Untitled Document

Berkeley, May 11, 2006

So welcome everyone.

One way that this gathering is different than, let’s say, a meditation class is that there is the invitation to see if something of what we are looking for in the results of meditation is here before we even begin meditating. Something that’s undistracted even if the mind is moving. Something that’s not a thing, which is why we often overlook it—why we miss it. Some sense of freedom that allows for beautiful states and uncomfortable states; that isn’t looking just for the comfortable. That’s untouched by what comes and goes and yet is right in the middle of each state that arises—each emotion and even each thought—so that nothing needs to be pushed away. Nothing needs to be held onto or even understood in the sense of trying to get something so that we know it.

So it’s a way of landing in which we’re not even trying to land on the razor’s edge because that’s too much solid ground. It’s somehow to move from the identification with this part of us that has been looking for safety and solidity and identity through the functioning mind, through the states that appear, through the body-mind’s identity. Just letting that functioning mind be natural. Just letting it be natural and discriminating and thinking and whatever it does naturally. But while that is naturally happening, while sensations are happening, while thoughts are happening, just to see what they are happening to. Who they are happening to? Where they are happening to? Then see what that’s like.

So in some ways this radical invitation is something different than what we’ve been taught—that there’s an identity, or a state or way to control experience, or a place to go that will one day achieve something, will be somebody—and then it will all be okay. If we get this… if we do this... then there will be a place, a way that we know our selves as this person that will be a good person and will be okay there. We keep trying to put this person together, to create this identity through thoughts and feelings and emotions and actions and behaviors. But this material we are using to build this house is not the material of our identity. It’s the material of our functioning. It’s the natural material of sensations and thoughts and feelings—but you can’t build an identity out of those. You can’t create something that will stay still because they are naturally coming and going.

So then this unique perspective, this hypothesis that has been offered is, is it possible that who we are, that our identity and our intelligence and our safety, is formless? If that is so, is who we are looking for is a formless identity even though the functioning of the body mind appear to this formlessness, and this formlessness is not only formless but has a quality of knowing—of knowingness—that isn’t mental, isn't conceptual, isn’t a reflection, but is directly knowing in a way that’s natural, that doesn’t have to know anything particularly, that can rest? Because it knows, can it drop out of the eyes and out of the brain and sigh—put down the burden of something that can’t be created, that can’t be stabilized—and find something that is already naturally stable in it’s formlessness? It’s already naturally vast and free and knowing and who we’ve always been.

That invitation, that reframing, is a way of presenting a possibility to look for, to tune into, to see if it’s true. To see what’s true if we include the place to look as formless and here and non-separate. And then to see what that feels like when we can’t quite land; when the usual habits of knowing something are running around a little like “Okay, I kind of get formless… whoops, slipped out of that one… Whoops! Oh, wow... there I am. Wow! What about... no don’t listen to that one.” Then, “Hold on... no don’t hold on. Let go... let go. I’m falling... no, there’s nowhere to fall. Ah... wait. I’m not anybody to fall... there’s no bottom... Aah! There’s no bottom. No, that’s right... there’s no time so there’s nowhere to go. I’m everywhere... no there’s no I.” [laughter] The habit keeps trying to catch hold and find its ground.

So even if that happens, what if that wasn’t a problem? What if that was just the natural process of reframing or realizing or an unfolding of something? Because the new way of finding the awakeness is in realizing that it includes even that—that struggle, that old movement, that identification—finding peace, and then losing it.

What if all of that was included? What if all there was was consciousness? What if there wasn’t anywhere else to go? What if there wasn’t anything else that opposed that, that wasn’t included? Any state? Any thing? That everything was just made of it, appearing in different guises? Yet ultimately uncaused, formless, empty. And in its emptiness, full because there is nothing left out—it’s not a vacuum. It just means not having to try to hold on.

Almost expect some habit, some old habit to come in to try to re-establish itself. See if some sense of this formlessness has a quality of welcoming, accepting—of not-resisting. So that the formless awakeness is here and it’s not detached. It’s got a quality of some kind of unconditional love, connectedness, non-separation that you can see. Tune in and feel to see whether it’s true. Even as it is felt, it can get subtler. It’s almost like the welcoming is an antidote. It’s not to be held onto as if it’s something, but it just allows everything to be as it is.

