Be In Love With Your Life

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from Dharma dialogues held in April 2017 in Byron Bay,

Australia.

It's called,

Be in Love with Your Life.

Sometimes we don't admit that we love our life.

Sometimes we go along and there's a fixation on the problems.

And lives have problems,

No doubt.

Every life has problems.

But there can be a kind of fixation on the long list of problems.

Or there can be something that you're waiting for,

That you won't really feel that you're loving your life until this other thing comes about,

Something in the future.

And there's almost a way that we withhold our actual enjoyment and love of our life in a misguided loyalty to the dream of the future.

It's like,

In order to really have that dream,

I've got to really,

I can't let myself just be content with this.

I've got to wait,

Hold out for the big one.

And meanwhile,

Time's a passing,

Isn't it?

On the one hand,

One can have a long laundry list of all the difficulties and go over and over and over it.

On the other is the dream.

Someone told me the other day about a cartoon,

I think it was done by an Australian cartoonist.

I didn't see it,

But he described it to me.

And he said that it was a picture of a fork in the road.

And the person in the cartoon is walking on one side of the fork.

And it's kind of brambly and dark and stormy and awful.

And on the other one is just rainbows and a big gigantic party is going on.

Often we imagine,

Right,

That other fork that you didn't take or that you might take in the future,

That's the one.

But what if your path that you're on,

The fork you did take,

Which by the way is the reality of the situation,

What if it's pretty great?

Especially if you use your attention to notice that it's pretty great,

Especially if you feel grateful,

If you use your attention to tune into that inner sparkle that's there,

A little secret that you actually do love your life and start really admitting it to yourself and then tasting it,

Feeling it in your day,

As you're paying the bills,

As you're driving,

As you're bathing,

As you're talking to someone,

As you're at work,

You're just sort of resting or flowing or at ease in a little bubble,

A little flutter of joy.

And even in times when something very,

Very hard is happening and you don't necessarily have access to that feeling,

It's okay once in a while,

Once in a while we get kind of kicked by life.

Something big happens,

Big loss,

Something terribly sad,

Something terribly difficult,

You just had an accident,

You broke your leg,

Someone's died.

Yes,

There are those moments when joy is not so easily accessible,

Sorrow is there.

But there's no point in using our times that we could be joyous and could be grateful and could be content,

Which by the way is probably much of the time,

Even most of the time,

And reserve some of the times occasionally when there's a big loss or a big difficulty and you feel the sorrow.

Everything is off limits.

But it's just about how you're using your attention in general.

Mark Twain said something like,

In his life,

He'd known a great many problems,

Some of which came to be.

Right?

But really,

Mostly we do have a lot of problems that don't even come to be.

So this is a flip of attention,

That's all that it is,

It's a little switch of attention into the brightness of being,

Into the aliveness,

Into the joy to just be here.

And then what may have seemed ordinary or you may have even labeled it as somewhat dull,

Suddenly pops,

Suddenly is a flash of beauty.

Just while you were saying that,

I can just going back to walking along the beach at sunset,

There's just walking with a friend and the beautiful sky and the sea there,

And there's no problems in mind.

There's nothing special happening,

But life's extraordinarily expansive and has infinite depth.

There's nothing exciting to look forward to and there's no particular reason,

But there's just no worries in mind and it's the same life,

But it's extraordinary and you feel a part of it and there's no way of really explaining it.

But as you said,

It's only a couple of little thoughts away and you're back into the worry,

The stress,

And then suddenly life becomes something very small and a problem,

An obstacle to overcome and some futuristic goal to achieve.

But it is that simple,

Isn't it?

This little switch of attention.

It is.

It's like a toggle switch.

Yeah,

Switch of attention and opening up and a change in thinking.

But you do need to access that clarity first before you jump into some kind of positive thinking,

Which seems to be just a battle against life.

Yeah,

I'm not suggesting positive thinking,

So called,

As is typically understood.

