The Light World & The Dark World

In this intriguing talk, the happy buddha explains that the quality of your life is defined by the quality of your mind. He illustrates that really there are two worlds, a light world, and a dark world and that the light world is one of joy and the dark world is one of suffering. He explains what these worlds are and how to move from your dark world to a light world.

Transcript

Hi there.

One of the ways we can look at the journey,

The work that we are involved in is that there are two worlds which we can live in.

There's what we can call the dark world and the light world.

The dark world is where most of us spend most of our time.

The dark world is the world of our own thinking,

Unconscious thinking,

The chatter,

The critical thoughts that we have,

The opinions,

The judgements about ourselves and other people,

About how life should be.

I'm sure you are familiar with this.

Now how often are we just doing the most mundane,

Ordinary things and there's chatter going on.

We might be dwelling on problems that we don't even have.

Some of them may be true but dwelling on going over and over and over these issues doesn't help.

We may assume it does but it doesn't help.

There is a way of working through problems and we'll go into that for some time.

But we have a tendency,

See we are all addicts.

We are all addicted to the same thing.

We are all addicted to our own thoughts and our own thoughts are again and again repeatedly displaying our own views of life,

Our own opinions and judgements of life,

Of how life should be.

I know how my wife should be,

My dog should be,

My family should be,

My friends should be,

How I should be,

How the weather should be.

Because I know.

And we go on and think we know how life should be.

We have a picture of life and we imprint that picture,

We put that picture on top of reality.

Reality is just doing its thing.

We have this picture and we try to fit reality into this picture.

We try to engineer life so that it fits our picture of it and it creates suffering.

This is the dark room.

It may be somebody,

There may be somebody you don't like very much and they keep doing things that impact on you,

That you don't like,

You react to.

You have an aversion against.

This is the dark room.

This is your picture of how that person should be and how that person is.

Don't match.

And we carry these pictures around with us all day long.

We look at the world through these pictures and they don't match up.

Oh they don't match up.

And so I feel,

And when they don't match up we feel angry,

Frustrated,

Resentful,

Vulnerable,

Uncomfortable,

Ill at ease.

Oh they don't match up.

And this is what we need to see.

This is one of the ways that we can begin to make a difference in our lives.

We can begin to observe how we are in life,

How we are with people,

How we get uptight when somebody does something.

See we are very much into blaming.

Blaming again is the dark room.

If somebody does something I have a reaction,

It's that person's fault.

It's very rarely to do with either person,

It's to do with us.

So for instance,

Somebody says something to us,

Criticises us.

That's not our picture of how life should be.

I shouldn't be criticised.

So it's like they,

You know we talk about we've all got buttons to press.

So somebody presses the button,

They say something to you,

They hit your,

They know your button.

Maybe they don't,

Maybe they just,

Maybe they just had something on their mind,

Maybe you're walking by them,

They didn't acknowledge you,

They had something on their mind and so,

Oh well,

Next time I'll see you there.

And you take that home with you,

Your button is pressed.

Then they take their finger off the button but what do you do with your button,

With your finger?

You put it on the button and you keep pressing it,

Pressing it.

They're having a nice cup of coffee or a meal with their family,

Enjoying themselves.

You're sat there with your finger on the button,

You're dwelling on it,

Dwelling,

Dwelling,

Dwelling.

That's what we do.

That's the dark room.

The dark room is the world of our own,

It's our own little thought-made world.

See we're trying to protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable.

The last thing we want is to feel uncomfortable,

To feel vulnerable.

We don't want it.

It threatens our sense of self.

Then all this,

All this mechanism,

This picture of life and the way we maintain it during the day is part of the ice we talked about.

It's how we keep ourselves from the dual,

From experiencing that dual,

The dual of joy because we are so preoccupied with not feeling hurt.

The dual doesn't mean to say we'll never feel hurt.

So let's get,

Perhaps somebody say something to us,

They criticise us or they ignore us.

What do we do?

What do you do?

You take it home,

You sit and you stew on it,

You go around and round in your own mind,

Over and over.

What about this?

What about that?

Could it be this?

They don't like me.

Well,

Never mind,

I won't talk to them ever again.

Whatever,

You know,

Some of us withdraw from that person,

Some of us will go on the attack,

But no matter which way our response is that person's,

We blame that person.

So instead of staying in the mind,

Instead of staying in the storyline,

See the storyline is the problem and the storyline is there to protect us from feeling,

In this case,

That hurt.

Let's just have a few moments pause here.

I just want you to absorb what we've been talking about.

Let's just have a few moments quiet.

So just settling into the body.

We're doing a lot of body work,

Body work.

The bodies is the key.

It's where the ice is held.

Okay,

So carry on,

Just,

You can even have your eyes closed.

