[178] A Path to Insight and Freedom - with Jeffrey Stevens
4:24PM Oct 17, 2024
Speakers:
Jeffrey Stevens
Keywords:
meditative relaxation
slim media diet
community event
Dharma talk
awareness practice
self-awareness
body relaxation
thinking mind
awareness traditions
mindfulness practice
relaxation techniques
insight experience
awareness traditions
meditation benefits
awareness-based practices
Jeffrey, you're muted.
Good evening. Everybody better. Nice to see you all. See a number of people that I recognize from this last weekend. Well, tonight, I think it's the last time that we'll meet before the events of November, and I don't want to talk too much about what events those are, but I do know that some of us could be feeling pinched or stressed. Maybe some of you don't, maybe some of you don't even know what I'm referring to, but I'm really finding right now that the best thing for me is to relax, which is interesting because all of our retreats recently have been about meditative relaxation. But even if they weren't, I find that this is a very good time for me to have a slim media diet and just to make my decisions. And then, you know, information can be a good thing, but sometimes information is it's like an addictive substance. It's intended to be an addictive substance. To keep you wondering if there's any new breaking anything, obviously, you know what I'm talking about. This isn't news to you. I would imagine that you're all doing something like I am, which is just, you know, as as irresponsible as it may seem, just letting go of being updated about what's going on, unless there's something that I could do about it. And at this point, I think I know what I can do and what I can't, and I don't really want to be exposed to the media empire right now. I'd much rather be exposed to the Dharma Empire right now. So what I've been doing is just spending time outside and doing everything I can to bring my attention into my body and to relax and then before bed, I read a little dharma. Again. This is nothing unique to me. I'm sure this is something very similar to what you do, but I thought tonight we could just practice together. And then if you have any questions, I'd be very interested in a discussion. I do want to share with you, because I know that some people come and go that we're going to be having a community event in the first days of November. We're still trying to nail down the details, because we're actually going to be traveling, but I think that the first, second, third and fourth of November, we're going to just have an evening sit, kind of a Dharma talk discussion for anybody who wants to come. This is free of charge. This is just a time for people to be together in those those days. So let me see if I have the info here. I think,
nope, this so a community sit, November, 1, second, third and fourth, 6pm Mountain Time. And in order to get the invite to that, you just have to go to our website. And here, if register for the Dharma talk, the Dharma talk is going to be Tuesday, October 15, at 6pm we do this once a month. We usually have a great turnout. It's a way for you to hear some very profound Dharma teachings that are in line with the finding ground meditation system that we teach. But if you go and register for that talk, and the link is down below, I think that Alyssa put that in the notes, then we will see that you have registered for that, and then we'll just send you a link to the community. Sit. We don't expect you to come. You know, certainly don't have to come every night. You could come one night or the other night. Right? And as soon as we nail down the details, we'll send those out for everyone. But I would think that if you are a meditator and you are alone as a meditator, that this could be an excellent thing to do. I know that my own teacher, Sonia Rinpoche, just announced last week that he's doing a retreat with us every day up to the election, and then a few days afterwards. And in his style, he's not mentioning why he's done it this way. He just pop there's like five or six days of retreat with him on either side of that fateful day. So that will be, for me, a real that will be very helpful in keeping my sanity, because I'll be with 800 other people who are practicing in that tradition. So April and I just thought, well, we should do the same thing. I mean, I just know that there are some people who would benefit from that. So go to if you want to do this, go to the link that Alyssa has put in the notes and sign up for the Dharma talk. The Dharma talk will be, as it says, Tuesday, October 15. But then in addition to that, we'll send you an invite to come to this community sit so
there really are two things that we can do at any Given time. We can either follow the expressions of our thinking mind, or we can observe them from the freedom of being aware. Awareness is the source from which thoughts, emotions and so forth, express themselves. When awareness is is aware of itself, then it doesn't follow those expressions. It sees them, but it doesn't cling to them. That only happens if awareness is aware of itself, if awareness is not aware of itself, then it becomes aware of other. And when a thought arises, that thought becomes other. Some thoughts are not compelling, they don't pull us, and so we see them, but we don't follow them, and we just stay in a kind of vague state. That's good because it doesn't move us into wandering mind. But it isn't as good as it could be, because self awareness is not present. So we could either be distracted from self awareness, which causes us to be pulled into thinking mind, or we could be undistracted within awareness, and then anything at all can arise and dissolve, and it doesn't do anything to us. It's kind of like if someone is watching a television in your house with and they have headphones on or something. You see the screen, but it's not interesting to you. It doesn't