What Really Matters Interviews

WRMI 006: Interview with Mary Helen Fein: Who Are We - Really?

June 09, 2017 Doug Greene
What Really Matters Interviews
WRMI 006: Interview with Mary Helen Fein: Who Are We - Really?
Transcript

spk_0:   0:05
Hi. This is Doug Green with what really matters interviews. And today I'm interviewing a woman named Mary Helen. Fine about suffering about Buddhism, about these things called the Five Sconces. And I maybe not pronouncing that word quite right. But let me give you a real quick background on why I find this very intriguing. As some of you may know, A few years back, I really went down the rabbit hole deep. I was I was diagnosed with glaucoma and I almost went blind, and I still could and I went down the rabbit hole very, very far. I know suffering part of what Buddhism is about. Israel is eliminating suffering. And I heard Mary Helen fine speak at a, uh, at the Mountains Stream Meditation Center in Nevada City. And she talked specifically about suffering and also a a deeper subject about kind of how we create suffering, what causes suffering and even more deeper than that. Like, who are we really? And I was fascinated. It was this whole presentation of kind of who are we and what really matters, which is the core essence of these podcasts. So I came what I want to do here is dive deeply into this, uh, into sort of exploring suffering. And these five sconce does and all of these things and what you can take away from this is really having a better sense of who we are and who we're not. Um, how we create suffering, how you can stop creating suffering and really live a life that's more in alignment with source. Oh, are however, you want to think about that source God, great spirit life, any of that. So without further d'oh um, merry hell, thank you for joining us.

spk_1:   2:14
Thank you, Doug. I really appreciate the opportunity.

spk_0:   2:17
Um, perhaps you can you know, let's let's I think the first question I have is why? Why is this so important to know this whole idea of Scotland is And the five I think you've called him the Five agitation

spk_1:   2:31
aggregate adaptations. It's good that it's actually aggregates. So

spk_0:   2:36
why is this so important? Why would people want to know about this?

spk_1:   2:40
Well, the idea behind the aggregates is that they make up our world, and we missed Aktham to be something that they're not. And that basic, uh, misconception causes a lot of our suffering

spk_0:   2:55
So maybe the word illusion comes in here, right? Are what the world is versus what we think it is. We kind of live in. This state of illusion is out of

spk_1:   3:07
Yes, we do. We live in an amazing state of delusion. I'll talk about that.

spk_0:   3:14
So maybe, um, I remember the part that kind of set the stage on. This was there were three key components about Buddhism that you mentioned and maybe you can. And then what we're talking about today fits within one of those, right?

spk_1:   3:30
That's right. The three key components that you're talking about are called the Three Characteristics of Existence. The three marks of existence. And I was like to use the poly words for things because sometimes they shed light on shades of meaning. So the poly words for these three characteristics Air Duca and Nietzsche and Nata, and I'll go into each one of them a little bit. So the 1st 1 is Duca and Duca means suffering. And, you know, um, I really appreciate your talking about what you've been through, And, um and I know that everybody has suffering in their lives, and we we, um It's the first noble truth. The first thing the Buddha ever said in any of in his first talk was that we all suffer and we suffer for so many different reasons. You know, some of those reasons air physical. We get old, we get sick. Ah, we die. Some of those reasons, their psychological we, um we don't get what we want, We get what we don't want. And the Buddhist said, I teach on Lee suffering and the end of suffering.

spk_0:   4:49
So that's the North Star in this is to to reduce or eliminate suffering in your life. So hold on to that, folks. This is That's the goal. If you suffer you, there is a path out of this, and Buddha points towards that almost. I think I'll add this too. In my experience, all the Buddhism is a religion of sorts. It is also, in my experience, a person. It's about personal growth. It's really about getting to know yourself. The Buddha was all about self exploration. And while who are we? Why are we the way we are so suffering pieces is at the core of this. So okay,

spk_1:   5:32
so true. That is exactly right. I mean, that's why that's what we're doing here, where we're trying to be happy. We all want to be happy we want. I mean, they're suffering that comes to us. But don't make it worse, you know? Put it in street talk as one of my friends, Tony Bernard. He's a teacher who's trying to put these concepts industry talk, so don't make it worse.

spk_0:   5:58
Okay, so So there's a three marks or characteristics of existence. The 1st 1 is that we suffer. What's the 2nd 1?

spk_1:   6:06
The 2nd 1? A. Nietzsche is impermanence. Everything that arises passes away, including us. Everything is in transit. Everything is changing from one thing to another. So you were talking about illusion. We live under this constant illusion that the world is solid and stable and unchanging, that we can have some control over things and make our lives secure and get insurance and not have to worry about anything and and, you know, that's kind of all illusion. The truth is, we're not immortal. We're all going to die, but we walk around and this is the most amazing thing in the world. Everybody walks around all day, every day, believing that they're never gonna die that they're here forever. We truly believe in our own mortality. I mean, if you question them, they'll give in. But you know, that's not how we live. And it's just incredible, isn't it?

