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  • [Meditation bell]

  • So I like to share what I think s really the good news,

  • which is that awakening is the beginning

  • of the path.

  • Some people have this idea that it's somehow the end.

  • That's kind of-- I understand what they mean when they say that.

  • It's sort of, once you realized your essential nature,

  • there's a very big shift in perspective that happens.

  • But then life really begins right then.

  • In fact, each moment is a beginning.

  • Natural well-being is, every moment is a beginning, is new.

  • It isn't overlaid with the projections of our mind and our heart

  • and our body.

  • We're free of conclusions, anticipation,

  • And in that alive stillness, there's a connectedness that can actually even be seen or felt.

  • For many people. Not everyone.

  • People perceive this in many ways, actually.

  • And I'm sure as many of you have heard me share before--

  • but again, I think it's worth repeating-- is that

  • everybody's unfoldment is completely unique.

  • The essence of that unfoldment, the fuel that feeds the fire, is essentially

  • universal. This presence is universal.

  • But how it moves through a nervous system, how it

  • heals one and transforms one, is very unique to an individual.

  • Therefore the other good news is, you don't have to follow anybody.

  • In fact, you can't. It's not possible to follow someone else's unfoldment.

  • You can benefit from

  • what they learned, you can benefit from their aliveness,

  • if they're living in that presence, certainly.

  • But the real goal is to find out,

  • right now, every moment, whatever you

  • decide you want to find out-- how to let it unfold right now.

  • How to let that natural well-being permeate your life .

  • And, actually, guide you.

  • Into a place that's really more trusting,

  • Without knowing what the answer is.

  • Without gripping the steering wheel.

  • So it's really about how to live this life as well as possible, really.

  • Because we all, depending on our individual circumstances, have

  • a huge range of life challenges.

  • You know, some very difficult, overwhelmingly difficult.

  • And others really quite wonderful at times, wonderful and fulfilling.

  • Hopefully we have at least a mixed bag.

  • [Laughter]

  • For freedom is the high without the drugs.

  • But freedom is not an altered state.

  • Freedom is real happiness.

  • And when you discover it and you cultivate it,

  • it just grows and expands,

  • and gets more wonderful, actually. More loving.

  • You kind of get higher. Don't worry, you're getting it.

  • It's permeable. You can't not get it.

  • You don't get it up here. Maybe you do-- that's fine.

  • That's cool.

  • That's not important. This is, if you want to get in anywhere, it's here.

  • Drop down a couple floors to the heart.

  • And just check in there. Are you happy right now? Are you sad? Are you tired?

  • Do you want a hug? I didn't bring the bunny, but... [Laughter]

  • Give yourself, you know, some tenderness, ok?

  • And just trust that you're getting it. That this field here has a kind of

  • It's permeable. We can we can't not unfold into that which we really are.

  • Suffering is resisting that.

  • Brother David told me once that the actual literal definition of sin,

  • was to be out of grace.

  • to be disconnected. That's really what it was.

  • not some behavioral thing,

  • external thing. It was a deeper understanding.

  • So even if you're disconnected right now, even if you're feeling separate or isolated or in pain,

  • Can you just meet what's happening

  • with some kindness and gentleness and acceptance? Just see what it's like to not struggle for a minute.

  • Take a break from struggling, if you can. can.

  • People often don't even know they're struggling. "I'm fine!"

  • [Laughter]

  • The good news is, it doesn't matter whether you're fine or not fine. You're still getting it.

  • Even its you don't think you're getting it, even if you don't believe you're getting it,

  • even if you don't feel it,

  • how can you not be what you are?

  • I mean, that's, well basically, it's just plain illogical. [Laughter]

  • It doesn't even make sense. I'm a very simple guy, believe it or not.

  • Like my grandmother said, "Common sense." I love that word. She used to say, "It's common sense.

  • Have we lost common sense?" I think so.

  • Maybe that's what we need to call it: 'Regaining common sense in the land of enlightenment."

  • The practical guide to freedom. Ok.

  • We're gonna rewrite the title. Let the publisher know.

