The Basecamp Of The Mind

A talk to a group of intermediate meditators in Hudson, Massachusetts in answer to their questions about life and meditation. In this talk, Seth talks about mind training, loss, acceptance, sitting position, how to navigate life's various challenges by changing our relationship to them.

Transcript

So,

First of all,

I want to say thank you for inviting me here.

This is really sweet.

It's a great group.

And yeah,

I'm just happy to know that there's these little practicing communities all over the place.

That the more I kind of am out there,

The more I see there's these little pockets of people coming together and doing it.

And that's important and amazing and that's what's needed.

When I was at Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery for a little while,

You know,

I was living there with Thich Nhat Hanh and his community.

But he had monasteries.

And there's one in New York,

There's one in California,

There's one in Thailand and Vietnam.

That he would kind of travel to different ones of them.

And it was almost like there's these different fires he has going.

And he had to go and tend to this one and build up that fire.

And then he'd go to the next one and build it up.

And then by the time he gets to the first one,

It's like kind of going low so he has to build it up again.

So there's just something to be said about bringing the energy together to really make it burn.

And it's harder to just do it alone when you're kind of separated.

Kind of like a fire,

Right?

If you pull the sticks apart,

The fire dies.

When you keep the sticks together,

They keep each other warm and they keep it going.

So practicing with the group,

It's so important.

Until it really becomes like a part of your everyday life where you would just do it by yourself regardless.

Things like this are so important.

So that's really cool just to see it and to be here.

It's nice.

So thank you.

I appreciate all the questions that you asked.

I'm probably going to maybe forget parts of some of them.

So I'm going to just talk and as I'm getting to the end,

If there's anything that I didn't touch on that you still want to hear about,

Then I can like go into that too.

So really briefly about myself for those of you that don't know.

So my name is Seth.

I'm from Andover,

Massachusetts.

And I started my spiritual path.

In a way,

Kind of like when I was a child,

Just with what I would call maybe paranormal experiences in my life.

And also watching the X-Files and things.

So I was like,

Kind of at the end of that,

I was like,

Oh,

Is that a UFO?

And it's like,

No,

It's a plane.

But I was like all excited.

But just with this kind of interest and just understanding,

But also with the experience that there's more to all of this.

There's more going on than we're shown.

Whether it was just really high level coincidences that were happening,

Things that shouldn't have happened,

To feeling presences and things around me sometimes.

And just,

Yeah,

That I was just kind of shown that there's more going on.

So it instilled in me at a young age an interest to probe deeper and to really try to understand.

So when I went to college,

I initially went for physics because that was my way of trying to understand things,

Which I thought was fascinating.

But I had,

I would say,

My first real spiritual awakening my freshman year of college.

And I also learned Reiki.

And I also met a Zen Buddhist master.

And I had friends who meditated.

And so I just started really getting into that world really quickly,

Which I eventually learned is,

Oh,

That's called spirituality.

And that's,

For me,

Much more interesting than physics.

And so I switched to the art school because I thought,

Well,

At least in the art school,

I have a chance to understand my own internal process and how I relate to the world and my own internal representations of things and how to bring those things in the dialogue.

That felt more in line with spirituality than physics at the time.

And I was also the president of the philosophy club,

I think already my freshman year.

I was already debating with the professors there about things and stuff.

But when I graduated from school,

There was nothing that really spoke to me except this Buddhist monk who came to my school and talked a few times had a monastery in Germany.

And he said,

Well,

You can come and visit the monastery.

So I bought a one way ticket,

Just because I didn't have money for round trip.

I told my mom I'd be home in three months.

And so I flew to Germany to this monastery.

And the more that I stayed there,

The more I felt a resonance.

And I said,

You know,

This is something that's happening here.

It's like importance.

You know,

It would almost be like,

You know,

We're in this group here and we're doing this work.

And we're having these important conversations.

We're being more real and authentic and we're reflecting each other,

Working together.

And then someone's like,

Oh,

By the way,

There's like beds upstairs and you can all just like live here.

And this could be like a community.

You know,

It's especially for somebody like coming out of college with no direction.

It's like,

That's amazing.

Like,

Wow,

That's.

So I stayed there and I ended up becoming a monk because just living in a monastery and make sense to be a monk at the monastery.

Just you get better food and stuff.

So yes,

I ordained after a year of living there.

And then I saw I was a monk in total for eight years.

So I was a monk for eight years.

So he eventually told my mom,

Like,

Just kidding.

Not three months.

And so that was a very long and involved process.

And that that was a whole lifetime.

I would say lifetimes were lived in that period of my life.

We would meditate every morning and every evening during the day we ran the monastery like a retreat center and like a guest house.

We had Chinese medicine upstairs and acupuncture massage was also a business.

And we also had the monks and nuns.

We had this community aspect.

So it was like,

I am a community leader and a businessman and a spiritual leader and janitor.

I was I mopped every day and stuff,

You know.

But then I went upstairs.

I was making graphic design and videos for things to promote things.

And then I'm making flyers and then I'm going downstairs leading meditation to school kids.

So I wore all these different hats,

You know.

There's times that I would go and be sitting meditating in the woods and deer would be like walking right next to me and not even seeing me because I was so quiet,

You know.

And I'd be kind of like almost more of like a beggar for my feeling.

I'm like wearing like just like a robe sitting in the forest,

Like the simple nothing.

And then like businessmen would invite me out to like dinner at like fancy restaurants or like consulates and like the Sri Lankan embassy where all of like the highest government officials would come and like kneel and put their head to my feet and like bow to me,

You know.

And so it's like you as a monk,

You get to play all levels of society.

