I looked at the sign-up sheet for this class and thought, oh, it's getting big. And I got a little frightened. And then I thought, oh, good. What's your name again? Peg. Peg. Are there any other pegs or peggy? Peg. Peg. And good for me, and good for you, the big group is good because people are afraid of big groups usually. Speaking of big groups. So... Some of you have done other workshops here on Care and Carelessness, right?

[01:15]

How many have done one before? Not so many. At the end of the last minute, people wanted to keep going. Wanted another one, but did he come back? Yeah. Once you get into it, you kind of want to keep working with it, but then if you get away from it for a while, maybe other things come up more interesting. So, here is something that a lot of people are working with, closely related to peers. inseparable daily anxiety. So these are things that most people have to deal with.

[02:20]

Well, everybody has to deal with anxiety. Most people have to deal somewhat with fear. And so they're just things we have to work with. But more than that, they're actually very closely related to on the process of getting in trouble and getting entangled and enslaved. They're involved in those processes by which we make lots of mistakes and do terrible things. And they're also involved in the process of doing good and becoming enlightened. on a very important topic still. So I would say that most people are in kind of a crisis concerning anxiety and fear.

[03:26]

I guess everybody is actually And I think some of you have learned that there's a Chinese term for crisis. Two Chinese characters. One character means danger. The other character means opportunity. So characters together mean crisis. So here is a very dangerous thing. If we don't face up to it and have courage in the face of it, we can be made to do anything. In the other hand, if we do face it, it can take us

[04:38]

The facing of it can take us into the most subtle realms of understanding ourselves and all things. Similarly, anxiety is dangerous in a different way because anxiety, if you don't face anxiety, you can't exactly be manipulated by anxiety the way you can be manipulated by fear. I'll explain that to you more later, but people can manipulate themselves and be manipulated by others and manipulate others by fear because fear is object-oriented. So people can be controlled and driven around by fear. But anxiety can't exactly drive people with it because it isn't object-oriented. The danger of anxiety is not so much that we will be driven directly.

[05:45]

Well, one of the dangers of anxiety is that we're driven from anxiety to fear. And there again, we've driven it to a realm where we can be controlled by our inability to work from fear. But the more immediate danger of anxiety is that we will withdraw from being present with a being, our self, we will, you know, diminish our self, be less present and self-expressive in order to attempt to reduce or escape anxiety. This does not work, but this is one of the dangers that we take that approach. The opportunity of finding a way to face anxiety and work with it is that we can see what we really are and

[07:02]

become free of our usual ideas of what we are through anxiety. Through anxiety, through healing anxiety properly. So we're ongoingly in a crisis vis-a-vis fear and anxiety. They're both dangerous and they both have great opportunities. So there. Yeah, they're like very sharp swords. Very, very strong medicine, even, you could say. There may be some things in our life that aren't dangerous.

[08:13]

I don't know if there is anything like that. Maybe there is something like that. Which is fine if there is. I don't know what. Maybe a... I just thought of various things. I thought of a ball, you know. The ball's a little bit dangerous because, you know, if you get a small ball and you put it in a kid's mouth, they could choke. You think, well, how about a big soft ball? Well, you know, if it gets deflated, it could fall in the water and, you know, smother some animal or something. I don't know. It's hard for me to think of something that's not dangerous. But if there is something that's dangerous, I have no problem with it. Of course, because it's not dangerous. But it's mostly through working with dangerous things that we develop skill. The Buddhist term actually is a skill derived from the word krusa, which is a type of grass, which the Buddha recommended for making meditation seeds.

[09:19]

And he recommended that the monk brought it and harvest this kind of tall grass and make a pile out of it and they sit on this grass, which made a nice surface and also protected their bottoms from its next fighting them. But this grass that he recommended with has a sharp edge, and so you could cut yourself as you harvest it. So if you were unskillful, you'd cut your hands on the grass. If you learned how to harvest the grass skillfully, you could harvest it without cutting yourself. It makes a nice seed, but also it can develop skill. because it is dangerous. So it's an opportunity to have a nice seat and to develop a skill and learn how to be careful handling something that's dangerous. And that term, that word for grasp, which is reverting from kusa to kushula. Kushula then becomes skillful or wholesome or appropriate.

