Serving what is true


Ken: October 11th, right? Somewhere around there, we’re into double digits anyway. We decided that this has been far too orderly [laughter], so we’re going to change the order and a topic for this morning is serving what is true. People have a lot of difficulty with serving what is true. Most of the time it’s because they want things to be a certain way, or they’ve become attached to things being a certain way, and they are unable or unwilling, whatever, to see that things are different from either their expectations or their understanding. And, well, the usual results.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the relationship between meditation and life, because it’s come up a lot of times in the interviews. And that is, how do I apply this to my life? Well, for the rest of the retreat, what I’d like you to consider, perhaps even explore, is that what you’re doing in meditation is learning how to negotiate life. How often do things go the way that you want them to when you’re meditating? What do you do about that? Well, most of us just ignore it. I’m going to sit here, I don’t care that I’m in pain. I’m going to sit here and get enlightened. [Laughter] Anybody else guilty of that one? It’s wonderfully ironic you know, because enlightenment is about manifesting what is true, but there we are ignoring what’s actually happening because we’re trying to get enlightened. Carey.

Carey: So this morning, while I was meditating, I was contemplating that very question because my knees were hurting and my legs were hurting. And I decided to be with that, thinking how many times in life do I stop because I run into pain?

Ken: Yeah. And that’s a very good example because things don’t always go the way that we expect them to in meditation. How can we actually be with that and serve what is true right there? I’ll say more about this, but I’m going to turn it over to Jeff right now.

The White Bird: part 6


Jeff: Back to our story. It relates.

Ken: You see, we changed the order. [Laughter]

Jeff: We left the prince and he had finally heeded the Book of Knowing and he’d managed to get the white bird and get away unscathed. And he and the white bird were mounted on the big horse and were galloping towards the Black Castle. Because, if you remember, he had agreed to return the white bird to the Gray Old Man. So on they rode and soon they came to the Black Castle. At this time, the monsters weren’t asleep, the dragons were awake right in front of the doors, hissing and snarling and soldiers were marching about shooting at things inside, as soldiers do. The castle was black. Now the prince really didn’t want to give up this new knowing of the white bird and so he took out the Book of Knowledge and opened it up. The Book of Knowledge said, take the white bird to the Gray Old Man and he will give you the sword. Turn the sword against him and his soldiers. And then you can both go free. So he closed the book and he rode on into the castle, The dragons eagerly were trying to refrain from taking off their heads or burning them up. The soldiers stared hard, lined up on either side. They had to kind of pass through one of those gauntlets, menacing on either side, but they let them pass because he had the white bird with him and he went inside. They both walked up to the old man. He couldn’t take his eyes off the white bird with those red eyes.

The old man gave the prince the sword and as soon as the prince had the sword, he turned it against the old man and chopped off his head. Soldiers rushed in, he chopped off their heads. The dragons came at him, he chopped off their heads. Pretty soon all the monsters were dead, heads all over the place. So the prince looked up and this time he took the leather scabbard because he’d learned a little bit. And he sheathed his sword and they mounted the horse and they rode off towards the Tree of Happiness. And they rode and rode and eventually they came to the Tree of Happiness and the Three Giants were there. He stopped a ways off and he opened the book and the book said, turn the sword against the Three Giants. So, he walked up with the sword, immediately just cut off their heads, three dead giants, three more monsters on the ground.

So, he took that old, shrivelled fruit, put it in his pocket and they mounted up again and off they rode, back towards home. And they rode and rode and rode and they finally came to that place where the two houses stood on either side of the road. He wasn’t quite sure what to do here so again, he consulted the Book of Knowledge and he opened up the book, and it said: “Buy no black sheep.” He thought, “Buy no black sheep, why would I ever buy a black sheep? This is silly!” He tucked it away. They continued on down the road and he came upon a huge crowd of people, and in the midst of the crowd were his two brothers, hands tied. The crowd was all shouting, leading them on. And the prince rode up and he said: “Wait, wait, what’s going on here?” And they told him: “Well, these guys ran up a huge bill and they didn’t pay it. They ran up bills all over town. So we’re going to take them to prison. They didn’t pay what they owed.” The prince said: “Wait, wait. Okay. Okay. I will pay for their bill. They’re my brothers.”