You get to be the beggar and you get to be like the king and you get to be everything in between.

So it's really interesting just to be able to see all these different levels of society as well and interact with them and to actually be a part of none of them but to be able to insert yourself anywhere you want which makes all levels of people very accessible because I could equally talk to a beggar as I could talk to a businessman because I just understood where they're all coming from in that sense,

Right.

One of the most important things that I would say that I learned during my time,

It was really kind of in retrospect,

It was a lot about just learning how to create a better relationship with myself.

I think that would almost be the simplest way I could put it.

I could even maybe say that's what all of this is about.

That's why we're all here in this room.

That's why people practice.

That's even maybe what religion is about in some ways.

Even though religion maybe offers you like a God or a Jesus or a Buddha or something out there that you can kind of surrender to and ask for help with and all of this,

It brings us that peace and that feeling of trust and a feeling of security.

So ultimately at the end of the day,

It still kind of comes back to the feelings that it provides from us.

If you went into a church or a temple or an ashram and you didn't feel good there,

You wouldn't go back.

So there's qualities that we're looking for.

So when we talk about things like projections or mirrors and stuff like this,

Oftentimes,

Like the Dalai Lama said,

Everything we do is selfish.

Every single action that you take all day long is in your self-interest.

Even if it's helping other people,

You help other people because it feels good to help people or because you want to be seen as someone who helps people or because it's painful.

If someone else is in pain,

I feel pain.

So if I can make you feel better,

Then my pain goes away too.

But if you really look deeply,

You'd see that every single action we do is self-motivated ultimately on the deeper levels of the mind.

It's all from ourselves.

But the Dalai Lama said,

So we need to learn how to be wisely selfish.

If I admit that everything I do,

I do because it feels good or it feels right or it feels my integrity or,

You know,

Fits for me,

How can I line that up with others?

So how can I be selfish in a way that also helps and supports other people?

And that's kind of where a lot of the Buddhist understandings of working in society and service and things and providing because we're like,

Hey,

You know,

What can we do?

If I'm anyway on a spiritual path and I anyway have to learn to give and forgiveness and helping and patience and all these things,

How can I also then bring this into the community?

How can I use that as a way to connect to people and to benefit others?

Something that was interesting for me that when I went on my,

I went on a 10 day Vipassana retreat.

I don't know if you guys know about these,

But they're retreat centers that are all around the world.

There's actually,

There's one in Shelburne Falls,

Mass.

It's the first one in the entire US is in Shelburne Falls,

Which is like an hour from here-ish.

And you sit for 10 days.

It's silent.

So you don't talk for 10 days.

You sit for 10 hours a day for 10 days.

But it's free.

So what the heck?

Right?

So you can just go there and they feed you and they give you teachings and you know,

The only catch is that you have to practice,

You know,

And because people have such amazing transformative experiences afterwards,

They,

You can give money if you want and people give a lot of money to them because they're just so grateful for everything they've learned.

But there's no pressure to do that even.

It's just like,

Yeah,

People are just,

It truly pours out of them.

But I was on that retreat and I was sitting in meditation and the whole thing about Vipassana retreats is that you scan your body.

So it's a lot about scanning the body,

Feeling the body sensations and you know,

Not with your hands,

You're sitting in meditation and you know,

Just scanning through with your mind and maybe you feel tension,

Right?

Or you feel burning or tingling or pain,

Right?

You're like her,

It's all pain.

And then going into those sensations,

Right?

Because if I feel pain in my leg,

Usually that's something that I have aversion to and I run away from and then I change position and I change again and I change again.

But if you're sitting for 10 hours a day,

There comes a point where you can't run away from that pain and you're like,

You have to face it.

But when you really sit and you face that pain and you go into that feeling,

What is it?

It's,

There's a burning feeling with like a tightness and a tension and a tingling and you can really go into the pain and it's like,

Oh,

It's not that bad.

It's just these different things that I've been running away from,

But there's nothing.

And then so over time,

You know,

You just become comfortable at sitting longer because it's not,

It's not something that has a hold over you.

It's not like you're aversion to it.

It's just kind of like,

Oh,

It's just a sensation.

So you're really focused on,

If you can look at sensations enough,

You start to create freedom within yourself because also the understanding is that also emotions are sensations.

If you like,

What is an emotion?

It's a,

It's a mental concept plus a body feeling.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

So like if I look at somebody and I say like,

Oh,

I love you.

I love you.

I'm taking this you,

Right?

This object,

This mental construct of this person and all that they are to me and the whole story about that.

And then there's a warmth in this part of my body and my heart area.

So there's a warmth in my heart plus an understanding of you and all that you are for me.

And so that thought and that feeling put together,

That's called an emotion.

Yes.

You can actually say,

Okay,

That's all an emotion is.

It's a feeling plus a thought.

So that of course goes the other way because I could also look at you and say,

I hate you so much.

Right?

So I was sitting in meditation and I thought about my father and I got really angry and I went like into that sensation.

I was like,

Okay,

There's pressure on my heart and anger.

And then so I started breaking it up into these pieces of like,

What is this about?

And then I kind of took it to the next level.

It's like,

Well,

What are the mental pieces to that too?

And I was like,

Yeah,

You know,

You know,

I was at like the bus stop this one time and he came out and yelled at me because I didn't have an umbrella and I was getting wet and he was like really angry and aggressive and like he was such a jerk.

And I was like,

Okay.

And I was like,

You know,

And this is like,

Okay,

This is a good moment to practice.

Right?

So he's a jerk is my like standpoint.

And I was like,

Well,

What does that mean?

Why is he a jerk?