No,

I'm suggesting coming back into reality,

Not labeling on something extra,

But just the already existing situation that's quite beautiful.

It is,

As you say,

It's a flick of attention that it's just a thought away in a sense.

And then also one can become habituated,

Marinated in it as you use your attention and intention temporarily to get the habit strong.

You use the attention to keep calling itself back to reality,

Nothing extra.

And you use some intentionality that notices that this is a good idea.

And then after a point,

What you described about walking on the beach,

That of course is a situation that would lend itself more easily than many other situations,

More easily than say riding on a crowded bus.

But even on the crowded bus,

One can become very,

Very sort of prone to sitting in that space.

Right?

That's the point.

Yeah,

Or sitting quietly like we've been doing with our eyes closed.

Yeah,

Those are very conducive.

And that's why we arranged this event to kind of intensify the experience.

But the idea of that is to just get a good soaking so that,

You know,

A good soaking,

A good steeping in it such that in other circumstances that you find yourself in,

There's that reference.

So let's say you're in a stressful situation in life,

But you've got this easy reference that knows where to return to,

Knows what to do with your attention to get back home,

Right?

Home safe.

And a lot of people,

Just due to conditioning,

Their minds are just racing.

They haven't understood that they could direct their attention.

It's amazing how many people don't really direct their attention in these ways.

They might direct their attention in some kind of production,

Right?

They might be able to direct their attention at their place of work or in even into some creative form and so on.

But a lot of people don't realize they can actually use their attention for their own direct well-being,

For their own immediate taste of well-being.

Seems to me a high priority to use one's attention that way.

I always thought so.

And like the hub of the wheel,

That's where you have to start.

You mentioned reference point.

Is having that reference point just a matter of practice makes perfect?

How's the best way to create that reference point for myself?

I'll tell you more because I'd rather not think of it as practice necessarily.

But it's like,

Let's say you've climbed to the top of a mountain or even a large hill and you've looked around at the valley and you've kind of understood things about seeing it from that vantage point,

Right?

So now you find yourself back down in the valley,

Back down in the marketplace,

But there's a way in which you have seen the picture.

You have seen the vision.

You actually know the terrain from a different vantage point,

Correct?

It's like that.

It's like when you're soaking in this,

Let's call it the reference point for the moment,

When you're soaking in this beingness,

Then even when the mind is somewhere else,

Even when there's trouble or even when you're a little distracted or even when you've whatever,

There's the knowing.

There's the knowing that's very strong that remains.

And that knowing,

If things get too intense out in that marketplace,

The mind will flee to its home base.

How do I climb the mountain?

Yeah,

There's some of the metaphors aren't exactly perfect.

It's really a recognition.

It's a recognition of what is already here.

It's not somewhere else.

It's not far away.

It's not something you have to attain.

It's not something you have to have merit for.

It's innate.

And it's just a love of it and a kind of resting in it.

So just,

And to really keep it simple,

Don't think it's going to be some big explosion of enlightenment or anything like that.

Keep it really simple,

That it's just this simple taste.

It'll be happening all evening.

And sometimes,

Just as people don't admit that they love their lives,

They don't value or really give its due to those simple moments of being where you're just sitting in well-being.

Not even having to say you're feeling content.

Part of being content is that it's wordless.

It doesn't require any commentary.

So that you're sitting in a kind of contentment and ease of being and quiet and simplicity.

And it doesn't even matter if there's some thoughts floating by.

They're no problem.

They all drift away,

Every one of them.

Every single thought you ever had has drifted away,

Including this one that's going through right now.

So there's the recognition of that and the,

As I said,

Giving it its due.

And keeping it dead easy.

So easy.

Right?

It's not complicated.

Pongjiji once said,

Probably said many times,

But I heard him say once,

In complication,

There is falsehood.

It's like the way that lies can hide in a lot of complication.

In America,

It's a trick of our politicians,

Maybe they do it here as well,

To create these bills to put through Congress.

