I was looking at some notes from a previous meeting here where I said that I'd been talking with you in these meetings about a practice or a way of being that is a mode of entry into wisdom and compassion or into the full participation in the creativity of the world, or the creation of the world. And what is that way of being? What is that practice? Yes?

[01:03]

The middle way. The middle way, right. Well, another way to put it is that the practice I've been talking about is also the way to enter the middle way, which is also the middle way. But anything more about what that way of being is? Non-clinging. Right. Not grasping what's happening and not rejecting it. Right. Not grasping and not seeking. And another way to put it is entering without a place to enter and having a mind that doesn't

[02:04]

dwell anywhere. Or, another way is giving up expectation and not looking for an alternative. So these are words about a way of being for entering into the middle way. Anything you'd like to bring up about this? I was wondering, from last week, it seemed to me fairly clear how having expectations

[03:04]

of people creates suffering, but I wonder if you could say more about how having the expectation that the sun is going to rise tomorrow creates suffering? Having some idea of the sun rising. Suffering. And then getting with that, so that when morning comes you expect that that's going to happen. And it disturbs the free flow of your energy.

[04:07]

If you were like, I don't know where, let's say you were like lying in a bed, maybe with me, and then the early morning hours started to manifest and you were lying there with some expectation of the sun rising. And then maybe it starts getting lighter. At that time, your expectation-assumption would have probably robbed you of what it would be like for that thing to happen to you without that expectation.

[05:13]

That's one thing it does. Which is another way to say it robs you of the actual creative energy that happens when you and the sun have this experience together of light. And one time someone said, I said this and I hardly remember saying it but I think it was good, somebody said, well, how do you get burnout? And tonight I would say you get burnout by expecting the sun to rise, or thinking it's going to, in the morning. You may not notice that that drains you, but what I said at the time was, if when you sit down in a chair, you expect it to hold you, you get burnout.

[06:17]

Does that make sense? If you sit down in a chair and as you sit down in a chair you expect it to hold you, that kind of way of relating to this activity of sitting in a chair will give you burnout. Now if you only sit in one chair a day, you still get a little burnout, but you may not notice it. But if you sit down repeatedly throughout the day, stand up and sit down, stand up and sit down, and every time you sit down and you expect the chair to hold you, you will lose your energy. You won't just get tired. If you stand up and sit down on a chair, just the muscular effort of doing that, you might get tired. But you probably won't get bored unless you expect the chair to hold you. And bored, I mean, bored means get discouraged and lose your enthusiasm for sitting in a chair. But expecting the sun rise once a day, you don't notice how much that disturbs you.

[07:24]

But if the sun rises, if the sun rose hundreds of times during the day, if we lived on a planet that was spinning faster and the sun rose a hundred or two hundred times a day and every time the sun rose, you expected it to rise again after it set, you'd notice that you were getting very depressed, or just depressed, because that way of relating to the event of expecting it blocks the flow of energy which is coming up all the time and moving around. And when you sit in a chair, there's an event there, there's this thing of you and the chair and gravity and blah, [...] all this stuff is happening, but you put it in the package of, the chair is going to hold me, and that blocks the actual relationship between body and chair and all that, blocks the actual way the energy is working. And again, if it's once a day, you don't notice it, but if you do it enough times, you'll

[08:25]

notice that you'll lose your spirit for chair sitting and you'll lose your spirit for sun rise. And I don't mean to make a plug or anything, but there's this movie being shown tomorrow night called Groundhog Day, and it's something about that, how if you repeat the thing over and over and over, you start to notice how you lose energy if you have certain approaches to the thing. So, having 24 hours between the sunrises, you don't really notice how your expectation that there's going to be a sunrise or that there's going to be another day, you don't necessarily notice how draining it is to expect it. Now, of course, and that's suffering, because you're exiling yourself from this actual participation