pull you in. You're not following the story. You just see the play of light on the screen. Our thoughts can be like that, as long as we are directed, to pay attention, or at least be aware of our own awareness. So how do we do that? How do we rest and remain in self awareness? Well, we really have two ways of doing that. One of them takes either a great deal of boldness, or it takes training, and that is to drop everything whatsoever and just remain in awareness. Another approach is when a thought arises and you begin to think it, and then you recognize that you're thinking it. You don't finish that thought. And then at the end, the thought breaks apart, and there is a gap, and you rest in that gap. When you rest in that gap, you're not following the expressions of the thinking mind, so you don't go into fear and confusion and so forth. The other way, the easier way, or at least the more practical way, is to train to relax into the feeling of the body. When you relax into the feeling of the body, you land in something that is ground. Surrounded and which does not participate in thinking at all. The body has no real relationship to thought. The body just is a field of feeling, and it's very receptive, and it will hold us so when we relax and fall into the feeling of the body, that is a way for us to then stay that way until awareness shines, then we have the body and awareness in this approach the body is like you could say, the pre dawn the earth, just before the sun rises, we land in the body, and we feel it, and then awareness dawns. We just have to wait when awareness and the body come together. We're definitely protected from any damage that wandering mind can do. So one way that we can learn to do this is, of course, we can direct our attention to the breath, and then when we feel that we are following the breath, we relax that effort and just stay in the body. Another way is to just, we've probably all done this together. Raise your hands and let the feeling of the body swell and then stay with that
when you are trying to interrupt a pattern of thinking, you have to be persistent. You have to interrupt it several times before it begins to show signs of weakening. But if you keep doing it, it will, it will break apart. And the body and awareness will both appear, and they'll start to merge a little bit. So let's just all practice. I'll guide the practice, and we'll try to get in to the body a bit so you can keep your eyes open or close them. You
at any given time, we have three dimensions to ourself that are right here, right available. We have our body which we feel. We don't think it, we feel it. Then we have awareness, which knows it knows that we are feeling our body. It also knows itself. And then between the body and awareness we have the thinking mind. The thinking mind produces thoughts which are like clouds, between the Sun, which is like awareness, and the earth, which is like the body and the world of feeling. If we're grounded in the body, it doesn't really matter if there are a lot of thoughts or not, we take shelter in The body so just relax and feel your body and
I when we really relax, we end up with these moments where the body is present and awareness is present, but the thinking mind has dissolved. It will come back. But when we really relax into our body, we have just body and awareness. We. Recognizing that that has happened will help sustain it and
When thoughts come up, As soon as you notice them, just relax back into the body.
And if thoughts crept up and you didn't notice them, then at some point you'll notice that you're thinking.
At that moment, relax and fall into the Feeling of the body and
the body is always a field of sensation. If we don't feel the body, it isn't because the body isn't expressing itself, it's because we are in thinking. We may not be aware that we are in thinking, but thinking is what obscures the sensitivity of our body.
We can reclaim that sensitivity by relaxing into the body and sustaining our time in the body by simply remaining relaxed you
it just like tipping over into a pool. We don't have to try. We drop thinking we will land in the body, and then we just stay there
in the Mindfulness traditions. We work very hard to do this. We direct our attention to the body, and we try to stay there, probably by using the breath. Mindfulness traditions separate us from thinking by using the effort of attention, and it works, but it isn't the only way. Awareness traditions don't use effort. They use relaxation instead. You
my mindfulness traditions often will use the breath because we need something specific to direct our attention toward. We have to have a target. Because we're going to apply the effort of directing attention to the breath, and then the effort of mindfulness to stay on the breath. So we need to make it clear the breath, not the whole body. That would be too much. We're
we've probably all done that type of practice, following the breath,
in awareness traditions which have existed alongside mindfulness traditions for 1000s of years. The approach is very different. We don't need a specific target. We're not aiming for anything. We're relaxing. And falling into what is naturally there. I call this the feeling world. This is the body and the subtle body. They feel. They don't think. Mindfulness is not a part of the feeling world. It is a part of the thinking world. Mindfulness is an aspect of mind. We're not using the mind in awareness practice. That's what's so different about it. We drop into the body and relax.
We may have to do this a dozen times in the first five or 10 minutes, maybe two dozen times. But eventually, if we persist, we find that we can relax and just land in the body and
and we want to do that, because when we are relaxed and embodied, awareness will begin to shine and
if you want to experience true relaxation, you'll find it in awareness, the body will help.
