Live Talk - Reincarnation, The Changing Seasons & Releasing Stagnation

And we hear one familiarity with all this,

Don't we?

How do I,

I,

I?

It's all related to this I,

Isn't it?

How does reincarnation relate to me?

How do the seasons relate to me?

I'm feeling stuck or stagnant.

How can I be non-reactive?

I don't have something today.

That's the common theme here is this I,

This me,

Isn't it?

And what do we know about this I?

In our own personal experience,

We take it to be ourselves,

Don't we?

We take it to be ourselves,

This I,

This me.

And then it speaks.

And when it speaks,

It speaks on my behalf.

So this I,

This me,

Speaks on my behalf.

But what do I know about it?

I can see here when we asked,

What shall we talk about tonight?

It was related to you.

It was related to you.

It was related to you.

It was related to you,

To you.

Seemingly different people,

But it's always the I in each one of us.

What do we know about this I that wants to know about reincarnation?

What do we know about this I that is curious about the seasons and how we can prepare for them?

What do we know about this I which is feeling stagnant and wanting to be non-reactive?

What do I know about it?

What does my personal experience of this I tell me?

And have I actually looked?

Have I inquired into the nature of this I that I take myself to be and that speaks on my behalf?

When prompted,

It is this I that speaks on my behalf.

But what is behind this I?

And can I find out?

How do I go about taking a look,

First-hand look,

A direct look at this I?

Is that possible?

Is that available to me?

How can I do that?

How do I go about that?

And also,

Why should I do that?

Why should I concern myself with this I?

For obvious reasons,

Because it's speaking on my behalf and it seems to be the common singularity in my experience.

In all cases,

It's I,

Isn't it?

And I don't know how to do that.

I don't know how to do that.

In my experience,

In all cases,

It's I,

Isn't it?

In all cases for us,

It's I.

But also,

In all facets of my own experience,

It's I.

It's I as I relate to finance.

It's I as I relate to romance.

It's I as I relate to whatever it is,

All the various things.

It's always me,

Me,

I,

I,

Isn't it?

It seems to be the common ground of all my experience,

The common denominator.

But have I spent any time looking at it,

Actually meeting it directly?

And we can ask such a question here,

Because this is why we're here.

This is what meditation is all about.

The meditation is about looking at this I directly,

Isn't it?

That's what we've been doing.

Meditation is the practice of looking at this I.

So I want to do that,

Because it's the common theme in my experience.

So usually what we do,

For example,

When we're relating to our experience,

Let's say we have a financial problem,

We try to deal with the financial thing.

When this I has a romantic problem,

We try to deal with the romantic problem itself.

This I has a health issue,

Try to deal with the health issue itself,

And so on and so forth.

All the facets of our experience.

But do we ever look at the I itself?

What do you think?

Generally,

No.

If we want to fix our life,

We generally,

What do we do?

We address the issue.

We address the issue,

Don't we?

Do we address the I?

No.

If I have a finance problem,

Do I address the finance or do I address the I?

Help me.

Finance.

No.

I address the finance.

Yes,

I would.

If I have a relationship issue,

Do I address the I?

No.

What do I address?

The relationship.

If I have a health issue,

Do I address the I?

No.

I address the health issue.

If I have a problem reacting,

Do I address the I or do I address the reacting problem?

Address the reacting.

I address things,

All these things.

And yet the very thing that these things have in common,

I neglect.

I don't look at.

I overlook.

Are you following the importance of this?

Is this?

So what might happen if I begin to take a different approach and I start to look at the I itself?

I start to inquire about the I itself.

I start to inquire about this person that I take myself to be and that I present in the world as I and as me.

What would happen and how can I go about it?

Will I then still be concerned about,

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned or shouldn't be interested in reincarnation.

Would I still be interested in the seasons and how to prepare for them?

Would I still be interested in getting stuck in the situation itself?

Can I become interested in the person,

The me?

There's a saying,

All roads,

We've used it before,

All roads lead to Rome.

So all the facets of my experience,

They all have in common me.

I am their common denominator.

Now why might that be really interesting for me?

The me as opposed to the facets of my life.

Why might that be interesting to me?

This might be a quicker result for all of us.

A result for all things,

Looking at this one thing rather than everything else as individual things to be fixed or repaired.

I am the singularity,

I am the cause.

