Letting Life Move Through You

42:56

42:56

Letting Life Move Through You

by Court Morgan

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

4

Allowing. On faith, wise effort, and starting to recognize the patterns of our own conditioning and how they cause us to disharmony. From The Nature of Awakening residential retreat, October 4-10, 2025.

Acceptance Awareness Dharma Effortless Awareness Mindfulness Non Reactivity Somatic Exploration Acceptance Of Imperfection Dharma Exploration Faith In Self Mindful Presence

Meet your Teacher

Providence, RI, USA

Meet your Teacher

Providence, RI, USA

Transcript

Well, I feel official now. How has the first full day been? Chef's kiss from some. Who has had a struggle day today? Yeah. Yeah. OK. Who's been kind of like in the middle, Up and down? Whatever. Yeah. Great. It's all exactly as it should be. It's all exactly as it should be. Hmm. OK. I wanted to check, Because I have never sat in the back of this room. Can you hear me OK in the back? That's OK? OK. Sorry I didn't ask earlier. I just wanted to make sure. I realize that my voice kind of drops, Too, As we go on. So things are going OK. Everybody's still here. That's good. On my walk down from the Upper Farmhouse, Down here just a few minutes ago, I was kind of caught the moment of like a little breeze moving through, A little gust of wind going through, And like this whole scattering of leaves just like across the road while I was walking. And it was just so beautiful, You know? And I know that feeling so well of thinking that things really should be other than they are, And that somehow there is some kind of magic to be found outside of very ordinary experience, That there's some kind of completeness or reconciliation or just something that needs to be changed in order for it to be right finally. And then a moment like that happens, And it's like, Wow, What else could really be needed? And then, Of course, With that, There was another moment, Like the next thought after that was like, This year's really been kind of dry, And these colors aren't as bright as they could have been. You know, Really, Like such a critic, Critic eye. So it's both, You know, This capacity that we're developing, Awareness that we're developing, It's like, Yeah, We can hold both. We can hold both the magic and the disappointment. We can hold those expectations that we have for ourselves, That we have for our lives, That we have for the people who enter into our lives and that we're in relationship with, And we can hold space for how those expectations can't ever be met, Because they're not really about the thing. They aren't in the person. They're not in the experience. They're not in the job. They're in us, You know? So how could something outside of us ever meet a thing that we're projecting onto it? It's really easy to be in this kind of context, Where we're on this retreat, And the mind is starting to settle, And it's almost impossible to come in without any kind of expectation for who we think we are and who we believe we will be or should be in this kind of context, Right? So it's easy to almost get lost in the fantasy of that. And then to meet the reality that the way that we interact with stillness and the way that we interact with our own mind is actually the same way that we interact with everything that we experience. We don't all of a sudden change just because the environment changes. We don't shift just because the people we're around are different overnight. It takes gradual and sustained noticing. It takes gradual and sustained effort, And that effort does rest on awareness of seeing patterns, Of seeing our patterns of reactivity and patterns of getting caught in loops, Patterns of getting a little stuck in the mud here and there. Did anybody get stuck in a little mental loop today? Or 50? 20? You know? Yeah. If it's a tendency for you, It's going to keep being a tendency for a while. But how great, Because then you can start to get a little bit of space from that. Oh, Yeah, That's a mental loop. Wow, I'm really looping right now. Woo! Oh, Man. Woo! On a ride. You know, So the dhamma, This word dhamma or dharma, And they're used in different contexts. I know many of you are yoga practitioners who are practicing from the Sankhya school of yoga, So the Hatha yoga, And that's kind of maybe what brought you into this. And it can be a little confusing, Because Sanskrit and Pali words can't even be the same or are very similar. And yet, Contextually, They're used very differently. The timing of the timing and the evolution of Indian philosophy shifted, Of course, Like everything does. So dhamma, Dharma, In this context, Is really the way things are. It is coming into reality with the way things are. And one could say, I have made the association with it where it's like, Oh, Coming into the way things are actually is to fulfill your dharma. The kind of classical Vedic understanding of what dharma is, Of moving into your highest potential or your pathway of