And more importantly,

Seth,

What did you feel?

What was your feeling?

You sound upset,

Seth.

What's your feeling?

And I said,

Yeah,

When he came out and yelled at me,

I felt like ashamed or like I was doing something wrong or like embarrassed.

Like he didn't see me.

I felt just totally not seen.

And I was like,

So what's the real problem here?

My real problem is that I feel not seen and I want to feel seen.

And I said,

So is your father a jerk or do you just wish you could feel more seen in that relationship?

And I said,

Yeah,

Actually it's just that I want to feel more seen.

And then that anger dropped away.

So I had dropped the projection on my father saying,

You're bad to saying,

No,

I just have an aversion towards you because of a pain that I feel.

And if I can identify that pain and understand it for myself,

I also dropped that aversion in that story about you and who and what you are.

And then I suddenly,

And the Vipassana,

I just started crying and I said,

I have been such an asshole my whole life because the amount of times that I have pushed other people away and been mean to other people actually just because of my own pain.

And to be even stupider about it,

Not even to say that I wanted to feel seen,

I even was like,

There's this feeling in my chest called love,

This warm feeling in my chest that I wanted.

And instead of that warm feeling up here,

I got like a sharp feeling in my belly.

Like I felt like I was being rejected.

So it's not even like love.

It's actually because I wanted to feel warmth here,

But instead I felt pain here.

I pushed this human being away for my entire life.

You know,

That we project our feelings outwards onto other people that we project into situations.

So at a Unitarian church,

I gave a talk at the Unitarian church in Fitchburg like a month ago and they asked me to come and I ignored the invitation because I hate talking in front of people like on stage,

Like podium stage things.

I like this feeling like a group or sitting together,

Same level.

We can interact a little bit.

I don't like just walking out and have to just talk to like a mass.

Like I need the inner,

I like the interaction.

It gives me something to talk about.

So I don't feel like I'm just blah,

Blah,

Like there's something going on.

So I just ignored the invitation and then they wrote again like,

Hey,

Did you get our message?

You wrote and I just ignored it again.

And then I was on a radio show and at the end of the show I was talking to the woman and she goes,

Yeah.

And then,

You know,

I asked her about the show and she says,

Yeah,

You know,

It's funny.

Like they asked me and then eventually they asked me to do it three times.

And you know,

If someone asks you to do something three times,

It means you've already said yes in the universal language.

And I go,

Oh,

That's like an interesting saying.

I've never heard that.

And then we got off the phone and then I get a message from the Unitarian church saying for the third time,

Do you want to come and do this talk?

And I was like,

Fuck,

That's three times.

And I was like,

Okay,

So I'll take that as a sign with,

And I was like,

Okay.

So I said yes.

And the whole time leading up to it,

I felt really,

I felt like nervous.

I felt like I'm,

You know,

I feel like I'm a pretty confident person.

I speak for hours about nothing in front of everybody.

That's my thing.

It's fine.

You know,

But for some reason,

Just that dynamic of me being in like this elevated position,

I just,

I don't,

I don't feel comfortable in that.

And and then I got there eventually and I,

You know,

The day of and I went to talk and there was like 12 people there and they were like all super sweet people and like very kind and just,

And there's no,

There wasn't like,

I was sitting in front of hundreds of people that have like this expectation I'm changing their life.

There's just like a couple of people that like,

They're like,

If you weren't here,

The minister would just talk and we've heard everything he has to say.

So it doesn't matter.

You know,

They were just very like cool with it.

And and it was just so funny because I just saw it.

I was,

I was projecting my own insecurity onto this situation.

And the reality of the situation was so much different than I thought.

And how much do we spend our lives in avoidance of situations that we think are going to cause us pain or how much of our lives we spend chasing situations that we think are going to give us pleasure of some kind.

But those are just total outward projections.

And at the end of the day,

Maybe the thing that you're super afraid of,

You walk into it and you're like,

This was a really pleasurable,

Wonderful experience.

And how many times have we chased something that we thought was going to be pleasurable and it instead gave us an immense amount of pain,

Right?

So all these expectations that we're working with.

So when we talk also Ruth,

You're saying about like assumptions,

The four agreements,

It's like,

These are parts of also the assumptions we're making.

We make assumptions because we're just projecting things outward often.

And we think that something is one way,

Like they say,

You can make a picnic,

But you can't predict the weather kind of thing.

It's like man plans and God laughs,

They say,

Right?

That even the German word I often talk about for disappointments,

The actual translation of that,

If you brought it into English,

It would be like the removing of illusion.

So it's actually like when we're disappointed,

It's like the illusion is removed.

What illusion?

Our expectation.

I thought I was going to have a beautiful day and it wasn't a beautiful day.

My illusion that I created just got removed and now I'm pissed off.

And we call that disappointment and so do they,

But the actual word,

If you look at it saying,

No,

That's actually your fault.

That disappointment and expectation are two sides of the same coin.

If you're not living in expectation,

You can't be disappointed because there's nothing,

Doesn't work.

But we all have so many expectations on such,

Even that I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning.

That's an expectation,

Right?

That this building is not going to collapse on us by the end of this talk.

That's an expectation.

That there's so many little embedded that I'm not going to turn into a bird right now and fly out the window because it's never happened before,

But that doesn't mean it's not going to happen eventually.

Who knows?

But we have all these expectations and that's normal.

We live our life through assumptions.

Assumptions are just part of being able to function.

But we also have to learn to release those assumptions the moment that they're not panning out instead of trying to force the world to be the way that we want it to be.

And that's what a lot of stress comes from.

A lot of stress is about that as the separation between how things are and how things,

How we want things to be.