spk_0:   7:08
When there's really only three guarantees in life, you're born. That's a given. If you're here to you will be taxed on. The 3rd 1 is nobody gets out alive. Nobody ever has. And as of today anyway, um, you you are going to die so that there is that, too just that's one of the three truths, right?

spk_1:   7:34
It really is. And isn't there a little voice that says, Yeah, but not me. It's quite remarkable. So those are the 1st 2 marks of existence. The 3rd 1 is the one that we're really interested in today because it relates to this subject of the five aggregates of clinging. So this is, um, this is the hard won. The Buddhist said that our sense of self in any absolute sense is a delusion that the self is, uh created by this combination of the aggregates that make up our whole world, which combine and give us a sense that we have a self

spk_0:   8:21
So it's kind of I want to say it's almost like the man behind the curtain right there is the illusion of the screen. There's Oz on the great Oz, and I think what you're saying here is that Oz really doesn't exist. Um, in fact, the man behind the curtain doesn't even really exist if I'm interpreting this, right? Yeah.

spk_1:   8:47
Yeah, I think you've got it. Right.

spk_0:   8:49
So Okay, so just to paint the big picture again, First of all, we've got suffering. That's a guarantee you will suffer. But Buddhist says you don't have to suffer. There is a way to sort of transcend that. Right? Right. Okay. And then the second part is nothing is forever. Nothing is permanent. In fact, the whole concept of permanence is a delusion. And now we've gotten too. We've got this whole thing about having this sense of self. I am, I I think therefore I am. There's this thing that there's me and there's you and there's objects out there. And I think that's what we're gonna deep dive into now with these five scandals or these five. What you calling the aggregates of clinging

spk_1:   9:40
five aggregates of cleaning

spk_0:   9:42
or heaps. I like that word keeps. We've got these five piles or heaps, right of cleaning that radio.

spk_1:   9:49
This idea that the Buddha introduced of the five aggregates of clinging the word that he used was Kanda. That's the poly word. And in Sanskrit Scandia, this word before the time of the Buddha, it just meant a pile of stuff. Ah, heap, Ah, collection. A bundle, a group. And often the Buddha would take an ordinary word. And he would re purpose it for a psychological function that he wanted to describe. So and then he could refer to that word over and over in his teachings. So this word, the condos, the aggregates means just a pile of stuff. And he said, There are these five piles of stuff. Five groupings of stuff that make up our entire existence, our tire world, everything we know. And I want to list them for you quickly, and then we'll go into each one.

spk_0:   10:49
So just to put some context on this, you are this fought this thes five things that we're about to talk about. That is you. That is who you are. Um, yeah,

spk_1:   11:02
well, that's all you know, everything you do that, you know about is is made up of these five things, and they're never alone. They all are all five present. And they are what you experience, but you transform it into an idea of itself.

spk_0:   11:23
Okay, so go ahead.

spk_1:   11:26
Okay, so the five things are matter, and I'm gonna give you the poly word for each one. Ruba feeling tone bait, enough perception, Sonya, Mental formations, Sankara consciousness, Indiana

spk_0:   11:48
and I want to add something here in my notes. I see another way to look at these as the matter you can think of is being your body. That the seconds Conda is, which is Vandana is actually your feelings, your pleasure and your pain. It's sort of this emotional side, um, and maybe sensations. And then number three is your perception, which is pattern recognition? Um, yeah. It's how you perceive things. Number four is your mental state. Um, that was mental formations, as you call it. And then va Nana, this consciousness is my consciousness. Now, I'm not even gonna take a guess at exactly how who played with that one. But so you got those five things, and it's right. This forms your how you perceive reality.

spk_1:   12:42
That's right. That's right. That's how reality presents itself to us. So And one of things I love so much about Buddhism is that it provides us with this amazing map of our psychology as human beings and not just, ah, psychology the way we think of it today, in terms of pathology and what's wrong with us, but more potential, our psychology, how it's structured and what is the potential of it? What potential can we reach with it? So this is really key to that map of human psychology. It's kind of

spk_0:   13:18
like How do you work? If you were look at yourself was a machine or is this software program? What are the five kind of key components of that,

spk_1:   13:29
right? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, what really matters, right? So if you were a software development team, you'd have your group a team, you have your evading a team and they'd all be working on their different parts of it.

spk_0:   13:43
So let's start off with, um, you said Rupa, which is the body, right?