You don't need to look at the screen.

So we go over and over,

We pick at it and pick at it and pick at it.

We mentally go over it again and again and again.

What we really need to do is to come out of the thinking mind,

Come out of the storyline and this is what we don't want to do because whilst we're in the storyline,

We can blame that person.

So it keeps us,

It keeps us taking responsibility for how we feel.

If I can blame him,

Then it's his fault.

I'm not to blame,

I'm not responsible.

He's made me feel like this.

She's done this to me.

So instead of staying in the storyline,

What we do,

We come into the body and to live in the present moment is to live in the body.

What we want is to be here and feel that hurt in the body.

It may be in the chest,

It may be in the belly,

It may be a sort of,

Might not be a little located very well,

But we will feel hurt in this case.

So we'll become curious about that feeling hurt.

What does he feel?

Where do I feel it?

What does he feel like?

A great mantra,

A mantra is something that we can repeat,

Like a word or phrase we can repeat to ourselves to remind us of our aiming life.

And this mantra,

A good mantra is just what's this?

Or what does this feel like?

This hurt in the body,

What does it feel like?

What's this?

So we're not asking why is this and what's caused this,

We'll watch this as a present moment force right now.

What's this?

What does it feel like?

Just do it now,

What does it feel like?

There may not be a lot going on for your right now,

But we'll still do the exercise.

What's the feeling around here?

It's round,

It's heavy,

It's black,

So we'll become curious about it.

Let me,

Curiosity,

It's one of the keys.

So I've got a lovely bell here,

Now I like going in antique shops and I'll pick something up,

I'll wee pick something up and we'll become curious about it.

Now I'm not thinking about where to come from Babla,

My mind's not busy.

Depending on the object I'm using my senses,

Sense of touch.

Smooth,

It's very cold,

Hard,

But it's got a lovely turn to it.

Now I use another sense.

It's not that I'm not using my thinking mind,

But I'm using it in a helpful way.

So I'm curious,

When I'm curious about a present moment object,

And this hurt can be the object rather than this,

I think what's it feel like?

Heavy,

Oh it feels hot,

Whatever,

It doesn't matter.

That takes us,

If we have that level of curiosity,

It takes us out of the storyline and the storyline is the problem.

So a takeaway from this session is next time something happens,

It won't be long,

Somebody says something to you,

You get a letter or a text or whatever,

You get some bad news.

We can do this with good news but we tend not to make a problem out of good news.

We can,

But let's stay with something that's unfortunate,

Something we don't want.

They don't push our buttons.

That's the dark room.

The light room is when we step out of the storyline into curiosity because there's awareness.

Awareness is the light.

If I'm aware I can see what's going on,

I look around the room.

There's a world,

You know,

Not just this made up one of how bad it is and what he said and not what that does.

It creates more feelings,

More painful feelings.

So the dark room is the room of,

Or the dark world is the world of our little thinking,

Repetitive thinking,

Our story and the light room or the light world.

We come out of it and we feel it.

Ah,

It's healing.

And there's the sound of the birds,

The sound of the traffic,

There's breathing.

So to be practical,

A takeaway,

Next time,

As I've said,

Somebody says,

Something happened,

You get some bad news,

Watch for the,

It's called pappancha,

Or oopadana,

Getting hooked.

We get hooked into the story.

Come out thinking and come back into,

It only takes a few minutes.

Learn to come back into the physicality of whatever it is that you take away for today.

Out of the story line,

Come back into the felt experience in the body.

That's how we live in the present.

That is how we begin to melt the ice.

Because all this mental proliferation,

Pappancha,

All this mental proliferation,

It's the ice.

It stops us from feeling it.

It's when we feel in the present moment,

Feel in the body,

That things begin to shift.

The ice begins to transform to water.

That held feeling in there begins to lighten,

Begins to lose,

Begins to flow again and transform.

What it transforms into,

We don't need to bother about that.

And as we do this work more and more,

We notice that all of us,

And this is going to,

You're going to notice this yourself,

That all of us have,

In a sense,

Unresolved emotions from years back.

And they're running our lives now.

It's like we clamped down on those because there were,

We couldn't deal with them.

So there's like a clamping,

A contraction.

And we begin to loosen,

And I begin to work with that.

And I'm going to show you how to do it.

We're doing it now.

Slowly we're starting to get in touch with real life.

And real life is where the satisfaction of fulfilment is.

The light room,

The light world is the one of satisfaction and fulfilment.

Not free from our pain,

But out of pain we don't create mental and emotional suffering.

So have a few moments of quiet.

Thank you very much.

Bye bye.

Reviews

I love this. I often teach other about the different parts of our thinking selves, but I love framing it in this context. Do you also believe that there is a place for deep compassion for the darkness?