[40] Exploring the Map of the Inner World – with Jeffrey Stevens
1:04AM Jan 4, +0000
Speakers:
Alyssa
Keywords:
meditation
awareness
mind
guided meditation
meditator
relax
andrew
called
experience
body
relaxation
retreats
people
thinking
meditate
questions
thoughts
rinpoche
physical sensations
learn
Hello, everybody. It's great to see you all how many of you are in Colorado, a couple people there. Anyone threatened by the fire? I happen to know having been to Andrew's house quite a few times. Andrew was probably could see the fires from his deck. And I can't believe that he wasn't evacuated. I live 10 miles from where the fires were and we were. We had all of our stuff out, ready to load into the cars. And it's quite quite something here. Anyway, I reached out to Andrew and asked him if he wanted to come to our house. I thought maybe he could help me with some of my teeth in the process. But he said no, he's fine, but it was close. And it was scary. So anyway, and I just learned that Alyssa our moderator experience something like that a year ago, lost everything. That's amazing. That kind of tragedy is not something you can easily prepare for. And meditators are people who often have recognized that this could happen at any time. It's so wonderful to have a life. It's so wonderful to have the opportunity to grow and explore. But you don't know how long you're going to have it. So a meditators perspective is always that why don't we do the most important thing now? Why don't we make sure that we can identify what the most important thing is that we can do and make sure that we're doing that not later, but now and so that is going to be what we talked about tonight. So those of you who have been at one of the previous evenings that I hosted, know that I think it's extremely important that you have an opportunity to ask your questions of a meditation teacher. It's just very, very important. And that doesn't mean you have to manufacture a question. It's perfectly legitimate not to have any questions, but there's gonna come a time on your path where you don't know you. You just need to ask and someone like me has been trained to listen and to understand the question and I might not be able to answer the question definitively. But I will be able to help you. Think about your question or maybe I can't answer it. But anyway, I know that a lot of people who are meditating in groups like this, don't have anyone they can talk to. I have a meditation community also. And it has had to meet online. And I think that the thing that binds us all together is that we were able to talk about our practice. So when I'm here at nightclub, you can bring your questions. previous weeks I've solicited those questions, but you can bring your questions and I will navigate the comments or someone can raise their hand and we'll we'll respond to them and I'll try and keep it short. And I'll also try to generalize the answer so that it can be useful for other people too. But um, anyway. Now let's proceed. So we're going to do a guided meditation because I just kind of thought, why don't we do a guided meditation after all, I don't know if you've ever done a guided meditation for but I thought we would do it. I'm just kidding. I'm trolling you. Because you told me last week because I didn't or last month because I didn't do a guided practice because I didn't know that that's what we're supposed to be doing here. But um, guided meditation is kind of a new thing. It's kind of a Western thing. While it is true that guided meditation has been used in for generations. Usually, it's an instruction that you absorb once through a teacher or an instructor leading you through it. And then it's yours to go do on your own and 90% of your meditation practice would be you alone in silence, not with a tape or something like that being played.
Um, nevertheless, guided meditation can be one of the most useful ways of learning to meditate and so what we're gonna do tonight, is I'm going to offer you a series of guided meditations that I'm going to go through them as a summary tonight, but there are three guided meditations and if you are interested in this and you're interested in hearing what, what my guided meditations would be like, there should be a link somewhere. Lissa, where are we going to put that link?
I actually posted it in the chat. So okay,
so you can click on that link. And that's going to take you to a place where you can tell me who you are. It's for you all, it's for the night club members. And it's going it'll go out, I think tomorrow evening, and there are three parts, you'll get the first part, and then a couple days later, you'll get the next part and then a couple days later, or maybe I should say, within two weeks you'll get them all. But there are three steps to this. And I think that this is a good orientation for any meditator who wants to transform through meditation. So I would say this is what what every meditator should know. So there are three guided meditation practices that you can download, they'll come to your to your inbox, and But tonight, I'm going to condense them so that you can get a flavor of that and we can at least do that. So let's start out and I have to remember to look at the chat here. Um
Okay, all right.
Let's start out by by asking, you know, what, what can meditation do for us? Why meditate? There are two answers that if you were to ask everyone who meditates Why do you meditate? You probably find two camps. There's a camp that meditates so that they can maintain themselves and maintain their wellness in their life. meditation helps people heal. Meditation fosters mental well being it's very good at that. That's kind of a modern thing though. If you go back centuries, you won't find much advice on how to meditate for well being. It was just assumed that meditation would deliver well being because it delivers something more profound than well being, which is called in our language awakening. The original term used was Bodie, meditation awakens. Us to the reality of what is, which is an interesting thing to say. Meditation awakens us to the reality of how things are.