life. Oh, To come into reality of who you are, Of your service to other people. But we can leave that aside. These are the threads that I weave in my own mind. Yeah, It's really an invitation. It's an invitation in the heart to be present with whatever is happening. And just that intention, And you're going to continue to hear me say that phrase and different iterations of that phrase time after time after time throughout this week, The willingness to be present with what's here, The heart state that can hold the kindness, That can hold with patience, That can hold with enough spaciousness and love and understanding and care to be with what's happening. That's the dharma. That's the practice of it. And you don't really have to work too hard. This is something that my teacher Alexis emphasizes so much, Is how we tend to over-effort in pretty much everything we do. So just like your responses to, I don't know, Not having the tea flavor that you were hoping would be here waiting for you, Although it's a weak example, Because I can't imagine that that's the case with 400 different teas laying around here. But yeah, So you are really excited about some peppermint tea, And you just can't find peppermint tea anywhere. And it's like, What is that spark for you? So the way that we approach anything is the way that we tend to approach everything. So this over-efforting, If that is a tendency, It shows up in our practice too. But how much effort does it really take to be aware? How much effort does it take right now to feel some part of the body, To sense something that's happening in your immediate experience? It's really this kind of act of remembering. It has that sort of spark to it, Almost like, Oh, There it is. And that word sati, The Pali word sati, Which means mindfulness or awareness, Has that root to it, Remembering. So it's like remembering to be aware, Remembering to be mindful, Remembering to have one toe, One pinky finger in the present moment. So as we sort of pointed to this morning with writing on the breath, Moving on the breath, Rather than moving and then breathing, Did anybody feel a difference when that happened? When the breath initiated, When it invited the body into movement, Rather than you moving and being like, Ah, You know? It's a little different. It's a little different. Rather than approaching any given moment that we have with an idea of how it should be, Can we instead allow the moment to meet us? So here is that, Like, How much effort is really needed in that? How much effort is it to almost let the honesty, The transparency of whatever is moving through you, Whatever the body is doing, Whatever the mind is doing, Whatever the sensation is that's happening and that's arising, How much effort is it to just let that happen and to notice it, Right? The little bit of effort needed is in the remembering to notice, The remembering to value paying attention, Enough to actually be there. And that is like any muscle that we have. It is muscle memory over time. So that's why we really emphasize this very continual, Light, Relaxed effort of awareness. So it's very, Very natural in the beginning, Beginning days of retreat. And I certainly feel this too. I'm sure that Laura does as well. It's kind of jangly energies moving through. And that might be some kind of like restlessness through the body or the feeling like there's something to fix, Like you have so much time. And so, My gosh, This time just stretching out, Like how much time do we have for lunch? Well, It says we only have an hour, But there's actually a two and a half hour gap in the schedule. Okay, Well, What am I going to do with that when I'm not supposed to be reading or not supposed to be whatever, You know, Writing my novel, When I'm not necessarily working on something? I don't have my laptop here. I can't just knock out some of those thousand unread emails that are sitting in there. Sorry if that's triggering for you. And that same jangliness is really present in the mind too or can be very present in the mind where we can feel that the mind's searching for something. We can feel an unsettledness. We can feel some anxiety. We can feel some whatever. It's so human. It's so human. And so we practice. This is the practice of this. We allow that to arise. Allow it to come up. You don't need to suppress it. You don't have to throw a blanket on top of it. You don't have to do breath work to get rid of it. You don't need to manage it. You don't have to, Like, Pull out your, What is that thing called, A fire thing? Torch? No, Not a fire torch. A fire extinguisher. Thank you, Monica. Monica's mind melded with me. Yeah, You don't have to pull out the fire extinguisher. You know, It's not a problem. It's not a problem. And if you're not going to feel it here, Where you don't have the intensity of a schedule of daily life and all of the relationships that you manage throughout your life, If you can't feel it here, When are you going to feel it? When are you going to let that come