In the case of my happiness and my unhappiness,

What do they both have in common?

Me.

My success and my failure,

What do they both have in common?

Me.

Isn't it obvious then that the me,

The I,

Is a more direct approach?

I can spend my life dealing with things and situations.

I can invest all my time and energy in dealing with things and situations,

Or I can spend it dealing with me.

Since I am the cause,

I am the cause of everything that happens to me.

So it seems prudent that I would be wise to take a look at this me,

This singularity.

All roads lead to Rome.

I would be wise to take a look at this me.

So this is philosophically speaking.

What is the application?

What's the practice of this?

That's what,

As we said earlier,

That's what meditation is about and what our practice will be all about.

When we sit to practice,

We will be turning our attention,

Our awareness,

To take a look at this I,

This me,

Directly.

To bypass all of the other factors of interest and deal with it directly.

So in terms of reincarnation,

First of all,

What reincarnates?

What reincarnates?

The soul?

Let's have a look at it.

What reincarnates?

I know nothing about the soul.

I know nothing about the soul.

That's just a word.

We can talk about it,

But I know,

Let's take the approach that I know nothing about the soul.

It's just a word.

We don't want to deal with words.

We want to deal with our own personal experience.

So what is it in me that reincarnates?

Apparently.

Let's have a look at it.

Let's really look at it.

Let's spend a moment actually ingesting it.

That may be true,

But we don't know what energy is either.

We know what energy does,

But we don't know what energy is.

We know energy by function,

But we don't know what energy is.

Not with the mind,

Not with the intellect,

But we can experience energy.

So what is it in me that reincarnates?

Now I'm not saying we know the answer yet,

But let's have a look at it.

Let's let it sink in.

What can I say about it?

Let's let it sit in.

Well,

In my own experience,

What do I know?

Do I have to die in order to know something about what reincarnates in me?

No,

I don't.

I can know right now.

I can know right now.

What is it in me that reincarnates?

That incarnates from moment to moment.

What is it in me that incarnates every morning following my sleep?

I go to sleep at night.

Something goes to sleep.

This I goes to sleep.

Is it this I that reincarnates in the morning?

Is it this I that wakes up in the morning?

Let's have a look at it.

So I go to sleep,

And in between being asleep and to waking up in the morning when I wake up,

I wake up into myself,

Don't I?

Before I have woken up to myself,

There is this instant of kind of just being.

There is this instant of undefined being Have you experienced that at all?

Just before that moment.

And on occasion you actually forget where you are.

You need to wake up and wake into that,

But before that.

Or sometimes you even forget.

It can happen where you forget that you are you.

So what is it that incarnates?

The knowing of you.

Let's not use just words.

No,

I'm.

.

.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I know.

We're.

.

.

Let's really.

.

.

We know the answer,

But we don't want to resort to knowledge.

We don't want to resort to other people's knowledge.

We want to see if we can access our own in the moment.

We don't want to use the clutch of what we already know.

We know,

Do you wake up in the morning?

Yes.

Do you go to sleep at night?

Yes.

We don't need anyone to tell us that.

Would you agree?

Of course.

So I can refer to my experience if I need to speak about sleeping.

I can refer to my experience when I speak about waking.

The problem with us is that we don't wait to uncover our own knowing.

We're way too quick in giving intellectual using that which incarnates memory.

What incarnates in the morning.

The memory of myself,

Nothing else.

Nothing else incarnates in the morning.

What is the body?

The body is a memory.

The mind is a memory.

Karmic memory.

I look a certain way because of karma.

This is my physical karma.

This is my physical memory,

The DNA,

So to speak.

So memory is not just an intellectual memory,

There is a physical memory.

There's also an emotional memory.

Already we're starting to understand something about my reactions to my son.

Right?

So obviously I'm reacting out of memory.

That seems to be activated,

That seems to reincarnate at certain experiences or certain events or certain triggers.

So what is it in me that reincarnates in the morning?

It's my memory.

It awakens.

I awaken into a memory of myself.

I go to sleep at night.

It's a mysterious thing,

Sleep as mysterious as death.

Right?

And yet I wake up in the morning,

I incarnate back into myself in this cycle of life.

In this life there are many seasons,

There are many cycles.

Every night I go to sleep,

Every morning I wake up.