So it’s almost like that first recognition occurs by stopping, noticing the space. Letting go of identifying with thought. Not resisting; including everything. It brings some sense of the formless quality. Then some of the old habit will usually come back. It becomes an inquiry to see who it is that anything that arises is appearing to because it is about, “What am I?” or, “Who am I?”

So if even the emptiness of the peace is appearing to the ego, that’s one thing. See if the peace and emptiness are appearing to emptiness, and the habit of mind is appearing to the emptiness. See if the fear and doubt is appearing to the mind or appearing to the emptiness? So it’s not a matter of what’s arising. It’s not a matter of the state that’s happening in this form. You can be upset or worried. Really the more important inquiry is, “Who is it happening to? What’s this that knows it? Where is that?”

So that we don’t get back into the subtle sense of trying to control experience by thinking that when we have peace then that’s awakeness, and if something disturbs the peace, then that’s not awakeness. It’s really about who we are. And then life can happen. There are good days and bad days and human experiences that are pleasurable and painful. Who’s having them? Who are they occurring to? Are they a threat? Comfortable? Uncomfortable? Is comfortable a good place to build an identity? Is uncomfortable something to be defended immediately? Create a defense around? Or is there some way to go, initially at any time, that you remember to remember? To see, “Who am I? Who’s here now? Who is this occurring to? What’s here and what’s the identity?” So the secondary reactions don’t create an identity.

The problem is not fear arising; it’s the, “I shouldn’t have fear.” That creates the “I” identity—“I shouldn’t have fear. Let me try to not have fear.” Even if the state can be skillfully covered over or put aside, there is still some identity that is keeping it over to the side. That has won a small battle and lost the war because the only way to win the war is to surrender and go to the winning side. [laughter]

There is no fight. Nothing opposed. And yet within that which there is nothing opposed, the opposites appear and they are welcomed. Life is lived in a human way. It’s not a perfectionist controlled spiritual persona that emerges, but a much more free, open, alive, awake way to feel, to live. Just to feel what the difference is between living a controlled peaceful life and an alive life as this free awakeness that doesn’t know what will happen in the next moment—doesn’t know the thing that will happen but somehow knows that it’s okay because there is nothing that can happen that can threaten who you when you are that identity of the emptiness that is everything.

It’s really feeling that okay ness with experience arising. And feeling the difference when the habit of identity is in the center as identity, masquerading as identity, and then seeing what it’s like when there is a sense of formless identity; formless, awake knowing. Then having some kind of respect for the newness of that.

That is not a common thing so there is quite a bit of reactivity in the system from the old identity that has habitually been running the show, trying to run the show, or thinking it’s running the show. So what’s it like to feel the difference? To feel in any moment, “Who am I?” so that it doesn’t become just a meditation, but just awareness looking to itself.

If awareness looks to itself as a thought or reflection we either get identification—which is sort of a merged sense or being in the experience, or self-consciousness—which is a reflected identity which is conscious, judgmental and monitory. Awareness can also look to find the formlessness, which then relaxes. The awareness that looks meets itself as not-two. And there is something that lets go. So what would you say? Anybody like to say what the difference is? You feel the difference? We have a microphone? Put your hand up and she’ll pass it around.

Q1: I notice lately when I’m…

L: I think it’s on... yes.

Q1: ... doing the inquiry that I feel the vastness and then I’ll notice that I’m really identified with some story I’m involved in—something I think is going to happen or some juicy drama of some sort. Then I’ll go, “Wow, that’s so interesting that I will be so desirous of contracting into this story.” Then I’ll go back to the vastness. So I feel almost like there is a physical locality to it...

L: Yes.

V: Like I’m going like this—vast—to that. But I don’t think there could be a locality. It’s kind of confusing to tell you the truth. What is it? I get that there’s vastness. I get that there’s all this stuff that we’re looking at, participating in and identifying with—including our thoughts and feelings—but I don’t get what it is that’s going back and forth.

