Designed To Be Awake Podcast - Episode 5 - We Are Eternal

You are listening to Designed to be Awake with Mick Kubiak.

Hello,

Divine beings,

And welcome to another episode of Designed to be Awake.

I am so excited about this episode,

Which is called We Are Eternal.

This is really just the heart of my experience and what I want to share with you.

I really hope that you feel it like I feel it.

It's like a transmission for me,

Even just reading the transcript and listening to it.

I'm brought into it more deeply,

Into the experience of being alive.

Hello,

And welcome to another episode.

I've just come home from having happy hour slash dinner with a dear friend in a lovely neighborhood near my own.

I ubered so I could have a cocktail.

It was really just lovely.

And I was sitting in a restaurant that I've been sitting in off and on for definitely 10 years.

I'd have to look.

I used to live in this neighborhood and my daughter and I because we lived near there.

And I was a single mom.

So there was only so much I could do of the whole like,

Okay,

I'm going to work my ass off all the time.

Plus,

I'm going to go grocery shopping and cook everything and also do your homework with you.

And so it was so great to have a cool restaurant near us.

You know,

We would go there and get dinner and I would get a glass of wine and I could help her with her homework and everybody knew us.

And it was really a beautiful,

Beautiful time in our lives.

And it was really a beautiful temporary family.

You know,

Restaurant turnover,

Of course,

Is a real thing.

You know,

People come and go,

And it's a shorter lifespan than maybe other jobs.

But more and more,

I'm just loving those lifespans,

Whether they're short or long or medium,

You just start to realize how dynamic reality is.

And there's something in that's always there and eternal,

No matter how much everything around you just keeps shifting and changing.

And there are other things that lead me to believe that I,

And in fact,

You,

Dear listener,

Are eternal beings.

This is something I say a lot.

We are eternal beings having a temporary experience.

That's kind of my updated for myself version of we're spiritual beings having a human experience.

It was a great quote the first time I heard it,

But then it just got recycled and recycled.

And so I think it's really good to update those things.

And that's where I came up with I am an eternal being,

Having a temporary experience.

It's temporary.

We know this about life on earth.

It is temporary.

It's one of the things that causes us the most pain and losing someone that we love because their body ceases to function here on earth.

The idea of actually losing the entire experience of being here on earth when our bodies cease to function.

That's like the deep,

Deep level of the temporariness of this experience.

On the more shallow level,

Every chapter of our lives is like this.

And something again,

Now that I'm 50 something,

I can claim,

You know,

25 years of experience living.

And I've noticed lately how chapters end unceremoniously sometimes and without our meaning for them to sometimes without our noticing.

And it sometimes even takes me a few months to realize like,

Oh my gosh,

That whole chapter just ended and it's going away.

Always everything that arises also goes away,

Which is at certain times in my life.

It just felt like whatever was going on was what was always going to be going on.

You know,

It almost felt like,

Oh,

Well,

This will always be this way.

I'll always live in this place and then I'll have friends who live in that place and they live there together and they've got three dogs and I have my kid and we meet here and we go do fun things together.

And it just feels like it's never going to end.

And it's not like you're thinking to yourself,

This is never going to end.

It's just that that's somehow the set point,

Right?

This is what reality looks like.

And then it changes.

A person moves,

A dog dies,

A building gets torn down,

You get a different job and meet new people and suddenly it's a turn of the wheel and everything's different.

And the more that I recognize that truth,

The more precious and beautiful everything becomes to me.

Everything that's arising in this moment is so beautiful,

Irreplaceable and not repeatable and precious.

A truly great practice is to prioritize being over doing,

Which is also to say you're prioritizing what is fundamentally present,

Always.

You're prioritizing that over what's happening,

What actions you're taking,

What things are coming over the bow to you.

And let's just say in our modern world there's a focus on I'm happy when things are going well for me and I'm not happy when things aren't going well for me.

I'm nice when people are nice to me and I'm not nice when people are not nice to me.

Those kinds of relationships.

And once you really start to shift and focus on being,

It's non-causal,

Right?

It's the non-causal realm.

And so when you're sourcing your sense of who you are,

What the world is from that place,

Your life situation can do all kinds of things and it doesn't throw you off.

It doesn't change the way you feel about yourself,

About humanity,

And it's better.

It's better.

That is one of the things that I've first noticed as I have made this kind of shift in my own life is that I don't have this idea that something going my way means something beyond that.

It doesn't speak to any of the larger issues in life.

And the same thing is true of something not going my way.

That's very stabilizing.

And as always,

You know,

I'm sure many of you listening are maybe at that point as well.

And some of you may be beyond me where that's like so stable.

I would say I still have days or moments where I get thrown off.

I've lost connection with my essential self,

With the experience of being the eternal reality as I perceive it versus the momentary lashing of the life situation.

And if you're listening to this podcast,

I hope that it will inspire you in your life today.

You're driving down a road while you're listening to this maybe or you're on a walk in a neighborhood that just feels eternal.

And you are eternal.

You are eternal.