But they're so complicated.

Sometimes they're 2000 pages.

None of our politicians would actually read one of those bills.

They're so complicated because it's able to hide all kinds of lies and distortions and really criminal kinds of actions that just get embedded into the complication.

So you're saying by making things complicated for myself,

I could be also lying to myself as well?

Well,

I can't say in your case necessarily that that's happening.

But what I'm saying is in general,

When there's a lot of complication around something,

You know it when you speak to someone whose mind you sense is like a labyrinth.

Do you know what I mean?

You're talking to someone and they're telling,

They're kind of all over the place.

There's no straight line of clarity.

You don't really know what they said or what they meant or what.

It's an unnecessarily complicated story.

So be watchful in those cases because all kinds of funny business can be hiding in the complication.

And we can do that in our own case.

There can be a way we self-delude.

We tell a lot of different labyrinthine stories to hide the actual truth of something.

So only you would know this in your own case.

But what happens is in this resting,

There is an increasing simplicity and clarity about how your mind is operating and what is coming out of your mouth.

Right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Nice to see you again.

Oftentimes in satsang when I have a question and I get the microphone,

The silence dissolves the question or answers it for me and it feels like it was a stupid question to ask.

Except in this instance is something really bubbling strong and hot in my belly.

And I noticed my body language went all crossed over when I know this inherent place and I know this toggle switch brings me straight home.

And I also know,

As my experience of Paul,

How I dramatise things so much to bring a big drama.

And it feels like April 2017 has been one of the most intense emotional times inside and outside myself.

It feels like things that I've been hiding since childhood have been brought to light emotionally and physically and scared the hell out of me and pushed a couple of people that I love dearly away.

Without a story this is an intense anger and rage here.

I could put a story to it and say against the machine,

Against greedy men,

Against any number of phenomena things that pain my heart.

And it feels that because that's come out like a pressure cooker in the recent past and been misdirected on reflection I've really felt a couple of things have blown way out of context and the misdirected anger and rage has left me really braced again to not make that happen again.

And I feel like I'm perhaps strangling myself a bit in this and hiding lots more of myself in this.

And there's a want to just flick that toggle switch and just come back to this aspect of self that doesn't need to reflect or project and can just bathe.

And so there's this seesaw between my ego or personality that just wants to jump in and thinks no this is lazy just sitting here and doing nothing.

In my heart I feel immense gratitude.

It's so yummy and from an eagle's view of my Paul's life and when I speak in first person my life and my situation it looks like a terrible train wreck to me.

It's not on so many levels it's not where my heart would want to be circumstantially.

And yet that doesn't take away this self love or this gratitude for life.

And so I feel I think that's the essence of my share that I feel blessed to be at a stage in my life now where I can look at that train wreck with compassion and know that things that I perhaps would like to reach some sort of reconciliation within my external world will happen as a course of just being here.

And allowing the reconciliation to occur just with you.

Right.

And then we'll see how it plays out in the rest.

But really to you know you mentioned the toggle switch that you're operating on right now and I would really encourage you to just let yourself have this ease of being these moments of simplicity as frequently as you can.

Doesn't have to be all the time but just as frequently as you can with no other story that this is not that this is lazy or something like that.

That as you know well that's just the mind jumping in and throwing in some complication.

But there's no other way through that I know of.

Right.

And to come to a place of like you use the word compassion for yourself and also if necessary forgiveness for yourself.

You know that there may be some sort of self judgment about looking at your life as a train wreck and kind of a big story about how it got that way and all the things you wish you had played differently.

But you didn't know then what you now know.

You know you played it how you played it then.

So it's another key to this to coming into like admitting that you love your life is allowing forgiveness.

And you know just starting afresh here in this very moment.

There's a lovely line.

The darkness of a thousand years is lit by a single candle.

Right.

A cave that might have been dark for a thousand years.

Total darkness.

One little candle and there's light in it.

Right.

And that's the way it can be here.

