Your Mysterious Self

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from a session of Dharma Dialogues held in Lenox Head,

Australia in August of 2019.

It's called Your Mysterious Self.

We have the illusion of a steady state of self,

A self that is consistent.

And we create this illusion,

Ongoingly,

With all our little bits of information,

Memories,

Desires,

Pictures,

Future plans,

Our stories about where we came from and experiences we had with friends.

And it's very interesting,

For instance,

Let's say you have an experience with your friend,

You go to Tibet.

And you both were on the same journey,

You were together the whole time.

But the recording of what your friend recorded in his or her mind is different than the recording you made.

You were both experiencing the trip.

Neither of you were in some sort of fantasy about it.

It's just that there were different bits recorded.

And even those bits that you recorded later on might get changed in your memory.

Right?

Things get changed later.

So there are all these different flows of material that give us a sense of a consistent self.

This is who I am.

We also do it with our future pictures as well.

We have pictures about how we want the future to go or how we think it might go.

And if that starts evolving in a different way,

Then we're now confronted with,

Again,

Revising who we think we are.

So many times people have a plan about their future.

And if it doesn't come to be,

It rattles their sense of self.

Because the identity was hooked on to these bits of information.

But what if we released our identification with all these little bits of information of who we think we are?

What if you allowed yourself to be much more mysterious to yourself?

Much more experiencing a feeling of presence and awareness that flows on,

But is not so much identifying with the bits of information,

With the stories,

With where you've been and what you wanted,

What you didn't want and what you got and.

.

.

Right?

How dramatically different life would be.

So of course,

We have a sense of being.

That is really your truest sense,

Simply being.

That's what you can really know.

And a lot of the history and the ways that you've presented to the world and all of that can become much more amorphous to you.

We've all had the experience of suddenly having to revamp who we think we are.

Right?

My girlfriend,

One of my best friends yesterday sent me a text saying she'd gone to get a mammogram some weeks ago and they'd asked her to come back,

Which is never a happy thing.

But of course,

She didn't expect anything big.

But anyway,

She said that the doctor had said it's 98% chance it's cancer.

And one of the things she was processing in the receiving of this information was it shocked who she thought she is.

It was like,

That can't be right.

That can't be happening to me.

Right?

The person I thought I was.

Part of the processing of,

Of course,

It's the troubling bit of information in so many ways,

But part of the processing that she was going through with me on the phone was about the identification about who's this happening to.

And she said,

I feel like I'm a different person watching this.

Right?

So we had,

We all have similar experiences in different ways.

Even in like the death of someone close to us,

Suddenly it just ratchets around your sense of who you are.

But I propose you can get used to letting those things be very freely let go,

Right?

Just feeling like you're in a kind of a wash of the identified thoughts will arise because they're strong and they're habitual,

But there can be a seeing through them.

I've quoted this before,

But apparently,

According to the legends,

When the Buddha woke up,

The first thing he said was,

House Builder,

I have seen you.

Your ridge pole is now broken.

And it's a fantastic image.

House Builder,

I've seen you,

Right?

The ridge pole,

The main structure is now broken.

So when we see through this,

When you can see by just simply assessing it even in this moment,

How here you sit,

All the stories,

All the identification,

All the times you thought you knew who you were.

And here you sit and what can you really say about this being now,

This experience you're having?

What can you really say in truth about who this is and what this is here and now?

I remember one time when I was quite young,

At my parents' house,

There was one,

They had a bar,

They had a bar in the den.

And behind the bar was a gigantic mirror with lots of fancy bottles and things.

And I was walking by that mirror one day,

I was probably 10.

And I looked at it,

And I was looking at my own image.

And it looked very mysterious to me.

I looked at it and I thought,

Who is that?

I really love that being a mystery to yourself.

And I know that in times in my life,

When you for whatever reason,

You're dropping an old identity and you're discovering yourself anew.

And it's so magical and alive and all that.

And then that identity starts to coagulate and become something then.

And then you're kind of stuck in that idea.

So there's that kind of transition point,

Which is so precious,

Where everything's possible.

There's something you're discovering,

But you're also open.

And I'm wondering if you have any advice about how to stay in that middle section.

