We’re going to maneuver a bit of bit, so I need you to simply move in a roundabout way that feels good, and that’s fluid. You don’t should do what I’m doing, but, within the mood of what I’m doing. It feels good, it’s smooth, it’s easy. If you ought to do something nice and circular together with your hips, whether it’s a hula hoop motion, or something that’s circular, get some circle movement in there, especially within the hips, but your knees could be moving in circles, your ankles could be moving in some type of circle. Then get your wrists moving in a circle. Again, it should feel good. We’re not attempting to stretch out, we’re just letting the body feel some fluidity. Get your elbows moving in circles, shoulders in circles, after which just get real random about it. Still circles, however it doesn’t should be a pattern, it may just be moving. What you would like is to simply feel nice. Consider your body as just a few water that’s very pleasantly splashing across the within a bowl, and keep that water splashing in a very fun way. It feels very nice, you may go fast if you ought to go fast, you may go really slow if you ought to go really slow, however it should feel good, that’s all. Feeling good can mean your soul feels good if you do it. Then, only for me, I’m going to stretch way way up. I’ve been doing this with my infant toddler—stretch away way up—hands to the sky, hands to the sky, hands to the sky, after which all the way in which down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Then, even when you ought to keep your heels on the ground, and go all the way in which down, way down, way down.
That’s it, just a bit of little bit of movement. Now, we’ll actually proceed with floor movement, just the same old one, where we circle our spine, and you may do your shoulders and neck and stuff, but principally, moving your spine in a circle. Perhaps moving it the opposite way in a circle. We’re just, again, feeling good, feeling loose, feeling open, relaxed. Start making the movement smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Still relaxed, but just smaller and smaller, until, eventually, you may’t tell whether you’re moving or not. It’s not that you just’re stopped, it’s you can’t tell if you happen to’re stopped otherwise you’re moving, since the movements are so small. Then, wherever that feels really just perfectly balanced, just stay there. Since you’re not a chunk of construction equipment, you truly are still moving, and there are all the time micro-adjustment occurring. Feel into those as clearly as you may, into those totally very small, automatic adjustments, that those little tiny muscles all up and down the spine are doing. Notice it remains to be moving, including in fact the movements of the respiration apparatus, and the movements of the guts beating, and the surging of blood through the capillaries, one platelet at a time.
Meditation
From this place of inward focus, ask yourself the query, What’s it prefer to be me at once? By that, I mean you: What’s it prefer to be you at once? Then simply feel, just feel your body, feel your emotions, feel the pondering, feel the world around you, and see if you happen to can do that without having any ideas in any respect about it being different. As a substitute, let go of any sense of aggression towards how you’re feeling at once. Just letting how you’re feeling at once be how you’re feeling. As a substitute of a stance of, I shouldn’t feel this manner, I should feel different, I need it to alter. Only for now, only for the length of this guided meditation, just let it’s the way in which it’s, even when it’s awful. The stance of continuous aggression towards how we’re feeling just makes it worse, whereas, letting it’s the way in which it is definitely already a little bit of a relief. So just give yourself a minute or so here, I’ll just be quiet, and we could just sit in easy acceptance with exactly how we feel at once.
Notice if you happen to’re attempting to avoid being with how you’re feeling at once. That may are available the shape of getting real distracted, stepping into fantasies, attempting to feel other stuff, attempting to escape, all types of strategies to get out of the straightforward experience of at once. What this manner of meditating is designed to do–we’re just going to take a seat still and be with what we’re feeling at once. That’s the entire thing. It’s designed to be free from numerous distractions. We stay physically still, because even fidgeting and scratching and stuff is a distraction. It’s a way of attempting to escape experience, so we just stay nice and relaxed and open with just what’s here, simply, and directly, in our own experience each moment.