up? Because if we don't do it now, We just keep stuffing it down. Just push it. Push it. Avoid it. Shove it under the rug. Just sweep it away. You know, Hide it under the covers. Do whatever it is that we do. All of us have some avoidant tendencies with stuff that's uncomfortable and that we don't like or that feels inconvenient. This is human nature. That's okay. But can you just maybe, Like, Crack the door a little bit? Just crack the door. This is my criticism with how yoga is taught, As somebody who's taught yoga for quite a long time, Is the tendency to give a fix. Like, Oh, We feel anxious. Try this breath technique. Ah, You feel tight. Stretch this. You know, Like, Just this constant managing of everything. It's like, Oh, What happens if we just learn how to relax with it? What would that be like? What would that be like to invite that? And then instead of, Like, The scope and the perspective becoming more and more narrow, Which, You know, For me, As a very long-time practitioner, Particularly of movement, It can feel like the scope gets really, Really narrow. Like, Oh, Okay, I have this tool to address this. I have this tool to address this. I have this tool to address this. And then you end up playing whack-a-mole with your life rather than allowing life to move through you and really seeing the magic of that happening. It is beautiful. It's so cool. The leaves change. We're not always in spring. And we're not always going to have a year that has beautiful, I mean, This is beautiful foliage, But that has, Like, The most brilliantly colored foliage. You know, Sometimes there's going to be years of drought. Sometimes there's going to be, I don't know, Gray winters. And sometimes there's going to be really majestic, Snowy landscapes to explore too. But it's all your life. Don't just wait for the stuff that feels like that's what should be there because you end up missing out, Right? You miss half of your life. You miss whatever the percentage is. You end up missing out on your life. The whole thing is your life. It's all here. So the thing that really turned me on in this particular lineage and this particular approach to practice, And all are valid, All are worthy, And, Like, If you don't feel super strongly about something yet, You will find your own way, You know? But what really turned me on to this was, Like, Oh, It's not actually in the thing that's happening that's a problem. This is the revolutionary thing, Truly, About the Buddhist teachings. So it's not about the thing that's happening that's the problem. It's the response to it, Right? It's the reaction to it. And those reactions are ingrained in us from so many different conditions, Causes and conditions. And so we just put it under that umbrella, Causes and conditions, Rather than being like, Well, My mom is controlling and anxious, And her mom before her was controlling and anxious. And so my genetic material has been sitting in a stew of anxious and controlling personality for forever, Since I was a little egg, Before even being fertilized. You know, We could go on, Like, Just back and forth, And like, Oh, The current political sphere, And to dismiss that any of this is real or true, That it's not totally stressful. Of course it is. But, You know, There's just so many different elements. And, Again, This is like trying to play whack-a-mole with the problems, With the ways, Like, Where we have assigned blame. What is the thing that's making you miserable right now? Could be any number of things. And so then you go out in the world, Try to fix them. Try and fix it. Manage it. Do some breath work. You know, Regulate your nervous system. If you're on social media, We hear all the regulating of the nervous system all the time. But if you actually learn, Right, Like, Oh, Huh, There's space. There's space. A regulated nervous system is one that has room for highs and lows. It has room for recovery. It has room to get overstimulated. It has room to be in high activation. And it can come down. It's not just this tight little thing that we're, Like, Trying to keep it within. And, Likewise, The world is always going to be fucked up. I'm sorry. There's going to be periods where it's not as messed up. But there are, And many of us came into, Or at least, I don't know, Many of us came into whatever period of life we are now and had a period where it was, Like, Relatively less messed up for a while or felt that way maybe in our immediate experience. But here we are facing the reality of things. And we're like, Oh, Man, This is real. Oh, My gosh, The suffering that's happening and has been happening for eons now is here. Now it is in my face. Now it is affecting me personally. It is right here. And so how do we develop the capacity to be with that? Just this. When we're going through life, If you can't meet your own stress, If you can't meet your own anger, If you can't meet your own frustration and disappointment, You can't meet your own judgment, How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that