So as you're discovering the mystery of yourself,

How that doesn't become another house,

Another structure that you're sort of stuck in.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

I mean,

My recommendation,

Of course,

Is to assess,

Like when you start to feel strong identification about something,

Which can usually be can be discovered through agitation sometimes,

Right?

Something's really agitating you and you start to deconstruct what is it that's getting agitated.

And usually it's some form of identification.

Now,

Of course,

If somebody's trying to harm you,

That's different.

I don't mean that.

But I mean just the normal irritants with human behavior,

You know,

Or the ways that you might be judging something that's going on,

Even that isn't personally connected to you.

Yes,

So this shows up where your rigidity is and that new identity.

You've already started to become like,

This is right,

That's wrong.

Yes,

Exactly.

Right.

And then it can also show up in your desires.

It can show up in very intense,

Like when you start to feel a burning desire or a big story is coming on.

If that doesn't happen,

Someone's going to be in trouble,

Probably me,

Right?

That's another form of identification is so it can go from like agitation or fear to desire.

And so those can be the triggers to show you what the identification is.

And,

And then having seen that that's what the that's where the ridgepole is starting to get built.

That's the time for reassessing.

Like,

To look at and say,

Wait a minute,

Do I need to be holding on to this desire that's causing me pain that I can see through and that I can release?

Because it occurs to me like those houses,

You know,

Fall down and you break the ridgepole when the structure becomes uncomfortable or suffering or you're sick of it or whatever.

But whilst it's still enjoyable,

There's very little reluctance to break it down.

Yeah,

It'll go unnoticed for a longer time,

Which is sort of okay,

Actually.

You know,

It's because it will get broken as well.

At some point,

If you're enjoying it and you're getting to know it and then at some point it becomes old,

Becomes a memory,

An artifact or something.

Or it becomes broken through,

Like my,

Like my girlfriend said yesterday.

This isn't me.

How's this me?

You know,

Who she's done everything right and been so healthy and doesn't do any bad things,

Hasn't eaten sugar in years.

So that kind of way that time itself will destroy all of our illusions about identifications.

You know,

Imagine sometimes,

I mean,

As you've heard me say,

I do this practice sometimes of just imagining myself on my deathbed.

You know,

Where's the identification then,

You know?

Where are the big stories?

Where's all of the things that didn't happen or that I thought was going to be the future?

Right?

That kind of,

Perhaps extraordinarily liberating view,

Though with perhaps some sadness,

Depending on the circumstance.

But to have that kind of whisper as you go,

As you're in your full swing of your strong identification and something's really pissing you off and this one is an idiot,

That one is greedy and the system is,

You know,

Horrible.

You know,

Right,

All of those things.

And you can make a case for a lot of it being true.

It's just that you're if you're having to sit in judgment of it constantly,

It's useful to look at the ways sometimes these strong identifications and the strong sense of self is propping up.

It's like the first line of defense against some other kind of insecurity,

Right?

Of the need to be right,

Of the need to be superior.

And it occurs to me it's that sort of comfort zone you create within that identity,

Your own kind of house,

But it does sort of separate you,

You know,

In subtle ways from meeting the mystery,

You know,

Finding out.

It makes things predictable or known.

That's right.

And people clutch that,

You know,

And they don't realize the cost of it.

It's the cost.

Yeah,

They don't know the cost of it.

Because you can stay trapped in,

Or not trapped,

But stuck in that one identity or that,

You know,

That one comfort zone at the expense of the change,

You know,

Whatever else is there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think it's one of the values of when people do experiment,

Let's say with mind expanding drugs,

Or they experiment with Dharma.

And,

You know,

They use silence as the gateway,

A portal to another way of seeing reality of another way of and really it's to another sense of yourself.

It's not just seeing and not just seeing out there,

But it's seeing in here.

You realize all of the big stories you were practicing and going over and over and over every day,

Like having your head in the spin cycle every minute.

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Me,

Right.

It gets released,

It gets broken through.

And that is one of the values that we used to say in the 60s and 70s,

You could sort of tell who had been on those journeys in those ways.

You could tell there was something about them that was looser,

That was more free,

That was more mysterious.

And it sort of opens that doorway to the unlived self.

Yes.