That suggests
that we aren't awake to the way things are. So I often have found in my life, I've been a meditator for about 30 years and I was raised in a just, you know, not very religious, not religious at all household and became really interested in this in my 20s. And my family. What are you doing? What are you doing with all your time? Why are you going in these retreats? And although these days, everyone in my family well almost every one of my family really appreciates that I did this and my brother is one of my students, and a stepmother. His mother is a very serious meditator. I was first but they all went along. Early on, people would say, Well, that's good for you to meditate. I don't really need to meditate. And I didn't understand like, What do you mean? Do you know something? I don't know. No, they didn't know something that I didn't know. They didn't know what meditation was. So it's very common for people to say things like, Oh, well, my meditation is my pottery practice or my meditation is when I'm on my bike in the mountains. Well, that's the first type of meditation that they're referring to. It contributes something that contributes to their wellness. And that's valid, but it most certainly isn't the second part because it just doesn't work like that. We are going to talk about the meditation that leads to the transformation of experience transformative meditation. This is what in the original languages is referred to as a yoga, yoga. We are joining or yoking ourselves to ourselves for the first time and we do this through a process of learning to look within everything else we do, we look outside of ourselves. We manipulate the world in order to serve our needs or just to survive and of course we we do have to do that.
We have to farm.
We have to find water and shelter and other people are outside of us so we have to communicate with them meditators wouldn't say that we should only look within. But if we only look outside of ourselves, if we're only externally focused. We miss something. That's the main point. So we have the term introspection. We've all heard the term introspection but what's interesting is that the the culture of introspection, which is what meditation is a culture of introspection is in opposition to a culture of what well extra section. We are a culture of extra spective attention. We pay attention to things outside ourselves.
Now there are more
layers of refinement of talking about what this journey involves. And so when we talk about meditation, we're always going to be talking about looking within, but there are three layers of looking within. There are three realms of experience that a meditator begins to explore. So, human beings are equipped with three areas of experience. We have our body and the physical realm. Then we have our mind. And that's a that's a vague term in English, doesn't mean anything in particular. Some people think that the mind just means the brain. Some people think that the mind just sort of means emotions or whatever, but in meditation, it's, it's pretty clear what the mind means. So we have the body, we have the mind, and then we have awareness. Now in the topic that most of you are probably interested in, which would be, I guess, Dream Yoga, or lucid dreaming, lucidity is awareness. lucidity is not the mind you have to be outside of the mind to experience lucidity. You can have a lucid dream, or you can have a dream of having a lucid dream. The only difference is that one of them has gone beyond the mind into awareness, and that's why it's called lucid lucidity or lucid dreaming. The other is just another dream. It's just as a topic. The topic is hey, I'm having a lucid dream. I'm gonna make elephants appear in the bathroom. Meditation teaches us how to experience the body as body how to experience the mind as mind so that we can experience awareness free from body or mind. That would be pure lucidity or as I said earlier, that original term is Bodie awake. Now when we are able to recognize awareness, and position ourselves, so to speak within awareness, we still experience body and we still experience mind, but we experienced them in an unintended way. Eventually this unentangled way, gives way to a sense of freedom. And this is when awareness begins to go through a transformation. It isn't just awareness. It begins to understand what it is and what it is. We have to put a word to it is what we call wisdom. So awareness goes through its own transformation into wisdom. And that is the journey that these traditions have called enlightenment. Enlightenment is the transformation of awareness, which is sometimes called Clarity, sometimes called knowingness into wisdom, which is sometimes called luminosity or sometimes called rigpa, or sometimes called Maha Mudra, or Buddha nature, lots of words for these things. But it's just good to know that there's a spectrum of things that we there's a spectrum of things to experience from coarse to subtle but there's also a spectrum of ways that we experience there's a spectrum of what we think we are. Now ordinarily we think that we are our body or we think we are our mind. That's a relatively coarse place on the spectrum. As we learn to relax away from those things. We begin to lose the identification with body and mind. That doesn't mean we become disoriented though. It means we become correct we start to understand that we aren't those things. Wow, we aren't those things.