[10:22]

And in general, it means the appropriate way of dealing with what the spirit is. So in the case of a sharp piece of grasp, You want to develop the way to get a hold of it and, you know, you don't want to grab it too hard or too softly. So the same with your fear. You don't want to grab it too hard or too soft. Same with your anxiety. What's the proper relationship to these things? What's the skillful, wholesome way of dealing with these phenomena? That's the question. I guess I have a feeling like I feel like anxiety... Maybe I'm not going to accept priorities.

[11:48]

I was going to try to say that I feel like anxiety is simply... Anxiety is simply the human condition we are. normally, naturally anxious. Basically all the time. It's not an unusual thing. It's an omnipresent thing. Some people are very happy to hear that because they know they're anxious. There's quite a few people who think it's just them. They're happy to hear that it's not just them. And even I'll tell you that Shaky Muni Buddha, founder of Buddhists, was anxious. If there is a sense, and then even a belief on top of the sense, in an independent self,

[12:59]

of a limited self, of a limited individual. If we have a sense like that and we give it some credence or a lot of credence, which most of us do, if we believe in our own being then we will be we will experience anxiety. If you don't have such a sense and or you attribute our reality to that sense, then you won't have anxiety. But if you don't, you're not a normal human being. And some people don't and aren't normal human beings and these people are usually hospitalized.

[14:05]

Either as psychotics or as people who have some kind of organic brain or neurological problem or developmental problem. And most of the work That is, most of the therapy they receive is to help them develop a sense of self and to believe in it so that they can function in normal human concourse and therefore be anxious. If there is a sense of own being, then all around that there is a sense of non-being. And non-being threatens in an immeasurable way, immeasurably big, immeasurably small, immeasurably varied, endless, ungraspable way non-being threatens being.

[15:17]

Feeling this threat from all around Because non-being can come from any direction, any time, any place. Feeling this, feeling the discomfort of this is a basic anxiety. And there's nothing you can do about it. Because non-being doesn't have any form, doesn't have an address, It doesn't come from any particular direction. It is this. From the point of view of me being an individual person, I believe it. Everything I see, every image I perceive is a symbol.

[16:26]

of non-being is a threat to my own being. And everything in that sense is both dangerous and an opportunity. Most of us, to some extent, and the extent varies greatly, do not wish to notice this fact. One of the main ways we distract ourselves from this, and also very basic, and not really sick, not a kind of sick thing, is that we derive, we derive to make this non-being into an object.

[17:39]

And then we're afraid. And we can do something about fear. we kind of like to do, because then we can do something. And also, in the interaction with fear, we are somewhat distracted from the anxiety, which we can do nothing about. So, from the point of view of anxiety, all images are symbols. All images are not objects of what's threatening my existence. They're not objects. They're symbols of something which is not an object. And non-being can be represented by anything. Anything's as good a symbol as another thing of non-being. And again, most of us do not want to live with that.

[18:59]

So instead of seeing you all as symbols, non-being, I make you into an object. And then I can be afraid. And then I can struggle with and participate with. Because anything that's an object of my awareness is partly me. And I'm partly it. And then I can interact with it. And in that sense, if I courageously interact with it without, like, backpedaling on myself, in a sense you can transcend with fear. And we can discuss how that might work. That's what that's done. That's good. Because then you're back to yourself again. And then the anxiety. reappears. So the fear and the anxiety kind of go back and forth.

[20:05]

When you're facing the anxiety, the fear is in the background. When you mix the anxiety into an object, fear comes forth and the anxiety receives. But, you know, the fear, the root of fear is anxiety. And fear is not the root of anxiety, but anxiety naturally goes towards and drives towards fear. They're very much in a dance. Generally speaking, Paul, I don't want to make a hard and fast rule out of any of this, but this is the guideline. Fear is anticipatory. Fear is generally in the future.