L: That’s a good question. Let’s look at all three. The first one is the beginning recognition of awakening. In some ways we’ve taken ourselves to be just the body-mind, which is either contracted or just self-reflecting—reflecting on itself within the body, within the mind, within the world. Then some movement of awareness occurs to recognize that there’s this non-local vast awareness, which somehow can’t be said to be known by the senses because it’s behind our heads a foot or more. So what could be feeling that? What could be aware of this? It can’t be sight. It’s not just hearing. It’s not sensation of the skin, smell. Maybe taste? [laughter]

So there already, we’ve moved beyond the material definition of who we are. That one move into this vast awareness is something that’s not really even on the map of most western psychologies and philosophies—non-local awareness. Not even witness consciousness; not even one spot that’s looking down like an observing ego, but actually a 360 degree sense that has an effect. It’s not like it’s just cool, it’s not like an amusement park ride. But there is something that relaxes and opens when that is the center; the centerless-center. Along with the fact that it’s just amazing or non-material, there is an experience of it and the way the whole system, including the body-mind, feels when that is the centerless-center. What would you say then of those qualities?

Q1: It feels very accepting and non-judgmental and intelligent, and loving and vast.

L: Yes. So all of those qualities that in some ways we’ve been pursuing, trying to develop in our selves, with one movement of awareness they are there naturally—accepting, loving, intelligent, silent, peaceful. Everything we’ve been looking for is this far away. And it’s already naturally present.

That’s the first thing that’s amazing. They call that in the Dzogchen tradition “recognition.” That when you recognize that, that in some ways, it is an awakening in itself. That’s something that many people never awaken to. Just that. It’s like, “Oh.” I know people who said that that changed their lives. When it happened to them during some other activity, not even in a setting like this where it was taught as a pointing out, they were freed of the small sense of self. The me just let go and there was a bigger sense of who they were. Sometimes they will call it a “free me” and sometimes they call it the “Holy Spirit” or “God” or something other because it’s like, “Oh, there is something bigger than me that’s loving and accepting—the beloved.” Or it can feel like it’s the small me that’s been freed to recognize itself like this.

You’ve also described how it seems that awareness has to keep looking in the mind or checking all the comments of the discriminating mind. Like, “What’s that? What did that person say? I better understand it.” Then the awareness just joins with that and follows its commentary so tightly that it merges with it, and the sense is, “That’s who I am. I’m the commentator. I’m the one who’s debating with the commentator. I’m joining with the functioning dualistic mind, which is just moving and discriminating and commenting on things just the way sensations are moving naturally.”

Q1: It’s probably exactly what you are saying, but I experience it like I’m creating this nifty drama. Even if it’s not nifty, it could be tedious and painful, but I can sense some excitement like a child about to play a game. “I’m going to solve it this time.” I can feel my sense of enjoyment at creating the story that I’m going to identify myself with. It’s not like watching clouds or thoughts go by, it’s creating something.

L: On some level there is some creating of a story. If I asked you if you could create a story, something like that, if you just notice, just sit and say, “I’m not going to create any stories” some stories will be created and then something will either identify and join with them and get excited, or judge them. So mostly what’s happening is old patterns are appearing as stories, and there is some joining or creative ride of them, like riding down the river. But the river is really running anyhow because if you just stop and sit here and don’t do anything the stories will start to arise. Anyone who’s sat in a retreat has seen that. So there is something moving—some sensations, emotions, aliveness, patterning, habit. If you look at some of the neurobiology that’s happening there are neurons firing. These peptides are just starting a pattern and then looking to be fed. They are looking for the same stimulus so that they can repeat the pattern again. If they don’t get it, after a while, they will just relax and they will change their pattern. But every time they are met they are reinforced. So if you really see that, you see that that is partly what meditation is really about—not responding to the habit.

Q1: So my question is, if there is the vastness and then there is the habit, surely the vastness doesn’t go, “Oh, I’ll go do that…”

L: That’s right.

Q1: What’s the connector? That’s what I don’t get.

L: Before I even answer that, there’s the vastness—that’s amazing. Then there’s the habit of mind. Then there’s also, even within the life, it’s not about being open all the time because in being human, there are some contractions. So it’s not even openness versus contraction, ultimately. Initially it is getting out of the closed contraction to say, “Oh there’s vastness.”

But then within the openness there is both contraction and openness. That’s the thing. Often we look for or feel or set up a new dualism that says, “Openness is good; contraction is bad.” But there is actually openness and contraction within the openness. Within the free, open sky there is life. Because the idea is not to be open and have no problem and just walk around like a zombie. There is something that is awake even in the contraction, even in the identification. Even the engagement with life can be free in a way that it’s awake even while it’s identifying, even while it’s contracted.