As we relax more and more we move into awareness. And awareness itself begins to give birth to a type of knowing, which brings with a tremendous freedom. And that is at the far end of the spectrum of identity. Now all this requires, there's a lot of stuff. It sounds like there's a lot of stuff when someone puts it the way I'm putting it right now. But all it really requires is that we learn how to relax in a particular way. Not relax in the way that we're all very good at. We can relax our body and we can relax our mind. And usually what that means is we just kind of let our mind drift. After a long day of work. We just sit in the chair. Just ah just relax. That's great. We need to relax but that's not meditative relaxation. meditative relaxation is a little more directed. And it takes a little more training. We relax toward awareness. Meditation, the highest type the swiftest type of meditation, is when you learn to identify awareness and move toward it or into it. By relaxing. You don't have to climb. You don't have to jump you just relax. And that's called meditative relaxation. And it's an art. It's an art. So, in your journey of relaxation, you pass through these three experiences again and again. You kind of move through them, and you become more familiar with what the body is. You become more familiar with what the mind is, and you become more familiar with the experience of awareness. It's not linear Exactly. Um, although the the body is the most coarse and easily accessible realm to explore in meditation. Some people are in their first week of meditation are going to go right to awareness. And that happens, but we're all going to have to experience these three areas and what if what we're trying to do the word is we're trying to resolve the difference between body and mind. The difference between body and awareness, the difference between mind and awareness, and the difference between awareness and wisdom, which and all of those are done to the same activity of relaxation. So we don't go after them with with a particular ambition, we just go through the training of meditation, and we start to see what we hadn't seen before. So I'm going to begin to move into the meditation but if you have any questions before we do that, please ask them.
So here we go. Let me get Quilly unmuted here
just did it
let you on mute. There we go.
Hi, Jeffrey. Thank you. What's the source? Maybe this is what you're going to do in the meditation. But what's the source of this relaxation?
What's the source of it? What does that mean? What?
Where does it come from? Like, what is the experience of it? What's the how do I do or not do it?
I see. Well, relaxation means it means to let go of what you're holding on to. So we will start out first of all, some of us will need to learn a little bit or train a little bit to become more stable. And that's often why people focus on the breath. But not everybody does that. That's not the only way to learn meditation. Another way of learning meditation is to simply notice what you are attaching to. So for example, you may have you may have an experience where you're not really doing anything. You're just sort of there, but then a thought comes up and you go with it. And when the thought begins to fade as thoughts do, you don't want it to fade, you buoy it up. That's attachment. Grasping clinging. Clinging is the activity that we engage in. When we don't want the reality of impermanence to show its face. It's like turning yourself turning away from something that you don't want to see and imagining something else. It's kind of what television is for. But um
it you're it's letting go of clinging.
Yeah, that's That's it. Letting go of clinging is an act of relaxation. That's an act of meditative relaxation. As long
as then I get the body but relaxing awareness.
Well, that yeah, that's not something. That's something that we have to we have to experience and I'll guide it to that's what those meditations are. There's, there's a lot to cover. This is the journey of learning meditation first. We just have to become comfortable and skilled at beginning to look within to pay attention to our inner world. And we're going to find out each one of us. We're going to find out where we are in right now in our lives. Are we able to turn within and observe our mind or is that something that we're not? We don't quite understand this I work with meditators, that's what I do all day, every day. And some of them are able to go anywhere I direct them, they can do it. They have the skills of introspection, either they just are that way or they have somehow developed those. They're just very able to do it. Other people. There's one gentleman who's super dedicated. We've been working together for about 18 months. He's one of the most dedicated students I've worked with in a long time. He cannot cannot recognize awareness yet. Just can't. And just it's incredibly such an intelligent person and he's so dedicated, but it's very hard for him. So I always am cheering him up, like keep going. He's has an extremely stable mind, but this just isn't easy. Other people that I work with, right away, they're experiencing that. So we have to face where we are and just be okay with it. And then begin to train awareness, ultimately, is the prize. Recognizing awareness and being able to understand the distinction between mind which is the part of us that thinks and awareness which is the part of us that knows that ultimately is going to be the most important discovery we make in our lives and the way that we will do that
question is really around. Relaxing awareness. You were saying? Relaxing
into awareness. Okay. Toward awareness. Yeah. Yeah, awareness. We can't do anything with it.
Okay, that's what I was thinking. And
I'm like, Alright, yeah, no, no relax toward awareness. Right. Okay, yeah.
Perfect. I haven't seen any come in through the chat. Okay, neither have I.
So
alright, so just get into a comfortable position. You want your back to be upright and comfortable. Your eyes can be open, your eyes can be closed. We're going to do a tour of these three realms of experience so we're going to be directing attention so to start with, we're going to explore the body, what it is and what it isn't. So first of all,
relax.
Let go of any thoughts, any preoccupations
and just be explore what it means to just be or how it feels to just be.