Just this candle of light in the being right now with no postponement.

Nothing needed.

Nothing extra has to happen.

No other thing.

That recognition right now.

Falling into well being.

Always welcoming you.

And that's really it.

And the more that's the case the more that's the habit in your life.

The easier the relationships the easier the work.

And even the thing you alluded to about the rage you feel about all the bad people and all the you know machinations of the players of power.

You know I said last Sunday in Lennox I spoke a lot about forgiveness.

It was Easter Sunday and I was saying that for me it's much easier in my heart when I look out and see ignorance instead of evil.

Right.

If I just see it as ignorance it just feels very very different.

And that's not something I have to artificially impose.

It is ignorance.

You know it's like Jesus said forgive them for they know not what they do.

You know.

You know I know it seems hard to see but a lot of what we're looking at is driven by fear in the in those powerful players.

Right.

Deep deep deep deep fear that's probably conditioned from childhood.

And if you really start to see that it's not that you don't work to stop the nonsense but at least you can do it with a lot more energy and clarity.

Because when you're looking out and seeing evil in the world and feeling rage it's exhausting.

Right.

It is exhausting.

It will it will drain you.

I've seen it for 40 years of hanging out on the scene and being involved in sort of social activists and environmental activism circles.

And you burn out.

But if you see if what you're looking at is ignorance first of all at least there's a chance that someone can eventually get educated about something.

If you think that they're just innately inherently evil there's not much chance of anything.

So if we look at history and we look at the way history has rolled out every inch of ground evolutionarily has been one with a lot of blood and a lot of sorrow.

But eventually the truth prevails.

You know.

And so we have made some strides over the course of centuries.

You know we have there are certain things that are not accepted by civilized people that used to be accepted.

I mean in Rome the upper classes and in fact everybody their enjoyment was just the most horrific kind of entertainment just the worst you know.

Live.

Live brutality you know just horrible.

And all through the ages we could just go down the list.

There's lots of things that have happened even in my lifetime there has been movement.

You know there's been a lot more awakening on a lot of levels.

Women's rights civil rights animal rights like a brand new thing on the stage of the world.

These are huge changes in understanding.

And one of my friends Paul Hawken wrote a book called Blessed Unrest and in it he he assesses that right now on earth there's something like two million organizations some of which have millions of members who are trying to do good in all kinds of ways socially and environmentally.

Two million organizations it's the largest movement in history.

So we sometimes forget just like we are we forget to love our own life to feel we sometimes forget that there is actually a lot of goodness in the world.

There's a lot of a lot of beautiful wonderful people.

It reminds me of my childhood I often reflect on all the trauma in my family and yet there's so many beautiful times together as a family but sure.

And sometimes the trauma actually tenderizes in some ways right.

It did in my family the loss of my brother tenderized the whole family.

So these are the kinds of reflections that will come in your own quiet you start to observe from a different place right.

You observe from you know you're not without agenda you observe without a without an agenda and you start to notice the truth of something that you know you one can easily get biased if you have some kind of agenda or a story that you want it to fit like you know people are evil.

You can look around and that's what you start to see you know.

So I ask you a question personally I say since you first experienced for one of a better term this awareness of the truth of who you are or sat with Papaji and had this awakening from then till now in all your years is it does it shift does it become do you become deeper or have you become deeper in this presence even since I've last seen you is there shifts in this or is it just still that toggle switch that I'm home and I.

Yeah see I never subscribed to some particular moment of awakening so of course it is just an ongoing deepening right as it was for him he told me that in an interview you know.

So yes of course there's always more information coming in and more insight that arises as a result of just living and especially when you're you're tuned into this channel it lends itself to a lot more insight.