And so they were freed and they marched off. And after a while they got tired, they’d been traveling a long time and so they stopped at the side of the road and the prince lay down. He thought they were all going to take a nap. He fell asleep. And after a short while he was woken up, shaken to his feet, there his brothers stood, they had taken the sword, taken the Fruit of Happiness and they had taken the white bird, made her promise not to mention anything of this. They made him strip off all his clothes and they dressed him in rags and tatters. And they left him beside the road. And they returned to their father the King with the white bird.

Reflections on the tale of The White Bird

Jeff: We have one more chapter this evening. [Laughter] So, the prince kept coming into these situations right, first with the giants and he kept knowing the Book of Knowledge and it made sense to him but then at the last moment, he’d always make a different choice. He picked the silver scabbard. Then finally he got to the white bird and he really paid attention. He paid attention that time. So what happened when he came back into his old territory and ran into his brothers, what happened there?

Student: He couldn’t understand metaphor.

Jeff: That’s often the case. Isn’t it? Anybody else?

Student: Habituated pattern?

Jeff: Say more?

Student: His instinct was to take care of his brothers, not to look at the total context.

Jeff: Ever run into that?

Sophie: It strikes me as obligation.

Jeff: Obligation to what?

Sophie: I think culturally and socially we’re taught to take care of our family and our friends.

Jeff: Yeah. Okay. Guy.

Guy: Along the same lines—don’t rely on a sense of duty.

Ken: One of the mind-training instructions, yes.

Jeff: Yeah. Don’t rely on a sense of duty. Boy, have you ever run into that?

Carey: I guess I’m not as smart as the prince either because I’m still waiting for the black sheep to show up. So black sheep, my judgment is, he’s done what he’s supposed to.

Jeff: Ah, okay. Okay. So, he made a purchase and it was a good purchase?

Dave: This time is different. It’s the notion of I followed the rules and this time is different and I’m not violating some principle that I learned. I’m doing something different. This is a different situation. There’s a reason, an excuse or whatever.

Ken: Yeah, Sophie.

Sophie: I’m still back when he’s chopping, well, when he kills the old man, because if your intention is ahimsa or non-violence and you come up against the old man and he gave you a tool and now he’s standing there before you, and you’re told to chop off his head, but you have a greater principle of not to kill.

Jeff: Sort of like the greater principle of take care of your family.

Sophie: Right. Very similar but even bigger.

Ken: Yeah. Laura?

Laura: With his brothers, he could have been blinded by affection not only duty.

Jeff: Yes.

The wisdom of fairy tales

Valerie: I’m also curious or confused by the things that didn’t come out the way they said they would. I’m curious about it, but for one thing, I can’t see any reason why he needed to cut off the head of the old man, because the old man told him, “Once you bring me the white bird, you can take the scabbard”— or whatever it is—”take the golden scabbard. “So, he decided he wanted to keep the white bird.

Ken: Have you ever …

Valerie: But—wait—the other one that’s there is that the brothers were eating, drinking and being merry on the premise of what the sign said. So we have, this is another thing that’s going on in this story, is that there were trust or promised transactions that aren’t coming out. I mean, there was really no reason why he had to take the leather scabbard. He could have taken the gold scabbard. There was nobody to take it away from him. So there were all these things that were set up that aren’t playing out. I’m just noticing that as another theme.

Ken: This is very interesting. I think we’ll have to give everybody an assignment after this, after this retreat. Okay. You know what your assignment is? Read fairy tales. Alex, and then I want to comment.

Alex: I’m kind of confused about the final development because I thought that part of the point here was [unclear] self-cherishing. He’s lost everything. I mean, it’s kind of like that principle in 37 Practices, if a thief takes everything. I don’t want to be doctrinaire about it but I see some contraditions here.

Ken: There’s some important stuff to clear up here and Valerie and you are in exactly the same place. That’s how I see it. [Pause]

There is the world of interaction, as we know it. The world of shared experience as you’ve heard me talk about. And then there’s the world which we actually know, actually experience—thoughts, sensations, feelings. There’s very little we can say about that interior world. There is no possibility of exchange or trade or sharing in it. So it’s very difficult to talk about. Stories such as the one Jeff has been relating are completely about that interior world. Now, how many of you have met the old man with the red eyes? What’s he like? Guy?

Guy: He’s the embodiment of a reactive pattern that has no awareness.

Ken: You’re giving an interpretation. What’s he like?

Guy: Untrustworthy.

Ken: What do you feel when you run into him?