In meditation, we're often instructed to just be and this can be confusing. What does that mean? But what it essentially means is that we don't try to change anything.
The Tibetan word for this. It's very powerful. It's much Chuba and it means uncontrived. Don't contrive, don't push, or pull, or suppress or encourage just be with be with whatever is happening. This is how we enter this meditation. So let's just take a minute and be with whatever arises.
Thoughts,
physical feelings, memories. Sounds in the room
let experience flow.
When we don't manipulate our experience we end up with three possibilities. We have physical feelings,
which would be our body.
We feel ourselves sitting, holding our torso up we might feel the temperature in the room.
We might hear
a ringing in our ears or the creaking of the upstairs neighbors as they walk across the floor. That's one possibility and it's a possibility that's usually a certainty. Usually we are feeling our body and we never need to get away from that. That's natural. So we let that be what it is
then
there is the experience of the body the knowing of those physical sensations we don't just have physical sensations we know that we have physical sensations. Something is registering these something is awake to these physical sensations
when we look for what that is
nothing can be found
there's just a sense of knowing just a sense of I am experiencing this that's the third possibility we've skipped over the second. That's awareness. Basic awareness. Now remember awareness is what will transform through meditation. So early on, awareness shows up as I am experiencing this body. It might not say that, but that's the sense I am called. My body is called.
So we have the body and all of the movement and changes within it. And then we have awareness, which doesn't change. It just is aware of what does change.
So let's explore this a little further. Pay attention to the flow of your body. Let the body arise from one moment to the next however it wants to. The body is like an orchestra without a conductor. Sometimes the horns sometimes the Tiffany's sometimes silence don't make anything happen, but just allow
where is the experiencer of this
try to put your attention on the knower of the body
look
where is this cognizance where is this?
Awareness?
Looking in this way, isn't easy to do. It can feel awkward or impossible. But that is the effort of introspection and we will become skilled in it. It will feel natural. Maybe not right away but it will yield a type of knowledge that we will value
so the body is a realm of movement and physical sensation. It is only a realm of physical sensation. The body. The sense organs are similar, but they have their own individual realms. They're part of the body but the eyes don't feel hot and cold. They see color and shape.
That's all they do. The ears
don't see color and shape. And they don't feel
hot and cold the here
same with the nose. Same with the tongue. So we will leave the other sense perceptions alone. Just talk about the body
if I ask you
what is your experience of the body?
What happens
think of it my body do you begin to think of a form
a shape
a face that you recognize a feeling you're familiar with?
Probably that's not the body that's the mind.
The body is only physical sensation. It does not have imagery
where is your body?
The body can't answer that. Because the body simply is the body it isn't somewhere it's the mind that would locate the body we think that our legs are below our shoulders and to the mind that makes sense. But the body is just pure physical sensation. It doesn't have location. We have to use the mind to decipher the map of physical sensations that it can access to say that the head is above the belly and the feet are below the knees and mind in the body aren't the same thing. They're both valuable and they're both part of our equipment. But as we learn to look within the Learn how valuable it can be to see that there are different realms of experience. When you put attention on the body, the real body you will not cause yourself to generate more thoughts. You will cause yourself to generate more physical feelings. physical feelings aren't thoughts we're not distracted by physical feelings or distracted by thoughts.
Attention
is taken away
by thoughts
if we're trying to pay attention to the body what is it that
severs that?
We call that distraction. Distraction is when attention is unable to remain and it goes somewhere else. Where does it go? It always goes into the mind. So now let's talk about the mind
for most of us
all we experience is our mind with a very light relationship to the physical world. We are in touch with the physical world but not very much in touch. If our coffee is too hot, well we're in touch with the physical world that's legitimate. If we have to then down to pick up our keys and our eyes have to connect to something that's the physical world. But as soon as we are able to we feel that we switch to a mentally constructed world. Now we can't just get out of that. And that's not really the goal. The goal is to relax and let the mind
slimmed down.
Let the body grow and brighten and then let awareness begin to come forward. That the mind is going to be the bulk of what we explore because the mind is the bulk of our human experience at this point. So let's return to just being and then we'll start the second part from there. Just let experience flow and feel whatever happens and allow awareness to be aware of any thoughts any physical sensations just be.
When we allow ourselves to just be we're not suppressing anything. So it's natural that we have a flow of mental activity, mental imagery, urges, whatever is normal for us. And it's also natural that we have a stream of physical sensations and sensory input. When we just be we're going to let awareness see the difference between body and mind. Awareness doesn't change anything. It has absolutely no aggression. Awareness is like sunshine just shining. But like sunshine, it can stimulate a process of transformation. The way that we let awareness come in is to relax. Relax, knowing that we will have a stream of physical sensations and mental activity
to be aware of.