One of the things that moves is thought, perception. The other thing that actually moves back and forth is awareness itself. Just as this form is a form made of awareness—it’s local here and it’s local there—it’s ultimately empty and not separate. But it’s also arising particularly, seemingly in form. Awareness can arise particularly—it can split itself off. That’s why they say, “Recognize your self,” or, “The self finds the self.”

We know who the self is but who’s the self who finds the self? It’s not the ego that finds the self; it’s not the ego that returns to the self. It’s the local awareness which is yet not a soul, it’s not the conditioning, it’s not the ego, it’s not the habits; it’s what is here that actually is the particular being that is here—that’s awake here, that’s not different than there. The field knows itself everywhere but it knows itself particularly. And the awareness can move and get caught.

Just from this point of view of perception and awareness, one of the ways to simply say what this awakening and identification thing is about, is to say that local awareness can move. So it moves to your left foot. It can move to your left hand. It can move to hearing. Now it can move to thought. Now it can identify with thought and become an “I.” Now it can notice it’s identified and release. In some ways that’s one of the simplest descriptions of what this whole thing is about.

Local awareness can move and then it can identify and then it can unhook. It can notice, and then it can notice itself as vastness or everything. Then when it does, it’s free of the local fast-moving need to check with thought—and it knows everything that it knew even when it was moving around really quickly. Like, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s in my foot? How am I feeling? My ears are feeling okay. What’s this? What did he just say? I better try and remember that.” If it just opens then it can know how your body’s feeling, what’s being said without splitting off or without checking with thought. Because when it checks with thought the habit is for it to get lost in thought.

Do you feel just that one movement? Just feel how it can hook and let go. Local awareness is what moves and ego is what’s formed when it gets lost in thought. Then feels like it constellates or enmeshes or closes down. You feel that? You can do it. You can play with it yourself. You can form an I by just letting local awareness go to a thought or a feeling and then start bouncing around in it. “Oh yes, right.” The moment you go, “Wait a minute! Hold on here! What’s going on? This isn’t right!”

Q1: That’s exactly what I was trying to describe. So another word for local awareness is attention?

L: Yes. Attention has been used a lot.

Q1: So is attention the connector between the vastness and the experience? Everything from what we see to our thoughts and feelings and bodily sensations? Is that the connector, the attention?

L: It seems to be, yes. And to really see what attention is has been one of my interests. When the word attention is used commonly it’s more often referring to perception or focus. But what’s focus? We know what’s attended to and it’s often thought to be a mental faculty. Like, “Okay, you can really keep your attention.” You can keep your attention on your breath.

The reason that people usually can’t meditate—most people have a tremendously hard time counting their breath to ten because the mind is trying to do it and it won’t do it. It doesn’t like to do it. “I want to run around... I’m not going to do this... this is no good.”

But awareness, local awareness, can hang out there easily if it is also allowed to hang out as vast awareness. So as you breathe in, notice the vast awareness; as you breathe out, notice the breath at your nostril, your heart or your belly so that something can either move to vast awareness or move to contact… move to vast awareness... move to contact. Then contact can be maintained and what’s aware of the contact is the vastness. Then there is no strain because there is no thought, there is no mind.

That’s actually one of the main things that I’m playing with, and when I run it by a lot of people they don’t know what I’m talking about because it’s not clearly in the literature. It’s said all the time, “Well just bring your attention to the natural state.” So who’s bringing it? What is it? We know the natural state, which was the first big discovery, like, “Wow, that one’s good!” But there’s the whole school that says, “You can’t do that because the ego is not the doer and so you have to do nothing. So you can’t do that. Anything that is an attempt to do something is an attempt at creating something. So don’t try.” So that’s all. Sometimes not doing anything can be a useful technique, because it can also reveal this. But that’s not the only way. And it seems like something does move.

So whether you just stop, or surrender or let go, or let be or don’t do anything; it’s more about what moves next. Ramana Maharshi said, “Let your awareness remain at home in your heart. And then it doesn’t have to go out to know.” I think he was talking about this exact thing—if you just let your local awareness, that has been running around and splitting off from the global awareness thinking it had to check everything out, if it stays at home then it’s already connected so it doesn’t have to go out. It doesn’t have to split off and look everywhere. There’s kind of a knowingness that is naturally connected. Anyone have a feel for that?