[09:27]

in the creativity of a morning. But those mornings when you don't expect the sun and you forget about daytime and it comes and you aren't expecting what it's going to be like for today to get longer and you actually witness it, those days the energy starts to flow, and this is like the way of practicing that brings you back into the creativity of a day, of your life in the day. Not to mention that sometimes, of course, things don't happen. Now those times, you know, like the sun doesn't rise, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes there's no more sunrises for you, you know, and that suffering, however, is a little bit different that suffering more like shocks you out of your expectation, maybe, and makes you wish

[10:27]

you hadn't been doing those things all along. Does it make some sense? Yeah. So, again, if you sit in your chair or open a door, try to relax your expectation of what's going to happen now. You know, like the doorknob is going to turn, the door is going to open, I'm going to go in the room. See if you can open the door and enter a room without expecting anything. And still say, okay, I'm going to try this, I'm going to try to turn that doorknob, let's see what happens, you know. The same thing happened to me in reverse, though. The sun never went down, and the Arctic never went down, and for the first week, we worked at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning, and we weren't tired because that expectation of the sun

[11:29]

never went down. Oh, it's time to go to bed, it's time to go to bed. So you exist on 3 or 4 hours of sleep, and you work hard. But that sun was always up. Would you say that a habit is an expectation? Would I say that a habit is an expectation? I don't know, if ... I don't know about that. I wouldn't say no, but I'm not sure, somehow my mind isn't ... doesn't know what to say to you. It seems like a habit based on expectation.

[12:33]

No, in general, a habit based on expectation, which is not conscious. Yeah, maybe it's based on expectation, so that you do it based on past experience or something rather than watching how the behavior comes up according to what's going on. Could you speak up, please? If you do have an expectation, in a way it's just metabolic, or if you do have an expectation but then your expectations get pressed by expectations, then in a way it's all based on expectation, or ... It helps. I think ... you mean recognizing the expectation?

[13:36]

Yeah, recognizing it is good. I would say recognize it, recognize it and relax with it. So, if you notice a habit or an expectation, you're kind of noticing your energy being blocked. So, you notice it, but then if you relax with the blocked energy or with the expectation, which is like interfering with you and whatever is happening, if you ... like, for example, again, it's dark and you start expecting the sunrise, okay? You say, there I am, here I am expecting the sunrise, it's dark and I'm ... I'm not just in the dark now, I'm in the dark expecting the sunrise. So, now I'm just going to relax with that expectation and then maybe you're back in

[14:49]

the dark. And then, you start to notice the light changing and maybe you're encouraged by the way you notice the light changing, because maybe it's not the light that you were expecting but the light that's happening and you're ready for it because you kind of gave up the light you were expecting by recognizing that you were expecting a light and then relaxing with that. And then it's like, well, what can I say? It's light, it's really ... it's the light that's happening and that's really what we're here for, right? To see that light, not to see the light we're expecting. And then again, if we're expecting the light, we see a light, but it's confused with the light we're expecting and we're kind of drained away from the meeting by our expectation,

[15:49]

by our energy being drained off to our expectation. Yes? I did the sunrise and I found it extremely difficult because what I found was that it started getting light and I said, ah, it's getting light. And what I found was there are a whole bunch of other things that I'm constantly checking on to maintain this kind of safety. And there is a lot of energy components. It's going to be a little foggy and the sky's going to be blue and the stream is going to be crowded and there's all these assumptions like that for this feeling of predictability and safety. What I wanted to ask about was that when I started thinking about it, that there are much more base-level expectations and assumptions about who I am. Yes. And those are so difficult. It's even hard to see those.