That can be paralleled with every life I die and then every birth I live.

How do I know that every death is not unto sleep or is likened to sleep?

Just a bigger sleep.

How do I know every birth is not a type of waking into the body again?

But in this case I wake up into the body as opposed to waking up into a memory of my present incarnation.

It's not exactly like that.

Yet we can know some things about these things from our own experience.

But in order for us to uncover our own knowing,

What must happen?

We must still,

We must still into our being.

We must center,

We must ground in our being.

We don't do nearly enough of that.

Tonight's theme or meditation is called centering,

Anchoring into being.

It's one of the most powerful things that we can do and yet the thing that hardly anyone does.

We don't stop.

We still anchor into being,

Tune into our own being and allow the heart to communicate its knowing to the mind.

We must be able to still to anchor into being and allow the heart.

The heart is the place of all knowing.

Between the heart's knowing and the mind's understanding,

There is a trespass that can only be met with presence,

Stillness,

With grounding,

With anchoring into being.

So first I must anchor into my being in order to know out of myself the answer to my own question.

So this is why I'm very quick to stop,

Say no,

Wait.

I haven't anchored yet.

I'm asking me also the answer,

The question.

So I must anchor into my being.

Once I've anchored into my being,

Which is the stilling,

The stilling of my machinery if you like,

I tune in in that stilling,

It's possible to be attuned then to my inner being.

And whoa,

There it is,

An impulse.

There it is.

And then my mind takes that and translates it.

My mind thinks the knowing of my heart.

All knowing is in the heart.

Everything you need to know about anything is in your heart.

But the heart,

Or perhaps we must find a way of translating our heart knowing.

The mind must find a way of translating the heart knowing.

We think our knowing into reality.

And we cannot do that if we don't still,

If we don't ground,

If we don't pause,

If we don't anchor into being,

And giving the heart a moment in order to respond.

And that's how I stop reacting.

This is the practical,

The mechanistic approach.

How do I stop reacting?

By stilling,

Centering,

Anchoring,

Same word,

Stilling,

Centering,

Anchoring into being,

And allowing a response to the situation to bubble up.

And it will just deliver itself.

And how do you recognize it?

It is tainted with joy of the heart.

It's tainted with joy.

I can't speak about these things without feeling a tremendous joy.

It makes me want to just cry.

Not because what I'm saying is so interesting,

But because the feeling that surrounds what I'm saying is having its heyday with me.

It starts to like fume,

Like it has an aroma.

My body starts to take it in.

And you're speaking out of your own truth.

How do you know?

Because you're dictating what is in your heart.

It's a very marked difference in quality.

I know you can hear it.

Practically speaking then we have perhaps an answer to that.

How do I stop this reacting?

Well,

What do we already know about it?

It is a memory.

It has a life.

It is a memory that has a life,

That keeps reincarnating.

Certain events keep triggering it into being.

And because this event catches me unprepared,

Unaware,

My emotional reaction is faster than I can do anything about it.

Once the emotional reaction happens,

It's too late.

You have to wait until you land.

You can't just suddenly decide,

Oh no,

An emotional bubble is being released.

It's rising.

You cannot stop it midway.

You must allow it to release.

But you can become aware of it in the middle of its release.

You can become aware of it.

In becoming aware of it,

A softening in the body occurs.

And then if you stay with this softening and surrender your urge to continue with your reaction,

Physical reaction,

The emotional reaction is happening,

But now you don't physically react to the emotion.

If you can allow yourself to just feel to heal or to release,

A softening happens in the body.

A softening happening in the body.

And then you appear to yourself in that softening.

Something real shows itself,

Which had been overlooked,

Which had been hiding,

Which had been veiled from you.

Because the reaction had been veiling you from yourself.

Your mental reaction,

Your emotional reaction,

Your physical reaction,

They work together.

As we discussed last week in our parable of the cart,

The horse,

The driver and the sleeping master in the back,

The reaction,

This organization as a reaction,

Has been veiling you,

Has been keeping the master asleep.

So we must pause.

We must pause and anchor into our being.

And when we anchor into our being,

We must listen in.

I know how I can feel you just by listening in to me.

I can feel you just by listening to me.

And you can too.

You're feeling right.

It's not anything unusual.

But we must slow down and we must be able to anchor in.