We don't want to try to get away from mental activity or physical sensations or awareness doesn't need us to get away from mental activity.
So let's just be
and notice these two realms that appear to us at the same time.
Let yourself feel
physical sensations
and whatever thoughts come up, can you allow them to just arise and dissolve in their own time? If not, if you feel that you have to think your thoughts, just relax a little more. Thinking is the non relaxation of the mind. When we're relaxed, we don't think we just are aware of thoughts. Those are two different experiences. One of them has awareness and one of them doesn't.
When we meditate we will always have physical sensations if we don't notice them. That's because the thing that does notice them has been obscured and that is awareness. Awareness is obscured by thinking not by thoughts.
Thinking
is not relaxation.
It's clinging.
Thoughts are neutral. They're just the flow of experience. So what we want to pay attention to is are we awake and aware?
Or are we thinking
when we're awake and aware, we will have physical sensations and some mental activity. Maybe a lot that maybe just a little maybe just a trickle. And both of those are healthy and they will not get in the way of awareness. We can let our thoughts flow fine awareness is so vast it's not going to be bothered by the discursive thinking of some individual human being. But only by staying relaxed. Will we be able to survive the little dance of thinking that's luring us into itself.
The way our meditation will proceed is that we will learn how to be
without thinking
so that we can experience the body and its flow of sensations and the mind and its flow of thoughts. That's called stability. Or shamatha
calm abiding that's the
base that we get to. I call this when I teach I call this base camp. This is the base camp that we have to get to. When you're at base camp. You're higher than the village and you can look out over the valley and see every place that you had been before you came up to elevation. You have a perspective that you didn't have before. You're not at the summit, but you're also not in the village and you have to adjust when you get to base camp you have to learn how to survive in that rarefied atmosphere. Just being is the space camp. And now let's just pretend that we've all gotten there. We're all able to just be and allow the flow of physical sensations and allow the flow of thoughts without clinging to them. Are there we're at base camp.
Now
we look back at the very awareness that is experiencing all of this. We look back and then we relax. That is how we transform awareness into wisdom.
Again, and again. And again.
We do that little tiny introspective
practice and bit by bit,
awareness comes forward more
and more.
And that awareness begins to come forward
with a type of confidence. That's when we know
that it's transforming to becoming wisdom and that can last the rest of our lives. More and more relaxation, more and more transformation
if you were to look at the centuries of meditation texts, they would all say that the most important thing for a meditator is to know what is always the best thing to do with this moment that you have. Because you never know how many more moments you'll have.
The best thing to do
is to get into being
and just relax. Go to base camp and just be
you can still do your taxes from base camp. You can still cook your dinner
so that is a summary of these guided meditations. The most important thing is to learn how to just be and everything will take place from there. I almost want to say automatically, maybe it is automatically but just remember, thoughts are not the prompts. Let them flow. Just don't think them. It's okay to think sometimes sometimes you have to think that's not It's not illegal for a meditator to think. But it's also something that we should do in moderation. Because there are tremendous opportunity costs that come with thinking when we're thinking or not being and thinking can lead to months and years and decades of forgetting to just be so that's that. If you have any questions I'm happy to respond. There's a question Jeffrey is my website under construction, always. But that shouldn't mean that you can't get to it. If somebody is having a problem with that link, then
I'll have to
did anyone not that anyone would because we're all meditating but Did anyone try to go to that link and it wasn't able to get
after I saw that comment too, and it looks like it pulled it up just fine for me. Okay, yeah, if you scroll down to the very bottom of that, it'll say download the guided practice session with your name and email so I can see it.
Okay. Yes. And if you put your name in there, it'll just come to you tomorrow.
But oh,
I'm Barbara, when I'm just being I tend to get spaced out and often sleepy. What am I doing wrong? You're not doing anything wrong. That's not to say that you want you want to cultivate sleepiness or drowsiness or space Enos. But awareness, just being is new for most of us and we don't know how to just be so we have to relax even more. Now. Drowsiness obviously is no fun. So I would suggest that you feel your body more and be more upright when you're meditating and trying to be don't do this we're not going to sleep. We're relaxing up, not down. I don't know maybe that's not the most useful thing or maybe it is, but we're relaxing into the part of us that is awake. And when we're doing that, the feeling of drowsiness and space Enos is allowed. It won't always be drowsiness and space Enos sometimes it will be agitation or busyness or or nothingness or numbness doesn't matter. Those are just the movements of the mind and the body. And there's nothing to be worried about. We relax into a simple state of clear being knowing simplicity. Just just keep going.