[16:52]

How does one look at those? I know, for instance, that there's a set of assumptions. I think all of you seem to maintain this separate style. There's a whole bunch of assumptions there. They're even hard to see. They kind of limit who you can be. But it's safe inside the wall. Yeah. Yeah. What I said at the beginning was I've been talking about a way of being that's the mode of entry into the full participation, fully participating in the creativity of the world, which includes, which is another way to say it, is it entry into the participation of

[18:01]

the creation of the self. Yes. And that way of entering that is not grasping and not seeking. So if you're trying to, if you want to see how the sense of self is created and also how clinging to the sense of self is created, then one of the things you do is you don't try to see it. But if you're in this mode, you will be shown how this, well you actually did get to see a little bit of it and you were a little bit in that mode. Just by trying this exercise you got to see a little bit of how the way you relate to

[19:03]

the sunrise then gets to be the way you relate to other safety factors, which gets to be the way you worry about how your life is going to go that day. The more you relax your grasping and seeking, the more you're going to see examples of where there's holding. And then when you see the holding, you just face it and don't try to figure out anything more about it, just face it. Okay, there's holding, there's tension, there's blockage of my energy around this idea of me being separate from others. Just face it and relax with it and then you'll see more about it, which will perhaps even be more difficult to face without tensing up or trying to figure out. But you continue to practice and you'll get more information about it, until finally

[20:10]

you actually won't really be able to find it anymore. And you'll be convinced that what it is, is something that's not just the way it appeared to be. And the world you built on the way it appeared to be will also be released. So this simple exercise of this morning thing, you know, that's part of the reason for getting up early in the morning and sitting in meditation. As you can see, if you can sit in meditation without trying to get something out of the meditation, then you might also be able to sit through that process called the day coming without trying to get something out of the day. Can you start the day without trying to get something out of the day? So we're trying to get something out of the meditation and therefore we're going to try

[21:12]

to get something out of the day. Like if you've got a day, we don't just have days, we have days, we get stuff from days. So this is a process of renouncing trying to get something out of a day. Can you imagine going through a day without getting anything? Without trying to get anything? Or rather to give up trying to get anything out of the day? So maybe in the morning if you can just start for a few seconds of trying to sit for a few seconds in the dark without trying to get anything out of sitting in the dark. And then as the light comes to try to like just let the light come without trying to get anything from the light. And then notice that somebody seems to be arguing with this waste of time. And somebody has something better to do than just like not get anything. And then like, well, we didn't exactly come looking for this guy but there he is.

[22:13]

And he's worried. And he needs protection. And he's scared and he's getting angry now. And nervous and like we're not going to spend much more time wasting time here. And then pretty soon he's in control and we're getting something out of the morning. And everything's fine again. And we've stopped the practice. We've stopped the way of being which takes us into creativity. And now we're back into control and protection. But a few seconds there in the morning before the big thing comes into control again is, you know, is pretty good. If it can extend its way partly, part of the way into the meditation. If the meditation happens around sunrise, then you can start to develop this new relationship with the sunrise. And maybe go more and more almost during a whole period maybe sometime. Or be doing a whole sunrise.

[23:15]

And you'll probably realize there isn't a sunrise. There's a million different events in the sunrise. And there's no beginning or end to the sunrise. The sunrise is beginningless and endless. You start to notice little things like that. In other words, you start to notice reality. And that is that any phenomena, sunrises, sunsets, noons, foggy mornings, all phenomena are beginningless and endless. And you get little. You get to see that kind of stuff when you're not trying to get to see that kind of stuff. When you're not seeking the truth, or grasping what's happening, or trying to control. When you relax with your expectations, you start to be able to see better. Because your energy is flowing more smoothly, and you're not disturbed by all these distinctions which you're gripping. So you did your homework to a certain extent.

[24:20]

And the longer you can be in that mode of experimenting with letting go of your expectation of sunrises, I would say the more you're going to learn about yourself and how the world is created between you and those ideas you have. Does that make sense to anybody? But we don't have to wait till the sunrise. We can do the sunset now. Did it start? Has it started? Did the sunset have a beginning?

