Manipulating Karma For Letting Things Go

Morning everyone.

Thank you for joining me.

For those who do not know me yet,

My name is Ron Levine from Mindfulness in Blue Jeans.

I've been practicing mindfulness and insight meditation for almost 25 years.

I was introduced to the practice during a time when I was dealing with clinical anxiety and depression.

A raging panic disorder had blown up into agoraphobia.

So I was on disability from work.

I was unable to leave the house.

Couldn't go past my front door without melting down into a pile of panic.

And happened to get paired up with a psychologist who,

Even back in 1998,

Was several decades deep into practicing and teaching mindfulness and insight meditation.

And this is what he offered me as a way of dealing with what I was going through.

And I was not thrilled with his suggestion.

My feeling was,

Hey dude,

I can't work.

I can't go out of the house.

My entire life has stopped because I've been crippled by this panic disorder.

And here's this guy talking about,

Well,

You know,

Maybe let's watch the breathing for a while and see what happens.

All right.

Like,

Oh,

Fantastic.

Thanks.

What the hell am I supposed to do with this?

So he didn't give me anything else at first.

I was sitting at home panicking all day anyway.

I figured,

All right,

I'm going to give this an honest shot.

Just long enough I can go back to him and say,

Look,

I'm not going to do this.

Just long enough I can go back to him and say,

Look,

Dude,

This didn't work.

Can I have the real treatment now,

Please?

And as I say,

This was almost 25 years ago and I never had that conversation with him.

And I'm still practicing.

Now I'm teaching.

My entire life has changed.

So it's worked out pretty well so far.

So I'm still going by the same line of thinking I did when I first started,

Which is,

Well,

I'm going to keep doing it as long as it's working.

And so here I am.

And here you are.

And thank you for being with me.

This is our last session of the year.

And I always like to end the year with this letting go.

Just let it go.

Let that shit go.

You know,

We hear this all the time.

Sometimes people say,

Oh,

You just got to let it go.

They're trying to be helpful.

Sometimes people are just like,

Dude,

You haven't let that go yet.

It's a very sort of passive aggressive thing.

Lots of talk about letting things go.

Not a lot of talk about how to skillfully do it.

So I want to talk about that a little bit today.

Practice with that a little bit today.

And I'd like to look at it in the context of what I primarily study and teach,

Which is Theravada Buddhism,

Which refers to the teachings of the historical Buddha from 2500 years ago,

As best we know them today,

As they've been passed around the world and across a couple of thousand years and so forth.

And in that context,

I'd like to open with one of my favorite old spiritual parables.

Lord knows if this ever actually happened or not,

But it's a good story about these two monks,

You know,

The proverbial teacher and student who are out walking somewhere,

You know,

In the wilderness or what have you.

And they come upon this stream and there's a young woman standing by the stream and she says to them,

I need to cross the stream,

But I cannot get this dress wet.

Could one of you please carry me across the stream?

And the two monks look at each other because they both know they've taken a vow to never touch a female.

They pause for a second and the teacher looks at the young lady and says,

Yeah,

I'll carry you across.

Picks her up.

The three of them make their way across the stream,

Two walking,

One being carried.

Reach the other side of the stream.

Teacher puts the young lady down.

She goes on her way.

The monks go on their way.

For the next half hour or so,

The teacher can feel this angst coming off of the student.

And finally the teacher turns to the student and says,

Something?

And the student says,

Well,

Yeah,

I can't believe after the vow that we took that you carried that woman across the stream.

And the teacher looks at her and says,

I put her down a half hour ago.

Why are you still carrying her?

And I always think about that when I am carrying something that maybe doesn't need to be carried.

Like that old saying,

Is the rock heavy?

Not if you don't pick it up.

There's a funny thing,

What I like to call the hot potato effect.

You know,

If you pick up a hot potato,

We just drop it,

Right?

We don't think about it.

We don't have to reason about it.

We just,

Oh shit,

What the fuck,

Drop it.

That's painful.

We do that very easily physically,

Not so easily psychologically.

As our poor student monk illustrated for us.

And why is this?

Well,

Like I say,

I like to put this into the context of the Buddhist teachings.

And in this case,

The teachings on karma really apply here.