spk_1:   13:47
Yeah, While Rubio is form or matter and we generally divided into internal and external Ruba internal Rupert, you're right, That's our body. But external Rupert goes beyond external rupiah is every physical thing in the universe besides our body. So it's our clothing. Our sandwich We just ate for lunch. All the trees. Ah, the planet Earth, the stars, the galaxy, the whole universe. Any other universes, anything physical that's out there is Rupa. We kind of got big group and little Rupert

spk_0:   14:26
and I think a form and again ropa is form and matter.

spk_1:   14:30
Yes, so just one up. Throw this in right now. The Buddha off taught to break Rupert down into the four great elements and he called them solidity, fluidity, heat and motion that everything physical is made up of those four elements. And what's really interesting to me that is in, you know, the 1600 Shakespeare is using the same four elements in his art and his plays. He had slightly different names for them. So solidity becomes earth. Fluidity becomes water, motion becomes air and heat is heat. Heat this fire. We have Earth, air fire and water. Same elements, no, 2000 years later. Impressive, huh? It's good concept if it lasts so long.

spk_0:   15:23
Shakespeare was one smart dude.

spk_1:   15:25
He waas he waas He also had a good map of how our psychology works. So the other thing to talk about with Rupert because Rupert includes our five senses are five physical senses. And those are the sense of sight hearing touch, taste, smell. These are the sense doors we know nothing that doesn't come in to our son stores. That's our connection to the outside world.

spk_0:   15:58
Okay, um, let's what's next one? Been Donna, right? Feeling

spk_1:   16:08
wrap up route bow and say one more thing. Okay, um, that's the first big pile of stuff, but we were talking earlier about a lesion. Delusion and the point I want to make about Roper is that we confuse it with ourself. We say my body, this is me. My hand, my house, my yard, my planet. All that's an illusion. I love the quote from Wittgenstein. He said the self is an illusion caused by grammar. You can hardly say a sentence that doesn't start with the word I or have the words me or mine in it. So that's how the first aggregate contributes to the false sense of self. Okay and good. Now we can move on to the second Scandia ve Dana,

spk_0:   17:00
which is my feelings. Pleasure, pain, feeling tone, I believe, is which has

spk_1:   17:05
this starts to enter into our emotional reality, which, of course, you know, is very different from our physical reality. It's a different level of knowing that we have as human beings, but it's not quite full blown emotion as we think of it. It's more, um, this sort of lower level, Um uh, feeling tone that is attached to everything that comes in a sense door. Let me give you an example. And I think that'll explain.

spk_0:   17:34
Yeah, examples are good

spk_1:   17:37
examples Air. So good.

spk_0:   17:39
Show me. Don't tell me

spk_1:   17:42
So you have an eye is a sense organ, and you can see you have a sense and you see a beautiful flower. So you have a sense object, and at the very moment that you see this beautiful flower, you find it pleasant. That is the feeling tone and the boot said part of his map waas that the pleasant or unpleasant quality of everything that you experience comes to you exactly at the same moment that you have the experience. Okay, Another example. You've got a pain in your knee This is your sense of touch, and it is having an unpleasant sense object, this sense object of pain, and it's having an unpleasant reaction. So that's different from the pleasant reaction. And some people say there's neutral and some people say there is no neutral.

spk_0:   18:41
So what this is telling me is it's bypassing our brain. This is like something that sort of intrinsic at a deeper level, Um, where it's almost like, I mean, because we're putting like pain and pleasure on it. There's kind of a there's a judgment about what it is, right? Pleasure versus pain. Yeah. Ah, ah. But, um, it happens concurrently with the, um, the sensation itself.

spk_1:   19:13
The experience? Yes,

spk_0:   19:15
So it's it's impacting us before we have a chance to think about it.

spk_1:   19:19
That's right. And neuroscience is confirming this today, which is really interesting, that is, it's It's if you know about if you have an experience of something through any sense door, you find it pleasant or unpleasant. Unless it's kind of beneath your notice, and then it might be neutral. So why is this important? The reason it's important is because when something's pleasant, our tendency is to get attached to it very quickly. Here's this beautiful flower that I've just sensed. I like this flower very much. I would like about 50 more of these flowers. Could you get them delivered tomorrow? You know, I can't really afford it, but I'm doing it anyway because I like you. I want these flowers now. Did you get them here in an hour?

spk_0:   20:02
It reminds me to have a Nevada city that where I live. There's this ice cream parlor and they have this ice cream called bourbon breakfast. And it's like the pleasure of eating bourbon Breakfast. Ice cream is so good. It's like there's a part of me that just wants I want more. I want more, I want more and I can't just, like, say no. You know, I just can't have one scoop. Um, anyway,

spk_1:   20:29
we call this desire

spk_0:   20:30
desire. Yes, we call it. Want what I

spk_1:   20:35
always think of the little two year old in the shopping cart. His mom won't let him have the candy, you know, and he's screaming his head off. That's me. So on the other hand, with unpleasant, uh, sensory experiences, our tendency is to be averse to them, get this out of here. So we're either leaning in toward something or pulling away from it. We cannot be with things as they are when we're in this state of desire or version. We're just, um this is the second noble truth that suffering is craving. Suffering is caused by craving, that wanting things to be different from the way they are.