That space in between those two things,

The tension between how things are and what we want them to be like.

That tension,

That space in between,

That is called stress.

That is the definition of stress.

Wanting this moment to be different than it is.

That simple.

I'm in the car,

I'm in traffic,

And I don't want to be in traffic.

I'm walking down the dark alley and there's an angry dog barking.

I have a bunch of work to do.

It's tax season.

My bank account's in the negative.

There's something that I don't want it to be that way.

That's stress.

I want it to change.

And then everything changes.

And then,

Ah.

Then I feel relieved.

You know,

I lost my father a year and a half ago.

So I'm really thankful that I was able to work through some of these things myself.

And then I was able to really be there for him during that time.

And by the end it was this really beautiful connection.

And also my partner Shannon of three years,

We split about a year ago.

I'm sorry,

About a month ago.

And so I've also been going through loss,

Different levels of loss and springing things up.

And loss is an interesting one also in terms of it's the greatest.

I found it's one of the greatest teachers because it's actually a kind of doorway into the only truth of life is that everything is changing.

If you look at any,

Everything is just changing all the time.

Change is the truth of life is change.

Shifts change.

Particles flying.

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

Seasons,

All of this,

Right?

And we know that up here,

But our heart doesn't really accept that.

And when things happen that involve massive change or things that are outside of our expectations of change,

Our assumptions of change,

It's really damaging for us.

It's really painful.

It's really crazy and hard.

And that's normal,

Right?

That's just what it is.

And I found that when I was in the monastery,

It's interesting.

I felt like in the monastery,

Although I went through a lot of really intense emotional processes,

I used a lot of my time at the monastery to build up my mind to not have my emotions control me anymore.

But thereby I also was learning how to not necessarily have to feel or deal with emotions.

I think they call it spiritual bypassing.

That although I did a great amount of reflection and journaling and I cried sometimes for months at a time,

I really went through a lot of really deep emotional stuff,

I also really used it as a way to not ever put myself in vulnerable situations because I had learned as a child that when I was vulnerable,

I was going to get hurt.

So I also used that as a way to protect myself and to distance myself.

And when I returned to this world and took off the robe and got into a relationship,

It was terrifying for me because I suddenly was like,

Oh shit,

I'm now vulnerable.

And my past experiences,

If I'm vulnerable,

I'm going to get hurt.

So that's one of my deep wounds is allowing myself to be vulnerable.

And I've even realized,

It's no coincidence that my job is like,

I'm the one sitting here talking to you,

I have the answers.

I am the teacher and you are the student and I have the answers and you don't.

That I am in situations where I'm not vulnerable because then I feel safe and I feel confident and then I can share freely and this is also great.

But if we dropped into one-on-one groups where we have to stare each other in the eye and say,

How do you feel?

I'd be like,

Ugh.

Because suddenly I'm in that place again.

So for me,

I'm on a journey of becoming human again.

And I think it's difficult when in the spiritual,

Whether this is a religious or a spiritual sense,

A lot of times we are moving away from our humanity in some ways.

They're moving into ideals or into stories or into a sense of disconnection.

We're disconnected from ourselves.

And I felt as a monk,

I was disconnected.

I felt like in the religion I was brought up with,

There was like a disconnection.

It's like,

Okay,

I have the Bible and this is like the truth.

And even if my heart doesn't agree,

The book knows better than my heart or something.

And I feel that my real deepest spiritual path has been the journey back into my authentic self,

Into my own heart.

And I've been learning that unpleasant feelings are real.

And sometimes there's nothing you can do about that.

And that's harsh.

That's like the hardest part.

You know,

Because I'm like,

I like to feel good.

And I like to have tools and I read books and I talk to people and I went to like a Tony Robbins thing.

They did all this and you know.

So I'm all about like owning yourself.

And this is important,

Right?

Because we are responsible for ourselves.

I was just talking to a girl on the phone on my way over here.

And she was saying that she was in a partnership and she broke up with this guy like a year ago and he's still sending her angry letters that he hurt her.

And she's still trying to hold space because she's like,

Yeah,

Maybe if I like stay,

You know,

If I hold that space open long enough,

Like his wound will heal and he'll know that I'm there for him and they can go off.

And I said to her,

Well,

What it sounds like to me is that whether it's by you staying in contact with him or not,

He's not taking responsibility for his own happiness.

He's staying in a victimized blaming role that it's your fault that I'm hurt,

Your fault that I'm hurt.

And I said,

You know,

That's what was so great about going on retreat is that when you're sitting alone in an empty room for enough days in a row,

There gets that point where you're like,

There is nobody else that's responsible for how I feel right now.

You know,

No matter what has been done to me in my past,

No matter where I'm coming from,

Like it's just me feeling this stuff right now.

It's me and my thoughts and my feelings and that's it.

And there comes a point where you really have to just own that and say like,

I am responsible for my internal world,

The texture of my experience.

That's up to me.

And simultaneously,

Like things like great loss happens and things that are just so painful and unexpected.

And it's like,

You know,

It's like sometimes all you can do is just get hit by that wave and you just have to cry and you just have to feel it and it has to be painful.

And it's up to us then how much we have to go into the stories about it.

I wish I could have done something different or this or that or the grief or even with this loss of this partner that we just split up all of these thoughts and stories and if it gives and buts and all of this and but maybe,

You know,

The steps of grieving.

And it's just kind of like,

I think that something that I've been really learning is that there's some things that we have a choice about in this life and some things we don't have a choice about.

And the things that we have a choice about,

It's up to us to make that choice.

And no matter how difficult that choice is to make the right choice.