Looks like there were a couple other comments that they didn't have trouble with the website either so Okay, that's good. Maybe it was just a one time fluke. Well,
did you enjoy that? If there's a style of guided meditation that you all know that uh, that I don't know, because, you know, I haven't, I don't know what I'm I don't really know what happens when I'm not here. But uh, if there is a better way, or something that would be more in line with what you normally have here. I just need to know that. I mean, Andrew is busy and he just when I asked him what to do, he says, just God, just do whatever. Welcome. Just awesome, man. Awesome. That's what he just says I'm jazzed to have you if you know, Andrew, you know, that's how he talks. So I don't really have any instruction for what for how you all do this. So I'm just I'm not winging it, but I'm, I'm doing what I do, but I don't need to just do what I do. If there's a way that you want me to do it. Just tell me because I'm going to be here every month unless I'm fired for not doing it the right way. So come on, I'm making good money doing this. No, I'm not I'm not getting I'm not making any money and you know, I'd love to hear your voices. If you want to talk or if you want to say something. Just raise your hand. It's very lonely here. Just looking at the screen. You can hear me but I don't know what's going on with you.
Sorry, Katie, let me get you unmuted. There it goes. So I can know okay, yes. Hi. Um, I found it very helpful.
I've been meditating a long time. I really liked the way you kind of isolated things the body and the mind and these things are going on and just trying to point to awareness. I found it very helpful. And then the then the whole thing about how you go from awareness to wisdom. Yeah, I thought it was great. Yeah. Thank you.
Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. Um, I just know someone said very different from Andrew. And that's okay. You know, Andrew, and I study with the same people. It's interesting how I mean, we're students, the same teachers. And yet, we I'm sure we have very different styles. I used to have Andrew come to the meditation center where I was the teacher. And people were so used to me teaching because I taught there all the time. I was full time and then he'd come people would be like, Oh my god. He's so different. He's got so much information, and other people felt like it's way too much information. Oh, they're scared of Andrew. You could be scared of him. He's tall and blonde, and he's a dentist. And, um, I always loved Andrews style, but I don't know how I don't know what he's like these days. I need to pay more attention to that but I do know that. You know, it's Bombs away. When Andrew shows up. It's Bombs away. Is he still like that? Yeah, okay. Everybody's nodding their head. Yeah, that's um, Andrew and I went through a teacher training together a long time ago. And one of his friends was the teacher who was going to pass us and Andrew was just, they just let him do whatever he wanted to do because he was sort of like, you know, part of the in crowd and I was young, I'm a little bit younger than Andrew. And I started to do what Andrew did and they're like, We don't want you. You have to have more space, and more presence and they gave me all this things that there's a long time ago and I'm not that way. They it didn't work. I still am. I talk a lot. But yes, people have different styles. But I the reason I'm saying this is that we have the same training. And I think that if there's something that I say that doesn't sound right, push me on it because it probably is the same thing. He's saying. And when teachers teach over the years, they develop their own vocabulary. So Andrew will have his own vocabulary for awareness and mindfulness and meditative stability. And I think that we're probably on the same page but he may be using the word lucidity more, I don't know. But these are things that I would like to to know if, if I'm using a term that's like you've never heard that term before. I'd like to know that. If I'm, you know, suggesting things that just sound like whoa, that's out of left field. Then I don't want to be out of left field. I want to be consistent with what you're already learning because I know Andrew and I know that. You know what, what he teaches is he teaches this tradition. Are there any retreats that I can recommend? Well, that's not the easiest thing in this new world because all the great of Steven I see you will. You'll be soon as I'm done with this. My brother just got out of a retreat at the end. Of upasana center in Georgia, I think and had a great experience is the second time he's done it. So Insight Meditation Society and the Vipassana society have these retreats and they're similar, but not identical to what Andrew and I teach. They're not Maha Mudra or zoek Chen but they're they're still totally excellent tradition, a very good way to do it. They're also I think they're just by donation. You have to get there but the food's free and all of that. Then there are retreats that will begin when the world is back in order. My main teacher Sony Rinpoche, teaches every year in Crestone and mount Madonna and someplace like Garrison Institute or something like that. And honestly, I'm just going to shamelessly say, I think it's the best thing going. It's not expensive. This is a meditation master. By the way. Andrew is the person who pointed me to this guy long long ago. And boy he's you know, anyway, doing a retreat with Sonny Rinpoche just, it doesn't get much better than that. And then his younger brother, who's sort of the up and coming most famous meditator is Mingyur Rinpoche. He does retreats every year. I think those are excellent. retreats because they're very well supported and they're consistent.