spk_0:   21:17
Mmm. I love that saying,

spk_1:   21:20
Yeah, it's important to notice that the Buddha was not against pleasure. There's nothing wrong with pleasure. It's just getting attached to it that causes the problem. And there's a beautiful little poem by William Blake called Eternity that I'll read to you. He who binds himself to a joy, does the wing it life destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity. Sunrise.

spk_0:   21:53
So I think I want to make an example of what that could look like if you see a beautiful butterfly, fly off of a beautiful flower and just appreciate the moment that is non attachment. But as soon as you see it and you want to capture that butterfly, put him in your net, pin him down on the papers and smashing between the pages for however long and telling is like spread out because you you must have Ah, that takes it away. And that's where this whole piece comes in. Yeah,

spk_1:   22:30
exactly. Exactly. And the point here is that Veda is this second pile of stuff that makes up our world this pleasant, unpleasant thing. And like all the other piles of stuff, we think of it as part of ourself. My pleasure, my plane pain. The Buddhist suggests that we noticed pleasure in pain but not identify them and not be confused that their evidence of having yourself

spk_0:   23:03
so that would be like, um even though it's part of you, as you say it are, uh, we attached to it and we claim its mind. The better way to look at it is as if it's almost I want to see outside of ourselves. But it's just it just is. It's just there and it's not you. It is just part of what the is this part of the landscape.

spk_1:   23:35
It's right exactly right. Don't identify with it. It doesn't have to be evidence of a self.

spk_0:   23:43
Okay, go ahead. Number

spk_1:   23:44
on. Yeah. Third aggregate. Sonya Perception. This is the faculty we have that recognizes things, and a lot of what we call thinking falls into this category. Sonya literally means the knowledge that puts things together. What that's referring to is that as human beings, we are great categorize er's. We see patterns in everything. We have this great capacity to match things with what we've seen before. So you know you can throw down the tea leaves and find all kinds of patterns in there and read someone's future. Or you look up in the sky at the Milky Way and other Galaxies and you see a bear and then a little bear and an archer and a dog and kings and queens, and we just make patterns out of everything. So, um, I think of this is data base. Look up so my eyes fall my sense organ, The eyes fall on something and I sump Ruba from out there and I say to myself, Oh, it's a chair. We all know what a chair iss. We go into the database and retrieve not just the word chair, but also the concept of a chair. And then this new chair, which we've never seen before and maybe is very modern and an unshared like, but we know it's a chair, and we know that it can fit into this category of chair. We can match the new things to the old categories

spk_0:   25:23
and the key pieces we crave. To do this, we want to categorize everything we see. Oh, it's a glass or it's over. That's a sheet of paper and it's got writing on it. It's got that phone or, um, I'm looking at the stuff in front of me. Oh, it's got this Looks like a microphone. It's a microphone and it's computer screen. It's this. It's that it's, um we can't not categorize Things were pattern were hard wired to find patterns.

spk_1:   25:51
Yes, and it's our survival. It's a great gift, but on the other hand, oh, he's a Virgo. That's why he's that way. You know, we over categorize, and we dismiss things in their categories, and we just miss reality sometimes, cause all we're seeing is the category

spk_0:   26:07
I remember audience Shawn to use a Zen guy that I really like, said as soon as we label something like we call it a chair, we call it a leaf or we call it a bird or we call it a cloud. We lose something like 95 to 97% of our direct experience with it. All of a sudden, it's this kind of a word. We point out and go Oh, it's that Versace. It's we it At that point, it just becomes this object outside of us versus something that we can truly appreciate as being so much more than that label. We stick on it.

spk_1:   26:46
If we can set these patterns aside and it useful, we need them to navigate the world. But they they're filled with preconceptions. So we miss. We don't see reality anymore. We we miss the beautiful detail of having fresh eyes. Hey, okay. And we think of it as me. My perception, my mind, my thinking. I know chairs right thing. This is another part of what we mistake or ourselves.