for anybody else? How are you going to have space to do that for anybody else in a real way? Not in a way that's just soothing. Not in a way that's kind of cajoling, But how? So this path of awakening is really about starting to see the shift in relationship that can happen to the flow of life, To this ebb and flow of cyclical relationships, Of aging, Of getting older, Of being ill at times, Or being ill chronically. So it's not about not acting, But it's about responding from a place that is more grounded, More centered, More spacious. A place that feels more connected and heartfelt, Rather than just like, Oh, I can't stand the way that this feels, So I've got to push it away, I have to fix it right away. You know, So it's accepting. There is an aspect of acceptance, And this is so hard. I mean, I think I've shared this so openly in this group, And I think with so many of you who I've seen over the past few years, But I've shared very openly that I've had a lot of challenging stuff arise in my own experience, My own psyche, Things around my family, Things around childhood trauma over the past few years, And it's hard to let, I know that it is, Because it's hard for me too, It's hard to not try and fix the past. It's hard to not try and rewrite what has already happened, Or to make somebody accountable for it, To not place the blame somewhere that's easy to place the blame for how you're feeling now. So I get it, I so, So deeply understand that. But that loop will keep you struggling forever. If what you are looking for is resolution from somebody else, Or from a situation that's already happened, If you're looking to rewrite it, You can't, I'm sorry. But you can continue to take steps forward with compassion, With care for yourself, With the ability to see that like, Oh, Actually my healing starts to change the way that I am in relationship with other people, It changes the way that I'm in community with other people, And that, More than teaching, More than understanding the words, All the Pali words, More than understanding the Four Noble Truths, More than understanding the Eightfold Path, Like all the lists, And blah, Blah, Blah, That is what actually ends up passing this lineage along, That ends up actually passing the teaching along and having a very, Very profound impact on the world. You may not see that impact in your lifetime on the grand scale that you want to see it. I'm sorry, I won't either. But we are all beneficiaries of that. We're all, We're in the soup, We're in the stew of all of these people who have come before us. And none of us would be here, Like, Can you imagine a bunch of white people in the middle of rural New Hampshire? I'm sorry if you don't identify fully as white, But us, Non-Southeast Asian people, Sitting in the middle of rural New Hampshire doing this for a week. How far did this have to come to touch us and to get us here? It is amazing, It is really amazing that we're doing this. And we are on the crest, We're on the wave, You know? So we just do what we can do and we let that wave continue to move outward. We, Write it down. Write it down. So exploring the reactivity is the path. Like I said, I know it's easy to get into the loops. I know it's easy to be like, But what happened here? But what if I just analyze this one more time? Explore the reactivity. Explore that urge. Explore it. The urge to want to figure it out. The urge to want to fix it. Feel that in the body. What is that? How old is that feeling? How long has that been around? Been around for five years? Been around for 20 years? Been around for as long as you can remember? Were you born with it? Yeah. Is it from the soup of your mother's womb? Might be. I love this word, Sada, And I talk about it so often. And I also, I just think it's so funny. Everything that I never identified with, Every aspect of my own life that I was like, Ew. I do not want anything to do with that. I now am so passionate about, But I love talking about faith. I do. I love talking about faith. I grew up in, You know, Kind of like, I was like a social Episcopalian. We would show up and around the time of confirmation, I had to go through confirmation classes. But my parents were like, You know, You're just doing it so you can understand what's going on in the church and kind of like understand what Christianity is in this country. It was the 90s. And, But I didn't have to actually get confirmed. But to make that decision, I had to go talk to the like head dude, The pastor, About why I was not going to do that. And he was like, Hmm. So I, You know, I was describing this, What he's like, Well, What do you believe? So I described it to him. He's like, Oh, Well, You sound like a pagan. Okay, Great. It's like, So, You know, That sounds good. You go and explore whatever you need to explore. But you know, This word Sada means to, What do we place our hearts on, Right? To place your heart upon something, Sada. To place your heart upon something. So what do you place your heart upon? Where do you find the energy? Where do you find the motivation? You know, What is it that is really at the core of you? And you can place your faith in whatever. And some of you may have, May have, You know, Multifaceted different faith systems with different higher powers, All kinds of stuff. And that is gorgeous. And just remember to include yourself in that too. That you are really a very, Very deep source of your own inner knowing. And you can trust that. I think that that has been, It really seems like here in the Northeast, I have encountered a lot of people who grew up Catholic and going to, Well, This is also informed by Laura's experience, But going to, It's called parochial school? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Going to Catholic school, Going to religious school, Growing up. And the emphasis on faith being in something outside of yourself is so strong. And like I said, That may or may not be your experience. Unsurprisingly, It's something that I encounter a lot in Providence, Catholic center that it is. But instead of running to the thing outside of ourselves that we think is missing, We learn to source that, We learn to find that from within. That's this like divine union. This word yoga means union, Literally. Right? The joining together, The coming together, To yoke to is the translation of it. So we start to see these patterns of how we get looped, Of how we dissociate, Of how we get stuck in the mud, Of how we're reacting to something. And that pattern is exactly the place where we learn how to become free. So that pattern is what's known as clinging. Clinging in this practice. So if you hear that word clinging, That's what that means, Right? These patterns that we have. It's like they're so hard to see because they're so familiar to us. It's like Velcro and we're gone before we even know that we've been Velcroed to something. But we start to learn to unhook because we see the pattern play out. And that might be like 10 minutes down the line. It might be a day down the line that you've been in the pattern, That you've been hooked by something. It might be a week down the line. That's fine. It doesn't matter. You can't change the past. But as soon as you see it, That's the moment where one of those little Velcros, Just think of like a Velcro fastener on your shoes. One of the little hooks on it unclicks. Right? And so then next time you see it, Unclicks. Another one unclicks. And before you know it, Your shoe's untied. It's un-Velcroed. Huh? Who has Velcro shoes in here? I would go back to Velcro shoes if I had the option to. But they just don't make them anymore for adults. It's unfortunate. Or maybe I'm not at that point in life where I can get them again. You'll know. All right. So who's familiar with the Four Noble Truths? Let's do just a little recap. A little recap of the Four Noble Truths. And this is Four Noble Truths as translated by Court. Because to me, I'm like, I don't know. This mind needs to revisit material over and over and over again. And it has to revisit it from so many different angles, And with so many different languages, And with so many different experiences behind it, In order to actually understand the thing. I actually think that that's really important. It makes it so interesting. And that is why I will forever be a huge nerd, And it is why I will forever love doing this thing, Because it's endless. Right? Life continues to move on. We get a new perspective because we go through some stuff, And then we revisit. And it's like, Oh, Now I get it. Now I get it more. Okay. So here are my current definitions. The Four Noble Truths. The truth of dukkha. That's the traditional. The truth of dukkha. There's suffering. There's stress. There's dis-ease. My current definition. There is a kind of suffering that keeps us trapped in destructive patterns in our lives. There's a kind of wanting something that keeps us trapped in those patterns. And that wanting is the Second Noble Truth. That is the clinging. That is the needing something to be different. Right? So the Second Noble Truth. Clinging. There's a cause to the suffering that's clinging. The velcro. The cause of the struggle is in how we've been conditioned to relate to ourselves, Our hearts, And our own minds, Which eventually leaks out to how we are conditioned to be with others, Too. The Third Noble Truth is that there is a release. There's a way out. And thank goodness that the Buddha did not have a heart attack while teaching this and expire after only the first two because that would be sad. I wouldn't know. But it is possible. It's possible. So it is possible for these familiar cycles of suffering, Not the people, Not the situations, But how we are relating to it to end. This is where this sadha, Where this faith, Where this placing our heart upon, Where trust, Conviction, These are all synonyms for sadha. That's where that comes in. And it ends the suffering around all of these places where we get looped, Where we get