The teachings are consistent with what you're learning here. And none of these are expensive. They're not like boutique. They're not boutique retreats. They're not expensive and they're also you know, you're roughing it a little bit. But you know, there are people of all ages there. So and even people who have who have special needs like they're in wheelchairs or a walker Mingyur Rinpoche has retreats, they're very well supported. Okay, Steven. Sorry, I get a little animated when I see hands up.
It goes. Hey, Jeffrey, how are you? I'm well. Awesome. Good. Um, I don't have any questions. There was a lot that you went over and I need to synthesize a lot of that. But it really brought up a lot of really good, interesting thoughts, especially during your introduction. So I just want to say I really appreciated your introduction. I thought it was very helpful. And the actual practices were really wonderful kind of just real reifying kind of what the process is that I like to ascribe to, but you kind of really just distilled in and vocalize it really well. So I appreciate that.
Thank you. I appreciate your comment. Thank you. Thank you, Steven. All right. Looks good. All right, Tony. I Tony
associated awareness with an aspect of mine and I have an eye roll. Well, you told me what? How you understand. See it as experienced, realize,
sure. I haven't realized much. That's all it's all just book learning. But I'm here. This is very common, because these words that we're using are used by different different meditators and just different people in different ways. So mind in the way that I'm presenting it, mind is that which knows, other that's the definition. So you've got mind always consists of a thing that knows and a thing that's known. And the word that's always used as it's a dualistic way of knowing. Mind is also a conceptual way of knowing this gets into a little bit of sort of a type of Buddhist psychology called Avi Dharma, but mind operates by transforming all experiences into concept. So for example, the mind doesn't experience the taste of an apple. what the mind does, is it gets an impression that's a facsimile of what the tongue experiences and then it's in here. It's kind of like someone who doesn't have any friends but has imaginary friends. Awareness is what the mind leans on to register experience. But the mind thinks that that awareness is it. So it's kind of like if I had a hand puppet to get technical. If I had a hand puppet and I was used to using the hand puppet, all the time, and then eventually, the hand puppet took on its own identity. And I just kind of would, you know, do this. That's kind of like what the mind has done. The mind arises out of awareness. Now again, Where's this coming from? My perspective is coming from the stock, Buddhist psychology. It's a map of explaining how mind works in the service of the journey of meditation. It isn't a diss. It's not a truth claim. It's not saying that this is how things are. Maybe they're this way, whatever. But if you see things this way, and operate in this way, you will experience a path. So it's a useful working model for understanding and mapping the inner world. I just think it's important to understand that these aren't, we're not arguing that this is how things are. What we're saying is, this is a an extremely useful, reliable guiding map of how things are so now I'm just gonna summarize what I just said. Because that was a lot of I think I said too much. Awareness is non conceptual. Mind is conceptual. Awareness is not a part of the mind. The mind is a contraction. Away from awareness. That
you know, I go in
for a different goal. Again, what's that?
I come in from a different doorway. Where, as I explained to myself, it's awareness is, for lack of a better term. Awareness is a feed when when I in non conceptual awareness, for me, that's a higher aspect a more transcendental aspect of my mind.
Yeah, that would make I see why you would say that. The only thing I would add into that is, when we say transcendental, what is it what is transcending what because in in the Buddhist thing, when we transcend, we transcend the dualistic or conceptual apparatus of knowing. And where do we transcend to, to awareness, awareness, transcends or is at the basis of the dualistic mind. unmuted Oh, I can't I can't hear you, Tony. I don't think he can hear either. Oh no, it's not working. Oh, oh, you're back. I'm sorry about that. No, it's okay. That's okay. We transcended sound
the last thing I heard was supply chain transcendence and for myself, the transcendence is neither above know or below there. is no concept around it. And maybe just using too many down words. She tried to express it. Can I still hear me?
Yeah, I'm still hearing you and and I sympathize with you. This is the challenge. Because when we experience awareness, awareness doesn't think but the mind is not able to see awareness. Awareness can see the mind but the mind can't see awareness. And that's the kind of Oh, you're okay. We need to get you a new computer. We're gonna send him a new computer. Let everybody pitch in a few 100 bucks. Let's get him a MacBook Pro. No, too much. Okay, I'll get him something else.
Oh, it's audio going in now and I don't want to interfere with with the class I will sign off.