I can lead you thru a thousand really complicated—extra triple complicated—techniques, however it all comes all the way down to: can you only sit with the way you’re feeling or not? One in all the moves that may be very vital here is to note that if we repeatedly narrow our attention tighter and smaller, and tighter and smaller, it actually gets type of harder to take a seat with what we’re feeling. Whereas, if we let our attention be naturally very wide, naturally open, which is what it’s like once we’re not intentionally squeezing it tight, but we let it’s sky-like, broad, it makes it much easier—there’s just so rather more room for stuff to occur. So, to whatever extent possible, without forcing, or shoving, or attempting to make your awareness big or something, just let it naturally be open. Just in the way in which you can hear the entire room around you without attempting to hear it; in the way in which that together with your eyes open, if you happen to don’t narrow them down on purpose, they only absorb the entire peripheral field. In the identical way, we just let our general awareness be wide open, which is what it’s like once we’re not tightening it.
Notice, it’s already a bit of easier to take a seat with how we’re feeling, to take a seat with all that’s occurring in our experience, simply because we’re not attempting to shove all of it in a box. We’re not attempting to put a fitted twin sheet on a king-sized bed on a regular basis. There’s good enough room. Notice that we’re not attempting to stop pondering. You may think as much as you would like. What we’re doing isn’t engaging with the thoughts. So, in a way, the thoughts can go on within the background, but we’re not grabbing onto them. We’re not digging into them, we’re not specializing in them, we’re not engaging. It’s like they are only somewhere within the background, and we’ve nothing to do with them. But that’s very different than attempting to suppress, deny, control, stop, them. As a substitute, we’re just letting them be there, but not giving them any attention in any respect.
Notice, once we allow awareness to be very broad by itself, and once we stop trying to alter our experience, but just let it’s what it’s, in the identical way, once we just set down that interaction with the pondering, and just totally set it aside, we’re not interacting with it in any respect, irrespective of how much is there. Unexpectedly, there’s quite a bit more room, possibly even almost an excessive amount of room. For a moment, it’s, but I’m so used to being engaged with that, what do I do if I’m not engaging with that? Well, what you do is just feel what you’re feeling, just be present on this room at once with exactly what’s occurring in your experience. Notice how incredibly easy that’s, it is likely to be uncomfortable, however it’s easy.
If you have got a robust, long habit of engaging with the thoughts, it’s almost a compulsion, since you do it a lot. I don’t want you to struggle or someway get right into a fight attempting to disengage, just, really simply and simply, and with numerous leisure, just anytime you notice that you just’ve grabbed on, you only chill out your hand, and let go. Come back to easy presence, at once, with what we’re feeling, easy presence, without doing anything in any respect. There’s all that body sensation arising, sounds of the room, all of the thoughts churning within the background, the sights around you, in case your eyes are open, and numerous other stuff arising in the straightforward presence. So, let’s just sit with that together for some time, remembering, over and another time, notice if you happen to’re engaged with the pondering, and just let go.
One in all the strategies for avoiding feeling what we’re feeling, is to get sleepy, or drowsy, or dull. Should you notice that’s happening, sit up. That is an easy meditation to do together with your eyes open because we’re having awareness. Be nice and open. We’re not attempting to give attention to anything specifically. So, again, if there’s drowsiness, sit up, open your eyes, you don’t should stare. You may blink and move your eyes around, but just let some light in. We’re staying wide awake, and letting go of any engagement with thought in any respect. Should you’re nodding off, sit up and open your eyes. Don’t just fall asleep, not sleep. Buddha means awake. We’re awake.
Sometimes there are cogs that just attach your attention to your pondering. The cogs just mechanically engage, and also you’re just engaged in that thought. Just disengage that cog, just push within the clutch, and leave it in, so that you just’re in neutral, and the engine of thought can just turn and switch and switch, but you’re just not engaged with it. You’re not doing anything in any respect with that, but, as a substitute, all of awareness is just wide open, vivid and clear, and just simply present, just nothing but present. It doesn’t take any skill in any respect. Wide awake, wide open, vivid and clear: that’s what’s there if we’re disengaged from the thoughts. It’s not trippy, it’s not psychedelic, it’s not highly altered, it’s not a special state, you’re just not lost within the dream of thought.