Guy: Danger.

Ken: All right. How many of you run into the old man with the red eyes? Okay. He guards something. There’s nothing you can trust here. What does the old man with the red eyes serve? Christina?

Christina: Himself.

Ken: Yeah. His own survival. What are you to him?

Christina: Something that helps him survive.

Ken: Yeah. There’s a knowing there, but it’s locked. And you’re going to claim that knowing. What’s going to happen? So that’s one piece. Take another piece. Take what you want and pay nothing. [unclear]. How many of you have run into that? [Laughter] What happens?

Student: It’s the principle I call “avocados, five cents.” Driving down the freeway, it sounds like such a good deal that you pull off and it’s not what it appears at first glance.

Ken: It’s the devil’s deal. Because when you get something for nothing, somebody else is getting nothing for something. And this is how the devil gets you. This is how the devil persuades you to sell your soul. You’re going to get something for nothing. And you find out that it costs you absolutely everything. In modern times, this is exactly what has produced the financial crisis we are in. Everybody thought they could get something and not pay for it. Right now, the banks in Iceland have gone under and hundreds of towns in England now have no money. Everybody thought they could get something for nothing [unclear comment and laughter]. So now everybody pays hugely.

So, this is why I say read fairy tales because they describe what takes place inside. And [pause] well, one may object to or feel that there’s violence being portrayed, cutting off the head of the old man and all of those dragons. And let’s take a look at that. You’re resting in meditation and you start feeling anger about something, maybe something that happened yesterday, maybe some meeting you’ve got coming up tomorrow. What do you do in your meditation, when that happens? Carolyn?

Carolyn: Just give it about 10 seconds. Check when you get present, find your place where your feet are solid, you feel your head. I’m applying this to general any big emotion that comes up. Because it’s external.

Ken: Well, what happens to the anger when you ground in your body that way?

Carolyn: It’s there, but it’s not overtaking me. It’s within.

Ken: And as you open to the experience, the anger, completely, but don’t get lost in it, what happens?

Carolyn: It dissolves through it.

Ken: You just took its head off.

Jeff: Can I add to that?

Ken: Please.

Jeff: If you don’t take it’s head off, you’re going to take someone else’s head off in the external world, in the world of shared experience. So the way you balance the external world, your actions in the world is you take the heads off in the internal world.

Ken: What really screws things up is when you try to make what happens internally happen out there. There’s a saying in shamanistic traditions: when your dreams become reality, trouble is not far behind. And many of the problems in the world, particularly in the religious area, is because people are trying to translate internal myths or myths about internal processes into actual political events. We have the myth, the Second Coming. What does the Second Coming refer to? You have this initial opening in spiritual practice and then as we all know, the patterns go [makes a collapsing sound] and there’s a long period where it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. You’re waiting for the Second Coming and there is nothing to do but do your practice and wait. And as you gradually accumulate a sufficient level of attention, penetrate the patterns, and then you have the possibility of presence again, but translating that myth into actual political events? Well, that’s produced a number of wars that resulted in the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. Gary, then Dave.

Serving what is true

Gary: Ken, how do you distinguish that from the dream vision of Plenty Coups in the book Radical Hope, there was an Indian chief called Plenty Coups that had a dream or vision that led him to somewhat of a political solution.

Ken: It’s a very good question. What Gary is referring to is the last great Crow chief who’s a contemporary of Sitting Bull. He was called Plenty Coups because he was an extraordinary rider and planted these coup sticks, which is how you challenged other tribes and so forth. And he was a young boy, actually eight or nine, when he had this vision in which the buffalo were replaced by cows. And this is before the white men had actually appeared. And he took this vision, this dream vision to the Elders. And they interpreted it as a foretelling of what was going to happen to the Indian, that the way of life as they know it was going to be replaced by something else. They didn’t understand these other animals as cows, there was just going to be something else, they didn’t know what it was, but this was the best interpretation that they could come up with. When it actually started to unfold, and this dream became reality, trouble was not far behind. Another part of the dream vision was that if you follow the way of the chickadee, you can save your people. The way of the chickadee in Indian lore was to listen and watch very, very carefully, because that’s what the chickadee does. It’s a small defenseless bird so it just watches and then finds its way. And that’s what Plenty Coups did.