And you're at the center of this ephemeral coming and going and rising and falling of people and relationships and trees and cars and sounds and smells and sights,

Family members,

Dogs,

Cats.

And we're all just in this thing together,

This beautiful,

Dynamic,

Unfolding moment.

And to go through it consciously and with this deep appreciation that none of it should be taken for granted,

So to speak.

Everything can change in an instant.

And when it changes in an instant,

Damn,

You notice,

Right?

But most of the changes we experience are just incremental,

Imperceptible,

Shifting,

Happening,

Even when you're sitting in a room that appears to be very static,

Very solid.

The truth is,

There's this imperceptible shifting going on all the time around you.

And it's so beautiful.

There can be that moment when you are loving what's happening so much that you just start to feel dread at the idea like,

Oh,

It could change.

And mostly,

You just want to enjoy it.

And that's exactly what you should do.

I hope that's helpful as something to maybe start practicing and just start noticing,

Oh,

Yeah,

Do I get pulled out of my inner peace?

Do I get pulled out of joy?

I remember reading Stephen Levine and he was saying that joy is your birthright.

And that's a Buddhist concept as well,

Right?

Happiness could be seen as something that,

In fact,

Does come and go.

You wake up in the morning and he's texted you something nice.

Now you're happy.

The next morning you wake up and he doesn't text.

Now you're not happy.

You get the raise.

You're happy.

You don't get the raise.

You're unhappy.

Your cat is healthy,

Happy.

Your cat is sick,

Unhappy.

All of these are sources of happiness,

Unhappiness,

Let's say,

Right?

But that this thing we're talking about is underneath that.

It's deeper than that.

It's this fundamental joy in existing and it's always there,

But we don't always have access to it.

And so these precious moments when we do have access,

This realm of joy and peace is closer than we think it is most of the time,

Closer than people tell us it is.

It's not a thing to get to.

It's not a thing to earn.

It is your birthright.

I came to spirituality to some degree with this idea that it would help me escape life,

And in some ways it did.

There are plenty of approaches to spirituality that I think amount to that,

An escape,

Like,

Get me out.

And again,

I can relate to that desire.

And yet,

And yet,

My life has not unfolded in a way that allowed me to move into a monastery at the top of a mountain and remove myself from all the things that cause suffering in my life,

In my particular psyche.

Now,

Of course,

Any monk on a mountaintop who bothers to come back and tell the tale will tell you,

Oh,

It's all up there too.

Even if you only see one person a year,

You know,

They'll trigger you.

And I guess the beauty of taking those times to isolate yourself is you really start to witness the contents of your own consciousness,

All by yourself in a room,

Sitting quietly on a cushion.

It all comes up and out,

And you're sitting there in a very comfortable spot,

But your mother is still somehow talking,

Right?

She's still in there.

Your third grade bestie who betrayed you in 10th grade and you never forgave her,

That unforgiveness,

That pain of betrayal will arise.

Now,

The benefit of being isolated with that is that you have a shot at just sitting and holding space and allowing the sensations,

The physical sensations,

As well as the emotional content,

As well as the thinking and the storytelling that are really kind of like this tangled mass of rope.

You can almost sit there long enough and get still enough and patient enough.

It just starts to untangle a little bit,

And you might even break through to a feeling of forgiveness or love,

Gratitude,

And then you sit with that.

And in my experience with meditation and long,

Long-term spiritual practice,

I always return to this feeling of expansive joy and almost elation at times that I'm here at all in this body with my particular set of troubles and problems.

And as you get more conscious,

You accept,

Oh God,

All this is changing.

And I guess I've moved through different experiences of that in my life where it's felt like a tragedy and everything's fleeting and ephemeral,

But I love this.

And well,

At least that's going to change because there are things that you're like,

Well,

Thank God for impermanence because this sucks,

But there's just real beauty in the world arising around us and real beauty and just that deepening acceptance of impermanence and the ever-changing,

Ever-shifting world around us,

Seemingly the same but actually different every moment,

New,

New,

New.

But the point is,

I always find that very useful.

Do not anchor yourself.

Do not anchor your well-being.

Do not anchor your whole identity in things that come and go.

An anchor is kind of a beautiful metaphor,

Right,

Because it drops down into the part of the ocean where there actually isn't any movement.

We think of the ocean as constantly in motion.

But if you go and you drop down,

Down,

Down on the floor of the ocean,

There's a stillness.

And that's a good metaphor for this place in your consciousness that I'm pointing to.

And you want to root down there.

And then you can go up,

Up that rope,

And there's a boat on the surface of the ocean.

That's happy,

Unhappy.

He loves me.

He doesn't love me anymore.

Someone I love passed away.

Someone I love just got born.

I'm sick.

I'm healthy.

Those that I just mentioned,

It is so much harder with those ones to keep that anchor rooted.

But if you can,

Bob is your uncle,

As I like to say.

Got that one from my Irish friends.

Shout out to my Irish friends.

Do you ever have that kind of thing happen in your life where,

Like,

Just suddenly,

Like,

90% of the people you know are Irish?

Or,

Like,

If you're an astrology person,

Suddenly,

Like,

Every new person who comes into your life is a Gemini?