[25:23]

Something's happening, do you see? We're going through this process now. Yeah? Suppose you want to go to bed earlier at night. Suppose you want to go to bed. And if you're trying to go to bed earlier at night, you end up staying up late. Can any of these suggestions work? Suppose you want to go to bed earlier, but you're unsuccessful at going to bed earlier? Correct. And so we have this phenomenon called being unsuccessful at going to bed earlier? Right. So do you have a question about that? I have a question of whether you can bring this way of being to that phenomenon. Can you? Yes. I don't know if you can, but it would be good, I think. Is it a problem to want to go to bed earlier because you want something?

[26:28]

It's not a problem to want to go to bed earlier. I don't think it's a problem, necessarily. It's just a phenomenon. There you are, you know, what do you call it, an innocent bystander, and suddenly you're struck with this desire to go to bed early. That's okay. That's fine. Now, if you're going to bed early to get something, you know, that's a little different. Well, why would you go to bed earlier if you weren't, I guess, unlucky? Well, why would I want you to be happy if I wouldn't get anything from it? Oh, just in itself. Going to bed is good, that's enough. Going to bed earlier is good, that's enough. No, you don't have to make it going to bed earlier, that's enough. Me wanting you to be happy, I don't have to have that be that it's good. I can just want you to be happy without me getting anything or calling it good.

[27:31]

I can just hear it sitting here and suddenly I want you to be happy. I can want that without getting anything out of it. I can want something, just it can come up in me, and it does, and that's sometimes just period, I want something. But I don't necessarily want it because da-da-da-da. Not necessarily, or I don't necessarily want it because it's good. Maybe I want something and someone says, that's bad. But still, here I am, what can I do? I want that. I might want something that's ridiculous even. But anyway, if it arises, there it is, my energy or the energy of the world has manifested through me a desire for the giants to win the World Series or something silly like that. It actually didn't arise, but something like that might arise. So there it is, it's okay, it's just a phenomena.

[28:34]

Now the question is, how do you relate to it? So if you relate to this phenomena called, I want to go to bed early, as soon as that happens with complete relaxation, then you're going to be able to enter into the realm where that phenomena and everything else is created, and then you're going to enter into the realm of wisdom and compassion. But if you bang on phenomena, they're going to say, okay, we're not going to tell you what's going on. You don't respect us, you're trying to get rid of us, or hold on to us, or seek something else. You say, obviously you don't want to learn. So whatever the manifestation is, you treat it with this respectful, non-expectation of anything in the meeting kind of way.

[29:39]

And then you start to see things like, there's nothing to get. You're acting like there's nothing to get. In other words, you're not trying to get anything, you're just dealing with it. And then you start to see it actually is so that you don't get anything. Things happen all the time, but we don't get anything, because we're not separate from it. We're part of what's happening. We're not like getting what's happening. We're over here and then what's happening comes over to us. It's like things are happening and we're there too. Kind of at the same time. If anything, it's slightly after rather than before. You want to see that, want to be ready for that revelation of how things happen, then just meet things like desiring to go to bed early. With this attitude, with this mind, with this way of being.

[30:44]

This mind that is not depending on, or residing in, or dwelling on. Or needing it to happen. Or needing it to happen. You don't need anything to happen that hasn't happened yet, but if you think you do, then you're kind of like stuck to shift over into expectation. So this won't necessarily, this way of practice won't necessarily manifest the phenomena of going to bed earlier. I'm not talking about how to get to bed earlier, because maybe, actually, there's a real good reason for you never to go to bed early that none of us can control. But you can keep wanting to go to bed from now on, you know, all the time. No, that's okay. You probably won't, but you could. So I think maybe you've heard this expression,

[31:49]

I don't know who said it, I think, oh yeah, I think Eric Erickson said it, I'm not sure. But anyway, he wrote this book about Gandhi. And did anybody ever read it? I think it's called Gandhi's Truth, right? And I think in that book he makes Gandhi sound like a pretty neurotic fellow. Remember that? Did he sound kind of neurotic in the book? Do you remember? I didn't read it, but anyway, I heard that Eric Erickson thought that Gandhi was, you know, a pretty neurotic guy, like a lot of other neurotics. But his point was that it's not so much whether you're neurotic or not, but how do you use it? And Gandhi used his neurosis really well. He really related to it well, you know. Somewhat, you know, he was neurotic, so he couldn't do that well, but, you know, he was really good. So it's like, how do you relate to a phenomenon like