I notice it in retreats for instance I'm just always amazed at how quickly people start to speak from that channel loud and clear and it's cross cultural and I sometimes say it's like listening to like some of the Sufi poets when I listen to people speak in retreat and I realized in hearing so many people say things that could have been said by Hafiz or Rumi I realized Hafiz and Rumi were not speaking poetry they were just describing reality right because that's what starts to happen and give people half a chance get them into their quiet space and suddenly it awakens a very wise channel of thought and clarity and insight not that they're trying to have that it just arises so yes I have noticed in my case that that is an ongoing ongoing process.

I'm not looking for some sort of goal I don't care about a goal you know I'm content that that it's more than it used to be and one of the aspects of it is that I'm getting better at letting go as needed and there's a lot of that that seems to be on offer a lot of letting go you know that there's plenty of opportunity for.

So while you were talking about this I just had a similar sort of similar conversation with a friend the other night and I was just talking about life and how you know we can kind of strive for all of these things that we think that we want or we need but that the times when I actually feel like I'm really in life and feel that contentment it's just really about the feeling and it's nothing to do with what's happening really you know it's just like it just comes like and it's when I'm in that full presence but I feel like for me there's so many factors like hormonal factors and just you know I may have just I just feel like our biology plays into that you know like and so I'm wondering like for those times when you've got hormones running or like you know and you just your mind's just taking you somewhere else and you're not embodied and you know that you've been in this full presence that just came not because of anything external that was happening so do you have any like tools for kind of bringing yourself back?

Yeah when there's a kind of strong distraction into you know neurotic thought or to just kind of a feeling of madness or just a feeling of busyness inside a swirl then there's a couple of things that I usually do for myself one is I move my attention into my senses whichever you can pick any of the senses basically so it can be seeing it can be hearing it can be smelling it can be tasting it can be moving or even just the breath I kind of sort of in a more strong way put my attention into the sensory experience and really notice it if that doesn't break through if that doesn't sort of cut through the swirl then my next step is gratitude I go into gratitude for whatever is at hand I don't make it some sort of esoteric story but rather I'm grateful to be able to see right I'll notice that I'm seeing think oh lucky to be seeing lucky to be moving that kind of thing right or if I reflect on who's around me just the warmth of friendship or love so to kind of keep it really close at hand move the gratitude into the direct experience of right now right now we can feel grateful to be in such a lovely space a quiet space to be privileged enough to have this kind of conversation you know just simple things keep it keep it very direct and you know it can apply anytime anytime anywhere I just find even gratitude is something that can just come so easily and you can just be overwhelmed with it and you're just naturally so grateful and then other times you're sitting there and you're like yeah I'm grateful for this but you're not feeling it you know you're just saying the thoughts but you're not feeling it and that's what I'm realizing about life it's like everything is about how I feel right well if you with attention you can feel the gratitude that's the point I'm not saying just to say the words I'm saying really consider how lucky it is that you have so much operating all well right lots of people who don't and one of my friends for years and years she's had a gratitude practice with one of her college girlfriends my friend is now 70 so it goes back a ways but the gratitude practice isn't that it's probably 20 years old but what they do is they email each other sometimes they call each other they tell each other something they were grateful for that day and so what it does is it leans your attention into looking at things through that lens and thinking oh is that my one is that my pick for the day but instead you're sort of shopping all through the day of all your moments of gratitude and it's it's causing the attention to stay a bit on that channel and she's they they say it's an amazing and that you get really good at little subtle things that little you can imagine doing this over the course of years and years and years of time how you would you know make your you'd surprise yourself with things you feel grateful for right little tiny things you know I'm grateful for my toothbrush you know I mean things like that you know just every little thing you know so you start to it's it's not just some conceptual idea all right it's that you it's it's a certain entrainment that happens and by the way I'm saying to use this not as an ongoing thing but rather in times of intense distraction into nonsense into into neurosis right these are ways you can come back home quickly into reality not fantasy and use your attention wisely in that way most of the time you could go along especially in a habit of ease you don't have to be directing the attention so much you can let it just hang around my body says I'm meant to be saying this I just wanted to share how grateful I am for this space and I'm grateful that I met Salila to tell me about this because I found just before I came here this is my third time now that I've started to get pretty out of balance and overwhelmed with the impressions of the world and which had a fruit and also my own into my own life and just coming here and sitting in this space and having this vibration I'm literally afraid like my soul could rest for the first time in a long time and it's just been amazing you know that the clarity without me actually trying for my whole life I mean you know it just says clean itself up and I find that I can actually deal now with I still don't hunt looking at the news and everything but when I get waves of emotions and thoughts coming I now can I don't know I can deal with this by being accepting of it rather than feeling I have to fix it all I guess before I came here I felt like it was my responsibility now to do something and I just didn't know what and somehow you've given me permission or this space being held by everyone has actually given me a presentation to just breathe and just allow it and not put my judgment on top of it.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