[21:10]

Anxiety is not in the future. It's not in the past, and it's really not in the present even. However, if you are present, That's where you can really feel anxiety. You, the subject, you, the meditator, being the most vividly and effectively meditate on anxiety. But the anxiety is not really in time. Fear is. And even fear of negative things, It isn't the negativity of them that bothers you. The pure negativity of them isn't fear. It's the anticipation and the possible implication of what you're afraid of that makes it hard on you.

[22:20]

And the implication of fear is... what the anxiety is worried about. So you can be afraid of things which aren't too negative either. But the real negativity of all this is what threatens our life. Turns out that non-being does not threaten our life. Turns out that life completely includes non-being. A part of life, you know, life polarizes with non-being. Being is actually the first. If there is non-being, it is irrelevant prior to being.

[23:21]

But once we are here, non-being becomes very, very significant. We living being creatures give life to non-being. Non-being is a living thing. Because we're alive. And our life is very much wanting to be itself and our life very much wants to transcend itself. One of the ways, in a sense, that it transcends itself is that life, perfectly healthy life, has the capacity to accept its negation.

[24:48]

It wants to be itself, and being itself, it can accept not being itself. And not being itself arises from being itself. However, anxiety arises in this very situation. But you see, again, it is part of our nature that we would get involved in this kind of dynamic. Because otherwise, Life would just be life, and life could not transcend life. But it turns out that life is something that does transcend itself. Life does not just happen and bog down and stay that way. Life is constantly changing and constantly erupting from itself and completely going beyond itself. Life is actually freedom from life.

[26:06]

But this breaking free turns out goes with this anxiety, which we have trouble standing and then driving to fear, which then, you know, if we don't work with that properly, we get way off track and forget all about being life and forget all about transcending life. In other words, we start moving You know, kind of like off the mark. It's kind of a, I don't know what, you know. Very challenging situation. Life is very challenging. Life is not for dead people. You've got to be alive to do it. And you can't be like a little bit alive. You've got to be like, eventually, work up to being, you know, completely alive.

[27:18]

And then when you're completely alive, you have to be completely you alive. And then again, when you are completely you, then you get the big reward of lots of anxiety. A living being in a sense has to command herself to be herself. And while commanding herself to be herself, she also has to obey herself to be herself. And if you command yourself to be yourself, you put yourself at risk. If you don't command yourself to be yourself, you don't put yourself at risk.

[28:24]

So you're not yourself, you're slightly yourself, and you're not at risk, you're quite safe, you're submissive to situations, not obedient. You don't listen to yourself and command yourself to follow what you hear. You don't do that, you don't take risks, The risk, the risk of being yourself. Not a whole bunch of risks. Just that one. That one, just that one. And that is virtue. To have the courage to take the risk of being yourself. And not just at random, but, you know, like listening, you know, what is it first of all? And actually, like, listen to see what it is. Don't just sort of like sloppily, uncarefully be yourself. Carefully be yourself. Check out what it is and then inhabit that person, that physical, mental, emotional, psychic, intellectual, blah, blah person by listening and being willing to be there.

[29:38]

And then the anxiety. Anxiety at the root of the word anxiety means to be choked or strangled or tormented. Tormented is related to the word torque. It means be twisted. If you're willing to be yourself, you get choked. You get twisted. By circumstances.

[30:48]

Not exactly by circumstances, in the sense that they come over and choke you, but you feel threatened by everything. What is a threat? What is the fear? Before the fear, there's the threat of, you know, I think we'll go into this detail, but basically, your being is threatened by not you. And not you is a lot bigger than you. Not you is, you know, almost everything is not you. And you don't even know which parts of not you are the most threatening. And you can't make an object out of not you, because as soon as you make an object out of it, you're projecting yourself on it, so it's a little bit you. And so you still got some safety in life when you make non-being into objects, you're still a little bit of you's in there.

[32:01]

But beyond and free of all your projections, that is seen as fundamentally a deep, Unsophisticated. Right. You don't have to be smart or well-educated to feel it. Again, it's more familiar to you to think now, if you would, like, express yourself, we might do something to you. Okay? You know about that. But that's when you drive this thing into the image of us being American, having certain standards, and you can do certain things here. And if you were someplace else, you'd try to, you know, you would make them into objects of people of another culture that you were less sure about what you could do. But that's what you'd make it into then. But before you would make it into, like, people who have certain rules and what they'll allow you to do, before you do that, you feel something. You feel threatened before you sort of think of some reason why you're threatened.