spk_0:   27:24
So we have an attachment to our pattern izing

spk_1:   27:27
Yeah, don't take that away onto the fourth, OK? The fourth scandal is Sankara, which means mental formations or state of mind. All of our volition tze and actions are derived from our state of mind. Buddhism says there's 52 Bennell states and you can look them up on the Internet. There's lists, and they include every kind of state that we could be in. Loving Kindness is a mental state. Hate is a mental state. Sleepiness. Composure, uh, making an effort. All of these are mental states, and we think this is evidence of the self. My mental state. I'm feeling sleepy. It's me who's sleepy. So once again, this illusion of the self is promoted by grammar at the beginning of the Dhamma. Paata, the Buddha says mind proceeds all mental states. Mind is their chief. They're all mind wrought, if with an impure mind, a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox mind proceeds all mental states mind is there, Chief. They're all mind rot. If with a pure mind, a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never departing shadow. So mental states can be a cause of suffering a very great cause of suffering. Many people feel that mental states kind of visit on us, and we have no control of them. We have to endure them. But, um, as you develop spiritually, you costarred to realize, Ah, you have this mature realization that you can take some responsibility for your state of mind. It's not out of your control. You can incline the mind away from the unwholesome inclined the mind towards the skillful. There's a lot of freedom and learning this. So then we start to leave behind this idea of my mental state. This is me. I'm so angry. I'm so happy I'm annoyed. The me me, Me.

spk_0:   29:58
Okay. And now we take the big one on you.

spk_1:   30:03
Yeah, the last one being Yana consciousness. So, um, consciousness is the last of these piles of stuff that make up our world. The last one that we confused with having a true self. Our culture teaches us what Doug said just a little while ago. I think therefore I am take heart our ongoing consciousness. This steady stream since we were old enough to remember things seems to be more than anything. Me, This is me. It's always been me. Doug referred to Addie a shanty, And I remember one time I went to sit with him and he said, this amazing quote the person who is looking out of your eyes this minute is the same person who looked out of your eyes when you were six years old. We all remember that six year old person, and that's me. That's I. But A. J. Ashanti was not saying that was I. He was pointing out the illusion. Of course, we all have a conventional self. You need a conventional self to function in the world.

spk_0:   31:21
A conventional self is sort of this. All these things we've been talking about

spk_1:   31:25
these things, Yeah, my state of mind, my consciousness, my

spk_0:   31:29
perceptions are patronizing,

spk_1:   31:32
but what we really are have the illusion off is an absolute self as self that is eternal, the Hindu religion a posits that we will be reborn and that our eternal soul will come back. And our our status in this world are cast will be a result of probably how Maney rites and rituals we paid for in the Buddhist said No, that's not That's not true. The Buddha's very revolutionary, he said. That we don't get reborn are there is no eternal soul that gets reborn. And today, in India, where the caste system is still so strong, many untouchables have converted to Buddhism

spk_0:   32:23
untouchables being the lowest caste Who are people that won't be touched. Nobody wants to touch.

spk_1:   32:31
Yeah, they have all the worst jobs. Mmm. All right. You can't stop it. It just does it.

spk_0:   33:00
I remember a quote I liked. It was basically it says we're meaning, making machines great. And the way we make meaning is through story. So what's your story? So I want to So for me to know, you have got to know your story, and I'm going to make one up. Um, based on a lot of these other things, how I perceive you whatever patterns I see, whatever my senses are telling me. So, um, but it's that it's just something we seem to be hardwired to do. Especially this mental peace. It's it's coated in stories.

spk_1:   33:38
It's coded and stories. I think about the planet er and the what? Seven billion. How many ever? Many? Six or 71 has an incredible story. Don't that Every single person on this planet has a story. Amazing story. You know, I kind of love that

spk_0:   33:57
stories air. Great. But

spk_1:   33:59
there is a great

spk_0:   34:00
So so the Is everything running out on the

spk_1:   34:05
I do want to add one thing that the Buddha gave a simple definition of consciousness. He said that you have consciousness, you haven't. I You have a flower. The eye sees the flower and there's I consciousness. So he defined it through the senses. I just want to put that in there, cause that's the detail.

spk_0:   34:25
So there's the thing. And then there's the eye that sees it. And then we could almost call it like an event horizon,

spk_1:   34:32
right? A contact point? Yeah. And that's that is, in the sum of all that makes our consciousness. So So what? What is what really matters?

spk_0:   34:44
Yeah. So what do we do it with all this? And just to recap. So there's, um, at the highest level. There's these three, um what did Mara was smart, and there was suffering and permanence. And then there's this whole piece, which is remind me. No, sir. No, sir.

spk_1:   35:03
Itself is not riel. And that's the area that we're talking.

spk_0:   35:05
So that's what all these aggregates for, miss No self. No cell s. So what do you do with this? And how do you explored? How do you I mean work?

spk_1:   35:17
So you know, we want to ask the question. What am I on? These fights condos on these six senses, but the Buddhist said I teach on Lee suffering and the end of suffering. So he's seeing Don't ask who am I there imponderables. Don't ask how the universe was created. Don't ask what it feels like to be enlightened. Don't ask who am I asked, How can I make the causes of suffering Go away? How can I be happy? So

spk_0:   35:49
it's the prime directive. That's

spk_1:   35:51
the prime directive. So these five heaps air always there. They're always working together and they're always creating your reality. And they're always giving you the illusion that you have this self homo SAPIENs man who knows. In fact, we are Homo SAPIENs SAPIENs man who knows he knows the higher order of consciousness because we are aware of ourselves of conscious beings as conscious beings. And we're if we can get past our pride in self congratulation of being conscious beings, we can see it as a doorway. So what is it a doorway to?