You want to find a way to feel into that so you are not holding it there. You are not capturing awareness in the prison of the heart; you are letting it remain in the heart. When it remains in the heart it actually goes out through the heart so that it’s not like it’s kept in the heart—it’s just that the heart is as big as the universe.

Q1: It does feel like a locality. I can feel it sort of here and sort of back there. It’s the weirdest thing because I know there can’t be any locality, but it sort of feels like…

L: It feels like it. Ultimately it is empty and has no center. When it touches form, and when form comes back into formless, either here in the heart area or sometimes in the dan-tien, there is a sense that there’s an easier center or openness to the both-and of the form and the formless. Because when the center is up here in the eyes and the head, where it is for most of us, then the local awareness can’t find a place to rest; can’t find its way home. It’s got to find its way home, which is ultimately the vastness.

But when the vastness comes home then it feels like it’s more below the neck somewhere—which includes the senses and the head, but it doesn’t have to go up to thought and check all the time. It’s like the awareness comes down to the heart, and from this new center the information is available from the vast field.

So that’s more about embodiment. It’s not about the ultimate nature, which is formless and center-less, but the embodied. The movement between formless and form seems to contact somewhere below the neck if it feels what it feels—fluid. Yes. Thank you. Anyone else about that?

The field, just feel that local awareness when it moves. Feel how it hooks on and it can let go. It can look to the vastness and then the vastness can know. And then the old habit can go split off a little bit, get all caught up and re-create an identity. Then there’s like an, “Oh!” But just that movement. Anyone want to say anything about that? Is that how it feels or does it feel differently?

DIALOGUES

Q1: The stories that I go into identity with do seem to come from the head center. The reminder to put my attention sort of back and down makes that vastness feels much more accessible. There doesn’t seem to be a problem at that point. It doesn’t feel like I’m going forward and back so much.

L: Yes. It also feels different than just being out in the vastness when there is a contact connection with the heart.

Q1: Yes it feels better when it’s body-centered. I feel out in the ozone a lot; to me that’s not necessarily a good place. I want it to be embodied. I want it to be here on earth while I have a body.

L: Yes. Great. Thanks. Anybody else?

Q2: Your first description of what it is that recognizes the space was described as having all these qualities. But to me it seems like it has no qualities, it’s just a functioning that can see and experience space and know that it is without any quality.

L: Yes—ultimately, no qualities.

Q2: Okay. That beautiful explanation of no ground actually created a wonderful ground because it was a way of being able to understand and experience the mystery of the self in space, and also to be more comfortable with the sense of not knowing what’s going on .

L: Right.

Q2: I guess there is not much to hold onto. [laughter] But it seems like it’s a way to understand this questioning of a sense of one’s self, and that questioning of what is going on.

L: What is a way of understanding that?

Q2: Groundlessness. Something that observes groundlessness.

L: That’s observing it like in it or outside of it?

Q2: Both. It hooks onto the observation and then lets go. There is still recognition or there is still some knowing that something is going on.

L: So even when it isn’t looking at it, when awareness actually unhooks and there is just groundlessness, there is still a kind of knowing, right? You can see that without an observer and observed?

Q2: Only until an observer comes.

L: Yes.

Q2: You seem to be talking about unhooking. You’re teaching the ability to unhook.

L: Yes. So when you are unhooked with the groundlessness there is a knowingness that’s not an observer or observed. Observer may come back, and observed may come back, but during that moment of just groundless awareness does there need to be an observer or observed to see?

Q2: The mind coming to understand what’s going on seems to be the same play of the wave that’s happening.

L: Yes. So how’s the ocean underneath the waves?

Q2: A home? You are saying that’s a home?

L: I didn’t say that; you said that. [laughter]

Q2: Well, it seems…

L: Sounds good to me.

Q2: It seems like there is not enough information to hang.

L: There is almost no information.

Q2: Okay. Yes. To hang out there.

L: Do you need information to hang out?

Q2: No.

L: So if there is a knowingness, it’s kind of the same thing as the groundlessness. It’s like moving to where you think you need a ground and then you realize. “Oh, the groundlessness is the ground.” It’s the same thing with knowing and information. At first it feels like, “Oh, in order to have knowledge or be knowing, I need information.” Then it’s like, “Oh, wait a minute! There’s a knowing that has no information. That’s like the groundlessness that’s the ground. It’s knowing, but there is nothing to know.”