And I always like to preface anything I talk about in terms of karma saying,

You know,

I'm not talking about this bastardized western version of karma where we're talking about revenge and justice and he's going to get his in the end and that sort of thing.

When the Buddha taught karma,

He's talking about basic cause and effect,

Which we can see in our experience right now.

And this doesn't have to be some down the road thing.

When I think of karma,

I think of it in terms of what kind of experience am I creating for myself now?

And I'd like to start with the first of the three pillars of karma,

Which is intention.

It is the central pillar of karma.

What is our intention?

One of the very first insights I ever had in this practice was when I noticed how there were certain thoughts that seemed to have me in their grip and wouldn't let me go.

And at one point,

As I was sitting and watching this,

It dawned on me,

I was like,

Well,

Wait a minute.

If there are thoughts and there's also what I think of as,

You know,

Me,

If we consider the two to be separate for a moment,

Only one of us has volition.

Only one of us has intention.

So if somebody's gripping someone here,

It's not the thoughts gripping me.

That's not possible.

So it must be going the other way.

So I call the direction of grip.

Okay,

Again,

Carrying something that maybe we don't need to carry.

So if I'm gripping some kind of thought process,

What's the intention there?

What's the motivation there?

Because we engage in these thought processes for the same reason we do anything we ever do.

There's a motivation there.

There is the rationale that we're going to get something out of it and that we're going to get something out of it that is worth at least what we are putting into it.

So we are channeling a certain amount of energy into this thought process because we think it's going to buy us something.

And usually what it is that we're trying to buy ourselves is changing how we feel about something or maybe trying not to feel something outright.

A fairly classic example I like to offer of this is one of those times we get into an argument with someone and then we spend hours,

Days,

Weeks,

Years ruminating about that argument.

Thinking about,

Oh,

That perfect retort that we didn't have at the time.

All these counter arguments we could have made.

Right?

And this kind of thinking is what the Buddha called verbal fabrication.

Now it sounds like it's something spoken because it's verbal but in this case verbal means directed thought.

Directing our thought typically using language,

Words.

When we're thinking in language it's an activity.

It is something we are engaging in and not just something we're engaging in but when he says verbal fabrication the fabrication part of it implies intention.

So there's a directed thought activity for a purpose.

As I say there's a motivation.

We're trying to get something out of it and in this case maybe we're trying to change our internal narrative about how the argument went.

Trying to make ourselves feel better by rationalizing how it would have gone if we had thought of thing x y and z to say at the time.

Maybe,

Maybe we are rehearsing over and over again this argument and the things we could have said so that we'll win next time.

Right?

Maybe that's what we're trying to get out of it.

Maybe that's our intention.

Now there's an interesting place where this falls down which is again this verbal fabrication.

This thinking in words and language.

This mental replaying of a past conversation or maybe a hypothetical future conversation that we're rehearsing.

When we are engaging in this in an attempt to not experience or change the experience of a felt sense,

A felt sense,

That fails and that always fails because our emotional systems are older than our intellectual systems which is why we can't talk ourselves out of feelings.

It doesn't work that way.

So this led me to a fairly critical insight about trying to let things go and that insight was this.

Stop!

Freaking stop!

Trying to use intellectual constructs like words and language to counteract feelings which are processes that happen at a pre-verbal level.

Doesn't work.

And there's an additional paradox that arises there where when we are trying to let go not only are we attempting to override our felt sense with language which again ain't gonna work but it actually is another kind of gripping.

We are now holding on to this requirement that we let something else go.

So now we're not just holding on to the first thing,

Now we're holding on to two things.

That didn't go so well.

So we can't use gripping to release other gripping in an attempt to let go.

So if we're not trying to let go then what the hell are we doing?

And this is where the other two pillars of karma come into play.

These are attention and perception.

So we've got our intention now we bring in our attention and our perception.

So what does work at least in my experience if we turn our attention away from this attempt to force letting go as if we could force letting go any more than we could force relaxation.

If we turn our attention away from that and towards the intention we have for it itself that motivation that underlying motivation that's driving the intention of trying to let something go we bring our attention to that intention as well as our perception the other pillar perception as well as the perception of the felt sense that is motivating that intention.

We're bringing our attention to the intention and honing our perceptive sense of that felt motivation that's driving the whole process.

And now we can begin to observe the chain that is formed by the various links in this process.