spk_0:   36:34
Yeah, great question.

spk_1:   36:35
Yeah, What's it? What's it? A doorway to for one If one of the first things that as you pursue spiritually development you find there's an observer, there's the one who watches. The one who knows and watches ourselves get attached, watches us fall into all the things we didn't want to do but is not part of it. So right away there's a part of you that's free. There's a part of you that's not part not engaging in that downward spiral.

spk_0:   37:07
And I I want to kind of give an example of what this feels like. A looks like, um, so that people going to understand this a little better because I think there's a there's a big kind of, ah, it's not the easiest thing to do. You've got this brain that is just spinning. I like to think of it sometimes is like a racquet ball bouncing on the side of a racquetball court every time it hits a wall, there's a new thought and says, Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you know, if you sit with yourself for just a minute and actually try toe track what you're thinking, you know you might come up with 60 things in 60 seconds. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know it's hot, it's cold. Oh, I got an itch. Oh, my car. Did I turn it on? Maybe it's hot Outside is a bird gonna, you know, drop splatter on it and your mind can just spin and spin and spin. And there's actually this ability and this is what meditation is partially about is being able to instead of being engaged in that racquetball thing like being the ball itself, bouncing around it is to kind of pull away enough to see that ball bouncing around. And that's the observer. State it. You're actually able to look at your mind almost like you look at your hand or your leg or your foot and go, Oh, look at that brain. It just doesn't stop My God! And it is this separate piece of you that is not all of you. Just like your hand is no more all of you than your foot is or anything else. So that's what this observer state that's a partial explanation of what it's like being in that observer state. You can actually watch your mind working without being sucked into the monkey mind, as they call it, or the racquetball court.

spk_1:   39:04
I love your analogy of the racket ball bouncing around. It's just a great analogy. And you know why? I think the Internet works so much for us because it's just another chance to racquetball. You're hot for linking from one thing to the next. Just like that whole list you just gave. You know, I got this. My car, Whatever. I gotta write a thank you know, my aunt. We're jumping around, so that's it's just an extension of what we do anyway. You wonder with the Internet, right. So So, um, so this is a doorway to realize that And to get in touch with this observer and to kind of look, look at that whole process while it's happening and not be lost in it. Not be the not be the racquetball. What other kind of gateway can this understanding about not having a self? I mean, it sounds like, Okay, these three marks of existence there's suffering. I can buy that. Their things they're not permanent while we know that, but no self. Come on. What, are you crazy? Of course, I have a self is very hard concept to take in because the ego doesn't like it one bit. No. Maybe you don't have a self, but I d'oh

spk_0:   40:18
and the ego is that racket ball bouncing around in there.

spk_1:   40:25
It's got its own agenda. So what else can this kind of understanding? Ah, that there is no self. What else can it give to us? It can open this gateway to, um, greater states of awareness. We can become aware of our own awareness,

spk_0:   40:49
so that is instead of putting your attention on the racquetball bouncing around which you can. D'oh! This is actually turning that vision, Howard, And looking back at that, which is looking at the racquet ball bouncing around. Yeah,

spk_1:   41:10
yeah, yeah, and it's even greater than The Observer. It's like kind of it kind of shoot you out into this great space. When you try this, when you try to be aware of your own awareness, the things start to grow and and move into a very infinite sort of space. Be aware of your own compassion. Be aware of be aware of infinite, infinite space.

spk_0:   41:35
I remember audio off. I'm gonna mess this quote up probably. But when you look in the mirror at yourself when you look at your eyes, who is that which is looking out. It's, um Anyway, I don't know why that came, but it did.

spk_1:   41:56
So someone recently was talking to me about enlightenment and they said, You don't get to awaken and at first I didn't get it and I said, Well, why not? You know, I wanna wait. And then I heard the U You You don't get to awaken because when awakening comes you the South is nowhere to be found.

spk_0:   42:22
So what do you do with that? If anything,

spk_1:   42:31
everyone's had these moments. Everyone's had these moments of kind of transcendence where we kind of lift up off the racquetball court and something greater, and it feels really good, and we want to know more about it. And that's the seeds of spiritual development. So what is it we're

spk_0:   42:50
hoping to achieve with this, right? We've got all these. All the we've got. These five pieces weaken deep, dive into each one. We've got these 52 characteristics and we've got this mind that's bouncing around. We've got the sensory things going on in this pattern making happening and the story creation and on and on and on. So, as we learn about this and we observe it, thio in or meditation or whatever approach we take to that. Where we going with this? What do we want to achieve? Why?