So basically just thank you for coming here.

So many people who have spiritual ideas they they're on a program of trying to change themselves and it becomes a kind of violence really you know it's a kind of war with your conditioning and your personality and your whole thought pattern and it's endless and hopeless but people do it you know they amazing they I mean they they fight the battle you know all in the name of some sort of you know spiritual training and trying to get to the next level and it actually sounds like life can be an adventure.

And it is.

Yeah.

I think it to me in my life I think it's about catching the rhythm of your life and allowing you to do that whatever comes up you know and I think obviously to have the the quietness and stillness of mind you can go through that.

That's quite a pleasure.

Say more about catching the rhythm it's a nice phrase.

Well it's you know it's your birthright really you know you're given that passage of life from the clock starts ticking and I see events as being non-random in my life.

They're there and whether it's a hardship or I think that's where you learn a lot in periods of suffering and I think you've got it you know from if you're given an action plan if you've got a code of some sort of practice at the start that allows you to deal with it by accepting what is I think there's even hope in the darkest of times.

So it can be very simple like you're saying.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be difficult.

I think it's I think it's quite an adventure.

Yeah.

But there are some circumstances today I mean technology mobile phones social media this sort of stuff it's plays havoc.

That's a hard one to get over you know particularly for the youngsters.

Yeah.

I mean and you know a lot of us in here and we didn't have that stuff.

So we knew what it was like to reflect back then.

I have a half brother who's 29 years old and he has this he has this kind of clarity about him.

So I noticed recently I wanted to look at his he's a photographer and I wanted to look up some of his images and I knew that he used to have them on his Facebook account.

So I went to his Facebook page and there was a notice there saying that he'd been away on a ski trip and that he had noticed and he had been offline and had not been doing his Facebook or anything like that and he noticed he felt better.

So he's he was announcing that he was no longer going to be doing Facebook.

Don't expect to see him there basically.

And I thought that was so cool.

It was so simple.

It's like he noticed he felt better.

Right.

Wow.

What a concept.

It's a lot easier isn't it?

Right.

I mean it's another thing though that sometimes we don't give ourselves permission when we notice that we feel better one way or another in certain circumstances to just say you know what that just feels better.

I'm going to do it that way.

Right.

It's again it's this this clarity that comes when you're just in your quiet place and you don't really have any agenda.

You're not trying to be somebody.

You're not trying to impress somebody.

You're not trying to live your life based on someone else's ideas or what you imagine they are.

Most of the time we go along and we think that someone's watching somewhere.

There's a weird sense.

I've spoken about it many.

I've spoken about it many times.

First you're indoctrinated thinking that God's watching or the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or someone.

Someone's keeping track.

And then the Akashic records or some sort of like karmic thing.

You feel like you're you know you better be careful about how you're playing this.

But there can come a point where you realize no one's watching just you.

Just you are watching your life.

Almost everyone is just thinking about their life.

They're watching their life.

They're not really thinking about your life.

So there's this incredible freedom like that can just come over you and in a flash when you really get that.

And then another piece of it is soon you'll be gone and then no one's watching.

So that's another level of the freedom as well.

You know that often again people are living their lives for some idea of prosperity and what are they thinking about me once I'm gone and all these things.