For example when we start thinking about it and engaging in this verbal fabrication is it just staying in a purely thought sense is it just above the jawline?

Hell no!

We start to experience some physical manifestations of that right?

Maybe our stomach tightens our heart rate increases we start getting angry right?

Start getting into maybe a little bit of fight or flight mode.

Because this is a fight right?

And then what are those bodily sensations do but cue the mind that oh yeah there's there's really something going on here we got to get ready for.

And we start to form that mind-body cycle that starts to create a whole big mountain of shit right out of well there's really nothing here which incidentally is how my panic disorder got out of control.

That's exactly how my own panic disorder brought me down.

There was actually no external threat to me the threat was experiencing panic.

I panicked about panic again that vicious cycle when these characteristics these processes start to fold in upon themselves panicking about panic or trying to let go of something so hard that now you're gripping onto the need to let go.

This is the kind of stuff that you know I'm sitting here laughing about it because when you actually see it it's like what the hell and then not just when you see it but when you see how you're the one actively engaging the process right it's not something that happens to us it's something we're doing.

Again we're doing things because we think we're going to get something out of them.

So we're not just experiencing the process we're creating and driving the process and sometimes when you step out of the process you're not just experiencing the process you're creating and driving the process and sometimes when you step back and see that all you can really do is laugh.

I've laughed at myself an awful lot in this practice.

So to take our example of the argument that we keep replaying in our heads you know sometimes we have this feeling of safety in the thought of like well you can't say certain things to me and you can't do that to me and that's what comes up in or at least for me you know that's the kind of thing that comes up in this argument scenario.

It's like well you can't say that to me and that's what I start replaying is how do I make sure you know nobody can say that to me because if somebody else sees they said that to me oh everyone's going to think oh they can talk to me like that.

You can't say that to me well guess what they just said that to you.

Yeah actually people can say that to you.

You can't control what other people are going to do or say and I know for me that's some of what I ended up seeing.

It's like oh okay okay here's the underlying insecurity,

The underlying fear driving this motivation and this intention to keep thinking about this thing over and over again in an attempt to you know maybe be prepared for the next time or think maybe it didn't go as badly as I thought I did so I can somehow hang on to this comfortable illusion that well people can't say and do certain things to me.

That's not to say that it's right if they may you know say or do certain things but it can happen.

It can happen.

In fact you know in the case of the argument it did happen.

We don't like being confronted by that.

It shatters that illusion.

It just shoves our face right in the actual vulnerability that is part of living on this mud ball that we're all trying to occupy together.

If we can start to see that and see where this is really coming from and let that begin to process and observe that process and see that that process in itself while not necessarily comfortable isn't actually unsafe.

Again like me with panic.

Oh this may be extremely frightening and uncomfortable but it's actually not unsafe.

It hadn't killed me.

Yeah.

Oh so maybe I can check this out a little bit and see what's actually going on here and this is that process of clear seeing that we're developing in this practice ultimately so that we can get out of our own way and deal with whatever is actually here instead of creating a bunch of storylines about what might be here,

What we don't want to be here and then living in that nightmarish headspace right.

So what we're really doing here is making space for the felt experience that is driving this verbal fabrication,

This rumination.

We're making space for that felt experience without arguing with it,

Without necessarily trying to rationalize with it.

There are parts of this practice where we do start to cross-examine those things if you will,

To test them but in my experience not as a first stage.

In the first step you just gotta,

You just gotta listen and like I say it's not necessarily going to be pleasant.

You know I call my practice mindfulness in blue jeans.

This is a blue collar practice.

We're going to get a little dirty sometimes.

You know we don't get to choose what we see but it's important that we see it because that's what's going to let us get off the hamster wheel.

The hamster wheel again that isn't moving on its own and we just happen to be on it.

Hamster wheel that we are propelling,

Whose movement we are perpetuating.

So we replace this cycle of avoidance and rumination with one of just seeing and listening which becomes a cycle of discovery and processing because it's the processing that needs to happen.

You know we can engage in it now or we can keep putting it off to later but it's going to have to happen and it's actually in the processing that the letting go happens.

We don't get to say how it happens,

When it happens but what we're doing is we are as the Buddha would say setting the right causes and conditions in place for letting go to happen.

When there's a certain result that we want to work towards but we by definition cannot force like say relaxation or letting go.