spk_1:   43:25
Why is it, ah, powerful to start to break apart the sense of self? Why is it powerful? It's powerful because once you start to break apart this false sense of self, once the illusion of self begins to drop away and it can be difficulty, it can be confusing. It can be frightening. But if you stay with it in its place, something else arises. Something without words. Something that was there all along. People call it a sense of connectedness because when the self subsides are connecting this with everybody else and everything else and all those flowers and even the racquetball, all of that comes true. And we have this sense of peace. And we have this connectedness this this universality that can feel us so it's very, very valuable.

spk_0:   44:25
Um, and take another leap here, Um, and this thing may bring in some work from some other people, but, um, the part that that audio keep coming back to audio. Shaun t I really like Yeah. Ah, highly recommend you look him up and I'll there'll be links around here somewhere. But Audie is Shaun t dot com or audio Shaun t dot or ge um, he the the way he phrases it, I'm gonna paraphrase it here is that it's like life seeks to express itself through us, and we are a unique expression of this bigger thing. We are spirit seeking to have a human experience, and it is our job simply to get out of our own way. These what we were talking about today, this ability to kind of deconstruct yourself and move the ego aside, all this programming that you think is so important, which is really just a racket ball bouncing around, um, and all these other things that go with that if you can rise above that and become sort of a clear channel for life expressing itself, that is the life that you are seeking and not you are seeking, but that ISS seeking to be expressed because you, in a sense, are there any more. Um, and another. I'm gonna bring in another author here. That kind of comes at it from a different way and yet feels especially relevant. There's a book called Fate and Destiny, by an author named Michael Mead. And I believe it's Michael Mead. And there's two parts of that, Um Fay. Our fate is so their fate and destiny. There's two parts want Fayed is that we come into this life with a gift, but we know not what it is. And our destiny, if we are to live a full live, is to find what that gift is and express it. And I asked him if he could, you know, take that down to a single sentence and he said, It's to sing your note and what I see through audio Sean tease thing of life seeking to express itself. His life has a note for you, and it is seeking to express that note through you, and it is your job to get out of your own way so that that can happen. And the rewards are that you, as however you wanted to find you at that point, is you'll be a full expression. You will be in harmony with all that ISS, and you will be. You will have a amazing life that you probably can't even begin to fathom in that ego, ex state. So this is something much bigger and my first So Thio going even a little deeper here. My first riel experience with this was when I went down the rabbit hole. So Rabbit hole so far, I was really ready to, like go and through Grace I ended up in a place down in the Grand Canyon where all of my years of grief and anger and sadness, which had felt like an ever tightening holder crevasse that I was falling into, took me to where I couldn't like my life. Factors came to a point, and I associated that point with death, literal death and the life actors did come to a point. But in that experience, Down and the Grand Canyon Ah, it was like the lines came to that point. And then they crossed. And on the other side of that sort of eye of the needle, there was this feeling of spaciousness, internal spaciousness I'd never known. And all of a sudden there was room for all of it. The anger, the sadness, the grief and all of that. But also this feeling of realizing there's something so much bigger than me here I felt almost like I had been wiped clean. And I was a blank canvas in that moment. And it was my first real sense of, you know, I just want to say wow, like our to to behold something so much bigger than me and to realize I was it It was me. It just kind of dissolved into oneness. And that is Yeah, that was a turning point for me. And it's what part of what keeps me coming back for this Because once you've felt that Anna, I'm such a deep believer and somatic experience. This is something that didn't happen in the head. It was something that was a total body. Ah, experience as, ah Robert Heinlein, I think, says a stranger in a strange land. He uses the word grok, and it's to get something totally your mind, your heart everywhere body to feel it on all levels. And once you had that feeling and you've experienced that, um, there's no going back. You know what to say after that?

spk_1:   50:18
I think you've said it.

spk_0:   50:21
Um So where do people go with us? Okay, so let's say that that experience I had is one is one possibility, but they want. It's like, Okay, I get it. This this could be good. I want explore more. What should they do next? Where do we go with this? There's meditation,

spk_1:   50:40
meditation. There's the arts. When you I think artists constantly report that when they do their finest work, they're not in the room. They're not even there. It comes through them. So just trying. You know, even if you've never done any artwork, take a little do drawing. Try it, you know, and you'll start to experience the self sit stepping aside and letting something else through.

spk_0:   51:11
So find the media that works for you could be writing to

spk_1:   51:14
Could Be writing. Could be drawing. Could be music could be dancing. Could be drumming. Could be, You know, a lot of art forms.