Because if you want to stay in that comfort zone,

You're living in a part of yourself,

Whether it's causing you suffering or causing you joy,

You're still just in a.

.

.

Right.

In a tiny little slot.

Yes.

And we all know,

Not only in our own cases,

But we all know people who seem stuck,

Bless their hearts.

It's very stale.

Yeah.

It's very stale to be in relationship with that.

Yes,

Yes,

Exactly.

Yes.

And it's really grounds for compassion.

It's really grounds for.

.

.

Because you can also feel in their ways of perceiving that those are all shut down as well,

That it's going to be a predictable perception.

It's going to get filtered through the identification that is very,

Very stuck.

And you could almost predict how they're going to react.

So what's different about the free flow of being a mystery continually to yourself is that you're unpredictable even to you.

Right?

Let alone to everybody else.

Right?

You're unpredictable to you.

And that's so.

.

.

It's like being a kid again,

In a way.

It's like you get to be in your childlike way.

Yeah,

That's really beautiful thinking.

So I wanted to talk about the disillusionment of this spiritual identity.

Yeah.

Because for a large part of my life,

This was what fueled my practice,

My inquiry,

And my unconscious desire for sex,

Power,

And fame.

And I feel like in the last three,

Four years especially,

That sense of me as an enlightened person or a person that's awakening or that can access my true nature at any moment,

Even that idea is really crumbling,

Especially with both my daughter and getting really real with things.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

But on the flip side,

I feel like a lot of the things that propelled me towards deep silence and inquiry,

That's also a bit fallen away.

I feel like now,

I mean,

I have a lot of worldly responsibilities.

I'm not finding as much time in that deep silence state or even do the inquiry because I just.

.

.

It's like almost like I don't even need to do those things.

But I'm wondering,

Am I kidding myself?

Am I found in this new,

Very practical,

I don't know,

A new ego state that somehow I'm stuck in?

I'm pretty.

.

.

You mentioned that free flow.

I find myself going that free flow,

Especially with my work,

Being with people.

And it's wonderful.

I'm finding like that,

The free flow more in the day to day.

But I want to really start to unpack this and see,

Where am I hiding and where am I not seeing things clearly?

How old is your child?

18 months.

Yeah.

So this is not the phase for having a whole lot of time for quiet meditation here.

You're in the phase of taking care.

And you have a job.

Yeah.

So you have a job and an infant.

And a sick wife.

And a sick wife.

So you've got your hands full with,

This is a phase that requires your undivided attention on these things,

On caretaking.

And they're beautiful.

It's a lot of love.

Right?

So I would just say,

Yeah,

Just roll with this one.

And again,

Part of the releasing of these identifications is any story that says you're not in the right identification.

Right?

So in this particular phase,

Your father and provider and husband,

Right?

Those are the hats you're wearing.

You can wear them in a kind of light way that basically says,

This is what I have to do now.

This is what I'm doing.

Without a heavy,

You know,

A heavy armoring that you're having to wear with those.

Right.

Because I find that sometimes I do get particularly triggered because life pre-baby was quite excellent.

And now it's just like everything is very challenging,

To put it lightly.

And so there's the time that we have this identification with like,

Oh,

It's my wife and my daughter.

It's your fault.

Or,

You know,

Kind of like this,

I won't say blame,

But it's more like this sort of resentment that comes up.

Yeah.

I'm like,

Oh,

I've just I love how honest you're being in this.

Thank you.

It was just,

And it doesn't come all the time,

But it comes up sometimes.

And it's like,

I know that that's just a story that comes to my mind,

But it grips me.

And I have this emotional reaction sometimes.

And it takes me a while to sort of catch myself.

But yeah,

I guess there's still this ego that says,

Oh,

I was free and now I'm not free.

And then I catch myself and yeah,

It comes and goes,

Comes and goes.

But I feel like,

Yeah,

I feel like it sort of just keeps on coming up and then I see it and it doesn't pay and it comes again.

This is a particularly hard phase,

I would say,

With such a young one who maybe doesn't sleep through the night and all of those things.

So,

You know,

And it's,

You're not the only parent who's ever had these thoughts,

But not that many of them actually speak them.