Very often we'll use the example of a plant.

You can place the plant under sunlight and healthy soil,

You water it.

At some point you got to step back because you can't force the damn thing to grow.

So you're setting the right causes and conditions and then letting things proceed and then based on how things proceed you know how to continue setting the right causes and conditions and that's what we're doing here.

We're setting the causes and conditions for letting go and when it happens it happens.

That's as good as it's going to get.

Over effort creates the paradox I talked about before and that's one of the real challenges of this practice I found is when we start to see how we are causing our own stress and suffering in the ways that I've been talking about the first thing we want to do is jump in and fix it right.

Oh we got to stop that.

It's like just watch for now,

Just watch for now.

Attention is enough,

Attention is enough to pave the way for change because in this case when we're talking about things like letting go it's not a doing,

It's a not doing.

We don't do let it go.

It's a process of subtraction,

It is something we are not doing.

One other thing that I want to mention is that this is not some kind of all or nothing process.

It's not just like okay I'm just going to do this or not do this and then bang right.

This can be a very challenging way to begin working with our own inner world.

For most of us we never really maybe did this before.

Most of us were raised by maybe parents in a society that didn't really know how to do this.

I'm like well how do we even how do we even start doing this?

It's enough to just be open to the idea of listening to let go a little bit.

That's already a start.

Just being open to the idea.

You know I always say to people you can put your psychological weapons down and if you decide you want them again well they'll be right there to pick up.

I mean you can go ahead and pick them up again.

People don't usually want to.

Like we're afraid to do it but then once we do it we're like what the hell is I carrying all this shit for?

So we can just be open to the idea of oh I can engage in watching and listening and just see what happens.

And that openness in itself is actually already part of the process.

In fact it's a pretty huge part of the process.

That willingness.

Say oh what's actually here?

So I like to say when in doubt listen.

And that's what I'd like to work with a little bit in our sitting.

So let's sit for a little bit.

Okay I always like to begin my sitting by imagining I am suspended from the ceiling by a piece of string attached to the top of my head.

As a nice cue to sit up straight without adding any extra tension to do so.

And if there is some tension here that's fine.

That is fine.

If we try to get rid of tension that's kind of like trying to let go.

Trying to relax.

All right.

Trying to get rid of tension means all right we're going to try to force it away somehow.

Meaning we're going to bring some more tension to the tension that's already here in an attempt to get rid of tension.

That's never worked for me.

We're here to observe,

See and listen.

So if we have brought some tension with us today,

Physical tension,

Mental tension,

Emotional tension,

That's allowed.

It's allowed to be here.

It's allowed to leave in its own time.

And we don't just think that it's allowed to be here so that it'll leave faster.

No it's genuinely allowed to be here.

It might as well be allowed.

It's here anyway.

It's going to be here either way.

If there's no discernible tension here that's fine too.

We can notice there's no discernible tension here.

We don't have to create tension for the sake of working with it.

It'll show up eventually right?

It's not about whether you have tension or not right now.

It's about seeing it.

What have we brought with us here today?

What's our current experience?

And if you haven't already you may begin to bring your attention to your breathing.

You may notice if your breathing changes when you bring your attention to it.

Sometimes we change it because we think we have to have some kind of meditative breath.

Something long and deep and contemplative.

Sometimes it'll just change because all we've brought our attention to it.

And it's it's not easy to bring our attention to our breathing without making some kind of a change to it.

We can control and shape our breathing in this practice.

We do not have to.

And I typically do not.

I mean I'm sure there is still some controlling and shaping happening that I simply haven't honed my skills well enough to discern yet.

Still working on that.

But it can be enough to simply feel the breathing as it happens on its own.

If we can learn to observe something as critical to our survival as the breathing without trying to interfere with it.

That's a skill that we can begin to apply in other parts of our lives.

All these things we're trying to control every day trying to control externally that certainly are not within our control.

Like a student monk trying to control whether or not his teacher carried a young lady over a stream.

And for someone with my background of panic I spent years hyper vigilantly controlling my breathing in an attempt to stave off panic attacks.

Exerting all kinds of control.

Still didn't work.

You know?

So learning to observe the breathing simply as it is without interfering with it.

It was horrifying at first but ultimately life-changing.

Just that one little thing.

Life-changing.