spk_0:   51:22
See if you can find that which is seeking to express itself through you to express itself,

spk_1:   51:31
and it could be teaching. It could be counseling. It could be co counseling, you know, helping people and helping yourself and just working. There's so many skillful, uh, things that you can do out there and you'll find, and I'm sure you if you stop and think about it. You're all everybody's doing stuff and and that the stuff that you do has the most power in your life when you let it be and you're not like controlling and manipulating it.

spk_0:   52:03
And let's let's explore the meditation part a little bit too. This is, um I mean, it seems so simple, right? You sit on a pillow or sit in a chair, whatever in silence, you don't move. This is so I remember Jack Cornfield saying What is meditation? And because this is a clean. So I'm gonna have to be careful about what I say here. But basically, you sit your your buns down on the pillow and you deal with the stuff that comes up and it will, and you learn you. You sit down and your mind wanders. You know the racquet balls, often running, bouncing off the walls and you'll go off on it for bed and you'll be bouncing around and you'll be caught in the story about is your car is there bird above your car right now? Um, did you lock the door? Is the ice cream melting because you forgot to crank the freezer up or whatever you stuck it on the wrong section of the refrigerator and you come back to your breath. You follow your breath, you find a place that you can concentrate and bring your attention to keep coming back to. It's kind of like the, um oh, it's It's like if you're looking at the X and y chart on a fun of those algebra things, it's where X and Y cross. You just keep coming back there and then you're gonna take off it, expect or y vector or a three dimensional when x y z and then you come back and then you go off the racquet ball bounces over there and you catch yourself. Oh, I'm thinking, Are you hear something or you feel something and then you just go, okay? And the mind will tell you something. And you just say Thank you for sharing or whatever works for you when you come back again to that neutral place until the next one spins off, and in this observation you learn about yourself. You like you may spend a lot of time thinking about money problems or about your relationship stuff, and you will start to see patterns here we go. Pattern recognition. But that's information that lets you know more and more about yourself.

spk_1:   54:14
And there's kind of two levels of patterns that we discover as we as we meditate. And there's the first is that you get all those put your personal patterns, some of which you're not so wholesome. And as once you see them, you have a chance to work with them more. But we also see the big patterns like the big house, this universe work like, Hey, what goes around comes around. Is that a pattern? Is that a law? Yeah, maybe it isyou know. And we start to be able to live in in more harmony with how things work because we see the big picture.

spk_0:   54:51
Okay, so we we're into this almost in our what other key things. Where what's the first thing they should D'oh!

spk_1:   55:03
Oh, the first thing you gotta d'oh in all cases is be really nice to yourself. Set up an atmosphere of friendliness as you proceed. You know, in our culture, we all have these critical voices that come up and rip us to shreds So many of us do and just try to recognize those critical voices. Tell them that they're not welcome right now. Please go away. I'm being good to myself, especially in meditation and just, you know, set this up to be really good to yourself. I think that's the most important thing There is key to happiness,

spk_0:   55:44
Okay? And where, UM, where can they find more information?

spk_1:   55:49
Ah, there's so much information. Let's see. There's, um, the kind of meditation that Doug and I are interested in is vipassana or insight, meditation and their insight groups all over the world. So you and the Internet will just help you find them.

spk_0:   56:08
Go, go! Is your friend on that is your

spk_1:   56:10
friend. If you're interested more in Buddhist philosophy, look up the five aggregates, read a little bit about them on Wikipedia and then click on some of those links and racquetball your way around a psychology and you'll you'll find a lot of great stuff.

spk_0:   56:26
Um, I'm gonna also put a pitch in here for a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Incredible book that goes very deep and yet is a fun read. Um, he talks about the that's sort of the racquetball mind being like. Imagine that being your roommate and sitting next to it and then realizing just how crazy would go with a roommate like that. Um And then there's audio Shaun T who we both feel is that we've had great experiences with That's a d Y A S h a n T I dot or gaudy ashanti dot or ge Any of his books are great. Um, I just finished one of his called resurrecting Jesus. That is, gives a whole different spin on the whole Jesus story. Um, and there is Jack Cornfields Books. What is it after the lawn? No, after the ecstasy. The laundry. Um,

spk_1:   57:30
there's a really great beginning book on meditation. If you want to get discovered a little bit about insight. Meditation called mindfulness in Plain English Ants by Bon Tae Gunaratna Henna Pola Gunaratna G U N A. I think if you go to Google, you'll find it our Amazon. You'll find whatever bookstore near you.

spk_0:   57:52
Great. And I'll see if I can find a list of other sources toe list here. But thank you for your time today. Really appreciate talking with you. I think this is one of the more esoteric, um, a serial interviews I've had because this subject is so it's that And it's kind of this bridge between the who? I don't know. Between this grounded this the here and now. And this large concept peace. I hope we gave you those of you listening that we gave you a little bit more to think about some clarity on that and some ways to move forward. Thank you. Thank you. It's really been a pleasure, Same.