  • So if you're aware of this openness I'm referring to, this presence,

  • or some kind of quality of just finding a kind of ease,

  • today, go with that.

  • Follow your ease.

  • Follow your opening, your openness.

  • Welcome the opening. You may just notice all of the sudden, "Wow, something's expanding!"

  • Expand. Don't think, "I've got to think about that," or, "What is he saying?" -- forget that.

  • [Laughter] Go with the expansion. That's what it means

  • to get a calling. Did you ever hear that? " I had a calling,"

  • You know, to find God.

  • That's what it means. Your natural opening is becoming conscious.

  • Just follow that. That's the real truth. That's the real teaching. It's within you.

  • And let it permeate every cell in your body.

  • Let it nourish and nurture all those parts of you that are sore and hungry.

  • Okay?

  • Because this presence is healing. And it may even produce a healing response in you while you're here today.

  • It can activate those things which have been unseen, unfelt, unexpressed.

  • So, you may get a little bit of cathartic movement

  • And that's fine. That's very normal, natural in an environment that's a little more amplified with presence.

  • With energy like this is here.

  • So if you start to feel agitated or like you want to get out of here, that means something's moving within you.

  • Something's trying to open up.

  • Something's trying to become seen, felt, heard, released.

  • Healed, integrated. Let it!

  • That's why patience is so important.

  • The process, the organic process through this body, is not quick.

  • It's usually gradual. Because our nervous systems, our tissues, are organic living tissues.

  • It takes a while for the nervous system to integrate more energy more energy, more light.

  • More presence. So be grateful it's not too fast.

  • People want it like this, you know. [Snaps fingers]

  • That is so not what you want. There's alot of wreckage on that highway. [Laughter]

  • There is. I've been around a long time. I've seen it, first hand, close up.

  • No. Be grateful you're screwed up and not happy. [Laughter]

  • That's not what I meant. I was just kidding. [Laughter]

  • I was just being bad. [Hits his wrist] "Bad teacher.

  • Go back to your room!" [Laughter]

  • That's terrible. So if you feel like you're, "I'm just the slowest one and I'm never getting it.

  • "Everyone else is getting enlightened.

  • "Yeah, I go to these retreats, and there are so many people getting enlightened.

  • "It's really bugging me.

  • "Maybe I should take hiawaska after all.

  • "Screw it. I wanna get high." [Laughter]

  • Oh, no. Be grateful it's not too quick.

  • It's gradual. It's organic.

  • It's ecological. It really is.

  • If you have this pressure, of saying, " Gee, I'd better get enlightened. Otherwise, I'm running out of time."

  • Or whatever. I hear that from people.

  • Or, "Ive only got so many years left.

  • "I've been sitting on my cushion for forty year or fifty years, and it's..." You know. [sighs]

  • Maybe it would be wonderful just to let go of this idea of time and getting something.

  • Wouldn't it be nice just to...

  • Today maybe that would be a goal, is to not care anymore.

  • "What are you talking about? You think we paid fifty bucks just to come and not care?"

  • Or sixty, or whatever it is? "You're kidding. I care alot.

  • It's insulting!" [Laughter]

  • Definitely the wrong teacher. [Laughter]

  • From audience: "Funny today. He's really funny!"

  • Jon: I'm sorry, it's lack of sleep! And then sugar. [Laughter]

  • It's a really great combination.

  • Ah. I'm just trying to lighten you up a little bit.

  • That's my big goal in life. I take it seriously.

  • I used to be so serious about all this.

  • I was, you know, it makes me cry thinking about how serious I was.

  • Seriously!

  • It's funny! [Laughter]

  • Breaking my back and my knees on my cushion, you know. Not moving like a ramrod.

  • I had alot of really rigid beliefs about it.

  • That's okay. Those will all dissolve.

  • iI's really nice to rest in nothing's happening.

  • Have you ever had a taste of that? It's a special kind of food. [sighs]

  • That's the food that nourishes very deeply.

  • I think when we were talking earlier about well-being, it's--

  • I think part of the quality, part of what well-being is, is being nourished.