Again attention is enough.

Skillfully directing our attention all by itself sets the causes and conditions in place to decrease our own stress and suffering.

Now something else that we can learn in case we didn't know already.

Something else we can learn as we're trying to focus our attention on the breathing is typically lots of things take us away from the breathing.

Usually thoughts.

Usually certain thoughts over and over again which is exactly what we've been talking about today.

So one of the things we might learn is which thoughts are we having trouble releasing?

And in this practice we're not just seeing what they are.

We're starting to investigate well why?

Again remember this is something we're doing.

If a certain thought keeps coming up probably because we've entertained it a lot previously when it's come up right?

Created those grooves in the mind and they start to become defaults.

So when there's some space like we're creating here now.

Well that's our default.

Here's that thing again.

So now we want to inquire a little.

Well wait what's the motivation here?

What do I do when this thing comes up?

What am I trying to get out of this?

What am I trying to maybe feel or not feel?

That's ultimately what we're always trying to do right?

We're seeking pleasure avoiding pain.

So how am I trying to achieve those ends with this thinking process?

And sometimes I like to think of it in terms of an interviewer.

You know not an interrogation.

Not an interrogation.

Not in the little police room with the the one lamp hanging down.

No an interview.

You always hear people talk about how Oprah's this incredible interviewer because when she's interviewing somebody that's the only person in the world to her at that moment.

So what if we what if we took that role with whatever is here?

What if we took the role of interviewer and we have this conversation but we can only ask questions.

We can only ask questions.

So with whatever might be coming up and if nothing's coming up right now well maybe we just keep these in the back pocket for later but with whatever's coming up we might ask it what are you feeling?

You know let's take the stance for a moment that this process isn't part of us isn't something that we're doing.

We're having a conversation with it as a separate entity.

What are you feeling?

Direct the attention away from what we think of as us.

You know we're Oprah and this experience that we're interviewing it's the only thing in the world to us.

We're here to listen.

We ask it what are you feeling?

You might get an answer.

You might not.

You might get an answer in words.

You might get an answer in images.

You might get radio silence.

It's okay.

It's not the point.

The point is we're asking.

You might check in and notice your reactions,

Your breathing,

Bodily sensations.

As we go through this process perhaps those things are the things that you are interviewing.

You might ask what would you like me to know and whether you're engaging in the questioning practice or not see if we can keep some sense of the breath energy moving whether you're controlling it or not controlling it or whether you're trying not to control it but you notice there's still some controlling of it which again we don't have to control the controlling that doesn't help so if you notice controlling that's fine that's what's happening point is we're noticing perhaps one of the questions you might ask is what do you need what do you need what does the breath energy or the general felt sense feel like if we ask how can i help we ask this thing that keeps coming up how can i help how can i help you i had this experience probably about five or six years ago where i was having these stomach pains and i kept fighting with it of course when i fight things internally generally one of the first things i do is tense up my stomach so oops after for a little while of this i finally saw what i was doing and just opened up to it and as soon as i did that i felt myself wanting to apologize to my own stomach for making its life miserable for the better part of a week as i was as i was basically fucking with it while it was already in pain and i psychologically apologized and said you know sorry about that let's work through this together a few days later wouldn't you know it all subsided shocking huh but i had to see what i was bringing to the proceedings how i was creating more stress and suffering and that brings me to the last and i think the most profound question that we can ask this thing in our role as an interviewer who is only here to listen and that question is who are you who are you i'll end today's sitting with a short quote from tanisaru biko an american monk that i study and reference and quote a lot in these sessions and this is from a piece called skill in questions how the buddha taught when the buddha described his quest for awakening as a series of responses to questions of the form why am i doing this he was indicating the point at which the search for a way out of stress turns inward the realization that stress may be caused by one's own actions he was also indicating that an important part of the path consists of the realization that one's habits and in particular one's intentions are not to be blindly accepted or taken for granted they should be called into question and subjected to honest scrutiny however he was also indicating that not everything is to be questioned in particular conviction in the efficacy of action should be maintained as a working hypothesis all the way to release in other words what we think we say we do these are all actions with intentions motivations behind them and they matter they matter in an ongoing way so sitting here and engaging in this practice the intention that we brought to do so what we've done here and what we do next that matters this is how we are carving our path to our own freedom