Good. Now, you may just stick with that, but when you ought to go a bit of further, in a very relaxed way, gently, in the event that they’re not already open, open your eyes. Look, in a relaxed way forward, and just allow all of peripheral vision to be present along with central vision. So, as a substitute of just taking a look at one thing, you’re type of seeing every little thing directly equally. The entire visual field, all of the peripheral vision and the center all together as one full visual view, with relaxed eyes.
When you’re doing that, and continuing to stay disengaged from thought, don’t engage with thought, ask yourself the query: What’s having this experience? Then, just look. You don’t should look together with your eyes, you may feel together with your body, you may hear together with your ears, you may, in whatever other way, experience. Don’t engage with any thought to reply that query, just search for the reply: What’s having this experience? Are you able to find what’s having the experience without serious about it? Give it a shot, at once. What’s having this experience? You can even ask the query: What’s experiencing? Are you able to find it in your personal awareness at once? If it’s a sensation in your body, which particular sensation is having the experience? If it’s a thought, an idea in your head, remember we’re not engaging with that, because that’s not a visible experience. Where is the thing having the experience, at once? Find it.
Should you’re a slick, highly trained Buddhist, you’ll be, like, “it’s unfindable,” so I’m just not going to look. But I need you to look, look—really look—knowing that, by that theory, you’re not presupposed to find a way to search out it, is just engaging with thought, which we’re not doing, so look: What’s experiencing at once? Keep looking, keep groping at nighttime, keep groping and groping, Where is the thing having this experience? Allow awareness to undergo every sensation in your body, feel every feeling in your whole body. Is it one in every of those feelings? Is it a certain type of tension behind your eyes? Is it that thing that’s experiencing, or is that just a few tension behind your eyes? Again, don’t go to the thought process to attempt to figure it out, just look. Leave your eyes wide open, seeing all of the peripheral vision in addition to the middle, and just keep looking.
We are able to change the query a bit of bit: What’s seeing at once? Our eyes are open, we’re seeing this uniform visual view. What’s seeing? Are you able to discover a seer? Look. What’s seeing at once? Notice, without engaging thought in any respect, notice the very fact of seeing. It’s vivid, it’s colourful, there are shapes, there are textures, there are outlines, there are every kind of visual stimuli coming in. It’s tremendously alive, it’s awake, it’s clear, it’s vivid, it’s a feast, a vision. It’s not nothing. There’s numerous vision happening. It’s wide awake. The lights are on. The actual fact of the experience is cold water within the face, it’s so intense. What’s having the experience? Look, feel, find it.
Notice, you may’t find anything. You will discover a bunch of experience, feelings within the body, thoughts in the top, vision, hearing, every little thing else. You will discover all of the experience, but you may’t discover a thing having an experience. What you discover is wide open, wide awakeness. Something is wide awake, and it’s wide open. There’s just no tightness in it in any respect. There’s no rejection in it in any respect. It’s completely relaxed, wide awake, utterly welcoming to all experience, playful, spontaneous, kind.
Notice the very fact of this experience, the shocking water within the face, cold water within the face fact of just experience itself. Notice, there’s no boundary on it, there’s no edge in any respect. Experience doesn’t stop on the skin, it doesn’t stop on the partitions, it doesn’t stop anywhere. There’s just experience, boundless experience, boundaryless wide awake, wide openness. The pondering mind can judge all that have—that is a superb experience, it is a bad experience, it is a boring experience, it is a cool one—I need to hold on to—every kind of stuff. But awake awareness, wide open, wide awakeness itself doesn’t say no to any experience. It says yes to every little thing, and it’s not a reluctant type of begrudging yes, it’s an exuberant loving, wide open yes to every little thing.
Sit outside the mind, and see boundless, wide open, wide awakeness, that’s utterly
spontaneous, independent, self-arising, free. Don’t just sit there napping, sit up, together with your eyes open. Should you’re drained, that drowsiness is within the mind. We’re sitting outside the mind, which is all the time wide awake, wide open.