Or everyone is reading a book,

And it's not a book that's on the New York Times bestseller list or on the Amazon bestseller list.

It's just kind of weird when you're like,

Wait,

So and so is reading that too.

That's weird.

I think these are messages from beyond these kind of,

Like,

Well,

Jung would have called it synchronicity.

That there's this moment,

This pattern that punctures the grid that we've all set up and agreed upon is reality.

The grid is artificial.

It's imposed.

And this kind of organic thing pokes through.

My bestie Joan and I had this remarkable experience recently where,

I don't know how it had happened,

But I had been at a restaurant,

And I'd had a purse with me that's open at the top,

And a fork had fallen in from the restaurant.

I had already noticed this at some point,

But I was out of the restaurant by that time and couldn't do anything about it.

And Joan was visiting,

And we're sitting in a room together,

And I actually don't remember why she said the word fork.

But at the exact moment that she did,

I was cleaning out my purse and had picked up the fork.

And I'm sitting there holding a fork that I got from inside my purse randomly.

And she has just said the word fork.

It happened,

When I tell you it happened simultaneously,

It,

I mean,

Just ask Joan.

She'll tell you.

It was insane.

And we both just,

Like,

Froze.

And then,

You know,

Freaked out.

Like,

What the hell was that?

I still have the fork.

I think it's magic.

It's actually just a magical reminder of synchronicity and of Joan and Carl Jung.

So yeah,

Back to the anchor in being versus doing.

This is difficult.

This is difficult for humans.

And one of the ways we deal with that is we try to stabilize things that are not inherently stable,

And that causes a lot of suffering.

The way Jesus put this is that you want to build your house on rock,

Not on sand.

You've got to build your house,

Your identity,

Your life experience.

Your true self is built on a rock.

Your true self is the floor of the ocean,

Not the surface.

And I find that the more I'm anchored in being,

The beauty of that which comes and goes pierces me.

It's not about,

Like,

Divorcing yourself from that which comes and goes at all,

At all.

It is actually,

It's such a vulnerable feeling in a good way.

There's this openness that emerges.

I'm not going to let a moment go by where I'm not looking.

There are these beautiful flowers right in front of me,

Candlesticks,

Three of which my sister gave me,

Three of which my mother gave me,

Beautiful beeswax candles,

A beautiful heath vase holding one flower,

A gray owl vase.

Like,

It's so cute,

And I got in a thrift store.

Every single time I put flowers in this owl vase,

I just feel joyful.

I love it so much.

Will I suffer when it breaks,

If it breaks?

Or maybe I'll die before it breaks.

Will I suffer as I leave that owl vase behind?

I don't know.

Time will tell,

Right?

But to really sit with the understanding,

That vase,

Those candlesticks,

Everything I named,

Even my sister and mother,

They belong to the world of things that come and go.

And this is,

You know,

The Buddhist teaching of impermanence.

And one of my favorite Buddhist teachers,

Shinryu Suzuki,

Who was a very important figure in bringing Zen to the United States.

He was specifically here in California,

And he has a beautiful book.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

It was one of the first books that I really attached to,

Ironically,

Because it too will come and go.

Belongs to the realm of impermanence.

But he said,

Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world.

It's accepting that they go away.

It is not giving up the things of this world.

It's accepting that they go away.

And this is probably one of my favorite quotes,

Because it refers to human traditions,

Ancient human traditions.

There have been people who understood the impermanence,

And oftentimes their response to that was to abandon everything,

Right?

Even the Buddha did this at first,

Right?

He left his wife and children.

He went out into the world.

He left a behind him that was his,

Right?

Rightfully his.

But there was this deepening recognition for him that that is not lasting.

And he did not want to build his house on sand.

And off he went to discover what I'm talking about to you right now.

And his teachings live on so that we can utilize them in our own lives in this very actually practical way of understanding what comes and goes and what is always here.

And I think why I find that so poignant is my human personality is like,

I'll get ahead of this.

I'll give up the things of the world.

That's not going to get me.

But that's,

It's a cheat.

And I'll do respect to anyone and everyone who has chosen whatever moves they've made on the spiritual path.

I am by no means deciding for anyone else.

For me,

That would have been a cheat.

Because the world of form is here to be experienced and embraced and perceived and beloved by us in my version of whatever awakening this is,

Right?

There's a feeling that like we're meant to be together,

The beingness,

And then that which comes and goes.

And it's just a beautiful display,

A beautiful display,

Sometimes a terrifying display.

And when you are anchored in stillness,

And that which does not move,

That does not come and go,

There's a capacity to witness without flinching,

To taste what you're eating.

There's a new level of recognizing,

This will never be like this again.

I will never be like this again,

Who I am on this day,

In this moment,

Never again.

And yet,

We are.

Thank you so much for listening today.

This episode and every episode would be impossible without my amazing team,

The brilliant Chase Coughlin,

Who not only edits every episode,

But also composed the music for the show,

As well as Maya Young.

If you enjoyed listening,

Please leave us a review.

Thank you so much for listening,

And I will see you next time.