The body is like a benevolent friend that reflects the light of awareness back at itself, so that it can recognize itself, and when it does, That experience is a deeper type of relaxation.
It's very soft. Aha, awareness and
when we use relaxation in awareness, meditation. We don't talk much about thinking or emotion. They're just not important. They're there, but they're not that important. We simply relax when they arise and they can't grip us.
If you've done any type of meditation with the breath and the past, you probably would come back to the breath. When you recognize that you are thinking, you might even have labeled it thinking, and then you come back to the breath. That's a good practice, but that's a mind based practice. That's a mindfulness style of practice. Usually you do that for a few years, and then you're introduced to awareness practice. I think I did that for 10 years before I was introduced to awareness practice. I but you don't need to do mindfulness practice before you do awareness practice. You can start by learning to relax, drop into the body and recognize awareness and then just Be awareness and the body And the feeling world and
when awareness and the feeling world come together, a process begins awareness begins to expand, and it begins to light up from within, there's a natural faculty of insight that emerges. It doesn't take effort. It takes profound relaxation.
Some people can experience this quickly, which is why it's good for all of us to learn this style, we may not need to do mindfulness practice or not very much of it.
Mindfulness practice does not actually wake us up. It prepares us to wake up, awareness practice that's the realm of awakening. That's what the traditions of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, the Zen practice of shikantaza.
Those are awareness practices. Those are what produce Buddhas, awakened people and
sometimes we are so stressed from our mind that we think we need training to manage our mind. Maybe meditation will help us slow our mind down, reduce our thoughts and of course, it will do that. Meditation will definitely do that. Of course we have to meditate regularly, but it will have that effect, and that effect will be very good. We'll be very glad we did it. But we should know that there are two ways to reach that. One of them is direct, and that's relaxation. Drop the mind. Just drop it, drop the mind, and be in the body and. And let awareness dawn in its own time.
Just that is a path to awakening. The only effort we need is the effort to keep our posture upright. But everything else we just relax. You.
If I could start over again, this is what I would hope to learn,
especially if I started at my age now I now I'd much prefer to learn relaxation and awareness.
All the awakened teachers that I've met, all of them practice this, and all of them told me to practice this, but I just didn't listen. I thought, No, I have to work a little harder. I think I'm a Western person, so I need to do more mindfulness practice. I think they were right and I was wrong, and I think I took about 20 years to come to that conclusion. You
we've all heard the term insight. Usually, Insight is something that is a special experience, because it's an experience that begins in the mind, but opens a portal out of the mind, and that's why it's seen as so groundbreaking, that awareness is insight. Awareness doesn't have to go anywhere else. When we rest in awareness, it begins to brighten and brighten, and that is the luminosity of insight happening organically at the first dawn of awareness, we already have the sense that we're becoming free. We just continue relaxed in awareness. We don't have to have insight. We are in Insight,
maybe there's a little bit of a catch though, the freedom that we experience within awareness is available to us when we are in awareness, relaxed, and that's not very much of the time, as soon as We're pulled back into the mind. Well, that freedom is gone, that insight is gone. It's not gone forever, but you're not going to find a fur coat in Walmart,
and you're not going to find insight and freedom in the mind,
whether we use mindfulness or awareness based practices, doesn't really matter. What matters is that we understand that. That these need to be folded into our life again and again. They produce results. They really do. They actually produce more impressive results than most of us come to meditation, hoping, wanting or expecting. They over deliver they humble us with how powerful they are, but we need to persist,
day by day, we have to make the decision that we're going to transform by letting our wisdom come forward the light of awareness that has to be a part of our life. We have to have a commitment to that. It's the only way it's going to work, but it will work if we do that. I
And then throughout the day, when we're not meditating, we'll begin to notice that our minds have carried us away. As soon as we have noticed, we can take a further step on our path, we can drop thinking, land in the body. Maybe awareness will show up, maybe not, but we still have taken a step.
That's why I recommend awareness based practices. It's much easier to punctuate our day with little moments of letting go and relaxing, rather than punctuating our day with moments of being mindful again, they both work awareness practice doesn't need to try to shape the mind into something mindful and virtuous, just like the sun doesn't have to come down and rub the Apples and rub the peaches to get them to ripen.
Awareness heals. Awareness enlightens. And the only way into awareness is to simply relax. It's the only way. So that's all we need to do.
Meditative relax. I'm sorry, meditative relaxation is all we have to do. I
The ordinary relaxation relaxes us into the mind. We let the mind drift that will not produce awakening meditative relaxation drops the mind and it brings the body and awareness together.