[33:08]

As long as I stay in my seat and keep my clothes on and don't talk too loudly, you know, and don't breathe on anybody or touch anybody, then maybe, unless perhaps Rick tells everybody to turn their attention on me, you know, maybe I'm relatively safe. But you're concerned, you know, we're concerned about that. But we're concerned about it in terms of these things as objects. Okay. You can hardly imagine this in a way, but you can feel what you feel is coming at you before you make it into objects, before it's made into fear. And you feel that. All this non-being that we feel is going to threaten us is not really... gonna hurt us because we made it.

[34:12]

We gave it its life. Before there was us and stuff like us, what power would non-being have? It's a dead non-being. It's because of us. Non-being was born. Non-being is our baby, but it's a big baby. And it's a big baby because we wanted to be little. Because we wanted to be like just somewhere, you know, under a ton and, you know, have a limited number of things we have to deal with. Then we decided that non-being would be big. But really, without that non-being, it's giving us not a life. And these people are symbols, and the trees and the sky and food are all symbols in our perception, in terms of our anxiety.

[35:18]

Everything that's pressing on us can be symbolized by these things, but before it's symbolized, something's pressing on us that we feel might overwhelm us, but actually, It gives us our light and we give it its light. It's not going to overwhelm us. But because we switched over to the side of being this and forgetting about how we made that, then that threatens us. Actually, like, get intimate with this is the job, is our job. To get intimate with it when we make it into objects and experience fear, and to get intimate with it before it's turned into objects. Or, put it another way, to get intimate with it when it's objectless. And just to, what do you call it, just give you a simple message from Zen Center.

[36:25]

Zen meditation is objectless meditation. Zazen is objectless meditation. You're actually doing Zen meditation in this classical sense. It's objectless meditation. You're meditating on, well, you know, in a sense, nothing or nothingness, which, you know, really means nothingness. It doesn't mean like your idea of it. You're actually like getting cozy with nothingness. So, of course, Zen meditation is closely related to anxiety. And so most people, when they first start practicing Zen, do not want to practice Zen meditation. So they practice something else because they do not yet want to get cozy with this kind of very basic raw anxiety.

[37:31]

But again, I want to say again, this anxiety is normal. It's the human situation. It is existential anxiety. It comes with human existence. It's not sick. It's not neurotic. It's not psychotic. It is also not healthy. It is simply part of the deal. And it is very difficult for us to stay with it even though it's part of the deal. So again, what I'm proposing to you is that... I think you also have heard about Zen being, you know, kind of like... Zen has to do with developing presence, right?

[39:46]

You heard about that? Being present here and now? You know, all Buddhist... All Buddhist... But this is basically just a basic Buddhist thing. But really just a basic human thing. Human life is about being present. Right? Rather than absent. Since we're here, and not for long, It's about being here for not so long. It's going to be over soon enough, so let's kind of like, for what little we have of it, let's be here. It turns out that knowledge makes common sense, but it turns out to be the happiest, healthiest, most unlikely thing to do, too.

[40:51]

And also it's the best thing you can do for all the other people who are here, even the ones who are not here while they're here. It helps them and encourages them to try it, too. Because a lot of people don't want to be here because you know what happens when you're present, right? When you're present, you start to feel what it's like to be alive. And what it's like to be alive is that you want to be alive and also you want to transcend being alive. So then it's very dynamic and very intense. Things become very acute. So, and very dynamic. So I pose to you just a proposal that a self willing to experience anxiety is a virtuous self.

[41:58]

That a self willing to be itself and therefore be at risk by being itself is a virtuous self. And it's a courageous self, of course. And it is a creative self. It is creative because it's creating itself. And also transcending itself and creating itself again. And transcending itself is constantly What do you call it? Autopoetic. Autopoesis. Constantly self-making itself. Checking out what it is and saying, okay, let's be it. Being present, feeling what it's like and saying, okay. And then feeling the anxiety and saying, well, I can't quite say okay, but I'm not going to run away. Or if I do run away, hey, I admit it.