That's our job.

The things we don't have a choice about.

That's our job to be soft and kind and understanding and forgiving to ourselves and to others.

You know,

And that's a time to allow ourselves to be humbled to be humans.

Yeah,

To not have it all together.

And to really go through everything as gracefully as we can.

And being graceful also sometimes means being a hot mess.

Sometimes it means just collapsing on the floor and crying and screaming and smashing things.

You know,

When I was in the monastery,

I'd say maybe the third week in.

No,

It's probably longer than that.

It's maybe like the third month in.

I was also doing massage.

I was helping the acupuncture.

I was doing massage.

And I was massaging this one woman.

And as I was massaging her,

And I wasn't pushing hard,

But she was going like,

Ow,

Ow,

Ow.

And I was getting angry.

And I was like,

I'm massaging her and she's going like,

Ow,

Ow,

Ow.

And I was getting angry and angry and angry.

And I kind of like eventually just like threw down the oil and stormed out of the room.

And I hear her behind me saying like,

Thank you.

Like you know,

She's like so angry.

And I go to my room so enraged.

And I had like this wooden chair in my room.

And I took the wooden chair and I smashed it on the ground.

And then I took the leg of the chair that was still intact.

And with the leg,

I started smashing the pieces of the chair.

And for about an hour,

I just sat in my room smashing this chair into splinters until I collapsed to the ground panting.

And like at that point,

Eventually somebody like walked by and looked in the room because they were all like at lunch.

And they were like,

Oh,

I heard that banging from downstairs.

And they kind of like walked away,

You know.

And what I saw for myself during that process was that it was about for me in that moment,

It was about something with my mother.

And that I had felt as a child that I had taken responsibility for her pain.

So I always felt like I was trying to protect my mother versus her protecting me.

And that if she felt like she was in pain,

It was almost like this guilt,

Like I'm hurting her.

So like I lived my life under the control feeling of like I'm hurting somebody if I don't do what they want.

And there was something in that moment as I was massaging that person,

It was that energy like as if they were blaming me for hurting them.

But they came to get a massage and I wasn't doing anything that I wasn't supposed to do.

And for whatever reason,

It triggered that in me and it all just kind of came out.

And I was eventually also have to like cry about that,

You know.

And eventually even had to call my mom one day and be like,

I need you to be the mom so I can be the vulnerable.

I need to be able to share things with you and not have it hurt you.

I need you to hold space for me sometimes.

And she got it and it was cool.

It's like a good process,

Right?

But yeah,

Like just going through these different really hard vulnerable things that we have to accept and acknowledge.

And there's some of these things that there's like a very tangible process to work through.

And sometimes we're just lost at sea and we don't know what to do.

And that's all part of this human experience.

And again,

I think if the definition of like stress or suffering maybe is even the separation between how things are and how we want things to be,

Sometimes our path isn't so much the path of change or forward movement as it may be the path of acceptance.

It might be the path of really coming back.

Like Pema Chodron also has a book called Start Where You Are.

Yeah,

Great title,

Right?

So it's like about starting where I am right now.

Not thinking about where I want to be as much,

But why not try being where I am even if it's hard to be there?

Yeah.

Sometimes the most important place to be is right where you are.

And sometimes the hardest place to be is right where you are.

Yeah,

But it's also the most important place to be because that's where the work is to be done.

Because that's what needs your attention.

Sometimes what needs your attention is your future.

Sometimes you need to plan stuff.

Like I'm doing retreats.

I'm doing a trip to Costa Rica next year and a trip to Peru and I'm going to be going to Maui and I'm doing all this stuff.

So it's all this planning,

But sometimes you really just need to be where you are with what's there and you just be in it and express it and love ourselves enough.

And forgive ourselves and allow ourselves just to break down and to be whatever we need to be.

And that's important.

So for me the spiritual path,

Like I was a monk and I was in robes and I met the Dalai Lama a bunch of times and all this stuff.

The spiritual path for me has become more and more and more about how can I become more of an authentic,

Vulnerable,

Honest human being?

How can I navigate the human being in just the most basic,

Easy way that I can to remove all of the bullshit,

All of the dharma and the dogma and the expectations?

How can I really just drop back to who am I really?

What's really going on?

And Jack Kornfield said,

You know,

It's not a journey from here to there.

It's a journey from there to here.

It's almost like our whole spiritual path,

It's about slowly allowing ourselves just to return to where we are and to learn how to reside in this moment,

To reside in ourselves,

To reside in the heart with whatever's going on in there.

Yeah,

And that's hard.

It takes a lot of courage.

So even though you guys are in this room,

Like I applaud you.

This is a courageous feat just to say I'm going to try to sit with myself.

Yeah,

I saw a post on Facebook.

Someone posted like a picture of a log cabin and they said,

You have to sit in this log cabin for one month with no TV,

No phone,

No internet,

But you get paid $100,

000.

Would you do it?

And underneath it,

All the comments,

Nope,

No way.

And I'm like,

I would probably pay 100,

000,

But I would pay,

I would,

I would Airbnb that hut out to be able to sit alone in the woods.

Like,

Are you kidding me?

But the average response to people is no.

Why?

What is the no that they're saying?

What they're saying is it is too painful for me to sit with myself.

I don't know how to do that.

That is hell.

I don't know how to be with myself because we don't learn it in school.

We're not told,

We're not given the tools.

We're not shown how to do it.

As you guys know,

You have to go through great lengths.

You have to go and find groups and read these like kind of,

I would even say obscure in a way books.

You have to find these little pockets of it because in the mainstream culture,

It's not there.

There's no tools,

There's no help,

There's no support.