Q2: The thought of that is exciting.

L: [laughter] Okay.

Q2: But it’s the thought of that.

L: In the experience, even if there’s not an ability to describe it or move from it to thinking about it, or talking about it, there’s a moment, and all you have to say is “Ah.” Which means, “Cool.” So it doesn’t need to speak yet. It doesn’t need to describe anything or talk about itself. But just like the sense that you have now that you may not have had before of the groundlessness being the ground, it’s kind of the same thing with the knowingness that has no knowledge of anything. That’s the real knowingness, just like the ground is the real groundlessness. It doesn’t need any information; it’s the whole field. It’s potential. It just is. Anything can arise. Any information can arise from it at any moment but it doesn’t have to until it needs to.

Q2: Very cool.

L: Very cool. [laughter] That’s a double “Ah!” [laughter] Yes, because that’s the amazing thing. When you start to get a glimpse of something like that, like, “Oh, hmm”, everything can then relax because it’s already as it is. We think to know or for something important to happen, we’ve got to go to the brain or the mind. This universe is being created and all sorts of things are happening in these millions of galaxies. Where is the brain of the universe? Which part is it located in?

It’s the same with us. [laughter] Even the concept of God is like trying to create a brain somewhere. We are projecting our ego out as if it’s one being that’s organizing it. What if we let go of that concept that there’s a figure, a human projection of one controller? That it’s just intelligence? The field is intelligent—everywhere. Same thing here. It’s the field that knows. Then everything can follow, can unfold from there.

Yes? Hi.

Q3: I’m wondering, from your experience of unhooking and not identifying with who you thought you were .. this whole process or the I..

L: Yes.

Q3: In this whole process of unhooking and not identifying with who I thought I was, I’m seeing how I’m not hooking into someone else’s stuff as much, either. Somehow this can be a problem for people in my family who know me, who feel like I’m pulling back a bit. And it does feel a lot less personal.

L: Yes.

Q3: So there’s still a sense of love for them but they can tell, and I have been told—since I have five sisters—they have a sense of me pulling back a bit. On one hand I just say, “That’s what it is.” On the other hand there is a kind of sadness because I don’t want someone to feel that way. But I can see as this I is becoming less personal, that how it is relating to other “I’s” is becoming less personal too. Can you say something about your own experience with this?

L: Right. Less personal—certainly in the way that it was personal before. And often in the beginning my experience was the same way. It almost swings the pendulum a little bit toward the impersonal in that a lot of the negatives go away—the hooks on the personal level go away. So initially there’s almost like a blankness or “everything’s cool” or “everything's okay”—a little of that. Then it seems that some of the aliveness comes back and things are different again.

Some people may not like the way that you engage with them because it’s different than the old story or role you were playing. But there’s more juice there. You’re more alive and real than you were before and maybe more connected or loving or listening or willing to go along or be with people. And in other ways you can just be more real and say, “No, I don’t want to do that. But I would like to see you some other time. What about this?” So there is some kind of strength and there is some kind of patience and aliveness that comes back.

But it does change things, as many things do. But staying with it I’ve found that most people will come around, will see there’s not a giving up on them. There is not an uncaring detached new persona, although that can be the first stage and it can even feel like that to yourself. It did to me a little bit—a little disengagement before the new engagement happens. I think at one point Paige, my wife, had to grab me and say, “Come back! Where did you go? I want you back here!” I was like, “Okay. Alright. Cool. That’s good. I’m here.” But something was in this blissed-out, everything’s okay. That was a kind of transition stage. At the time I didn’t know that. I kind of wanted it to stay. But it changed for the better and became more real, more ordinary—in a good sense.

L: Yes?

Q4: I’m interested in a comment you made a little earlier about within the openness there are contractions.

L: Yes.

Q4: I want to relate a story that I read today and get your take on it. The story takes place at a fancy restaurant and a rich business guy comes in and sits down with a few of his associates. And the sommelier, the guy in charge of the wine, comes up and hands them the wine list. The rich guy is very, very critical of the wine list says, “Well you obviously have no wines of any value here.” The sommelier feels really bad and he wishes that he had some comeback. Then two hours later in the car he thinks, “Oh, I should have said, ‘we only have valuable wines for valuable people. You obviously aren’t valuable.’” I tell that story just as a generic, “I got my feelings hurt.”