  • Feeling nourished and nurtured.

  • Kind of held by the loving heart of the universe or something.

  • The Divine Mother.

  • I remember when I was first becoming quite familiar with presence--

  • And I was-- in those days I was meditating alot.

  • It was my lifestyle, my profession.

  • I was a professional meditator.

  • As my grandmother said, "What kind of a living is the Zen center?" [Laughter]

  • You were right, Grandma. I should have gone into tech. [Laughter]

  • When I was getting used to presence,

  • I began-- I often felt like I was floating on my back.

  • When I was meditating-- just this amazing feeeling of like, floating.

  • Have you ever felt that? Where you're just, like you just lean back and you're just floating in this weightless softness.

  • I think many people find their way here because they want to feel nourished and nurtured.

  • And have a sense have of full well being, you know, unconditional well-being.

  • That isn't reliant upon all the ducks lining up.

  • They rarely do. And when they do, some of them act out a little bit.

  • It's hard to keep those ducks in a row.

  • But I think in Zen they call it "Way-seeking mind."

  • I think even the Buddha said,

  • the one thing it's okay to want is freedom.

  • I mean, it helps you stay on the path, so to speak. it keeps you going.

  • In a way that -- the promise of liberation.

  • And I think when you get a glimpse of the truth, or a taste of the truth--presence.

  • That is profoundly motivating to keep going.

  • I think it's a natural homing device of our own nature--

  • is to want to come back to home ground.

  • So in that sense, I think seeking is completely natural and very much a part of the process .

  • There's a whole other kind thing that's called seeking

  • that I think is a kind of grasping.

  • And clutching, that actually can be in the way.

  • That's different. So I think you can make a distinction between a kind of

  • wanting that's not getting in the way, and one that is getting in the way.

  • I think anything-- my litmus test, on anything like that,

  • whether it's doing practices, or therapies, or whatever, is--

  • even how you're paying attention in this moment--

  • is how you're paying attention allowing opening, or allowing a kind of contraction?

  • And in my book, if it's allowing opening, its working.

  • And I think seeking, another word for that, in some sense, is a kind of longing.

  • I think people have a deep longing in their heart for freedom.

  • And many of us have been on the path a long time.

  • You know--In this life, maybe other lives-- who knows?

  • I think that longing is something that you can trust, be grateful for.

  • Because it's-- we know deeply that being realigned with our deep self is

  • very much a part of what being alive and being a human being is about.

  • Rather than some kind of-- having the perspective that

  • somehow, I'm gonna I'm gonna make it happen. That's the kind of seeking that will get you really attached.

  • And maybe even deluded, actually. You know?

  • " I'm gonna do it. I'm going to get enlightened."

  • That's okay. For sometimes-- I guess, whatever it takes. Maybe it does take that. I don't know.

  • In the Eightfold Path, it wouldn't be under the a listing of Right Effort. [Laughter]

  • Yeah. You know the Eightfold Path? It's good stuff-- if you understand it. [Laughter]

  • I'll give you a quick Buddhist lecture if you don't know, okay?

  • This is a real quick, scaled-down version.

  • Two minutes. Just in two minutes.

  • Well, Buddha discovered that life is suffering, right?

  • And he said, there's a cause of suffering.

  • it's not wanting what you have, and wanting what you don't have.

  • Even getting what you want and then losing it. Those are all sources of suffering.

  • I added a few more things to that list, but...

  • And that there's an end to suffering, and it's the Eightfold Path.

  • Right Effort, Right Livlihood, blah blah. So that's it. That was less than two minutes. [Laughter]

  • Right Effort is what we've been talking about today.

  • iI's about being fully present without interfering.

  • Not detached, but actually embracing without clutching.

  • So that you find the spacious awareness

  • that nourishes and nurtures the human condition,

  • and is the perspective of awareness itself.

  • That is, compassionate itself.

  • And that allows the human to heal, and that allows the light to shine.

  • And the heart to open. [Meditation bell]

[Meditation bell]

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