[43:11]

I'm afraid. And I'm going to face the fear, and by facing the fear, I come back home. The fear is vanquished, and now I'm anxious again. Life willing to be itself. is good life. Like willing to transcend itself is good life. Self willing to be itself is a good self, is a virtuous self. Self willing to transcend itself is a good self. If you're willing to be yourself, you will unavoidably transcend yourself. If you don't accept transcending yourself, you won't get to be able to be yourself again because you've just changed. So you have to be willing to be yourself and transcend yourself, moment after moment.

[44:24]

That is the good self. to transcend yourself, and that is the good self. However, you will not appreciate that. And you will be miserable, frightened, and driven to cruelty. But you will always be exactly that self, nothing else but it, and you will constantly transcend it. That will be in fact what you are, and that is in fact what life is. And if Buddha saw you, Buddha would see that happen. And what I mean by Buddha, a person who is doing that and admitting it while they're doing it would see that you're doing the same thing, but also would see that you don't think you are. And therefore, the rule of it, the way it works, is that you would be... You would be miserable.

[45:31]

Miserable. You know, miserable comes from miser. Or miser comes from miserable. Reminds me, you don't give anything to yourself. You don't let yourself be yourself. Martin? I had a lot of experience of what you're talking about. I'd like to share it with you, okay? Yeah. I recently did a practice period at Green Gulch in December. I was there for about a couple of months. And when I first got here, the first couple of weeks I was very anxious. And I didn't want to be here. I had thoughts about meeting, a lot of things were coming up with me, which, you know, things from the past, whatever, that I was anxious about. And I just couldn't... I couldn't get around it, but I was doing my best doing any present, and we'll be doing a lot of meditation, and I was very aware of what was coming up in my mind and my emotions.

[46:43]

And, but in the beginning, I was not that, I was it, I wasn't that passionate. And I remember I had one experience that I was going to leave. I walked up to the entrance. I was in like two and a half weeks. I was standing right there. It was a beautiful day. And the cars were coming by. I was going to stick on my thumb. I'm out of here. I'm out of here. It was just, I was overwhelmed at the time. All my emotions. And then I asked myself, where am I going? If I let go home, what am I going to accomplish? Let's go. I got really committed to staying here and being here till the end. And after that, something flipped over. That emotional stuff was still coming up, but it was still that anxiety. So I began to feel more joy in its place. And for my remaining time here, there was more and more joy and less anxiety.

[47:52]

What you're saying about the anxiety and being in the presence is very real for me. Congratulations. I didn't talk to you about this. Yes? Um, very important. When I do something, I feel like I've become left. Uh-huh. As a result of going right into it, whatever it is. You know, going right diving into whatever fear it is. Anything, whatever it's going on. Looking right at the pain, it needs to dissolve a lot of the time. So I find it in general in my daily life, I must let that actually result in prayer to. Does that contradict what you think? Or am I doing it wrong? Oh, the air in here.

[49:17]

It's a lot of air. Could we open some windows? People stand there? Okay. So Mary Lee said that she feels as a result of meditating that she's less anxious than she was either before she was meditating or when she's not meditating.

[51:59]

Something like that. She's wondering. I was surprised to what I've been saying. Now, when you say you weren't anxious before, what was your experience, what was the anxiety you're talking about? Well, for example, I got here early today. I got here about four. And there was nobody around. It was like nerd at the guest office. Nerd at everything. Nerd at. And that ordinarily made me get pretty active. I'm going all alone here. And I start feeling lonely and I start getting kind of freaked out about my lonely life. So I sit down my cushion. I look at that. Just a second. So what you're describing there as anxiety is that you feel alone. And nervous. And you feel nervous. First of all, you feel alone. Yeah. Okay. Now, how would the aloneness, what is it about the aloneness that makes you feel nervous? Kind of a band of people. So that's, is that anxiety or is that fear?