So you know,

Just forgive yourself all of that and let yourself off the hook about what it could have should have.

Right.

And see if you can just,

I mean,

Again,

Part of the surrender of identification is this the identification to who you used to be,

And what your life used to be.

Now,

This is the new you the new plan,

The new expression,

Your awareness is now being called for a different purpose than it was.

And all of that can be very,

If you allow it,

It can be very fresh for you.

Again,

Like a whole fresh way of being and letting yourself really feel the love that you have for these two,

These two people you live with,

You know,

Really let that compensate the some of the sacrifice,

Which is your,

Perhaps you're more exhausted now and you don't have as much time for some of your own pleasures,

You know.

Yeah,

But I feel like,

You know,

In compensation,

My heart is reopened.

Yeah,

Before it was very much like being in the emptiness or the head or,

You know,

I feel like this part here is really flawed.

Well,

That's a good,

That's a good trade off.

You know,

Having having that intense love,

You know,

So don't miss it with thinking you should be somewhere else because you obviously are where you are,

And you're in it,

And you're probably not going to walk away from it.

So to really then,

Okay,

Go for it fully.

And all the while as you're living it,

Just what we're saying the,

The allow yourself to be mysterious to yourself.

Right,

You might discover this,

This father role just kind of,

You know,

Really floats your boat.

You know,

And yeah,

And sometimes that can happen almost like in a moment.

Like in a moment.

I'm just having a memory of a little story.

Some friends of mine had this fabulous house in Los Angeles,

And I had used,

I used to live there,

But I had already left and I had come back just to visit.

And they asked if I wanted to house sit their house.

So I said yes.

And so I was going to be there several months.

They had this menagerie of animals,

Pets that were part of the house sitting job,

Which I didn't realize was going to be quite the level of work that it turned out to be.

And to tell the truth,

Their animals were all fairly neurotic.

Like all of them had like eating disorders and pooping disorders.

Except for one of them,

This little cat,

Little small cat,

Who never hung out at the house.

She was always somewhere else off on her own.

She would only show up for meal times and then she'd disappear because she didn't want to be around the rest of them.

And so I had this thing of like,

Oh,

It was such an ordeal taking care of these animals and cleaning up after them.

One of them was constantly vomiting and another one was constantly pooping all over the house.

So,

Time passed.

I began to like have a kind of interest in the little one that stayed away.

I began to realize that one is very cool.

So anytime she was around,

I was really kind of sort of trying to get close to her.

She was known by the family to like not let anyone get near.

She didn't,

No one could hold her or anything like that.

She was really kind of a wild creature.

But slowly,

Slowly,

Slowly,

We started to bond.

The family came back and they were staying at their other house and they took all the animals to the other house.

I'm staying in their fabulous guest house.

So I asked if I could keep that one with me.

And they said,

Okay.

So bit by bit by bit,

I'm making friends with her.

And there's this one day when she came in and she jumped up on the couch where I was sitting and she came and sat on my lap.

And I fell madly in love with her,

Like crazy in love.

It would have been a long lead up.

But I bonded with this cat and I kind of became her mom.

And for years afterwards,

Long after I had left Los Angeles,

When I would go to visit them,

The family.

And she then went back to her old routine of never being around,

Never hanging out at the house,

Never being anywhere near them except to come and eat.

She'd disappear again because they had the way they had their cat doors all set up.

All of the animals could come and go.

But when I would show up,

Within an hour,

She would show up.

And then she would stay in the house and sleep in the bed with me.

And then when I would leave to go get on a plane,

She would again start disappearing from the house.

And as you can imagine,

This sort of had a heartbreak component for me because I would have liked to have just taken her as my cat.

But I was on the road and didn't really,

I couldn't do it.

And I didn't,

I don't think they would have given her up anyway because they also loved her in their way.

And so,

But my point is that there was just this moment that it was just like,

It was almost like a toggle switch.

It went from like,

How cool is this little creature to like this whole other mothering feeling that came over me.

And that I still feel to this day.

She's still alive.

And so I guess I'm saying this by way of saying,

Who suddenly was I in that moment?

Right?

As with any time,

One kind of instantaneously falls in love.

It's sort of like you move from like one territory to another.