We must still center,

Anchor,

Attune and then respond.

That response will be the truest thing you've ever said in your life.

And you will know it.

Because it will be carrying the perfume of its origin,

The heart.

And who knows what your response might be?

Maybe you'll start dancing in front of your son.

Can I ask a question?

So if you go to say this is a family function,

So you're full of memories,

Of reactions which are memory based.

And your heart's desire is to walk in and maintain a stillness and a presence amongst people who are,

You know,

You connect with all this memory.

And you can go for so long and then all of a sudden you're off.

You know,

Because their energy is other.

That for me is the hardest.

You can prepare for that.

There's a few things to say about that.

First of all,

We can prepare for that.

How do we prepare for the future?

How do we prepare to be present in the future?

When do we prepare?

Now.

If you can do it now,

You'll do it now and now and now.

How do you prepare?

By being present.

That's the first thing to say.

The second thing is drop the idea.

Get rid of it.

Get rid of the heart's desire because it's not the heart's desire,

It's the ego's desire.

The heart has no desire.

The heart knows nothing about the future.

How can the heart have a desire if it doesn't?

How can the heart have a desire when it doesn't know about a future?

It's the mind which is privy to this concept of time.

It's the mind that exists in time.

The heart exists in timelessness.

So can the heart have a desire if it doesn't exist in time?

Desire is for something that can come later.

So can the heart have a desire?

Obviously,

From our own logic and our own exploring of this idea right now,

We see that no.

Can the heart know a fear?

No,

Because fear is based on something that happened in the past.

But the heart does not exist in the past.

The heart always lives in the now like a dog.

It doesn't know about the past.

And so as a result of that,

Can we say that the heart also knows no fear?

The heart is a fearless terrain.

The heart is a desireless terrain.

The mind is fear-based.

The mind desires.

So we can drop this idea that I need to be like this.

And then I can spare my family from my own egoic prejudices.

And you're not the only one,

By the way.

I'm not speaking about you.

You know that.

You know it all of us.

I think it's a gift,

What you've just said.

I'm glad you see it that way.

So I can drop that idea and just have fun.

Okay,

That's the second thing.

And the third thing is,

So I'm there,

And I have this desire that I've got to address.

And I can keep it going.

I can keep the pretense going for a certain amount of time.

But I need to ask myself,

How can I recognize the pretense if I'm pretending?

Here I am pretending accompanied with what?

Judgment.

I'm judging.

Aren't I doing that?

Definitely,

I'm doing that.

So that's how I can recognize my ploy,

My trick,

The trick of this I,

The trick of this me,

That claims to be me and that acts on my behalf.

It wants to do good.

It wants to be good with the family.

It wants to,

It wants to,

It wants to.

Now I need to take a look at it.

Now before we take a look at this,

In the second part of this,

We need to say a few words about the practical practice of anchoring,

Centering into being.

It's not enough to think of it theoretically.

How can I anchor into being?

Let's not answer yet.

See,

I have to tune in.

Myself,

I have to tune in.

I know the answer but I have to tune in.

Because maybe my knowing has a different way of wanting to present in it this time.

How can I anchor?

So I'm in my living experience.

This is a living meditation.

I'm in my living experience.

And there's a family event situation.

My husband,

My wife,

My cat,

My dog,

My work.

I'm feeling stagnant and so on and so forth.

I have been trained to deal with problems instead of dealing with myself.

I mean,

Let's face it,

That's our education.

Deal with issues.

Don't deal with yourself,

God forbid.

But I am the thing that all these issues have in common.

Shouldn't I?

No,

No,

Just be realistic.

Stop being so floaty,

Flighty.

Be realistic.

Deal with.

.

.

No one says deal with yourself.

Educate yourself.

If you want your life to change,

Change yourself.

If you want your life to advance,

Advance yourself.

If you want your life to go to the next level,

You go to the next level.

Invest in your being.

That's obvious.

But no,

We are trained to invest in our job,

Invest in our relationship,

Invest in our marriage.

Invest in you.

OK.

So what is the practical practice of anchoring?

I must be able to recognize the feeling of anchoring for a moment.

Let's take a moment and see what this practice of anchoring,

Of centering,

Of stilling looks like.

For me,

If I have to describe it,

I immediately feel like I need to look away for a second,

Look down.

And you can look at my.

.