[53:09]

Well, from your definition, it's probably fear because I'm defining it as something rather than just facing the form of... Yeah. So there are many, many, many, many possible objects which could be frightening to us. Traditionally in Buddhism, there's five basic types. Fear of death. Actually, they're actually, sometimes they're off-phrase in terms of loss. Fear of loss. Fear of, you know, or you're just not saying, not even say fear, but anyway, the feeling you have about losing life, that's one. Feeling you have about losing, basically, your mind, losing control of your experience. Feeling you have when you think about losing your job, your livelihood.

[54:28]

Feeling you have when you think about the prospect of losing your reputation, your good reputation. Feeling you have likelihood, reputation, life, you know, your mind or your body, sense. And then also fear of speaking in front of a large group. Those are the five. Fear. But, you know, just five types of fear or... They say that's just the way you feel at the prospect of losing these four kinds of things or speaking in front of a large group. But speaking in front of a large group means losing something. Speaking in front of a large group, you could lose your life. You could lose your reputation. You could lose your life. And you could lose your mind. So basically, they're all about, in a sense, one sense is they're about losing something, but also they're about...

[55:29]

the other, you know, they're about states of mind that are other than your usual, they're about forms of livelihood that are other than what you usually think of as livelihood, they're about reputation which are other, they're about losing what you have, or just so that the other will come moving in on you through these object portals. So when you come into a place and nobody's around, And you start feeling nervous. Part of the nervousness is because nobody's around, but also the nervousness is also something that's a harbinger of perhaps more nervousness. Or, you know, that your mind will move into a form that is usually considered to be out of bounds or other or out of control or And maybe it doesn't go too far, but you're concerned that it might, that, you know, you come into a place, you know, what, there'll be some people here, supposed to be attacked, as a matter of fact.

[56:43]

Nobody's there, you know. That's not so bad in itself. But what does it imply? What does it imply? That everybody left? It's the wrong day? Um, they're hiding from me. It's the, you know, it's the implications of this that sends you into this sphere. And the implications are, well, there's no limit to them. Really? There's no limit to the implications of something that's... Once you start thinking about the implications, if things are going according to plan, you sort of say, okay, that's it, and you stop, and you don't get into the implications. If a tiger's in your face, and you just need it, and don't think about the implications of it, it's not fear. It's just a big face. And then you are.

[57:43]

You and the face. If you start thinking about implications... Well, there could be a lot of important implications. Then you become afraid. So when you got into... I think you got into the implications when you got here. That's what it sounds like to me. You didn't get way into the implications because, as you were about to say, you went and sat. Instead of elaborating on the implications of nobody being around, which you can see, you can take that a lot of different places. The people had all been abducted by... You know, and I might be next, or they might be sent back in a different form. There's lots of different implications. But rather than get into the implications, which means rather than elaborating on them and causing more fear, you just face the fear. And you faced some of the ramifications of the fear, the nervousness, and also your concern about the nervousness. You were a little concerned about the nervousness, too, because you didn't, that was a little bit out of, you weren't planning on that either.

[58:48]

So you went and sat, you came back to the present, and the fear was, in some sense, vanquished. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. You come back, and the fear is vanquished, you're calm, and then I propose to you, then the anxiety is present. When she's not so aware of it. Why not? Well, you want to become aware of the anxiety? Well, I want to progress. And progress, where do you think you'd be progressing to? Transcending, yeah. The progression, in a sense, would be to progress from coming back from fear to the present with yourself and then start feeling what it's like to have a self.

[59:52]

And the more you start feeling and being aware and the more you command yourself and obey yourself and become this person, the more you become this person, the more this person is at risk. Now, if you come up here and sit in front of me, okay, and look out at the people and talk to them, and you don't get into the implications of what's going to happen if you do that, just feel through these symbols what that's about. You start to feel the anxiety, but only if you come and sit here. You know, you have to really be yourself here. If you sit here as an individual in front of these people who represent all things that are you, you start to get in touch with the anxiety. So, it's not that you were doing something wrong, you didn't do anything wrong, to come back to feel that fear, to face that fear, which you could identify, which you could deal with, which you could participate with.