Earlier, I said that this wide open, wide awakeness doesn’t have a boundary. See if you happen to can discover a boundary. Don’t just consider me, look: Is there a boundary? Where is the boundary of this awareness? Sitting outside the mind, unengaged with thought, look, feel, into, When did this awareness start? What was the primary moment of this awareness? Find it: When was the very first moment of awareness?
On this moment at once of wide awake, wide openness, all you will discover is either awareness itself, at once, or memories that you just’re aware of at once. We’re wide open, wide awakeness, with no boundary, outside of time, simply wide awake. That’s not happening to anything, it’s just happening, with no starting, and no source. And, yet, experience is there—a splash of cold fresh water. Experience is going on. It’s not nothing. Timeless, beginningless, boundless, wide open, wide awakeness, spontaneously unfolding each moment unfolding.
Notice that, since we will’t find what’s having the experience, there’s no separation in any respect from the experience. The experience is all; there is no such thing as a separation in any respect from the experience. No separation in any respect from one another. Wide open, wide awakeness welcomes everyone, is everyone, incorporates everyone, loves everyone, completes everyone. Not as some idea or as an aspiration, but as just what’s happening. There’s nothing but connection and interbeing. Nothing but love for wide open, wide awakeness, with no boundary, outside of the mind, outside of time, utterly intimate with every little thing.
Dharma Talk
So, if nothing else, this not less than not less than gives you a likelihood to note clearly what your strategy is for not resting in your personal experience. Besides experience itself, that will be essentially the most obvious thing from sitting here, is just, What got here as much as take me away from just being? It’s really this super easy thing to do. You can do it by just putting yourself in a quiet room with no distractions, which is what we’re doing right here. Quiet room, fairly quiet, apart from me droning on and on, but pretty quiet, not much distraction. You may’t take a look at your phone, we won’t let you progress very much, a few of you were scratching the entire time, but still that’s type of a boring distraction. So, what comes up? The entire instruction is just sit together with your experience, sit with nonetheless you’re feeling, sit. With an hour of just sitting here, if that wasn’t all that was occurring, what else was coming up? What were your strategies for not encountering actual experience?
Perhaps actual experience is boring, okay, my strategy is to get really excited by some idea. Or, possibly, actual experience feels really type of depressing at once, and I don’t need to feel that feeling, so I’m going to continually attempt to be up up up up. If I’m sitting here, I even have to someway be up, but especially if you happen to’re not allowing yourself to interact with the strategy, you’ll keep noticing it trying to return up. It’ll keep poking at you, because just resting with what’s actually occurring is intolerable. Isn’t that interesting. Just sitting here with whatever is definitely happening is intolerable, unless you’ve done numerous this, it’s intolerable. No, it’s not, I can tolerate it. Really? Were you in a position to not spin off into a method? Should you weren’t, you then just proved it was intolerable to simply simply rest together with your own experience.
Does everyone know concerning the battery experiment? This was in about 2013. A straightforward white room with a chair and a desk. The instructions are go within the room and sit there with no phone, no TV, no music, no books, nothing. That’s it, that’s all you have got to do: come out in quarter-hour. Oh, but they only occur to go away a 9 volt battery there. I don’t think they made you lick it. I believe it was something like a button, so the one thing you were allowed to do is give yourself a painful, actually, very unpleasant, electrical shock. So it was really surprising to the researchers—everyone could just sit there and hang around with their very own thoughts and feelings in a white room for quarter-hour without ever shocking themselves. Oops, I meant, nearly all of people sat there and shocked themselves as a substitute of just feeling their feelings, as a substitute of just being, 67%. It was greater than that—some did it lots of of times, normally young men. That’s an actual study: It was higher to take a seat there and shock yourself painfully time and again, than to easily be with experience without distraction. So, experience without distraction for the common person is intolerable, it’s worse than being electrically shocked time and again.
So, after I say, what’s your strategy? I’m serious. What did you employ as your battery to offer yourself some type of something so that you wouldn’t should just be with yourself? That’s what this experiment does. It’s a very easy experiment: what did you do? Because, there it’s—that’s it! There is likely to be multiple, however it shows you what your electric shock is.