And that shows up in so many different ways in life.

So yeah,

There could just be a surrender.

Right?

Really deep surrender just says,

This is the groove and I'm going to enjoy it.

Thank you,

Arthur.

Yeah,

I've,

The way I've sort of seen this more like my karma yoga.

Yeah,

Which has a kind of toil to it,

Doesn't it?

Like if you see it as karma yoga,

It still kind of has a tinge of a bit of an ordeal.

Maybe service is the right word.

I'm not sure I'm really framing karma yoga in the exact way.

But it's like,

It's my service.

It's a way for me to,

You know,

To serve without any strength or touch.

Yes,

It is that.

And it can also be like your greatest love affair.

Right?

It can have that quality of service,

Which inevitably it does because it requires your effort and energy and resources.

But it can also be that you're in service to a love affair.

That's part of the surrender.

Thank you.

I'm in a kind of part of my life where things are,

My identity is actually changing quite rapidly.

And actually specifically the last weeks or so and it's coming,

A lot of kind of fear is coming up.

And I'm in this kind of constant state,

Especially the last week of just anxiety and waking up in the middle of the night and just can't sleep.

And so the excitement of the change is kind of,

Yeah,

It's kind of pushed away by the terror and the fear.

And I guess it's something that's been kind of churning for a long time.

So that's maybe why that's there.

But yeah,

I'm just wondering if you have any advice on that.

Is the change something you perceive to be a hard new way or is it just that it's something that is brand new and you don't know what to expect or?

Yeah,

We both.

Yeah.

Well trepidation in changes is normal.

It's a human thing.

And especially if it requires letting go of all that was familiar about who you think you are and what you were doing what you were up to and how things were going to unfold.

All of that gets washed away when confronted with,

Okay,

None of that's going to be the case,

You know.

So yeah,

Naturally,

Some trepidation arises,

Fear arises.

It's useful to hold steady to a feeling of you don't,

You don't know how you will be through this.

I once heard Ram Dass say something pretty fascinating.

You know that he had a big stroke about 20 years ago.

And so post stroke,

When he was finally able to speak well enough to be understood for a while he actually couldn't,

He didn't have any language,

Couldn't really speak much,

But it got better and better with time.

So at the point that he could actually express himself again.

And by the way,

The stroke pretty much paralyzed him.

One of the things he said was that pre-stroke,

It had been a kind of fear,

Not that he thought about it a lot,

But he thought like that would be being paralyzed and being so diminished in terms of his own language and articulation would have been one of the most scary things he could have imagined and was just horrifyingly scary,

As it sort of is for most of us,

Right?

We often might think,

God,

If that happened.

But he said,

Post stroke,

He sees that it wasn't as bad as he thought,

Which is so fascinating to me.

Like he said,

It wasn't what he thought it was going to be.

Amazing,

Huh?

And liberating to think that's that possibility.

So I really took that to heart and allowed myself the thought or the information to live in me that often my fear about something has turned out to be a big boogeyman that once the thing happened,

It was different than what I had feared.

It may not have been pleasant still,

But it was different.

And often the fear part was the worst of it,

You know.

So if you can sit in the unknown,

Sit in the kind of confidence of saying to yourself,

At each step,

I'll take the step that I need to be in at that moment.

And at the next moment,

I'll take that next step.

Right?

So you don't have to have the full picture of the plan in your head,

Which also can be very,

Very exhausting and scary,

Because,

You know,

It may not be working out as your picture.

But the confidence can be,

However,

It's going,

I'm going to ride with it.

Right?

And however,

I need to be in the moment,

I need to be there.

I'll be that part of this whole thing we're talking about being a mystery to yourself,

Having to adapt,

You know,

Having to adapt in the new circumstance and finding some other way of yourself that heretofore you didn't know.

Like that.

Yeah,

And there's,

I guess,

You know,

Having observed that through these last weeks is almost as much beauty as that,

In that than any outcome.

So,

Just kind of meeting that moment.

Yes,

Exactly.

Yeah.

You know,

A lot of times,

We're looking,

We're looking outside for us to be lit,

To be lit up,

We're looking,

We're looking for something out there to light us up.

Right?

But the only way you're going to be lit up is from within.