[32:51]

having a neurotic desire to, you know, go to bed earlier or go to bed later or watch a certain TV show or be a professional football star or, you know, have your black eye go away by Thursday or... How do you relate to these desires, these neurotic desires which throw your body and mind slightly off-center, you know, or way off? If you relate to them in this way, the flow starts to be re-established and you're liberated. It's not so much that we get things all under control, but that we keep liberating these blocks. So that's how I would suggest you work with this desire to go to bed earlier.

[33:52]

I kind of have it myself sometimes. I used to have it more. When I was younger, I used to want to go to bed early because I used to get up early and I... I wanted to be awake during the morning meditation. So, if certain people wanted to talk to me like at 10, 10.30, 11, I kind of feel like, I don't want to talk to you. I want to go to bed. Leave me alone. I used to be that way. But now I'm not that way so much. I just stay up later and later. But I take naps. Since I had a heart attack, I take naps. And I found, even in the old days, I found that if I resisted those people who wanted, if I resisted those late-night conversations

[34:54]

which put me in jeopardy of sleeping in the meditation in the morning, if I resisted them, and that really did tire me out, but if I would really relax with them, not try to stay up later, but not fight them, I wasn't so sleepy in the morning. It didn't tire me out to stay up late if I wasn't fighting staying up late or if I wasn't staying up late to accomplish something. If I wasn't wanting to read more or something, if it wasn't because of my desire that I was staying up and I also wasn't fighting somebody else's interest, but just stayed up, then it wasn't so tiring. Surprisingly, not tiring, even though there wasn't much sleep happening before I got up. So you watch the phenomena of wanting to go to bed early, you also watch the phenomena of why I'm not going to bed early,

[35:54]

like reading or whatever, you watch that the same way. Yeah, right. Watch everything that same way. Watch all manifestations of your life in the same way. And then you enter into understanding. And then, because you understand how things work, then the proper behaviors come, which might be that you still want to go to bed early. But the way you relate to that, you know, those people who live with you in the same planet will be benefited by the way you relate to your desire to go to bed early. Yes, I think Nancy and then Bernd. Yes. I've been kind of fixated on that statue behind you, and I don't know what it is. And so I've been thinking about it, but I know that it wasn't too long ago. It's a guardian deity.

[36:56]

A fierce guardian. Is each of us supposed to perpetuate? I was going to say, let it protect you. You don't have to protect yourself. It'll do it for you. You can just assume that from now on. Okay, Roger? I mean, Ralph. Excuse me? Did you say you're supposed to individuate? Because Carl Rogers said you're supposed to? Or Jung said you're supposed to? Well, if Jung and Carl Rogers are in hell, that's because they expected you to individuate. They probably thought it was good for you to individuate, so that's why they talked about it all the time. But if they expected it, that drained their life out of them. Of course, we want everybody to be

[38:03]

as good as they can possibly be, but if we expect that, then we're going to really get burned out on that project. You know what I mean? If I expect everybody to be... I want everybody to be happy, and if I expect that, then I'm going to want to get away from those people who aren't doing what I want them to do. Because when I see them, I feel terrible because they're not progressing at the rate that I would like them to. So, the funny thing is that bodhisattvas who want to help people, if they have some expectation of how that's going to go, pretty soon they find people abhorrent and they go and hide from people. Because people are not meeting their expectations, which are good... they're expectations of something good, but expectations of something good are not good. The thing's good, but the expectation is antithetical, is anathema to the thing, if it's a good thing. But if you want to be unhappy,

[39:06]

then expect to be unhappy. Or expect to be happy, pretty much the same. I think probably better to expect to be happy if you want to be unhappy. Because expecting to be unhappy, you might get distracted by the fact of being successful and say, see, well, I'm happy because I am unhappy. But that just actually kind of disguises this underground leakage that's going on. So I would suggest, if you want to be unhappy, just try to be happy. Seek happiness. And if you ever get it, cling to it. It's one of the best ways to be unhappy. I got happiness, and then I clung, and I clung, and I grasped it, and I blew it, and now I'm so upset with myself, I'm going to blah, blah, to punish myself for ruining the happiness which I got.