Meditators call that nowness. Nowness the meeting of awareness and experience. It's a very sacred state to be in. It's also very immediate, practical and To some extent, it's ordinary. It's
When we relax, things penetrate us, and we are afraid of that, which is why we aren't relaxed. We think that things will penetrate us and hurt us or steal us away, but they won't, not if we're relaxed,
experience dissolves in awareness
like snowflakes falling on water. We have to see that for ourselves, and when we do, we'll have great assurance, great confidence, that we can face the world and the intensity of it, the intensity of other people, and their fear and passion, And our own fear and passion the mind can't handle this. The mind tightens and fragments and speeds up trying to protect itself from something that it doesn't need protection from you.
Simply by relaxing, we make a gesture toward the part of ourself, which is vast, something that can accommodate whatever arises, something that can even accommodate our own suffering and our own mortality. The more familiar we are with it, the more real that accommodation becomes to us and
many good things Come out of awareness, joy, compassion, humor wisdom,
power,
fearlessness and no bad things, bad things such as anger, jealousy, pride, those come out of the mind when the mind has been cut off From awareness. Those are called clashes or afflicted emotions and
there are no afflicted emotions in awareness. It's remarkable, but there really aren't. There are said to be no afflicted emotions, and I haven't seen one in awareness, but I have a long way to go before I've explored it all.
In the mind, it's hard to have anything but afflicted emotions. We can try. We can try to have noble emotions. And I. Uh, virtuous thoughts, but as soon as we stop trying, you know, they don't just arise all that easily. It's like, once you get a ball rolling down a hill, it's probably not going to stop and then go up the hill a little bit, and then down, and then stop and then go up. It's just that's not its natural trajectory, and that's the way the mind is. The mind is the product of awareness, not recognizing itself. It's not the product of wisdom. It's the product of the lack of wisdom. It's hard to expect our solutions to come from the mind. The mind's not evil, but it's cut off and
and all we need to understand is that the mind doesn't really have a hold on us, because we can relax, fall into the body, feel and recognize when awareness dawns, and those two join together in nowness and we just be, and the light gets brighter and insight dawns, bit by beautiful bit. And
well, okay, thank you all for sitting with me this evening, October, this beautiful time of year where I am.
If there is any discussion or conversation anybody wants to have I'd welcome it take a few minutes. I'd again, like to invite everybody to come to the Dharma talk that we'll be hosting. It's Tuesday, October 15. It's free. If you want to come to it, you simply have to sign up so that we can send you the link. And if you do that, then we will also make the replay available to you. We also have our community sit, which we are only doing this year because of the tension around the election. Just thought it'd be a good idea trying to be bodhisattvas there, so that nobody feels alone in their I
mind.
And then for those of you who have been asking and for those of you who are interested, we have our weekend retreat coming up, october 26 and 27th you can register for that on the home page of our website, findinggroundmeditation.com We've had some terrific experiences in these last 14 retreats that we've done, and this one, I think, will be the best yet. So if you're looking for that, please consider becoming Whole awareness retreats and so are there any questions? I
Hello, Prem.
I'll I'll be brave and ask a question, or actually, you mentioned that you know an awareness practice one doesn't require. Um. To, you know, purify the mind or or whatever. I don't remember the exact words you used, but you implied something like that,
yeah,
and I, I accept that principle. Uh, but at the same time, if one considers the the words of the of the great Mahamudra and Dzogchen masters such as Tilopa, Guru, Rinpoche, long chin PA, Jime Lingpa, they all say that until you attain the path of seeing, never forget the two accumulations.