.

You're looking at my face,

Seeing my process,

You may have your own process.

Now I'm just exaggerating this so that you can see it.

It doesn't mean I'm standing in front of someone and I start to swoon,

You know.

But I'm exaggerating it.

I'm exaggerating it and I'm trying to hint at inwardly beginning to sense my internal being.

My awareness,

My attention is you turning.

It's turning in.

I'm looking out but I'm feeling in.

So for me,

The process of anchoring in my being is characterized by something that I describe as this.

Looking out,

Feeling in.

Like an arrow with two points.

One point is looking out and the other point is pointing back at myself.

It's a two-way looking.

I'm looking out,

I'm looking in.

And in my looking in,

I begin to feel me.

So there's my son or my dog or my cat or whatever.

I'm being triggered or a thought is triggering me,

Causing me to feel stagnant.

I can have the thought.

I can look at the thought also as an object.

I can look at the story in the same way that I can look at a person.

There's no limit to my awareness.

There's no limit to my attention.

I can look at you,

Helene,

In the same way that I can also look,

Pay attention to a thought.

You are an object to me and so is my thought.

It's an object that is appearing in the field of my awareness.

So let's say it's a thought,

A story.

My life is stagnant this year.

I mean that's enough to drive anyone crazy.

I'm sorry,

Where did you get this ridiculous idea?

Just chuck it in the bin,

Flush it twice.

It's a long way wherever it needs to go.

A thought like that can cripple us for a whole year.

Ah,

This year,

Man,

I've just been so stuck.

That's enough to keep you stuck for another year,

Not you.

Or,

Oh,

My life,

How difficult it has been.

That's enough.

It's already difficult.

That thought is enough to keep recycling.

So anchoring is characterized by I must have a feeling of my being.

I get a thought that disturbs me,

That causes me suffering,

That causes me pain.

I shouldn't have said that.

I shouldn't have done that.

My life has gone to the shit house.

I can't use my hand anymore.

I am this,

I am that.

Not to use you as an example,

But I'm an opportunist.

It could be anything.

It's a story which is so profoundly disruptive to the flow of divinity in me.

A story can absolutely disrupt the flow of bliss.

And since we're continuously running these stories,

Our internal waters of bliss are just all over the place.

So anchoring means to stop.

And there is a mindful actually,

Is it the word synonym that they use?

S-T-O-P,

Is that called a synonym?

The S means something,

The T means something.

I don't know what that,

Huh?

Acronym,

Is that what it is?

Acronym.

The S,

So you're in a situation,

You have a thought,

You have whatever is disturbing the flow of internal peace,

Let's say.

Stop.

The S stands for stop.

The T stands for take a breath.

The O stands for observe your environment.

Take a look at real things around you.

Look at the wall,

Look at the different shades,

Look at the edges.

Take a look at real things.

So stop,

Take an internal breath.

And by internal I mean a mindful breath.

Observe,

Take a look at real things.

That's called glass,

That's called a painting.

Really look at them.

And then proceed.

S-T-O-P.

Stop,

Take a breath,

Observe and proceed with that connection.

So this is an acronym for anchoring,

Grounding.

But I prefer also to,

I've taken my breath,

Can I now feel my internal being?

Can I feel the vibration?

Can I feel the volume of myself occupying space and time?

Can I become aware that space wraps around me like a bubble?

I'm inhabiting an invisible space.

And then I'm this embodied consciousness.

I'm this consciousness which is inhabiting this body.

Space wraps around my body in the same way that my body wraps around my consciousness.

I am the living consciousness inside my body.

Can I become aware of that?

Can I become aware of the awareness?

Not the body,

That's not me.

I'm the living light,

I'm the living awareness.

I cannot catch it,

I cannot identify it as an objective form.

It is non-objective.

I can become aware of the aware.

Aware,

Aware.

It's not my eyes that are aware,

Awareness is aware of my eyes.

So to anchor is to stop,

To still,

To feel in.

To try to stay as much as you can in this feeling in.

And then to attune,

If you have to respond,

To attune to what wants to be said.

What the truth of the moment wants you to say.

Not the death of the past,

Not the conditioned mind.

This is my son,

Therefore I should say this and you should know his place.

La la la la la la la.

What about the moment,

What does it want to say?

What does stealing in the moment want to say?