[40:08]

Great, I know none of you do that, but I've met other people that do that. Yes, let's say, let's say somebody wants you to be happy. If that happens, you should sometimes expect them to deliver that happiness, so that they relax. Well, I can imagine, yeah, I can understand that. But actually, it's probably better just to sort of like work on helping them to relax. Because if you deliver the happiness, then they'll be scared that that's just going to end. Say, okay, finally, Dad, Mom, here I am, I'm the happy daughter you've always wanted, here I am. And they say, great, and then they're afraid you're going to become unhappy. So, I think, rather than delivering what they're expecting, it's okay to give them what they want, but if you're promoting their practice of expectation,

[41:13]

it might be better to give them some encouragement to practice relaxation, so that, you know, if they don't get what they want later, because you're not totally in control of everything, right? For example, let's say you get sick. And you tell them, I'm sick, I've got cancer, yes, but I'm really happy, so don't worry. No, really, it's okay. And then they say, no, no, we are worried and we don't like this. So, eventually something's going to happen that's not part of the program, so I think it's more important to give them the practice than some thing. Because the thing isn't really going to make them happy. The thing, like the happy daughter, is not going to make them happy. Happy daughters do not make you happy. That's a perverted view, to think that a happy so-and-so will make you happy.

[42:15]

What makes you happy is to be devoted to a happy so-and-so, or be devoted to an unhappy so-and-so. But things don't make you happy. But sometimes parents think that a happy child will make them happy. And then sometimes they have a happy child, and then they notice it doesn't make them happy, and they can't figure out what's wrong with them, because they expected that that would make them happy. But it doesn't. That's called a perverted view of purity or beauty. That we think the beautiful, pure person, or car, or whatever it is, will make us happy. So, if your parents think that the happy daughter will make them happy, and you play along with giving them the happy daughter, you're playing along with an inverted view. It's better to, like, say, here's the daughter you have, and the daughter you have is, like, trying to relax with her expectations, and show them how that makes you happy, rather than you being what they want. Parent?

[43:20]

Parent. Yes, I think that's true. It opens to... Practicing non-expectation opens you to the experience of interminence. So, let's say when this is actually happening, when I go there, then, for me, expectations, in a way, I could say, fully turn. And this is accompanied by, for me, by deep anxiety. We need to put more clearly the expectations that come up at that point, or like the sun would not rise.

[44:34]

I didn't hear that. Let me go through that again now. When you open to the impermanence, then anxiety comes up? Yes, anxiety comes up. And then, excuse me, and then you said some expectations come up with anxiety? Yes. What are those? They are expectations of annihilation. Let's say the sun does not rise. Yes. Basically, everything would turn now. The vivid experience of impermanence, and if you if you relax with that, you maybe get presented with a vivid experience of anxiety. And then if you see the anxiety, it's possible then to not relax with it, to not relax with it, and if you don't relax with the anxiety, then you veer off into expectations. It's like you're actually then shrinking back from the practice at that point

[45:36]

when you slip into the expectations. If you could treat the anxiety with this gentle, relaxed, non-grasping and non-seeking and non-expectations with the anxiety, okay, then you won't you won't veer into the expectations about the anxiety because the anxiety is actually more difficult to face than these terrible expectations. And if you if you get into those terrible expectations, which I say are like a veering away from the anxiety, if you would face those then with that same gentleness, then you come back to the anxiety. That's the main thing, that's the really hardest thing to face and to face with this gentleness because the anxiety is not an expectation, it's a sense of global threat. And it's much easier to like