So a lot of people,

They feel very overwhelmed with their internal worlds or they feel helpless to it or afraid of it.

So the average person is in a constant state of fight or flight running away from themselves because anytime there's a moment where they're returned back to themselves,

It's terrifying because they don't know how to navigate it.

So they need to use distraction.

They need medication.

They need sleeping pills.

They need Netflix.

They need sex.

They need drugs.

They need something,

Alcohol.

They need something.

Some people just talk continuously about nothing.

You know,

People like that in your lives or just gossip or something,

You know.

So what is it?

What is it that we are,

Do we have an addiction,

A way that we're trying to escape how we feel,

Right?

So these are all just really important ways to look and understand that this is the bigger problem because I work in schools.

I also work in schools.

I teach meditation mindfulness to students,

To teachers,

To principals,

Things like this.

And I've come over time to realize the biggest problem is that people just don't feel comfortable being with themselves.

That's it.

Whether that's the students or the teachers or anybody,

That everyone's under pressure.

Everyone thinks,

Especially kids,

Not only are they like under the pressure from their parents and the schools,

But then they're under the social pressures.

Not good enough,

Need to do more,

They have like everything against them.

Like kids,

It's really,

You know,

Some of the hardest experiences a lot of people have.

It's like in their childhood because you're just trapped in a situation that is largely out of your control and you're still trying to figure out who you are and yet you're simultaneously expected to be all of these things,

You know.

And so my part of my work is to come into schools and to teach everybody like,

Hey,

It's okay.

You know,

My favorite is when I go into a classroom and the teacher goes,

Okay,

Like the class ends in an hour,

Like and the teacher's like,

I'm going to step out,

You know,

And they leave.

And I'm just kind of like look around at this class of,

You know,

Like 25,

You know,

13 year olds and I just kind of laugh and I'm like,

No,

Like we're in trouble right now.

Now I'm going to really tell these kids how it is and like no teacher here.

So,

You know,

And I really tell them,

I was like,

Listen guys,

Like school sucks.

Do you agree?

And everyone raises their hand.

I'm like,

Yeah,

School sucks.

And I go,

Why does school suck?

And they say all the things I just said,

You know,

I'm like,

Yeah.

And I go,

I was in school,

I hated it,

You know,

Because I was being forced to learn stuff I didn't care about.

I was being punished if I didn't pay attention.

Yeah,

I wasn't seen,

I wasn't understood.

I said,

How many of you feel like there's not even one person in your life that knows you,

That understands you?

And across the boards,

25% of kids raise their hand.

And I've done this in multiple classrooms,

Multiple places,

25% of kids,

They say not one person,

Not their friends,

Not their family,

Not one person actually knows them.

Isn't that insane?

Yeah.

And I'm sure it's because partially they don't know themselves.

So it's also like they're not able to share all of themselves because they don't know who they are,

But somebody that really knows them should know,

Oh,

They're still finding themselves,

You know?

So just that feeling of being alone that a lot of kids have too,

Right?

And a lot of adults have,

If you really drill down into it.

And same kind of deal,

A lot of us feel alone because we don't know ourselves.

And I really like this thing about being alone versus feeling lonely.

Because I heard you say being alone,

And being alone,

There's something in the,

When I went to Australia and I was in like a hut practicing for three months there.

And there's a community,

But you have breakfast at 5 a.

M.

,

Lunch at 11,

And that's your only meals,

But that's your only contact with human beings that you just eat and then you go back to your hut in the outback by yourself.

And then you eat and then you go and you sit in the outback.

So there's kangaroos and things.

I had cool interactions with kangaroos,

It was neat.

But it got lonely.

I felt lonely.

Being alone for long enough,

I had periods where I felt lonely.

And then I had periods where I would pour myself a cup of tea and I'd sit at the hut at night,

It was dark,

It was raining outside.

And I'm just sitting with this little tin cup of tea alone in my little hut in the outback with nothing around and nobody around,

Just smiling.

And just feeling like,

Wow,

This is great.

Just this simplicity.

And it's like,

I'm on an adventure here,

Like wow,

What is this?

And yeah,

Loneliness is a choice in a way.

Maybe,

Maybe not,

Right?

But it's an emotional cloud that can pass versus being alone isn't necessarily painful,

Whereas all the people on Facebook are like,

No,

I can't be alone.

If I'm alone,

That's when the demons come out.

And it's like,

Maybe.

Or maybe you're gonna get alone and you're gonna say,

Yeah,

There's periods of loneliness and there's periods of painfulness and then there's also periods of beauty and simplicity and things,

So making these new experiences,

Dropping the assumptions.

For me,

How I learned to sit,

There is also,

By the way,

No,

I would say there's no right way to sit,

But there are wrong ways to sit.

So a wrong way to sit is any way that you don't feel like you're stable,

That if you're sitting in a way that you feel like you're getting tight and that you're not stable,

Then I'd say it's like a wrong way to sit.

You wanna sit in a way that feels comfortable and easeful for you.

When I started sitting meditation,

It hurt.

I would sit and my legs would hurt and I would try to maybe force myself into full Otis and I'd be like,

Oh,

Painful,

You know.

But eventually over time,

I learned just to sit however I could feel comfortable and anyway,

The longer I sit,

The more that my legs start to make sense,

That it starts to feel comfortable for me.

And there's times that I've sat for three hours in a spell and I have no of monks that sit for like 17,

18 hours straight and they can just do that because they've just done it long enough.

And also when you meditate,

The mind gets really peaceful and really content to the point that you don't even experience pain in the same way.

You don't experience time in the same way.