Okay. No, no problem. Thank you for for trying, though. Clearly.
I didn't want him to leave because I wanted to be in that conversation. So I'm a Tera Vaada practitioner primarily. So some of my teachers will delineate between awareness and mindfulness. Others of them will
use
awareness. Either way, and what happens if you're like doing an awareness of awareness practice? Or something like that, then you you do transcend but you can go back and forth. You can go up and down whatever was out in in where you you can you can know you're walking you're feel the bottom of your feet, and then you can leave that behind. And it's, and I also wanted to say that I what I like about this group is a lot of different practices. And even when Andrew comes He doesn't just do one practice. He might do one for a few weeks or something but you know, there's there's a, there's a real array and what that's done is strengthened my my understanding of what things mean, what when, when happening to me in my private practice, so I think it's it's great to have different vocabulary and but we do need to know what that is. I think sometimes, I'm sorry, Tony isn't here because I, I want to do
seems to still be here and this will be recorded. So if he wants to he can watch it but
yeah, I thought it was an engaging conversation about
Yeah, to
action and I don't know how stable This is at the moment sorry about that. I should have come in on my phone and not my PC.
Well, we'll we'll pick that up next time. You know, we'll we can um, it's always the topic on the table. I mean, I might talk about other things, too. I might talk about karma. I might talk about loving kindness, but I'm always talking about awareness because that really is that that's what causes these transformations and some schools will use, like mindfulness and awareness, awareness in that context. Now, this is gonna sound contradictory is an aspect of mind. But that's a different use of the term. So mindfulness and awareness can be used in non transformative meditation styles. You know, awareness knows that mindfulness is holding to an object of attention. Awareness is the thing. Mindfulness goes out and grabs the object like the breath and awareness. is the thing that knows that that's happening. And when mindfulness drifts away, awareness goes, hey, hey, get back on the breath. And then mindfulness goes, oh, sorry, and they work in tandem. But that very awareness, when it's developed begins to relax back to the basis of mind, and then it clicks out of mind all together. And that's what I was calling base camp. That's the beginning of a deeper type of meditation. The Tera Vaada tradition doesn't have a lot of language for that. But when you look at some of the masters of that tradition, it is obvious that they're there. I mean, it's obvious that they're experiencing this one of my if anyone looking for a good example of a master of meditation, there's a female practitioner named Deepa ma de IPA. Ma There's a wonderful book about her. She started meditating when she was, I think, 54 and before she was 60, she was an acknowledged master. She died in the 80s I think, and you can learn a great deal of what is possible by just reading the story of her life. She's so recent, and she was such a master and her entire practice was the practice of just paying attention to mind. And then she went beyond the mind. She is the Jimi Hendrix of Tera Vaada in my opinion. Okay, well, I don't want to keep any Yes, Deepa Ma. I don't want to keep anyone from dinner. So I don't want anyone to be in trouble. Like if you're somebody is waiting for you. I don't say that. Well, I couldn't get off that call with Jeffrey. He just kept talking. So I want to make sure that we all get some nourishment. But hey, if there's anything that you want me to talk about, please tell me and next time, I will know that. I don't. Again, I don't know how I don't I'm asking you for this, but I don't really have anything set up for you to reach out to me. Actually, you could you could go to my website and you could just send me an email or something. There's probably another way that's not occurring to me. That's the
on the night club website. You guys can put suggestions or questions in advance, that'd be another way. I usually get those as they come in so I can always forward on to you in advance and kind of help help it that way.
Yeah, yeah. If I have some heads up on on something, I mean, obviously, my the, the places where you're going to get the most use out of me, are in the development of progressive meditation. That's really my you know, that's what I do. I can talk about all the topics I suppose. There are probably people who are more interesting to talk about, you know, some of the topics than then I would be, but I can talk about karma and emptiness and things like that, of course, but the development of meditative stability, the development of meditative relaxation, and understanding the milestones along the path. That's my forte. So, in particular, I look forward to sharing more of that with you.
Hey, happy New Year, everybody.
Yeah, happy New Year. I'll get everybody unmuted and they can say hello or say goodbye or whatever they'd like to say. My dogs are going to start barking. Oh. Happy New Year. Happy
New Year. I look forward to
seeing y'all Thank you very much. Thank you, Jeffrey.
Do you the first Monday of the month. So see you in February right here, reach out if you need anything and if you if you do download those those guided meditations and you have any questions about them. Of course I'm available for that. Give me a couple of days to get those up. There's three parts I think you'll like them. Anyway. I'm gonna I'm gonna go up and have dinner alright everybody it's been a pleasure.