You're only going to ever be lit up from within.

And you already know that you've already experienced it thousands of times.

Right?

And you've also experienced times when you thought that external thing was going to be the thing that let you up,

And maybe it didn't.

Right?

Or it did for a while and then not.

Yeah.

So it's to come back to where you're going to find you're really you're the shining experience of being is how you're using your attention.

How you're using your attention here.

And when you have when you really kind of have many times of that being your habit.

It comes with confidence.

Right?

So that you can go through a stroke and get onto the other side of it and say,

It wasn't as bad as I was afraid of.

Right?

You know,

I've told this before,

When I was a kid,

I was a long distance runner for my school.

And now,

I have trouble with my feet.

I have a lot of pain in my feet.

I have to be careful about walking.

I can't really walk for more than an hour.

And during the hour,

I still have pain.

And now it's gotten to the point where I kind of have a lot of pain at night as well,

Even when I'm not on my feet.

If you told me that when I was a kid,

I would have been terrified.

I would have thought,

Oh,

My God,

You know,

I would have just been,

It would have been unimaginable horror if you told me that when I was a kid.

But honestly,

At this point,

I don't mind.

It's like,

I just adapt.

I don't have a story that I need to be running about.

I don't have an identification about it.

I don't feel like I'm being seen as a cripple.

I don't,

Or if I was,

I wouldn't care.

You see what I'm saying?

It's like,

The terror of it in advance is much worse than the actual lived reality of this.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I mean,

It makes sense to me.

And that's what I keep telling myself.

On the other side,

It's not gonna be as bad as I expect it.

Right.

Yeah.

Somehow,

It takes a bit longer for the body to get that.

Yes,

That's true.

To live it.

Yeah.

The body can,

The thoughts and the emotions that arise around things like that can trigger bodily chemistry that takes much longer to process,

Even though the assessment that comes in that clear awareness can come in and say,

That's ridiculous.

Don't keep indulging that.

But nevertheless,

The body already got triggered.

And so just treat it like indigestion and let it pass in its own good time.

And not worry that it's there.

Not worry that it got triggered.

Yeah.

And that can happen in all kinds of ways that it gets triggered.

And some people are more prone due to their own delicate nervous system to that being triggered.

Some people are more prone to anxiety.

And therefore,

It's more easily triggered.

Yeah,

And I think there's always that hope that,

You know,

Maybe the cat will just mind my life one day or something.

And your father's love.

Yeah.

I just accept,

You know,

Just accept it.

Be with it.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

That turning point will just sort of,

Yeah,

Never know.

Right.

Well,

Also,

That turning point can happen in other circumstances whereby,

Let's say,

There's been some story that is scary in your heart or your being or your mind.

And there can be this strange seeing through it in an instant.

And the ridgepole gets broken in that instant.

Right.

And suddenly,

It's a release of the nightmare.

Almost as if someone shook you and said,

Wake up,

Sweetheart,

You're having a nightmare.

And you wake up.

And at first,

It's sort of like you're still a little bit in the nightmare.

And then you realize,

It was just a dream,

Right?

And that moment of freedom that you have sometimes being woken from a nightmare,

You can have in a day,

A nightmare of seeing through something and realizing I don't have to suffer this again.

In this moment,

I can let this go.

So a lot of it is story,

You know?

The story of what might have been or should have been or what's going to be.

And a lot of times those stories can be far worse than the reality.

I was getting irritated.

And I felt like I'd come here again.

And again,

I felt like what you were talking about was sort of destabilizing.

And I was like,

Oh,

No,

I don't need to feel more like the ground is moving underneath me and I can't find any soothing in what you're saying that it was just really like,

It's my experience,

My body's changing my things,

You know,

I have a lot of moving parts and perceptions.

And then I was asking,

Why do I come here,

Actually?

And then that conversation was so great,

Because there was a moment when you said something about we're often looking for something outside of ourselves.

And I don't even know,

You could have said it in another moment,

And it wouldn't have landed,

But something about it being in me.

And there was just a drop.

And it was just very relieving somehow.

And then what I came here for,

I sort of started to get,

But it is only when I can bring something back,

I was like,

Something just sort of and it was in the process of me thinking,

I'm going to pick up the microphone,

I'm going to say I'm irritated,

That somehow something started to shift.