That's right. Yeah. So how do I reconcile that? Yeah, yeah. Luckily for me, all of my teachers have to answer this question every time they teach. You know, chin because, you know, here we are saying that you don't need to do all this stuff because you have awareness. If you can access awareness, then you then you don't need, you don't need to do the accumulations if you can access awareness, because that on its own, awareness is the accumulation of wisdom, and recognizing distraction and turning to awareness is the accumulation of merit. Now maybe this is some funny business that Mahamudra and Dzogchen teachers get into, but really here's here's how I think about that for myself, because I find awareness practice to be remarkable in that it does purify and I notice within me that I become a more full hearted, compassionate person by practicing in awareness with relaxation, far more than I ever did when I was using the effort of generation stage practice and you Know, the traditional accumulations, and yet, like this morning, April and I, for those of you don't know me, my wife, April, she's also a teacher. We sat down this morning and did a bunch of practice that wasn't just resting in awareness. Why? Well, because of what you just said, until we are stable and awake. We will not give up on the two accumulations, purifying and accumulating merit. But the thing is, most of us, because we don't live in cultures where these practices make much sense, we have to put a lot of effort into understanding what the practices that accumulate merit and purify the obstacles. I mean, most people are what are those practices? First of all, what are the practices that purify? Well, there are the very gradual practices like, God, I can't even really think of much. I mean asking, what's that
six paramitas? Well,
sure, and I'm just trying to think of like, what, what would be something that would purify negativity, that we would that we would talk. Because usually, before you answer that, usually what we hear about, or we hear about the preliminary practices, Vajrasattva mantra purifies negativity and mandala practice gathers the accumulations and Guru Yoga practice brings down the quintessence of all of that in the form of gin lap or blessings, that kind of thing. I think that if we were all living in a Buddhist world, we would probably love doing that stuff. That would be like, what you do when you get together with your family, hey, let's have, you know, a puja. Let's let's make offerings, and let's say mantras and all this stuff. It's just like what what people do in those worlds, but in our world, basically, virtue is when we tame our personality, right? Like we we think of others before we think of self and things like that's how we get through our life. If not being a selfish person, all of that stuff is what we are going to do when we're not even thinking about awareness. If we are on a path, if we're on a path, we're not just like Bonnie and Clyde when we're not practicing. It's not like we practice in the morning and then we go rob banks in the afternoon, we practice in the morning and then we try to tame our conduct the rest of the day. What? What teachers have emphasized so much that I just didn't hear it. I mean, sometimes teachers can emphasize something to the point where you're so used to hearing it, you're wanting to hear something else. And my teachers emphasized awareness and relaxation to the point where I just didn't believe them. What I began to understand is that they were emphasizing this, I think because when awareness is available to you, that's a very precious time, like when awareness is really available for you to rest in and see body And mind as expressions of awareness that's bordering on Samadhi, that's bordering on a meditative state that just we're not all walking around in that meditative state. Those moments are very precious in our practice. If we prioritize those and rest in awareness, it kind of purifies our mind, our mind begins to liberate. And when we rise from our meditation cushion and we go go through the world, we have some of that kind of, I don't know what to call it. I mean what, I know what the Tibetans call it. They would call it. We have some of those blessings with us still. But that's not really a word that most of us use. I think that there must be a reason why people like saraha would say, just rest in awareness. Some of the great teachers do say what you've said until you've achieved stability and emptiness, never abandon the two accumulations. What do they mean by that? Well, people interpret that different ways. The interpretation that you know, I've always heard is, if you're resting in awareness, you are not abandoning the two accumulations. You are that is the quickest way to generate the accumulations, particularly if you mix awareness into your activities, which is what the paramitas would be. I don't know, save me here Prem. Save me.
No. I mean, I totally agree. I think the initially, I always thought of the path as you know, the foundational and then the sutra Mahayana, and then eventually the tantra Mahayana, and you know, The the third turning, and so, but then the from your perspective, and how Sony Rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche talk about fruition as the man so starting from fruition and So then you kind of get the inner meaning of the four brahmavidharas, the inner meaning that you know, the negaden of the six paramitas and all that, rather than starting in a very sort of rote, linear way from the beginning, definitely going through the motions, right? And what, the, what, the, what, the bigger picture or purpose is?