They're not even thinking about you while you're here.

Do you have the experience I do sometimes when I'm watching the Academy Awards and they're going through the people who died that very year.

Sometimes really big names.

I will have forgotten by the time it's on the Academy Awards even though it was within the year I'll have forgotten that they died even though I knew it at the time when it was only six months ago.

It's just there's this swirl.

You know it's like you're on the game board right now.

You're in the play.

You're here.

But then there comes a point when you're not.

The game goes on.

And so there's a freedom in that.

It all goes back to the thing I said at the outset.

Just like really love this life that you have this few minutes that we're here.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to a memorial of a dear one here in this you know from this community.

It's just a blink you know and so to really let yourself know it live it celebrate it.

Don't worry about how it looks.

Right.

If you notice something doesn't feel good just stop doing it if you can you know if you have that option.

You know but some people feel that freedom can be 24 hours.

I'm free to use Facebook for 24 hours a day.

If you're.

No no.

No but her point is right.

If there's some people who maybe thrive maybe some characters thrive in that in that world they love the information they love feeling connected etc.

It OK.

So be it.

Some of the main me there is there is a lot of data that is showing right now though that there's a correlation between depression and a lot of time spent on social media but maybe not for every single person.

Maybe some are really having a grand old time.

You know obviously it's very popular and all the other derivatives you know of the social media but but the point being that it may not be the case for you.

All right.

Marianne and I were talking we're both sort of into introvert types.

Right.

So we're talking about the difference between people who you know walk into a room a party.

Right.

Like why we would never go to the Blues Fest for instance.

They walk into a room a party and they feel like they've been plugged into a socket of energy.

I I walk into a circumstance like that and I feel like someone has like there's a vampire draining my blood.

You know I'm just like a star.

It's just how I made it's just my nature.

It's nothing I can.

I don't have any Apollo.

I don't think it should be different.

I don't have any apology about it.

I don't think it has anything to do with any kind of awareness thing.

In fact it has to do with my awareness of a certain level of sensitivity.

Another way to see extreme introverts is that they're extremely sensitive.

And so for someone of on that end of the spectrum when they walk into a circumstance a big you know jangly circumstance they're picking up lots and lots and lots of information that after a while feels overwhelming.

In fact after a short while.

Another component of this is that you are very in touch with your own nature and the quieter you get the more respectful of your own nature and the more aligned with taking care of yourself based on your actual nature and not trying to look like anyone else or having any kind of big shoulds story.

One of the great delights about meeting punjaji was that he he didn't show up as what a spiritual teacher in my in my lexicon prior to meeting him should have looked like.

I mean I had been trained in Buddhism for so many years and we had there was a certain look to our to the Buddhist hierarchy of teachers.

There was a certain you know kind of one of the big manifestations was that of equanimity.

You weren't supposed to show any emotion one way or another about anything and punjaji was an incredibly passionate person so he could laugh and cry in a satsang on any given day right.

He could have tears in his eyes or he could be wildly laughing and he could flip back and forth and that was that was such a permission to be authentic and to be really just tuned in to you know your truth of your being the actual manifestation you know.

So it's another it's another aspect of this loving of your life.

It's loving of your own expression as it is.

Living your own self as this unique incredibly specific one off in the universe.

In this quiet you part of it is living in a true genuineness a true authenticity and kind of deep honesty and not looking to the side or back or around to have a reference point for how you should be or what you should look like or any of that.

It's that you become more and more proud of yourself necessarily it's that you become you become very in most beautiful way surrendered to how you are and the truth of your life and the and the whether it's humble or whatever it is it's it's from another vantage point from sitting in that understanding your own life becomes so beautiful to you.

This has been in the deep.

You can find the entire list of in the deep podcast at KatherineIghrim.

Com where you can also book a private session by phone or Skype see the schedule for Dharma dialogues and retreats or make a tax deductible donation in support of this work till next time.