L: Right. Yes.

Q4: What’s your take? You’re the sommelier. Have you transcended the rich businessman’s insult? Is that where we’re going? [laughter] Or do you say to the guy, you drop out of your role as the professional guy and say, “Gee, you’ve hurt my feelings. I’ve put a lot of thought into this wine list.” Or something else?

In this specific situation or in life in general, where does one go with hurt feelings where someone has the intention to zing you and they have zung you? The mind is cranking and cranking, and two hours later it finally comes up with a re-zinger. But that can’t be where we’re going.

L: No, that’s not where we’re going, to focus on the re-zinging.

Q4: I guess within the openness and the vastness that you mentioned there is contraction.

L: Absolutely.

Q4: How does that dance work? Even within that specific example?

L: Let’s say for the sake of the example that the person’s intention is to give a hot potato to the other, to poke them in the rib or zing somebody. If you don’t see right away that it’s their stuff, it can get you and give you a sensitive sense in your ribs. Then at any point you can wake up from that.

Q4: What does waking up look like from that?

L: It can look along that way, as it’s happening. It has unbelievably myriad potential to either just have compassion for that person or feel like, “Well they are free. They are free to have that opinion about this wine list. That’s one person’s opinion. That’s this person’s now.” And there is another table and another person and everyone is allowed to be free.

Q4: I don’t see the contraction. It seems like this would be a moment to be contracted. I got hurt. This is my God-given right to react. Talking about the continuum within the openness, it seems like, “Oh my God, this is the perfect moment to be closed.”

L: Certainly you can have those feelings at any point. Within life’s give-and-take there’s always responses and packets of energy that trigger stuff that has been packed down and repressed. Stories or patterns from your own particular system will get triggered and come up. There will be anger or fear, or wanting to say something, or even saying something. That happens to the extent that it happens. And in some ways it’s not really the area for change. It’s not to focus the change on doing a personality transformation or self improvement in that area.

It’s really about any moment being fully alive and feeling. And yet within the feeling there is awakeness to some extent or another. And to some extent or another we are always both at any moment—we’re always both human and both this true nature. To some degree or another it’s always both.

Even the perfect state is often described like, what you were saying Pat, which is to be in bliss all the time or be above all the time, or non-reactive; to not let anything hurt you or ever feel anything. To be almost spiritually transcendent from all human affairs—and that’s not it. That doesn’t appear to be it.

It seems to be that there is a compassion, there is a sensitivity. But it comes in different forms—the Dalai Lama standing up for the rights of his country or something. He was speaking on this not backing down, but not taking up arms or putting down the Chinese. And during a talk where he was speaking out, somebody came up and told him that one of the nuns that had been in prison had died, and he just started weeping. And he wept for a few minutes. Then he picked up a handkerchief and started speaking again.

So it’s kind of like that—the heart is open, the feelings are there. It’s not transcending in terms of being above. You just have to see what the aliveness is in the moment. You can feel the difference between that and when you feel every situation is a personal attack. You could, in that feeling of personal identification, feel like your whole life is a personal attack. So you can be so identified that you don’t really have a connection to the awakeness in the moment. Then you are reactive all the time. But even then, there is nothing that’s outside of what is, which is only consciousness playing these different forms.

Q4: Could it ever be consciousness just wanting to defend itself? Wanting to make the mean business man stop?

L: Sure.

Q4: I guess it’s kind of an archetypal, human thing of somebody trying to get a position over somebody, and then the person trying to get re-positioned. I could tell a million stories that I’ve been through. But it feels very, “Ah!”—something I’m always dealing with.

L: Yes. So in some ways there is a very human feeling but the other thing is one of the main movements of ego is it wants to find something to oppose. It wants to find conflict in order to re-create itself. It wants to find opposition. It wants to get one up, or one down. It wants to find right and wrong. So see this happening at any moment. I know for me that is one of the seeings of the movement—it wants to either negate and whitewash and deny everything, like everything’s okay and there’s no problem in some form or another; denial on that level of relative events—or it wants to fight.

Fight or flight, or freeze or deny. So it’s looking to when the local awareness is identified with the functioning dualistic mind, which is primarily survival-based. It’s going to fight, flee or freeze and try to gain, gather and protect itself. It’s going to be self-centered and self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing and feel like it shouldn’t be hurt and it should fight back. It’s going to oppose—it’s going to look for opposites to try to survive. To try to find its identity and to try to survive as this one opposed to the others.