The key is, is that if you're, if you're starting from awareness, just just like you've just said, then you have the inner meaning. And then when you engage in like, you know, usually the first thing I do when I come out of my meditation session in the morning is I go out and I I kind of mess with my cats a little bit. And I'm always aware that, wow, you know, these little beings, here's this big being, stronger being coming up to them. And what am I doing? I'm just kind of pushing them over and tickling them and things like that, and there's still that light of awareness. It hasn't tapered off completely. By the time I've made my coffee, the awareness is probably gone for a little while, but at least when I'm playing with my cats, there's still some kind of generosity and compassion there. And. I see how when you start with the inner meaning, it sort of shines through everything else. When you don't start out with the inner meaning, you're relying on your mind to figure out what all those things mean, and so it's going to be hit or miss. It's like, Have you washed your hands before you cleaned the crystal. Or is the are all the wine glasses and all the crystal gonna, you know, when you hold them up to the light, you're gonna say, who washed these? Well, it wasn't the person with awareness. It was the person still using their mind that, sorry, the awareness people. They were already gone, and we needed to wash those so to me, there has been it's really made a lot of sense. It did not. For the first decade of my practice, I didn't understand why they were telling me to relax. I thought there's so much work to do, all these things to study. Come on. I want to bust out all these practices that you guys are teaching, and so that's what I did. And then I was just so tight. I mean, I'm sure I learned a lot. I learned a lot up here, but my practice really wasn't, really hadn't ripened me at all. It was only when I started listening to trusting them, when they would say, just drop all that and relax. Just relax, because first you have to glimpse, you have to glimpse the meaning. You're not going to become enlightened right away. I mean, don't, don't get ahead of yourself, but they would see. You have to glimpse the meaning and really understand. And you're not going to be able to hold on to that all the time. So you are going to have to go and make your way through the world, and sometimes you're going to be confused, and sometimes your mind is going to open up, and you're going to learn how to join those and you're always going to join it by remembering to relax into the meaning. So I just take it that way. I mean, it was very good advice, and definitely. I mean, if anything has worked in my practice, I suppose that's debatable. I mean, I started when I was young enough that I guess I don't know what kind of an adult I would have been without meditation, but judging from how I was when I was 18 or nine or 19 or 17, I think I was headed down the wrong road. So I really think that if anything has worked, it's been relax into awareness. I think that's, you know, that's what I'm doing for the rest of my life. Hey, Premier disappeared, but someone
could please clarify. Sorry. Just one quick clarification. I'll stop.
Okay, and you have to stop. I just thought you were
at the beginning of your response. You said that from awareness, practice, perspective, the two accumulations are what again?
Well, you know you have these. Wait. For those of you who don't know what Prem is talking about, I'm just going to say this so we spent a lot of time. The accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom are said to be the two ingredients that you need on your path to transform your confusion into wisdom. The accumulation of merit is like being a wholesome, loving human being, a generous human being, a disciplined human being, and all the little things we do that take effort in the right direction, a good person, a noble person, the accumulation of wisdom has to do with appreciating truth and recognizing truth. Those are the those are sort of the accumulation of wisdom. And so the path consists of joining our our activities of accumulating virtue and accumulating wisdom. So when somebody starts from awareness. They are given practices to do that. Combine those, let's say my mind is wandering and like I'm just thinking about, ah, I want more. I want more of this and more of that, and more of this and more of that. And then I recognize, hey, what are you doing, man, your mind's just wandering out of control. Yeah, you're right. Maybe I should just relax. That right there, that decision to relax was the accumulation of virtue or merit, relaxing into awareness right afterwards and recognizing awareness, that's the accumulation of wisdom. So those two are joined together in a very essential way. And that's what that's they say. That's what makes those inner practices, Mahamudra and Dzogchen so darn fast, because just recognizing that your mind is wandering and making the decision, I'm not going down that road anymore. That was the acute. Emulation of merit. Good for you. You got a little stripe. See, I have one stripe right here. I got that today because I brought my mind back from it was just being crazy, and it just appeared, I'm telling you, it works. Prem, don't doubt. No no,
no doubt. No doubt. Here, look
at all the stripes you have though, my god, yeah, who am I talking to? God and Jerry too. Wow, I didn't I should have looked before I even was showing off there. Now I'm embarrassed. Okay, you're done. You're done. I'm embarrassed. I'm too embarrassed. Now I want to hear from Beth. Hi, Beth. You
Am I muted? Can you hear me?
I sure can Good.
Well, I'm new. I remember I was new to a meeting over the weekend with Hamish. So I don't know a lot about Buddhism, and I'm really kind of new to meditation. Been reading this to be Yeah, been reading about it and trying to learn some things over the last couple of months, but I'm telling you, this just hit my sweet spot.
Oh, that's what I wanted
to hear. Well, I will tell you, 40 years ago I gave birth to a very large son. I had what I've always described as an out of body experience, but that's not really what it was at all. But after many and so this wasn't anything I did on purpose. It just happened. But after he was born, and you know, it was all natural and that kind of horrible stuff, which I would never recommend. I'll keep that in mind. Well, third time around, you know, they they fool you, and they say, Oh, this will be a piece of cake, you know, not so. But anyway, after this physically, extremely arduous ordeal where I was conscious the whole time it was done. I had a beautiful little sun, you know, healthy everything, and they brought me into my room, and I literally experienced this. And this is the first time I've ever heard it named, and that's what it was. It was simply awareness. And I, I didn't know what it was until all of a sudden it was over. And I have spent almost 40 years trying to figure out capture how to do that.