And so it was those words and confidence there.

And you've talked about confidence before.

And it just feels like a real key for me,

Because it's shit that I know.

And I just don't allow myself to have the confidence to really trust it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Yeah,

Confidence.

And it comes with your own experience.

That's how confidence comes.

It's not through belief.

It's through making the experiment over and over and it being consistent for you,

Which is that you use your attention to be lit from within,

Right?

You use your attention intelligently,

Wisely.

And it's true what you say about the way that we have to give ourselves permission to do that.

Right?

Not postpone or wait for some sort of fairy tale enlightenment to descend on you.

Right?

But rather,

Keep using your own attention wisely.

And then you develop a confidence.

Because you've been through,

We all go through lots of difficult things through our days.

And we hear news and we have there's losses and people we love are suffering and so on.

So you have many,

Many opportunities to use your attention to stay in your quiet,

Clear space.

And you keep doing that.

And then there builds a natural confidence that you're going to keep doing that.

Because it's the one thing that makes the most sense.

Yeah,

I'm always really moved just by being in proximity with others doing an inquiry.

And I think it's like,

Well,

What got me here and why?

Why anything really?

But that just feels like a fruitless mental story really.

But there is a calling or a yearning or a benefit in the company,

In the field,

Which is not accessible in the same way if I sit in my own,

You know,

Either perfect stillness,

Rare,

Or,

You know,

Story.

So I guess what is,

What's present in my world is the disquiet of consideration of the future.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Sure.

And I read something today in that Deep Adaptation Facebook group and there's lots of really like,

You know,

Considered intelligent conversation and preparedness.

And I just,

I think the real discomfort in a way is that I had such a radical,

In a way,

Unwanted separating from what a place that I would call home and family,

You know,

Community and belonging,

In a way that fed the,

You know,

That I've known before.

So it's kind of like now where and now what?

And what am I called to do?

Because yes,

The need absolutely for the sweet attention,

The mystery has been my mistress,

And many wonderful forms and wonderful teachers.

And it's not just about me.

And I know the beauty of showing up and of contribution,

Giving my gifts,

Being,

Even if it's just sitting in the excruciating unknown of it all,

In presence that has benefit.

And so there's just a lot of where,

What,

Why,

How.

Oh yeah,

And the point of that reading this piece was from someone who I've met and respect,

Vicki Robinen,

And she said that it was something about the idea of a future rather than,

Of course it's unknown,

But having the idea of it gives ground or a sense of where,

That if this practice will plant these seeds and there's a plant growing in the future,

You know,

Do this work and there's,

You know,

So there's momentum.

I don't know what that all means,

But there's a paradox in there about the stillness and the,

Yeah,

I'm willing to sit with a heartbreak.

Yeah,

I know you are.

And how,

Yeah,

Just kind of hold that in a tormented way maybe.

Well,

There's a line I love from W.

S.

Merwin,

On the last day of the world,

I would want to plant a tree.

So William S.

Merwin,

He was an American poet.

He's just died recently and yeah,

He was known as W.

S.

Merwin.

Yeah,

On the last day of the world,

I'd want to plant a tree.

Right?

So in your daily life,

Like you're just giving everything over to existence without,

You're planting the seeds without knowing they're going to grow.

Yeah.

You're just,

It's like a different level and it's true that most of the time throughout history people had the idea of a future.

They had the idea of a future,

Whether or not they got to have it,

That was always,

You know,

You didn't know somebody,

You know,

Death comes unexpectedly a lot.

But at least they had the idea of a future going on for others,

You know.

But we're just in new territory all the way around now.

So it's a whole new,

Again,

A different kind of identification.

Right?

Being a different kind of creature.

Now that's basically saying,

Who knows how this is going to go?

How long is it going to go?

What it's going to be?

And who we are is having to be very new to ourselves and to how we think about things.

That how you'll be called upon to offer help will be obvious in the moment and in the next moment and the next moment,

Right?

And just let anything be revealed to you as you go.

Like as we're sitting here and as we carry on,

Just whatever comes up,

You know,

Just let yourself feel into it.

And if it makes sense,

Yes,

If not,

No.