So at any point it is going to feel hurt, or right, or righteous, or not good enough, or better than. Any point that pure awakeness is there, it’s going to feel like there is no problem. And when the two of them dance it’s going to feel like there is some energy going on, there is some contact, there is some communication going on and it’s unknown how it’s going to be responded to, and at what level along the pendulum at any moment you’re going to respond.

So there is something between the two—between the “everything is a threat” and “there’s no problem”. There’s some kind of aliveness that’s, in any moment, seeing the levels of anybody its meeting, and feeling the energy.

When you see somebody putting somebody down you can see sometimes that you feel like it’s time to say something. At another point you can say, “Oh this guy is just looking for me; he wants me to feed the fire here. He wants me to say something because that’s the trouble he’s looking for. He’s looking for trouble and I’m not playing—that’s his problem.” Or something like that.

There is some seeing that starts to happen, on a personal level, that starts to clear away some of our own emotional identity in terms of survival and personal interaction. Some of that begins to be taken less personally. It becomes less about our own survival and just seeing that somebody else is having a bad day and they are saying something about their reality. They are saying “I don’t like anything.” [laughter] They won’t like whatever you put in front of them, whether it’s the wine list or the food. So they are just talking about themselves.

Q4: Okay.

L: So it unfolds. And it will show up for you in a different way at any different moment. There is no prescription about how it looks; it’s almost in the aliveness itself. Everything is kind of amazing; you start to surprise yourself about what you are saying or doing, or not saying or doing. It’s like, “That’s not like me.”

Q4: Great. Thanks.

L: Some small one will catch you and then a big one will be like, “Huh? That’s not like me, too. That was the big one, and that was the small one.” We’ll see how that goes.

L: One more.

Q5: Just an observation. You were talking about attention earlier. It really is kind of interesting looking at the narrowing, the focus. It seems like you just notice the self-awareness of events without needing to put attention on any one thing, necessarily. It’s a very interesting contrast to what happens with thought, which just seems in such self-enrapture. It is an amazing power of thoughts here—grab attention. That’s a poor way to say it. It’s an enrapture with itself, but it’s self-awareness

L: That’s a good question. Is it thought that grabs awareness or is it awareness that merges with thought? It seems like, the way we’ve been taught, is that it’s thought that grabs hold because it’s the one that’s moving, and it’s moving quickly like a train.

The story starts and the story is the subject. But is that true? Because when you sit in meditation thoughts can run as fast as they want and unless awareness moves to it—if awareness remains open and doesn’t go to it—then thought can’t grab it. It seems to me that thought is innocent and awareness is just curious.

Q5: It seems like it’s almost a conscious, long-term disbelief that pulls awareness out of thought—reeling it in time and time again, and then again, and again. But that’s not really what we are.

L: Right. By conscious disbelief you mean it doesn’t what? What would you say about that? Say something about that.

Q5: I can believe that I’m primarily my mind and my thoughts and my stories about myself as a separate identity. Or I can let go of that belief and notice the self-awareness of all events going on around me. It almost takes this disbelief, this reminder, which as soon as it goes back into thought that that’s not it.

L: Yes. So by disbelief it’s sort of like a sense of not believing? In other words it needs some knowing that belief is not the final word about what’s really true?

Q5: Right. There is an assumption that because all these events go on—you see, and you hear, and you taste, and you think and you act—that I’m a separate individual. And it’s deconstructing that. “Oh, maybe that’s not the case”, and look at the fallacy of that group of assumptions.

L: That’s right. Yes. Because there is action, because there is thinking, because there is functioning, then this must be who I am.

Q5: Right. It seems there’s another way that it’s possible to notice a lot of self-aware events going on.

L: That’s right. A lot of events happening to this self-awareness. Yes. And that that’s a different identity. If it’s this package that’s who I am—just the motion and the action and thought and feeling—if that’s the only place we’re looking, then there’s a very definite experience of who we are. But then, as you say, if this self-awareness is included or looked at, or awareness goes to that, and lets that awareness look at the events…

Q5: Or even through the events. Self-awareness of the events is what’s driving me at the moment.

L: Then there’s a whole shift, right?

Q5: Yes.

L: Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good to see you.