Wow. So what was the feeling like? Was it was there, peace, or was there? Yes,
it was, it was what? Well, what you were. I mean, I don't have a recording of this talk, but as you were, you will, they recorded, okay, as you were guiding this and I was listening, I'm going, that's it. That's what it was. It was just Yes, absolute like not having to pay attention to anything, from being completely aware of everything, and there was no it wasn't dramatic. It wasn't but it was, it was incredibly peaceful. I guess that's the one word that I would use. Well,
you've got a big head start. It would mean that like
the peace well, and I'm a very old person too, so I'm thinking, This is good, if I can just do this. And while we were doing it, I was kind of, I was kind of able to find it, you know, just find it and not, I mean, it wasn't like back then, 40 years ago, when I had probably, like, a couple of hours of that going on, but I I touched it, and I could say, that's what I can do. This the, you know, the other kind of meditation, where I've been being mindful and going through all the waking up apps and, you know, oh yeah, every morning, doing the morning meditation and the afternoon, the
Sam Harris one, the Sam Harris one, that
one. But there are other ones too. You know, there's Mind Valley stuff, you know, everywhere. It's all out here, but this just resonates so deeply, and I think I can do it.
I know you can do it. I mean, you already you already know. Thing is, you already know why to do it. You already know the punchline. And that's the nice thing of. About it.
It's like the just you when you said the light of awareness, and I wrote down peace and I underlined it like that's what it is. Just drop everything and just be.
That's right, and then learn how to make so that is true. You drop everything and just be and sometimes you will have a, what we might call confirmation, like, Yes, this is it. And a lot of times you won't, but that's okay. That is completely okay. You drop and you land in your body and and the light doesn't come on. But still, that was good. But then you know, maybe for every five times, one or two times, awareness shows up and you just know, this is it. You just know, this is it, and what, what the path really is at that point, is learning how to knead like making bread like knee, that experience into your every day. So that awareness is invited by the way you live your life and the way you prioritize your states of mind. That awareness is invited to show up again and again and again until it takes over the driver's seat, or at least, very often, takes over the driver's seat. And that's just the process of awareness, meditation. The great traditions that teach this. You know, there are these just massively old, wonderful traditions still thriving and alive, like all the all the people here at nightclub, all of the teachers, I actually don't know if, because there are all these new teachers, but Andrew, me, Joseph and you guys have to help me out. That's what we've all been trained in these awareness traditions. So it sounds wonderful. Yeah, I think your honor. I think you found, you found something worth exploring, for sure, sure. I would recommend you read the book. Maybe someone can help me. Is it called in love with the world? Is that the book by mingier Rinpoche, no one here has read that. It's a famous it's a book called, I think it's called in love with the world, which you will love that book. And you know, it's just good to know where to look to find this is so natural. Awareness. No one has to give you awareness. No one has to. It's yours. But if it were, if it were that easy, there wouldn't be these paths. So it's just good because you're starting out. You said you're new to all this, to know where to look. And you know, traditions that teach awareness based meditation and traditions that teach mindfulness based meditation, you know, they're all from the same family tree, right? We are from the same family tree as a chimpanzee. Who do you want over for dinner? Me, or any of these other people or a chimpanzee?
Well, I like I do too,
and don't hurt my feelings, though. So just Yeah. Another thing
is, I work as a as a Deaf doula, and meditation is like such a hard Well, previously, seems like such a difficult thing to teach somebody when they don't have a lot of time. But, you know, of course, family members and other people involved in the whole situation can learn those things, but for the person that's facing limited time and doesn't have a great sense of peace, I think this might offer something
there are sort of, you know, there are ways that that teachers have tried. So in our culture, people may not have any preparation for death, and they only start to think about death, like a week or a month or something like that before they approach it, so they don't necessarily have time to put new habits in. And the thing that awareness does, if given enough time, is it overrides fear. Fear causes a contraction that speeds the mind up and causes forgetting. And awareness can fear can spring up into awareness and then just kind of break apart. Right? The person who's dying might not have time to do that, but you do well. You can hold that space and say it's okay, just relax. It's okay, as long as you are maintaining the relaxation of awareness, you're kind of helping them. That's you know, I hope that someone is there. You have
time, they have a year, or they have a year and a half, and if they're interested, that's nothing I would push on anybody or even suggest, really, yeah, make them aware. They're interesting. Make them aware it exists.