Notice that, if you happen to listen, that’s your whole life you’re doing that, all day long, on daily basis, just because feeling what you’re feeling and being with yourself is intolerable. That’s sad, right, really sad. What’s so bad about sitting with yourself? Hint: it is likely to be in that pile of pondering that I said to not engage with. Regardless that we’re not stopping it or denying it, it’s there, but that could be pretty gnarly. We are able to work with that, too, and will work with it to make it rather more nice company, but to find a way to do that experiment we were doing, we’ll need to set it aside, because actually the pile of pondering isn’t really where we’re coming from anyway.
We’re coming from wide awake, wide openness that has no center, that has no time, that has no boundary, that has no starting, that claims yes to every little thing, it has no problem sitting with experience, has no problem sitting with the way you’re feeling at once, it has no problem sitting with being you in any respect, not the slightest problem with it.
Having the ability to sit with the way you’re feeling and sit with being you, will that directly solve all the issues on the earth? In a roundabout way. But, I might say that, all or not less than most, of the issues on the earth are caused because people can’t sit with how they’re feeling. So, actually, yeah, it solves many of the problems of the world. Many of the terrible things people do are because they will’t sit with how they’re feeling. So simply, simply, sitting here in a quiet room, being with the way you’re feeling, being you, is already starting to heal the world. Not less than for an hour of sitting here, you’re not only lashing out, or mindlessly consuming, or whatever, to distract, distract, distract, or try to alter the way you’re feeling. Only for a bit of while, not being a part of the issue, and never contributing to the pain.
So, it’s actually type of a giant deal to be willing, I mean, to be brave enough, to simply even try to take a seat here and face this thing that just about all people find intolerable. To face, which is, just this moment, just the way in which it’s, just yourself, exactly the way in which you might be. It’s a really significant act, every time you sit down and do this as a substitute of just being one other one in every of the dominoes falling, you’re pulling one in every of the dominoes out of the chain and breaking the chain. Every time you sit, you may imagine the entire world is just people hurting other people because they were hurting, and somewhere in there you pull the domino out, and just sit with the way you’re feeling and be with that, and it breaks the chain, it breaks the chain.
So, thanks for sitting with me tonight, and helping to show things around. If anyone has anything they’d prefer to say, reports, questions, ask for the microphone. Remember, that it’s going out to live to the web, not simply to this room.
Q&A
Questioner 1: Thanks for leading that meditation. I’ve been attempting to practice in life, just, let me feel something, but sitting here, I used to be getting this almost excruciating pain. It hurt quite a bit, and I still tried to feel it, but, around halfway, I noticed I began attempting to do something. It was like, Where is it? What’s the thing? It’s here, I’m looking, looking…
Michael: You were doing the self-inquiry query. That could be a doing, the instruction is to do something.
Questioner 1: Yeah. It felt like after I let go, it felt a bit of bit easier to go looking for that feeling. I actually wanted to search out something, and I had an idea of what that something was. I just need to say gratitude for that. and I desired to report what I used to be feeling. That is my first time here.
Michael: Thanks to your report. Awesome, what else? Other things coming up? Stuff arising, questions arising, reports arising?
Questioner 2: Hello. I even have type of a sassy, type of a curious query. Do you ever wander away in your thoughts?
Michael: Sure!
Questioner 2: Okay, just curious
Michael: I’m just an asshole, don’t hearken to me.
Questioner 2: Okay, cool, you’re identical to me. Is that this practice type of disengaging like pressing the clutch, is that this a thing that we are only practicing at once, or is that this a thing that we practice like on a regular basis.
Michael: Type of each. Obviously, there are specific sorts of thoughts that you just wouldn’t want to try this with, like if you happen to’re coding or something, you then engage with, with the intention to do the duty. It’s crucial to try this type of pondering. It is advisable to think to do your taxes, but that’s not an issue. That’s a functional sort of pondering that’s useful. But not doing that sort of pondering, even when walking around, it’s very useful to simply disengage from the type of slurry that goes on within the background. Nonetheless, I’ll say, in the long term—that is my tricky response from a moment ago—you may even eventually re-engage with the thought, because if you recognize there’s no person having it, and no person engaging, there’s no problem with engaging with it. It starts to open up, it becomes something very different, to place it in one other way. But there’s an in-between phase where disengaging opens up the room.