Like when you get really deep in the meditation,

It's just this really beautiful uplifted state that you could sit for hours and hours and hours and you wouldn't even notice.

It just becomes beautiful and timeless.

So that's kind of how it works to answer those questions.

To tie some of these things together,

When we're talking about meditation,

Meditation,

It's like you're working with the mind directly.

So you're learning to watch my reactivity.

What are the stories that I'm telling myself again and again?

You know,

Oftentimes we sit here and we're like,

I have monkey minds and I think too much and everyone's fighting against their thoughts and it's like the stupidest thing ever.

It's like,

Has that gotten you anywhere?

Like great,

Keep fighting your thoughts.

You know,

What's more interesting for me is what are the thoughts telling you?

What are the stories?

Those thoughts have,

They're trying to have some kind of a reason or a purpose.

Am I remembering old arguments I had?

Am I singing songs in my head?

Which is something I went to the monastery and I had a different song in my head every single morning.

I would sing songs in my head for the first,

I would say year and a half of the monastery and then eventually just stopped because I wasn't listening to music.

But it took me about a year and a half for that just to stop.

Why was my mind always spinning with songs?

Because I felt so unhappy that I was filling my internal world with pleasant pleasure,

Pleasant feeling noises to compensate for the fact that I didn't feel good in myself.

So the more that I felt good with quiet,

The more I felt good just in myself,

The more all those things could drop.

So if you watch your thoughts,

Our thoughts are our karma.

Our thoughts are our karma,

Meaning that all of the thoughts you have,

They're coming from somewhere and that place they're coming from,

You did that to yourself.

Yeah,

You filled your internal world with music because you felt like you wanted something else going on inside of you than what was there.

So now when you want to meditate,

You hear that music still,

Right?

That's your karma.

That's the effect,

The cause and effect.

If you've been fighting with somebody and then you sit down to meditate,

You're going to remember that fight,

Right?

Because you're now experiencing the effects of that cause.

So all of what's happening in our mind,

The mind is a conditioned thing.

The mind is a bunch of forces that we are,

It's like you're dreaming.

You know,

It's like when you sleep at night and you're dreaming,

You're imagining those landscapes while simultaneously being the figure within the landscape.

Yeah?

It's a kind of amazing thing if you think about it,

But it's like you're the environment and you're the character in the environment.

So when you're meditating,

You kind of realize that's like what daily life is,

Is that I am my thoughts and I am my feelings and I am all of these experiences and I'm the one that has to experience that.

Yeah?

And that's how you can say things like,

I hate myself,

Right,

Or I love myself because the me in the middle,

This feeling that like there's this me that's experiencing all of this negative self-talk and is getting so much pain out of that,

It's like I hate this.

I hate what this mind,

You know,

I hate myself.

Or it's sitting there and it's this really beautiful thing and all these nice things,

Oh it feels nice,

Like,

Oh I love myself,

It's so nice,

Right?

But it's all just one thing,

Like what does that even mean?

How are we saying I hate or love my,

That doesn't even make sense,

Right?

So,

The point is,

Is that we are the ones creating our experience,

We create our internal atmosphere,

Maybe we could say it like that.

It's an internal atmosphere and we're either creating a pleasant internal atmosphere or an unpleasant internal atmosphere or something in the middle or some weird thing with all these different parts,

Right?

But those are things that are within our control.

Yeah?

And the way that we can start to control our internal atmosphere,

Which actually could just be translated as like start to have more of a choice in being happy or not,

Right?

Start to feel more empowered and less like you're a victim of stuff,

Is to first return to yourself,

To watch your stories,

To watch the emotions,

To see,

To be able to identify what's going on in there,

What are the mechanisms,

What are the beliefs that I have,

What are,

It's a lot,

There's a lot going on in there,

The deeper you get,

It's like whoa,

There's like all these different levels of beliefs and perceptions and stories and things and what is going on in there?

And slowly,

It's like a computer,

You sit down at a computer and there's all these different programs running,

You know?

And it's like slowly finding the program and closing it and finding the next program and closing it.

And slowly you're closing down these programs that you have more space.

Yeah,

That suddenly you're creating more space and more of a quiet.

And then you'll see maybe like the clock on the screen that's ticking and that's not a program you can actually close.

You're like,

Oh,

That's actually just part of the computer.

Then you start to learn what are the things that I can control and what are the things I can't control?

What are the things that I need to learn to accept and make peace with and what are the things that I can do something about?

Yeah,

And then this is kind of like this almost like internal organization process is a lot of what this is about.

Because you start to learn how to pick your battles and you start to also learn what's helpful and what's harmful.

Like fighting yourself,

Not helpful.

Judging yourself,

Not helpful.

Being down on yourself,

Not helpful.

Being a victim,

Not helpful.

Having a pity party,

Not helpful.

Yeah?

And you start to really learn like here's the things that are helpful and here's the things that are not helpful.

Here's are the things that if I continue doing this,

This is what's making me happier and happier and more uplifted,

More inspired.

That the quality,

That my baseline level of happiness is increasing.

Because the Buddhism,

The Buddhist path,

The Buddha said I only teach one thing.

He said it's freedom from suffering.

Which is like a fancier way of saying happiness.

This path is about happiness.

We are supposed to be getting happier.

If you are not getting happier over time,

You are not practicing.

You're doing something.

I don't know what you're doing,

But you're not practicing.

And there's a lot of people that they sit and they meditate and they're forcing their legs and they're all grim and they're sitting up straight.

You know I was a Zen monk,

Zen monks do this,

They're all like,

They're all tough.

As if somehow if I could just be tough enough,

I'll get enlightened or something.

