So good morning, good day, everyone. So this week we I'm talking about challenges. And what the for the kind of the general theme now is going to be for a while. And and so the challenges are, you know, can be very challenging, that's what it means it's difficulty, which is difficult difficulty which we're having trouble figuring out how to be with or it's not clear what to do. And we had to sometimes have to figure something out or it can be overwhelming. And so a wide range of what can be called a challenge. And what I offered this week was the, what I call a challenge, check in the mindfulness check in. And it has a number of functions. One is to have a step away from business as usual with a challenge if we're really caught in it, and, and oppressed by it. And, and, and really preoccupied with. And we're, and we're focusing on some clear idea, this is the problem. But to step away and not be caught in anything, and take a pause, a sacred pause, to check in. And to have a different framework, a different perspective in which to look at our experience, then the perspective we might have been using in that provides the idea that I have a challenge. So we can check in with how we are physically. And we might discover that we're tense, or that our posture is kind of, you know, out of balance. And so we can relax the body, we can bring balance to our body, we could maybe go and exercise in order to get some nice things flowing in our body rather than feeling all congested. We check in with the feeling tones sensor, which things are pleasant and unpleasant. And generally, when we feel challenged, there's something that feels unpleasant. That sometimes generated from how we're preoccupied how we're afraid or angry or upset or something. And, and it's so generous, generous thing to feel our contribution how that sitting in us. It because as we feel it, it allows something to make space and to dissolve or to open up, become clearer. But also gives us a chance to, to also realize there's much more there's also pleasure here, there's also some good feelings. And we're realized we've been, we've been preoccupied or fixated on the unpleasant or we see the world through the unpleasant. But since there's more here, what happens if we include what feels right and good? Then there's the mind state, the emotion, the attitude by which we're operating? And to see it as just that. Oh, that's an attitude. That's an emotion, that's a mind state that I have a mood. And I'm with it. I'm not it. I don't have to see through it. I don't have to have those glasses on those lenses on. There's no other way. And then. And then the mental processes are my involved in process that are keeping me tight and contracted and grasping? Or am I touching into a practice for example, or mind states or ways of being that it clearly recognizes the challenge, but is freeing in the midst of it. So asking yourselves as check in has a number of functions. One of them is that because some of the challenges we have are really big and some of the ways we can be with a challenge even a small one sometimes is not productive. That we might have to might giving ourselves a check in we might see that and see oh, I need to do something here. I need to somehow break the trance break out of this. This funk I need to break out of somehow clear out so I could start fresh. And so to do something that refreshes us or to resets us. And you know, it could be a wide range of things. Different people have different things that they want to do. But this idea of having agency to shift how we are to put ourselves in a more productive, useful way, is invaluable. To be stuck in that challenge. And you know, is can often what happens when we're stuck in it, we tend to ruminate and repeat the same thing. So just kind of strengthens it and strengthens it and, and makes it gets worse. So something as simple as going for a walk, or having a cup of hot drink. If you have, if you're, you know how to nap to nap for 10 minutes, to meditate for 10 minutes, take a shower, listen to music, call up a friend, and have a human conversation with someone or go someplace, you know, in society that you can kind of lose your preoccupation, it's just nice to be there. And, you know, maybe you volunteer at an animal shelter, and you see you go spend some time with the kittens. And, and that kind of pulls you out of your kind of Caithness with whatever. So by doing the check in, we find out oh, I'm really caught. For example, if you can't do the check in, because you're so caught up, that's a clear indication that an intervention is needed. Not intervention that you escape forever. But maybe sometimes you escape for a little while. So you can come back refreshed in a good way. The other thing that check in does, it provides a lot of information about how you are that you then can kind of figure out okay, with knowing this about me, then now I have a better sense of what I can do. And, and both of those, just having, you know, doing an intervention for yourself, and, and you know, doing something different, or not understanding what's happening with you. So you can be with yourself or adjust yourself in a good way. Both of them involve agency. And you know, in our Buddhist scene, there's a lot of emphasis on don't control, don't control shouldn't be controlled in your meditation, which has some truth to it. But we also don't want to dismiss agency. And sometimes we dismiss agency, because we have this strong emphasis on not-self. An agency is where the self operates. But agency can exist without this kind of self that we caught in. But we want to begin feeling and engaging in our capacity to choose engage, to have agency with what we do. Because what happens with extreme challenges, we tend to Part of the reason we can freeze, we can be overwhelmed, and we don't use our capacity for agency. And so even just kind of going away escaping the challenge for a while, is an act of agency to check in with yourself is an agent, you're using agency to do that. And so then we still slowly start discovering by using that agency, how to use it in a way that is nice is useful. We don't pile on self and self identity and shoulds and shouldn't send and, you know, I'm supposed to be able to manage here. The agency they that's almost the same as the agency to us attention. We learned to do that in a soft way, in a gentle way, in a kind way. We learned we learned agency that we enjoy doing. And this is what I want to suggest is it's invaluable to discover in challenges to discover some way some pleasure, some or some goodness, some rightness something you feel is right and good. And if you can do that in how you accompany that challenge how you show up for it and are attentive to it. Where you have confidence in your agency, not necessarily that you know what to do. But confidence you could always have agency, the agency to do the mindfulness check in the end for an agency to pause and not do anything and just look at the situation. The agency to ask for help the agency to tell yourself Oh, recognizing Wow. I don't know what to do here. This is overwhelming to do that in a clear conscious ways almost in a way not to be burdened by it but like wow, and I'm overwhelmed, to start discovering how this sense of doing
can be freeing, can be relaxing can be, give you a different place from a source within, from which to act from. Because sometimes when we're engaging in challenge, and we're coming from a place of being a victim or being it feeling inadequate or feeling confused or feeling angry, or feeling just scattered, that will often make the challenge harder. But if we could recognize we are that way, by doing the check in, we are beginning to find agency, we're beginning to find other way that feels good. So anyway, this mindful check in has a lot of functions. And there's probably many more than I that I've said, and you're probably maybe discovering it. But to take some time to experiment with this simple checklist, body, feeling tones, mind states, and then these processes of the mind, how the mind is behaving, the operating principles is behaving in a way that is deleterious or beneficial, that's getting you caught and, or that helps you set more space and freedom. So
So then, thank you for all this. Now, for next week, I'm off at the IRC, they are a retreat center for teaching a retreat, so I won't be here. And I believe Matthew Brent silver will be teaching. And then I'll be back for one week, and then I'll be away for a while. But my plan is, for the next months, as I'm here, that I'll continue the series on challenges, even though there's a big gap, with the idea that we're slowly building kind of laying the foundation here. And, and in that regard, I'd encourage you to look for manageable challenges, maybe even really minor challenges that you have, and, and start kind of bringing some of this exploration of the challenge or being with a challenge that that we've been laying out for these last few weeks. And, and that you're going to be creating their own foundation yourself for what we do as we go along. So one day, you can maybe have a new capacity wise capacity to be with one of the some of the major challenges that you have. And so, thank you very, very much and I will look forward to coming back and week or 10 days. And and I'm sure you'll enjoy next week is teachings as well. And there's a way in which whatever a Buddhist teachers teaching, either directly or indirectly is about how to be with challenges. So so thank you