In the long term, meditation isn’t brain surgery that removes the power to think or something. You may get actually excellent at pondering very well, but for the needs of the meditation, disengaging with the ruminative self-talk is incredibly helpful. That does are inclined to die out quite a bit over time since you’re not feeding. It doesn’t actually do anything except make you miserable. But this isn’t some type of sledgehammer to the top, where you would possibly as well just chop out half your brain or something, that’s not what we’re doing. The power to think really clearly and very well goes up when it’s not all mucked up with ruminatory self, just chewing.
Questioner 2: Okay. I believe I understand, possibly, thanks.
Michael: What we’re doing is, I’ll just quote Shinzen for a minute, one in every of my fundamental teachers, is that we’re removing the drivenness of thought. There’s an addiction to pondering since it takes us out of experience. So we would like to remove the necessity to think. When that does truly go away, the actual have to think, like I want a fix, I must be distracted from this moment, I must be in my drama this moment, I want it, I want it. That’s what we’re ravenous out. But once that’s starved out for real, it doesn’t come back, and any pondering that happens after that is totally effective, since it’s not an addiction. Pondering isn’t the enemy. That’s why, even once we’re disengaging, we’re still letting it occur.
Questioner 3: Hi. I’m going to see if I can articulate this query. I used to be noticing this experience that feels type of prefer it’s piggybacking on what you were just saying, where there can be this opening, and something comes up, like possibly a sensation that’s a robust emotional quality. It’s a pocket of spaciousness like welcoming acceptance, after which something will come up, after which it’ll start to maneuver.
Michael: Which “it” moves?
Questioner 3: For instance, a sensation of emotion in my stomach will just arise in response to this openness or—I don’t know.
Michael: After which what moves?
Questioner 3: The energy. It appears like it wants to precise, the emotion wants to precise, or something in that vein. Then, the strategy that I appear to take pretty often in my meditation is to get enthusiastic about that emotion expressing, since it means I’m going to heal or something. So there’s excitement that arises, or a bit of little bit of grasping that happens. So it finally ends up being this backwards and forwards between this expansion after which a bit of contraction around the outcomes. Like “I’m going to feel this emotion now” however it’s actually a bit of little bit of a contraction. Then, I used to be noticing that it looks as if that motion, that type of like expansion contraction creates numerous speed or like there’s numerous speed happening
Michael: What type of speed?
Questioner 3: I used to be exploring it after which I used to be just type of like oh like the speed is high within the system. This expansion/emotion/contraction cycle, and it almost appears like too fast.
Michael: What’s going to occur if it goes just a bit of faster, gets really fast? It’s going to get buzzy, something’s going to interrupt.
Questioner 3: I don’t know, so I used to be just sitting with the speed for some time
and I used to be identical to, whoa, this is just too fast.
Michael: Too fast for what? What doesn’t like that? What desires to slow it down?
What desires to slow it down?
Questioner 3: That’s an amazing query. Well, that looks as if the meditative thing to do.
Michael: There’s just really tremendous energy and experience, right?
Questioner 3: Right, that’s really interesting, I’ll sit with that.
Michael: And, also, it’s really hard to get entangled within the strategy if it’s all moving so fast. It’s like there’s no time to grab on and switch it right into a [grr-rrr], right?
Questioner 3: I don’t know, I even have to give it some thought. I feel like I even have to take into consideration what you said first for a bit of while, then I can take into consideration what you only said.
Michael: What’s the thing that doesn’t want it to go fast, just test it out. That’s a superb query, thanks.
Other stuff coming up?
Questioner 4: Thanks very much for that, that was very, very nice. I’m wondering how the common strategy of concentrating on the breath pertains to this method. It looks as if the breath work can be preliminary to this in order that it concentrates you sufficient so you can actually be open, without being completely dragged around and thrown off the goal.