[61:02]

You engaged it, you participated with it, and in a sense, you temporarily vanquished it. And also, your anxiety is allayed But it's not gone. It is still here. And your anxiety will manifest more and more clearly as you more and more take credit for being yourself. The more fully you express yourself and not moving into the implications of that self-expression, not anticipating what will happen to you later as a result of this self-expression, Be yourself not for some reason to accomplish something for yourself or for anybody else, but be yourself only to be yourself. Being yourself only to be yourself is to put yourself at the maximum risk. To be yourself, you know, to accomplish something or to get something for yourself, that's not really emphasizing yourself.

[62:06]

That's a distraction. It's a distraction. from the primary activity of being yourself. And when you work on that, you feel the anxiety most vividly. When you say what you have to say, as an expression of yourself, primarily in order to express yourself, primarily in order to show your heart, to show your mind, to show your body, if that's your primary concern in your self-expression, then you feel at risk. And as you get more skillful and more honest at revealing yourself, you'll feel more and more at risk. And you notice your reward for self-expression is anxiety. And then many people say, well, if that's it, I'm not going to express myself. But you see, that's in fact what they learn.

[63:07]

They learn self-expression, payment, anxiety. But to keep expressing yourself, even though you get anxiety for self-expression, is the road to liberation. It takes a while to get present enough and expressive enough to be obedient enough to yourself, to be obedient enough to listen to yourself, to recognize yourself, to feel yourself enough, and to command yourself to be what you hear. Not to be something else, but just to be what you hear you are, to get skillful enough at that so you really start feeling anxiety. True anxiety, not fear. And then when you feel the anxiety, if you stay present and watch, you'll notice how it veers off into fear. How it goes off into objects. And then bring yourself back, feel the anxiety, and then notice how it drives off into the fear.

[64:13]

And how when you get into fear, that when you get to fear, the real crunch of fear is the anxiety of fear. It's not the known, it's not when the known thing happens. It's not the negativity itself. It's the endlessness of the possible implications, which is the anxiety. It's all back around here. And... Fear against the objectification of anxiety. Is that what you said? Yes. Fear is the objectification of anxiety. So a typical representation that you observe it, you might observe yourself or other people, is fears that arise regardless of

[65:23]

the apparent reason for fear to arise. In other words, anxiety exists and to objectify whatever it encounters and create fear in the situation. Whereas, to another person's viewpoint, there doesn't seem to be rational reason for that fear to arise. So that would then be the case of anxiety, objectifying. Take any particular object and objectifying. Yes. You know, I feel like, you know, for all I know, what you said was, I don't know what. I couldn't quite, you know, connect with it. But anyway, back to what you said. Fear is the objectification of anxiety. There we were, you know, right with you. And then you talked a little too fast, Mark. So, if you walk more slowly, maybe I can stay with you.

[66:28]

I can see in myself a tendency, you might hate your work if you're experiencing anxiety. I think you said this in fact, you can justify almost anything. It's not that you can objectify almost anything. Okay. It's not that you can objectify almost anything. You can't objectify almost anything because it is something. It's already been objectified. So you can't objectify almost anything. It's a thing. It's already objectified. And you've got to work with that thing, and you've got to objectify that thing according to the rules of that object. Okay? That's one step. Anxiety is, you know, it's not an object.

[67:41]

It is endless. It is like everything that's not you, okay? Then you have experiences. You, being a living being, you have experiences, which means you interpret this universe, okay? Something happens. You have a feeling, or a smell, or a picture. There's a woman, there's a woman, there's a man. You see these things, things happen. These words happen to you, okay? then you can say that this thing out there, that object is about this, all that non-being out there that, you know, correct me. So then any of these objects could be, I could take them as symbols of unknown non-being. In fact, all these things in a sense are little, kind of like,

[68:45]

You could use them as kind of like little, you could use anything as a symbol of that. Then everything reminds me. I'm not me. In fact, that's the way it is. But not me. Like, you know, autistic kids, right? You heard about autistic kids. That's the way it is for them. All this stuff's out there like kind of. Anything could be like practices. But it isn't the thing, it's that this thing represents what you think threatens you. Then, if you put it in the future, and think about the implications of this, what you've done, then you're afraid. This is all, you know, and some people can come up with nice, they pull out all kinds of good reasons for why they're afraid of this person, but not that person. But these are both perfectly good symbols of my non-being.

