth,
Nature is such a great teacher because we are nature.
And I think that the more that we become removed from nature,
The more we're living in a human created reality.
We forget that.
We forget the rhythms of nature.
We forget that the truths of being an organic being.
A lot of teachers that I talk to say that the kids in school right now,
It's like the worst they've ever seen.
They don't know how to be patient and wait for things.
They don't really know how to work for things.
They're lacking in social skills because everything's done over a screen these days,
Right?
That there's like a clear shift going on from kids that are being raised on a screen versus kids that are being raised out,
You know,
Playing in the streets,
Playing in the backyards.
And it's interesting because if you look in yourself,
It's the same thing.
You look at your own frustration.
You look at your disappointments,
Your sadness,
Your stress,
Your situations.
It's like a jungle.
It's like the forest.
That's nature.
Your emotional states,
That's nature working through you.
And it's so funny how hard it is for us to just accept that,
Just to accept how we feel and let it be okay.
We think that if there's pain,
There's something wrong with you.
If you're sick,
There's something wrong with you.
If you're angry or sad,
There's something wrong with you.
Sickness and pain are the most natural things.
Yes,
Sadness is just as natural as happiness.
Anger,
Just as natural as joy.
Stress is just as natural as relaxation.
We really need to remind ourselves to remember that most always the biggest problem is our own judgments of how things should be.
I remember in the movie The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise in that one.
Tom Cruise?
Last Samurai.
He talked to the samurai,
I don't even know,
Emperor.
And the emperor said that he was writing a poem.
And the poem was that the emperor every day walked through the orchards looking for the perfect apple blossom.
And then he said,
But I don't know how to finish that poem.
And then at the end of the movie he says,
Spoiler alert,
By the way,
The end of the movie he said,
I know how to finish that poem now.
He said,
They are all perfect.
And what he means by that is the only thing that creates a perfect apple blossom is the observer saying that one's a perfect one.
Because in nature an apple blossom with a wilted leaf,
Or it's a little whiter,
A little more pink,
A little misshapen,
They're all the same.
It's all equal.
There's no difference.
Nature just is.
Things are.
It's only the human mind that comes in and says,
Oh,
That's too white,
That's too red,
That's too big.
And we do that to ourselves.
We walk around inside of ourselves judging ourselves all the time.
What we are,
What we shouldn't be.
We do that to each other.
You're too much like this,
You're too much like that.
Why are they like this?
Why is the president like this?
Why is my mom like that?
Why is my partner doing this?
Do you walk through the forest pointing at the trees?
That one's too fat,
That one has a burr,
That one's,
You know.
That we're so,
Yeah,
It's so interesting how we do this.
So strange.
And we really create our own suffering.
We make life exponentially more difficult than it has to be.
So all things exist within us.
And we can choose,
You know,
How and what we do with that stuff.
I'm not saying,
You know,
If you're angry,
Go punch somebody because it's like that's natural,
Right?
But don't judge and reject that anger.
Look at it,
Understand it.
Ask it.
What is the story you want to tell?
Why are you angry?
What's up?
What's the feeling behind that?
You're angry because what?
Because this person did this,
This,
This,
And this.
Okay,
Yeah,
Yeah,
They did that.
And that makes you feel what?
What do you want in yourself that's so angry?
What's the problem?
Well,
I feel sad,
I feel not seen,
I feel judged,
I feel an injustice has been done to me.
Okay,
I feel alone.
Okay,
Now we're getting to the point.
I gave a talk yesterday in Andover and it was called like,
This Is It,
Right?
And it was about how this moment right now,
Right here where we're sitting,
This is all that there is right now,
Right?
This is it.
And it's almost like if I wanted to write a book about this,
It would be called like How to Un-Fuck Yourself.
You know,
I don't know how else to put that.
It's like how to.
.
.
There is?
Someone beat me to it.
So kudos to that guy.
So it's this process of.
.
.
We spend our lives trying to force the world and force ourselves to fit into our expectations and our hopes and our dreams.
We spend our lives trying to control everything to fit into our box instead of realizing that the box is the problem.
Instead of realizing that everything is fine,
Everything is the way that it is and the problem is that we want it to be otherwise.
And I wrote a quote the other day and it was that,
You know,
Meditation,
It's not about getting something.
It's about learning to be right where you are.
And it's this understanding of like deprogramming,
Undoing,
Releasing,
Opening,
Surrendering.
Deconditioning.
That it's a process of moving ourselves more and more and more into the acceptance of the present moment.
Learning how to more and more and more fully just be with what is here without wanting it to be another way.
And that's the point of work.
You know,
It's almost like everything that's going on in the body is fine.
Everything that's going on in the emotions is fine.
Everything that's going on in the world is fine.
But it all goes through this filter of our brain,
Right?
Or our perceptions or our beliefs or our stories or whatever that filter is that everything goes through,
Right?