Yeah, no doubt about it. It's great. I mean, this is definitely right in line with, with what you with, with your work. Because, you know, mindfulness training is hard for someone who starts when they're 25 you know, even even a monastic who isn't gonna do anything in the world, it's still hard. But awareness practice, it's hard to believe. That's the difference with awareness practice. It's hard to believe because it's basically saying that you are already sane. You are already free. Just have to discover it.
Thank you so much. This was wonderful.
You should come to one of the becoming all retreats that's the entire weekend. Is the training. We do it every month,
virtual, yeah, it's just like
this, Oh, okay. A number of these people have been on those retreats. It's definitely a, I mean, it's right up your alley. It's exactly training in this, yeah, come to our website, finding ground meditation.com and to see if
it was it already,
yeah, it should be. I think it's in the chat. Finding ground meditation.com, go there and see that. We'd love to see you and get a whole bunch of training in just this. Anyway. Nice to meet you. Beth, where are you? Oh, wait, you, uh, you're muted again,
um, yeah. Have a thought for us here. I'm in Daytona Beach, Florida, right on the other side of Milton it's coming our way. I went, it was royally, pardon me,
the beach was still there. Well,
I'm actually on the East Coast, and it was weird. Yeah, we were getting pounded with Surf. And I figure the the wind must, you know, the waves are wind driven, so it must just be already circling around that way. But yeah, to Wednesday, I guess, is when we're gonna get it. So it's category five right now.
Well, I wish the very
best be safe. We'll be good. Yeah, got a new roof, new windows, and all the trees have already been blown down by past hurricanes. So I think I'm in good shape.
You're brave.
Okay,
all right, are we? Hey, Marianne,
Mary, are you? You're not asking a question. Are you? Are you? You're I can't,
okay, Alyssa wasn't letting me unmute.
Oh,
yeah, no, I just wanted to thank you for another great talk. Jeffrey and it is in love with the world. I I'm pretty low tech. I think I just tried to send it to everybody, but the it's like this long, so I hope I did it right, cool, and I loved it's by minger Rinpoche, and I read his near death experience in that book. I've read half a dozen times, and it just rocks my world. So thanks for bringing that up. I
got to do a retreat with his brother, Sonia Rinpoche, his older brother, and one of these retreats that I did, this was right after Mingyur Rinpoche came out of that retreat that he writes about in that book his while he was in retreat, one of his sort of like friends of the family, I don't I can't remember if he's in the book or not, but named Tashi. Tashi found mingiri Rinpoche when no one knew where mingiri Rinpoche was, he saw a beggar in Buddha around the the the stupa. And he thought that looks very familiar. That beggar, looks very that beggar, and he started running after him. And the beggar took off down the alley, and he basically chased him. Chased him down into a minger Rinpoche tried. To hide in behind a door. And then Tashi opened it up and said, You're coming back home. It had been like two years or something. No one knew where he was. And mingiri Rinpoche refused. He said, No, I'm not. My retreat is not over. And so Tashi said, Well, then I'm staying with you. And mingiri Rinpoche said, if you stay with me, then you have to do what I do. You have to practice the way I practice. So he did. So Mingyur Rinpoche and Tashi went into the mountains after that and lived in caves. And like a lot of the pictures that you've seen, if you've seen them, are pictures probably Tashi took. And Tashi did two years of retreat, wandering around like nomads with MinGi Rinpoche. And then when minger Rinpoche decided to end his Tashi, did another year and a half on his own. And when he got out of that retreat, he came to the US with Sonia Rinpoche, and he was there at a retreat with just like 150 people. And Sonia Rinpoche had him have an open mic every single day so that we could ask him anything we wanted about that retreat with with Mingyur Rinpoche. It was great. So we got the inside scoop of someone who was there, amazing. Just thought I would flex. I just thought I would flex there a little bit. So, um, well,
thanks again, everybody,
yeah, thank you. It's nice to see you. You look your light is very soft. It's almost like you're on a movie set. Okay, there this has been Thank you. Lori, good to see you. All right, everybody, you
hope
to see you soon. If not, I think I won't see you until we know the fate of the world in November, whenever the first, the first Monday in November. I'm not sure when it is, but I think it's, you know, it's like the seventh or something. Wait, the first Monday is when the fourth. Wait, I should know this, shouldn't I just know this here i i have a calendar, the first Monday is the fourth. Oh, my God, okay, I guess I'm here on the fourth so that'll be nice. We'll have a nice time together. We'll just relax, see how we are, and I guess I better recon re think my calendar there. All right. I'm very confident that things will be things will be good. Everybody. Practice well. Stay healthy, stay relaxed. Your strength is within you. You don't have to fight. See you very soon.