velcroed, Where we get caught, Where we get stuck in the mud. And the fourth, This is pretty traditional. There's a path. The path is the Eightfold Path. I'll talk more about that. You're on it. Sorry. You're on it. Whether you knew it or not, You showed up for the retreat. So it's kind of like we've been on it. We started with the ethical precepts. We're developing awareness or mindfulness. We're practicing wise speech and wise action because we're paying attention to those ethical precepts. You're already on the path. That's already happening. The one caveat I would like to say is that the tools that we have, The path, Is composed of so many different things. There are so many incredibly wise people and wise approaches. And because we all hear language differently, We need different teachers. We need a collection. We need like a team. And we need a whole bunch of different styles to kind of come in, Styles and approaches. And we take what we need from everything and then leave the rest. So we end up just like, I don't need that part. That doesn't work for me anymore. Or that doesn't work for me right now. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point. Path is extremely adaptable. It's extremely customizable to you. So I just want to throw that out there. Another critique. I was an art major, And I have a master's in design. So critique is very strong in me. This is like a part, You know, It's been trained in for a long period of time. But discernment also looks for that too, You know. One of my critiques is that if we are practicing as though we're pretending to be monastics for a week, When we're not pretending to be monastics for a week, It's going to fall apart. You don't have to pretend. You are people who are choosing at this point in your lives to live in the world, To have relationships, To have jobs, To live these full lay practitioner lives where you're interacting. So we use that to our advantage. And it's so cool. All of the different places that you can practice in your life. I love being a lay practitioner. I really do. I think it's so rich. It's so incredible. So the shift that happens, Right, And this is what we're going to continue to point to over and over again and why we have included so much somatic work within this retreat, Is that the shift in your practice or the shift in your understanding, The shift in your ability to build capacity changes when it stops being from like how can I conceptualize this and how can I wrap my mind around it to how does it feel in the body. The body is almost a registry, Right? It holds your entire history. And for better or worse, You get to explore that. So all of those knots you feel, All of those places of constriction, Of tightness, The like, There are overuse injuries for sure. There are things we do like play pickleball, You rupture your Achilles tendon or whatever. Oh, Yeah, That actually happened to you. That happened to my mom, Too, Actually the year before. Oh, My gosh. I'm so sorry. So sorry. Triggering. That was just really on my mind. You know, You do something, Whatever. I'm on my longboard. I'm like scooting around on the longboard too much, And all of a sudden, My calf is like super tight. Those kinds of things happen. But we also have ways that we hold ourselves. You know this. You wake up in the night, And you're like, Why am I sleeping like this right now? Or you're like that. You get on the massage table, And you kind of fall asleep, And they give you a massage, And you realize that you're like this. When you wake up, And you're like, Oh, Wow, I had no idea that my neck was twisted in this way or that hip that continues to bother you. It's a registry of everything that you have felt, Every experience you've been through, Every way that you've used your body. And so we get to unwind some of that, And that's really our intention, Is to help you unwind some of it and to help you feel it. So you build a capacity in the body to be with the body as it is. I know that's not always easy. But it's not because it hurts. It can hurt. But you got this. Where's the energy now? How are you feeling? Reassured? Still super confused? Julie, If it's unclear right now, It's totally, Totally fine. And you don't need to try and think your way into it. Just trust, Right? Almost like you trust when you hear the bell, And you're like, Oh, My gosh, I'm in my room, Or like I was outside, And I'm just wandering around, But I heard the bell. That must mean to come inside. So you come inside, And we're all sitting. Same thing. Just keep trying. A little bit of effort over and over. It will start to come together in its own time. You don't have to work for anything. You're here. Holiday for the heart. We're on vacation. Trina does a vacation. But just a little bit of effort, Right, Is going to yield the fruit that you want. Just remembering, Remembering to be aware. So words to live by. I'll say them again. Relax. Allow. And receive. Just receive. Let's sit for just two, Three minutes here.