That it's that emperor that's looking around at millions of little rose blossoms and thinking that none of them are perfect.
He's looking for the perfect rose blossom,
Apple blossom,
Whatever it is.
You know,
That's us all day long.
We have our colored glasses on.
You have your blue colored glasses on and you think the whole world is blue.
You have shit in your pocket and you think the whole world stinks.
You know,
We don't realize that the only problem is our way of relating to life,
Our way of seeing life,
Our way of being here.
That the only problem is thinking there's a problem.
Perceiving the problem is the only problem.
Even if right now a huge,
We look out and a huge tidal wave is coming towards us and we're all about to die and we have three seconds left.
That's not a problem.
That just is.
You know,
Like,
Okay,
We have three seconds left.
That's it.
It's just,
That's it.
That's life.
If you ever watch like National Geographic,
You know,
Or the Animal Planet,
It's like,
Man,
Nature is savage.
Nature is really,
Really brutal and savage.
Look at the ocean.
Everything in the ocean,
Like I watch the ocean,
The blue planet,
It's like,
Oh,
All these cool animals.
It's like everything in the ocean just eats other things in the ocean.
At least on land we have like plant eaters.
In the ocean,
It's literally everything is just eating the next animal smaller than it.
It's savage.
Everything just eats the next thing.
It's crazy.
That's life.
That's the reality.
That is,
That is this place that we're living.
You know,
This earth.
That's what this is about.
You want to talk about nature?
Yeah,
It's the orca eating the seal.
You know,
That's not how we want life to be.
But that's the truth,
Just as much as the rainbows are the truth and the sun and the blooming tulips are the truth.
They're all there.
It's all true.
This place is heaven and hell all at once.
We've all experienced heaven and hell in our lives.
We know that.
And if you look around,
You could find it.
You could find heaven or hell anywhere.
Right now in this moment,
There's places on this earth that there is heaven going on and places that there's hell going on.
And it's all there.
It's all part of it.
It's all real.
And us wanting that to be any different or any other way.
Sorry.
There's day and night.
There's summer and winter.
It's all there will be death as long as there is birth.
There will be sickness as long as there is health.
That is all a part of the cycle.
If you don't want there to be any more violence in the earth,
Well,
You're not going to have any more animals because that lion needs violence.
The coyotes,
The bobcat,
They need violence.
Right?
Birds.
They're eating the insects,
Right?
So really just understanding deeply just this tapestry that we're a part of and how everything belongs,
How everything is a part of it.
Inside of ourselves,
Outside of ourselves.
And really seeing how can I make peace with that?
How can I live the most peaceful life possible within that understanding?
And that's it.
That's our work.
Right?
At the end of the day,
We're just here to find peace.
And it's not like only when there's no more pain is there peace.
No.
Peace is there even with pain.
Yeah.
Only when I'm really happy then I'll be peaceful?
No.
Peace is like equanimity.
It's like a middle place.
It's not anywhere specifically.
It's the place.
It's a transcended place.
It has nothing to do with any of the extremes.
It's not good or bad,
Black or white.
You know,
We think of peace as like a good thing,
But actually no.
Peace is something that exists.
The mountain in the middle of the storm.
Yeah.
Peace is something that just transcends.
It's not interested in the duality.
It's not interested.
It doesn't have a dog in the fight.
Right?
It's not interested in the game.
Peace is something that just sits in a state of equanimity.
It just is.
The beingness of things.
That presence in us,
The awareness.
When you say,
I feel sad,
Who is it that feels sad?
I feel happy.
Who is happy?
What is the me that's happy?
What is the me that is sad?
What is the me that is listening to Seth talk?
What is the me that is,
My leg is falling asleep?
What is me?
My leg,
Who's me?
Right?
What is this awareness that we keep identifying as me?
That awareness isn't happy,
Right?
That awareness feels the happiness.
So what is that awareness?
Yeah.
If you're really more present with that awareness,
That awareness is just peace.
It just is.
Awareness is neither here nor there.
It's just present.
Anything could happen and you're still just aware.
There could be a war.
There could be a wedding.
It's just awareness.
You're aware of both of them.
So with that,
Let's get ready for our meditation.
We'll probably today just meditate for the rest of class.
It's about 40 minutes.
So sitting in a way that feels comfortable and stable,
Feel free to grab a chair.
And see if during today's practice you can really make some steps,
Some inroads towards allowing yourself to be here with what is.
Allowing yourself to be like you are.
We're not trying to get anywhere.
We're trying to stop trying.
We're trying to just be.
Close our eyes.
Take some deep breaths if you'd like.
Really telling yourself this is it.
Whatever I find now,
I will find later.
Life will never be perfect,
Therefore it is always perfect.
This moment is always perfect.
It is just like this.
Can I be with it?
Can I appreciate it?
Can I experience it with no resistance whatsoever?
With the eyes closed,
Feeling the body and we breathe.