[69:51]

Both these people are perfectly, deeply good symbols of it. But I may choose to, you know, elaborate how Raphael is, you know, I may get into how he is. Rather than a symbol of that, I may make him the object of it. Because then I can interact with something which I can't interact with. Because if you could interact with non-being, it's not non-being. It's coming over and dancing with you. It's coming into being. But then you're afraid. If it's non-being, you're afraid. Which is kind of a problem, being afraid. Because of all these. Now, where are you? I feel like I follow what you're saying. Can I do something you want me to follow? I think that you stated what I was trying to say, but the only difference in our orientation was that I was trying to look at it in more of a psychological framework where you can recognize certain types of people's behavior that they justify their anxiety more than other people seem to, and that makes them seem anxious about things that seem irrational to another person.

[71:10]

Yeah, some people are more afraid than other people. Some people have a less tolerance for anxiety, which means some people are not as courageous as other people. The people who are more courageous have a higher tolerance for anxiety. Being courageous means being yourself. Some people are really backpedaling on guess who. But that's the way that they be themselves. And they're perfectly doing it that way. But the way they're doing it is by basically self-accusation. They find they feel it's wrong to be themselves. So they back down into some corner of themselves. And then they don't feel less anxiety. But feeling less anxiety, you've got to do something with it, so then you feel more fear. And then you say, well, there's the fear, and that fear is saying, I can't be me.

[72:14]

The anxiety doesn't say you can't be you. The anxiety says, since you are you, we're going to wipe you out. The anxiety is not saying you can't be you. The anxiety says you are really being you, and who do you think you are to do that? Anxiety is only for people that are being themselves. Fear is for those who have already kind of like left the scene of the crime. Now there's also like before even getting into fear is to withdraw from the situation. So there is neurotic anxiety and then there is fear. Some people are into fear and some people are into like getting themselves in a position where they can't even feel what would drive them to fear. Yes, Dr. Hale. Anxiety, at least for me, anxiety is more impressive than fear. Yes, it is. Because fear, I can do something, I can feel it. That's right, exactly.

[73:18]

So, I was thinking now that something that I do is that when I have anxiety, I will do something. Especially something dangerous or something. Yes. I'm afraid of what I'm doing, but I can deal with that. Right. That's right. I agree. That's the pattern. I keep on doing it. I never have to. Correct. You're just looming there waiting for you to come home. And when you get home, it actually will say, well, where you been, sweetheart? We've been waiting for you to come here. Be yourself again. It turns out it takes more courage to come home. The thing that takes the most courage, the most courage, the most courage, the most courage is to be yourself.

[74:21]

It's the most courage. Yeah. Something you're right. was confronting an old friend about certain things that could happen, which is very hard for me to do. What's your name? Marsha. Yes. And she asked me a question the first time I told her about where she was, and that was incredibly anxiety-forgiveness. And... And I went to talk to my therapist and said, well, it doesn't belong to that person. And I thought that was very profound, because it has to be yourself and be differentiated from whatever that object it is, you have to be willing to let somebody or something. Right. Yes. Get in, Janice.

[75:33]

What? Joyce. Joyce? Yes. Oh, what I mean is be your ego. Authentic self, the authentic self is not the ego. There's no less of an ego to protect when you're authentic. Same amount of ego to protect. The authentic... Don't get into where it's true or not, just listen to it. Were you saying truths over there before?

[76:36]

No, I said it's the way I'm reading it. Yeah, it's just the way I'm reading it, too. I'm not saying truth. I'm just telling you what I'm talking about. That's all. So when I say self, there's self that has the anxiety, that's the ego. The non-ego doesn't have anxiety. I'm talking about the ego. Now, if you want to meet the authentic self, the authentic self is the transcendence of the ego.

[77:06]

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