Hey everyone,
It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 463.
How are you feeling?
10 days out from the U.
S.
Election and how do you know how you're feeling?
So my teacher,
James Barrett is one of my teachers,
He has this tagline on his email that says,
Action Absorbs Anxiety,
And it's an Angelus-Aryan quote.
And long before I met James,
Angelus was one of my very first teachers.
She was a Basque woman who grew up and into her own spiritual path,
In part by breaking wild horses,
She used to tell those stories.
And she was a cultural anthropologist out of Cal and the California Institute of Integral Studies,
And she wrote eloquently,
She spoke very eloquently,
But to me she was mostly this mystical,
Very tapped-in human who could always see the true person sitting in front of her.
And when that happened to be me,
She could see through my 30-something static or veneer or bull or whatever,
And better than anyone I'd ever met at the time.
Not that that necessarily felt great all the time,
But she was amazing.
And she was right about a lot,
Including about how action absorbs anxiety.
And so this is what I understood,
Is that taking action on an external level,
You know,
For example in this political moment,
Or in this climate moment,
Or taking action in whatever the work moment holds,
You know,
Buckling down to a piece of work that's been staring me down,
Definitely lowers my anxiety.
That's what I thought Angie meant,
And what James meant when he posted her quote.
That that kind of action feels like the place where,
I don't know,
Where like the life of a lawyer,
Maybe the life of an activist,
The life of a bodhisattva,
Which are maybe not so different,
Where they all meet.
You know,
It's this great intersection,
And the action is good action,
And a good byproduct of that good action,
At least in my experience,
Is that it does,
It does absorb anxiety.
And then there's internal action.
And these days,
I wonder if Angie was thinking about that too,
And if James is pointing it.
Meaning taking action in the sense of making an intentional choice to pay attention in the moment,
You know,
To our bodies,
To our minds and our hearts.
Or taking action in the sense of dedicating ourselves,
Or maybe rededicating ourselves to an active mindfulness practice,
What I sometimes talk about as a portable practice.
So yesterday I met my partner,
I was walking down the stairs,
He was walking up the stairs,
He was moving kind of quickly,
I was stopped.
I was almost doubled over,
And I was in tears.
And there was nothing particularly wrong.
It was just that I had had my arms full of all the things,
I'd slept up to my office that morning,
I was heading down to the house at the end of the day,
With all of those things.
When I noticed that something wanted to be felt,
And that's the best way I can describe it,
It wasn't like a bolt of lightning,
And it wasn't like a moment of wise practice,
I just noticed that something wanted to be felt.
And so I'd stopped and made some space.
And you know,
It was this moment that I hadn't calendared.
And if I'd looked at my calendar,
I'd looked at my to do list,
I'm 100% sure that there would have been a conflict,
Right,
It was time to do something else.
And I wasn't moving particularly slowly when it happened.
And there were all the usual,
You know,
All the things going on,
But I just,
I just stopped.
And the minute I stopped,
I expected emotion and it came,
You know,
Sadness,
Fear,
Anxiety,
All of that definitely came,
Hence the tears.
What I didn't expect was the clarity.
And I have no idea how many times I've kept on walking in a moment like that,
Or even actively turned away,
You know,
I have some sense of the number of times I've encouraged other people to not do that,
And to take the moment and take the stop,
You know,
The actual practice of stopping,
Taking a breath,
Observing and then proceeding.
And I'm,
Like,
As I was writing the wake up call,
I was thinking,
I hope the two numbers aren't equal,
You know,
That I've turned away as often as I've encouraged other people to turn towards.
Anyway,
When I stopped and took a breath and observed my own state of mind,
State of heart,
When I essentially made time for a meeting with myself,
Instead of for all the other people I make time for meetings with,
Which are also wonderful,
It only took a moment.
And it was many things,
Meaning that in addition to the emotions,
There was surprise.
And the surprise was,
First,
That I didn't realize the moment was so complex.
There was surprise at how much complexity there was.
There was also surprise at how much curiosity arose.
It just arose very naturally.
It wasn't like I had to say,
Okay,
Curiosity,
It's time for you.
And then the last thing,
And this was the most surprising thing,
Was that there was clarity.
So I don't know about you,
But if you've had a good cry lately,
Or maybe even a while ago,
And maybe you've had the experience,
This is what I've had,
Of have a good cry,
Feel a little bit muddled at the end,
You know,
Kind of a swoony feeling,
Or like I've been swamped by emotion,
My eyes are sore,
My heart is,
It's kind of too tender to do much of anything other than maybe rest,
Take a breath,
Make a cup of tea.
But this moment,
This meeting with self,
Is what I'm calling it,
It was different.
The emotion was invited.
I mean,
I actually did the stop practice,
The practice of saying,
Okay,
Judy,
Bring it.
Let's see what's here right in this very now.
And then the take a breath part,
Which served a different purpose,
Not the purpose of focusing the mind,
Which is what paying attention to the breath in formal practice,
It's often about that for me,
But of almost cleansing the moment.
And when I say that,
I don't mean cleansing the moment of emotion,
Or even cleansing it of unwholesome thoughts.
It was more like the breath cleansed the moment of everything extraneous to love,
Really,
To this loving and gentle invitation to see what was there,
Right in the then,
Right then.
Which created all this safety.
You know,
It was almost a location,
But it was an internal state and also an external state where it felt safe to simply allow what was happening to be happening.
And then to observe it,
I'd say for me,
It's not as hard to remember to get to stop and then to take a breath.
It's the observe part that I often don't make much time for.
And this time I did,
And even though it wasn't a lot of time,
That's because it didn't take a lot of time.
Even though what arose was hard,
That safety that the breath provided gave me the space or the permission maybe to take a good look.
And that was when the clarity came in,
Because the last step of the practice of stop to proceed.
I've often thought of that as,
You know,
Stop,
Take a breath,
Observe,
Let everything go,
Then proceed back to business as usual.
But this time,
Observing led not to simply knowing how I was feeling,
Thank you very much and let's get on with it,
But to insight.
And the insight really was about how loving this kind of action was,
How this itself was a very loving action,
And how important it was,
It is to take this loving action,
This loving internal action right now in this moment and how I'm not doing that enough.
And maybe all of us aren't doing that enough.
And then that gave me the idea of how to proceed.
And in this slide,
This is the best that I could find was tough decisions,
I had to proceed with caution.
What I really wanted it to say was proceed with love,
Right?
From the wisdom that arises in the moment,
Not back to business as usual,
But to proceed with love because that absorbed all of my anxiety in that moment.
And for a little while,
Okay,
So let's sit.
So finding a posture that is comfortable for you right now,
That is upright,
And maybe a posture that gives you the ability to express,
To feel and express some love for yourself right now.
Maybe that's rolling the shoulders back and opening the heart,
Or turning the internal gaze towards the heart,
And then noticing whatever is present right here,
Right now for you,
Letting the breath lift up whatever is here for you and create a kind of moment or crucible space.
And then the practice that we already know of meeting whatever is there with love,
With loving kindness,
With metta,
Invitation to do that,
And also to take in what a loving decision it is to be sitting here,
To be stopping for a few moments and taking these breaths and observing.
This in and of itself is loving action.
And then just inviting yourself to imprint this sense of loving action on your own heart and inviting yourself to take it with you into your day,
Into your week.
And just see,
Because there's a lot,
There's a lot out there.
So what happens if you remember,
Recollect this loving action and take it with you?
Thanks everyone for being on the Wake Up Call today.
Great to see you.
Take good care.
Be safe out there.
We'll see you next Thursday.