[46:39]

pick a threat, even a horrible one, and then you can like fight it or whatever, but then you're like you're off in the races again. You might as well not get scared in the first place, just you know, just but anyway, come back to the anxiety and if you relax with the anxiety then you're going to be able to start having revelations about what anxiety is. You'll be able to enter into the creation of the anxiety and when you see the creation of the anxiety you're going to be all set. You'll understand it. You'll be free of it. And then you'll be able to, you know, be more helpful than you already are. But that often happens that you that you're working with something in this way

[47:40]

and you start going deeper towards the creative center of the thing and as it gets more intense, as you get closer to the creative center, you flinch and go back to your usual grasping and seeking and then things really seem vividly terrible. Like, don't try to see what happens when you practice that way. You should just go back to your usual way of grasping and seeking because here you gave it up and you just got in more trouble, right? Well, okay, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you. Okay, fine, yeah, this was a big mistake, yes. Practice is stupid, yeah, right, I got it, okay. Fine, fine, [...] fine. Just relax and go back to work facing this big mess you got into. And you start seeking, coming deeper, deeper again. And then when you, at the moment that you see what anxiety is about

[48:41]

and how it's created, then again, what anxiety is about is that it's empty, right? That it's interdependent. When you start to see that, there's another tendency to like fly away from that into like, whatever, you know. Oh, I understand Buddhism now or something. Or I'm free. You know, finally I'm free, finally I made it, I'm enlightened, great, you know. That's another kind of grasping and another disturbance of the free flow. And that's called, but at that point, your illness, your neurosis becomes a special kind called Zen neurosis. Because since you're successful at having illumination about creation, you now have Zen sickness, which is harder to cure because not that many people understand this type of illness because it looks like enlightenment. So it's difficult to actually like stay relaxed as you go closer and closer to the truth.

[49:43]

It's easy to like fly off into some kind of like big deal, like expectations of horrible things or enlightenment. Yeah? So you seem to be saying the anxiety is first, and then let's say shortly later, at least in my case, like an anticyclone or expectation attaches to that in order not to replace the energy of the anxiety itself. I was a little up here. Do you know why? Well, yeah. In the scenario you told, I thought you said that you come to meet this anxiety and then there's expectation. I thought that's what you said. So it was like

[50:45]

you got some revelation of the anxiety around the impermanence and you got to see the impermanence because you relaxed a little bit with your daily life. So it's kind of like you're seeing truth when you see impermanence and you get that reward if you relax with what's going on. You get to see that with everything that's going on it's characterized by impermanence. All the stuff that's happening is changing and impermanent. This is like you know your meditation is working when you see that and then if you relax with that you get to see even more like you get to see basic anxiety. But at any phase of this deepening you can like flinch back to your usual pattern and then you can get big sparks happening like terrible expectations. And I thought that's what you the story you were telling. But I wouldn't say

[51:47]

that anxiety is first. I would just say in the story you told anxiety was after seeing the impermanence and relaxing with the impermanence and then it was before you veered away from it into these expectations. But anxiety is not actually first in its origins. The thing before anxiety there's ignorance. There's misconception. There's ignoring reality and misconceiving it. And then there's anxiety. Now if you would stop there which most people don't of course because we have to grow up and stuff like that and you know most people move far beyond that so it takes meditation took a long time to get us back to like really face the anxiety and relax with it. And then see the misconception that it's based on that co-creates it and then relax with that and then let go of that.

[52:48]

And then we enter into a full-scale world with everybody. Then you start to develop your real relationship with people. Linnea? Yes. I was upset when I was experiencing a separate self and I was wondering it's a very young it's a very young place. Is that is that what you're saying? Well that's what you said.