It's like well,

You're building up your forbearance.

You're a tough dude so you could sit through.

If I was sitting outside and a mosquito bit me,

I'd be like,

Ow.

And it'd get to me.

These guys could sit outside and they could be bitten by a hundred mosquitoes and it wouldn't bother them.

So it's like that's a great skill to have.

But you're not creating happiness.

You're not really freeing yourself from suffering in other ways.

And so it's important to keep it real,

I guess is the point.

It's important just to bring all this practice back to ourselves,

To really be honest,

To see who we are,

What we are,

What's possible,

What's not possible,

To drop the expectations,

To drop the assumptions,

The shoulds.

Well the book said,

But the teacher said,

But Seth said,

Drop all that stuff and really come back to yourself and your own experience.

And from that place,

Just how can I learn to sit more peacefully with myself?

And that's really enough.

And if you want to then from there go deeper,

If you want to go into the deeper levels of meditation where even the mind starts to break up into pieces and fall apart and things start dissolving and crazy,

Crazy stuff happens in the deeper levels of meditation,

You feel like you're on drugs but you're not.

That's all out there.

But to even be able to get there,

The baseline to get to that place,

When you climb Mount Everest you first have to go to Mount Everest base camp and you have to chill out on base camp for a little bit and acclimatize and then you can climb to the summit of Everest and come down.

So the base camp of our practice is that feeling of general well-being,

That if you can get to that place where you feel general well-being in your daily life,

If you can sit at any given moment during the day,

If you can just sit in meditation and you feel a general sense of happiness and well-being,

That's the base camp.

From there you can get to the deep states and you can keep going back and forth if you want.

If you're sitting and you feel irritated,

You feel bored,

You feel restless,

You feel like you're at war with yourself or if you feel like regret,

Like something's wrong,

Like I've done something wrong,

Then you have to start saying,

Okay,

What do I want to do?

How do I want to remedy this?

And I found for myself there's things that I can let go of immediately and then there's things that I need to do something to let go of.

So I think for regret and guilt and stuff like this,

If you feel really guilty about something and you regret something and I just say let go,

You'd be like,

I don't know how.

So you have to go through a process.

Maybe you have to realize,

Oh,

I'm not actually the only person at fault for that situation.

Or you have to go through a process of forgiveness.

I'm learning.

There's no such thing as a mistake.

There's just learning.

I am just simply learning.

And that was a learning experience that I did something that I don't feel good about.

I learned not to do that again.

That's just,

It's all learning.

Everything we do in this world is just learning.

Even if you made the mistake a hundred times,

You're still,

You haven't learned that lesson yet.

Right?

But it's not a mistake.

It's not bad.

You're just learning.

Unfortunately some of our learning processes hurt other people.

Some of our learning processes hurt ourselves.

Yeah.

And then there's consequences,

Karma to those things that we do.

So that's why other people try to give us advice.

That's why there's like a law.

That's why there's these things that are trying to say like,

Hey,

Like don't do these things.

That's not good.

You know,

It's harmful,

But some people still do those things and they get the results,

You know?

So that's kind of the thing is we sit in meditation.

Can we get to that base camp,

That wellbeing platform?

How do we get to that place?

That's I feel like what I'm teaching most of the time.

I'm not teaching much about going from the wellbeing platform to the deeper states.

I think there's also other monks out there that are much,

Much,

Much more experienced in that part than I am.

The monks often Burma and Thailand and they're doing retreats all year long and stuff.

So I know that path myself,

But I feel like the average person that doesn't help them.

I feel like the average person,

They really need just to learn how do I go from a place of a general baseline of suffering to a general baseline of wellbeing.

And it's seeing what are the things that I can do something about?

What are the things I need to let go of?

That's it.

What are the things I can do something about?

What are the things I can't do anything about?

Yeah.

What is it?

The prayer of Saint someone.

That's like,

Please Lord,

Give me the serenity prayer.

It's like,

Give me the strength to let go of the things that I need to let go of the wisdom,

Well,

Yes,

It's like the strength,

You know,

Whatever to let go of the serenity,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Boom.

Talk over.

Yeah,

That's it.

That's it.

That's it in a nutshell,

Right?

I would say that's the path to wellbeing is building up that wisdom and meditation.

Instead of sitting down to meditate and thinking this is my time to get peaceful,

Which sometimes it is,

Maybe sit down to meditation and say,

This is my time where I can look at my mind in an uninterrupted way.

Yeah,

That takes off that pressure that we're not in this room to get peaceful meditators.

We're in this room to know ourselves,

To know thyself.

If you're sitting and your mind is going crazy and your mind is a mess,

You're not a failure at meditation.

You are a success at knowing where you are at right now.

Yeah.

And that's the real practice,

Right?

Pulling back,

Coming,

Start where you are.

Where am I right now?

Yeah.

And that's,

I think,

The impulse that I would give our group for today or even moving forward,

If you will.

So I have talked for almost an hour.

I hope I answered most of the questions,

If not all of them,

A little bit.

I think we can now practice meditation to kind of,

I want to say,

Put our money where our mouth is,

But that's not so fitting right now.

Put our mind where our breath is.

So why don't we all get into positions that are comfortable?

We can turn off the lights even if you want to make,

Get some mood lighting.

It's nice outside.

It's fine.

I'm doing this,

I should say that Kim once taught us the whole.

.

.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing your wisdom ! Much love and gratitude ❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏🕊️🕊️🕊️

Would love to meet you and see you in person. Your talks are very helpful to me and seeing how I make myself unhappy

I found this talk. Helpful and informative. Thank you.

Very interesting! Thank you!