Like that.

It's a definitely,

It's definitely a readjustment to think about what I called in my essay,

The end of legacy.

Because we're very conditioned to be thinking constantly about legacy.

Whether I'm leaving something behind or I'm leaving a name behind,

I'm leaving a work behind,

I'm leaving all these people behind who will love me and talk about me when I'm gone.

All those kinds of ways that we unconsciously have legacy issues.

Part of our identification,

Part of our sense of me,

I was here.

So we imagine it even when we're not going to be here,

We imagine the I was here part.

And we want that to be important.

And it's a real adjustment to be letting go of that one.

It's a psychological,

Deep psychological adjustment.

But there were plenty of cultures who were not afflicted so much with that idea at all.

Their idea was to leave no trace.

And even when I heard about those cultures back a long time ago,

You know,

When I was just a young hippie,

I admired that.

I knew that I admired that I wouldn't have been able to say why.

Right.

But I knew that I really liked that idea that to just leave no trace.

So all these ways that we have been living in these thought grooves,

It's like Michelle and I were talking about how refreshing it is when suddenly you're not in that thought groove and leaves you freed up to respond to things that come along.

I was feeling into what you're saying and how it's nice just to be in the field,

You know,

And I always do notice my body just gets really relaxed.

So we just relax.

But then I noticed how this idea of future too,

How little I care about identification.

You know,

I feel a bit bad about it in a way.

Like don't.

I mean,

It was like a field of some,

You know,

Some intense looking,

But I sort of like hearing it talked about and I have a sort of vague interest in the topic,

You know.

And I think when this idea of future is out there,

I think what sort of sits in me is like,

I have no idea what matters.

I just have no idea.

Yeah.

And that's just the truest thing.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Great.

I don't know.

And sometimes it feels like a lazy,

I don't know,

Or there should be something,

You know,

There should be something that I'm trying to do.

And the things that I am trying to do.

You are doing some things.

Yes.

And those things that I know you know about,

I'm also like,

Maybe there won't be time to finish it or maybe we'll never get this.

And it's like,

Well,

You know,

It's just a very strange,

It's just a very strange time to be here.

You know,

The truest thing that I can say is it's just nice to be around people asking questions.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And sharing simple beingness together,

Right?

Because that is really the frequency that is here.

There's people who love that who just love the deeper,

The deeper well of being.

You know,

And so we speak words that,

You know,

Either point to or come from that place.

And it gives us all permission to enjoy it,

Right,

And to,

To value it and to think,

I'm not crazy.

I'm not just I'm not the crazy one here in the world,

You know,

That there are others who love this frequency,

And that there are many others,

And there were through time.

But it doesn't get the kind of celebration that one thinks it might deserve,

You know.

That's just how it is.

Poonjaji used to always say that.

He used to always say things like that.

He would say,

He would say things like,

Of all the people in your family,

Your extended family,

Who is interested in this?

Only you.

Of all the people in your village,

Who is interested?

Of all the people in your city,

Of all the people in your country,

Right?

He would point out that it's super rare that people would think that there would be more if people just understood,

You know,

That they many more people would want to live in the quieter ways and simpler ways.

But conditioning is strong.

Now cultural conditioning,

Media conditioning,

Is just such a group think that's going on,

I think like never before,

Even in my lifetime,

It's changed,

You know.

It is just being spoon fed through the most powerful media,

And social media and every kind of mediated vision that's being implanted,

You know,

In the minds.

And as Michelle was saying before we started,

You know,

The whole notion of how even the brain chemistry is getting changed to be easily conditioned.

You know,

That little brains are being conditioned at such a young age.

When we were kids,

If you were bored,

Which we were a lot probably,

You had to find some way to just sort of like either use your imagination or go outside and,

You know,

Play in nature and make up things and live in a different time,

You know,

In your forts that you made.

There was a whole other way that your mind,

Your brain was working and creating different types of neurochemistry.

But that's just not so much on offer.

So for those of us who really love,

Really love this kind of sitting in the mystery of it,

Sitting in the freshness that is not living in conditioned pictures,

Whether future or past.

It's a very,

It's a very lovely thing to share it.

You know,

It's just comforting.