Michael: That’s the thought of doing that type of breath work, and typically, that’s how I might teach someone, just because it slows things down a bit of bit, right? But, really, really, really, it’s not crucial.
Questioner 4: I understand theoretically it’s not crucial however it looks as if…
Michael: Okay, so what’s your query?
Questioner 4: Well, what about doing the breath work first, before this method?
Michael: Go for it.
Questioner 4: Okay I’ll do it.
Michael: Again, that’s typically how I might teach it in an extended class, or another concentration object. It doesn’t should be the breath.
Questioner 5: Hello, hello. Thanks a lot for this sit. It was quite painful, but I’m very grateful. Wow, it closed beautifully, and that’s when it got really, really painful, really feeling out how connected every little thing is. I used to be, like, oh, I felt my resistance there, so I used to be identical to, okay we just got to be with it. I do have a matter, surprisingly. I normally just share. My query is, what’s the difference between openness and spaciousness? Also, does that even matter?
Michael: I’m just using them as synonyms, but they’re two different words. Spaciousness—I like that it really gets on the boundlessness part, but I add in openness. Again, it’s just one other word. People relate to it in a different way, however it is also a bit of more relational, open to others. It’s not only me being spacious, it’s openness. You felt that, right? It’s got a bit of different flavor, and it also points to that welcoming quality. Space might be cold or uncaring, whereas openness is warm, right? So it’s all just vocabulary. In a technique, such as you said, who cares, it doesn’t matter, but there’s stuff in there.
Questioner 5: I appreciate, that I felt that little soupçon difference. Yeah, thanks.
Michael: If I used to be talking Buddhist, I’d call it emptiness, but that sounds much more cold and uncaring and nothing, so we use every kind of words.
Questioner 6: Hi. I even have a matter about an idea that I believe I’ve heard type of mixed instruction from teachers on.
Michael: I’m sure you have got, it’s not like everyone’s teaching the identical thing, that’s of course. Perhaps that’s the reply, it’s just that different individuals are teaching various things.
Questioner 6: That is sensible. Perhaps I could get some clarification or guidance, because I’ve been doing this for some time and it seems to feel good, but possibly there’s a greater thing for me to do.
Michael: Like shocking yourself with a battery? [laughter]
Questioner 6: I’ve been doing this thing where I let my mind go really expansive, or possibly some body scanning, and I find some type of extreme emotion intensity in my chest or elsewhere, and it involves the surface. I rejoice a bit of bit, and it hurts quite a bit, and I’ll attempt to tune into it, and feel it out, and I can have this concept that I’m clearing something out of my system, or releasing some type of trauma. That does feel good, and I believe it actually has contributed to less tension in my body, and likewise in my pondering.
I’ve been doing this for quite some time, and I also know that this comes with every kind of assumptions about, I’m this body that has trauma in my body, and I’m clearing out my trauma. I need to be sure that that I’m not only going to get stuck in this sort of paradigm, or to what extent is that paradigm useful? I do know Frank Yang loves body scanning and likes this sort of thing, and I’ve also heard Rob Burbea says you may get stuck pondering you’re just oh you’re just this countless cycle of clearing trauma out of your body, so I desired to hear if you happen to had thoughts on that, or could see my confusion.
Michael: I can see it real clearly. All of us have that to a certain extent, and, actually, that
query touches into a very deep query about spirituality in any respect, which is, Are we doing anything, or is it just grace? Are we getting anywhere, or are we just finding we’re already God, right? It’s really the identical query, and that query never gets finished being answered.
So sometimes you’ll be in a cycle of clearing trauma, and also you’re clearing your trauma, and also you’re doing a superb job of clearing your trauma. After all that’s doing something useful, right? Other times you’ll be, like, it’s already complete, every little thing was all the time complete, there was never anything to do. And so they’re each right.
Questioner 6: Thanks
Join Michael’s mailing list and get notified of recent offerings and courses.
Donate to assist create more of those videos and more.