[53:52]

Yeah I know. Well I don't know calling it young and stuff like that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with calling it young but I do think that going that you do go back to the place of the of the creation of the sense of separate self. You actually see it how you see it there you see how it's created you see how anxiety is linked to it and you also see by seeing how it's created you see how it also is kind of an illusion and not really substantial and calling it young you can call it young young is okay another word to call it would be fresh. Ah

[54:57]

I got it. Yes. I I don't relax with the anxiety. You don't? No. So far you haven't? The only time when I see that I relax is sometimes when um for some reason or another when I'm letting go usually in association with movement or some kind of a trick that you create you create a trick and all of a sudden there is a relaxation Yes. but when I let go There's no tricks? There's no tricks at home? Where's Fred? There he is. That's a trick.

[56:06]

That's a trick he's doing. I told him. Thanks Fred, that was good. Well I would just say to be able to relax with basic anxiety is you know to do it for a moment is you know even that is not that common but to do it steadily long enough to really get settled with it is something that we work towards for many years to to really bring it out clearly and face it and relax with it is takes a lot of development of of relaxation and alertness and flexibility and buoyancy so it'll probably take you a while to like really be able to handle this. We have this expression you know going down into the green dragon into the cave of the green dragon so this is kind of like

[57:07]

what we're talking about is to go down into that cave where there's this this dragon of ignorance and anxiety and to like go down in that dark scary place and become friends and become relaxed with this very challenging phenomena called ignorance and suffering and how they turn on each other these first two truths that Buddha taught and so we need to be patient with our practice because it takes a long time to like get down in the cave and then once you get there to like actually like eventually feel like you're on a picnic you know and like oh well here we are it's all slimy and dark and you know and you know it's like if there's a scary place this is it and you know this thing could like gobble me up yep but I'm kind of like amazingly relaxed wow you know and all these Buddhas

[58:08]

are around you playing tricks to get you to you know be able to be there with this dragon and then finally the dragon says you know Elena I'm really you this is you know this thing that threatens to gobble you up and annihilate you is really you the universe is not out there but it doesn't somehow say that to you you don't hear it it's actually always saying that it's going you know but after a while you hear it saying I'm really you but you have to like you know tune into the right the right you know kind of like you've got to get you've got to get simpatico with the dragon and then you can hear what it's actually saying to you

[59:09]

so Jenny there were no props to remind me of who I was except for my backpack and my friends that are familiar with the talk tonight and I focused on bears just knowing that they're bringing themselves to me yeah bears right and I've seen bears but I felt much more anxious up there when I got in front and started writing down thoughts and feelings that I'm giving away and I was scared of the earth and I didn't know it's a sort of practice yeah it's interesting it's really interesting my experience of being up at high altitudes is that my mind becomes very very simple and as I go down

[60:10]

the altitude goes down my mind becomes more and more complicated I once went to Sierras and I was up at about 11,000 feet for a long time and my mind just I got used to my mind being just like really not very interesting I mean like I was awake but like you know like chipmunk what? oh yeah maybe I don't know anyway life was very simple up there and I wasn't even upset that it was so simple and I wasn't upset that nothing was happening I was just up there but as I as I descended I noticed my mind maybe because of oxygen my mind started like until I finally I got back to the Greyhound bus station in San Francisco and you know it was just like it was amazing the different minds that you go through but she's bringing up

[61:11]

the fact that when you get up to that altitude sometimes although your mind's simple maybe it's because of lack of oxygen somehow you also maybe don't have enough oxygen to like push away your anxiety so you get simple but and you open up to some very primal stuff at the same huh? yeah there's no yeah your mind is not it's not doing its stuff to distract you though it usually does when you get to the Greyhound bus depot you don't have time to be anxious you gotta like get out of that bus depot you know with all this stuff happening and it seems like it's a good excuse right? yeah it's very interesting and so the same thing happens early in the morning if you get up and sit in the dark it's nice because your mind's simpler at that time so sometimes you can like it can allow itself to not do all of its fancy stuff for a little while so there it is it's a chance to like it's a good chance

[62:18]

so anyway it's dark

[62:22]

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