So, he listened to what was being spoken to him in this metaphorical, highly metaphorical, and translated it into a way of approaching life. That’s not trying to make the dream reality. It is understanding what the dream is saying in this metaphorical language. And this is what’s very important. When we take these spiritual truths to be literally true, all kinds of problems … like the creation myths in the Bible, we have creationism now, which is trying to take this stuff as literally true. It’s a disaster. You follow? Okay, Dave, you had a question?

Dave: My two responses, one about he didn’t understand metaphor and the second was, this is different, are a couple of patterns I have in my life. I’m not alone in that I’m sure. One was having supposedly learned the lesson of listening to the teachings, he still comes to a situation either where he doesn’t understand the next teaching, or doesn’t trust his understanding, or says “I understand.” But this is different. The same thing isn’t posed to me, “I must take care of my brothers, and not follow the teaching.” So those are a couple of different things that I do in those settings.

Ken: You want to comment on anything? Then we want to go the exercise.

Alex: I still see something of a contradiction between this ruthlessness and the sort of inner approach which you were alluding to occasionally in your podcasts on 37 Practices. You know, how does this ruthlessness relate to the idea that when you encounter something in your own life and your own behavior, which is taking something away from you, you should be generous towards it?

Ken: This is going to lead us right into the exercise isn’t it? You have to serve what is true. This is something I’ve related before, but when I was in the three-year retreat, I was intent on practicing as hard as I could. So I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. And eventually I got so ill that my body said to me, you can go and get in line if you want Ken, I’m not coming along. It took me at least another 10 years, a little more, before I began actually listening to my body. Some of us are extraordinarily stupid. As Dave was talking about, here I was, bent on knowing what was true and I was not at all prepared or willing to deal with what was true.

Jeff: So let me add to that.

Ken: I held onto things very, very hard. What I was protecting the whole time was the old man with the red eyes. He was running the show. It wasn’t until I let go of all of that, took his head off, that other possibilities opened up. Jeff.

Jeff: There was something really important here that a number of you have pointed to. I misinterpreted this cutting of reactive patterns for years and went head on, tried to cut them and they got stronger and stronger and stronger. What Carolyn pointed to was anger comes up. You include it in your attention. You’re generous with your attention. In your attention, something happens, and that anger, that old man disappears. You do it over and over again, of course, it’s not like [snaps his finger], well I took care of the old man. The cutting with the sword is a metaphor. That’s not the way you want to work internally. It might work for some people. It did not work for me.

Ken: It’ll work for some people some of the time.

Jeff: I’m finding in being generous with my attention means sometimes I focus in on attention, sometimes I ease off, sometimes it’s very gentle. I’d be generous with what’s going on. You know, the rule isn’t be gentle. The rule isn’t be intense. The rule is respond to the situation and be generous. Does that makes sense?

Ken: Last comment, because we have an exercise to do, which is going to take a little while.

Student: Is that where patience comes in?

Jeff: Patience? But you have to be balancing patience too.

Ken: Yeah. There’s patience and there’s also not acting and allowing yourself to get very hard and rigid. Okay. I want to give it a go, Gail, Jeff, who should we use as the fourth to demonstrate this?

Jeff: Peter.

An exercise in trusting others


Ken: Should be interesting for Peter. This is the demo. So pay close attention. So we’re going to form a diamond. You’re going to face that [unclear]. We’ll start off with you as the leader. [laughter] So as a foursome—there are four walls in this room and the person in Peter’s position has to touch his nose to that wall, person in Gail’s position has to touch her nose to that wall, Jeff’s positioned to touch his nose to that wall and me over there. But we have to keep this configuration the whole time and whoever is facing in one direction is the leader. So right now, Peter is facing that direction. You can move wherever you want. We have to do whatever Peter does. So that’s the first one. Now what Peter? What are you going to do? Yes. So we’re going to back up. [unclear] How’s Gail going to touch? Now you see what’s happened, okay? He’s coming up with—why don’t you turn? Now Gail becomes the leader. [laughter] Now I’ve become the leader. So you see, it’s very simple. Peter had a little difficulty because he just wanted to hold on to that leadership position, but there’s only going to be one slight complicating factor. There’s going to be all of these other groups doing it at the same time. We had the easy version. So up you get. Groups of four. [Recorder is turned off.]

Pardon? Yes. These are all the exercises, we just figured out a refinement, but not sure—yeah, we might have time. You’re rolling? Okay. So what was your experience with this. Molly?

Student feedback


Molly: You had to work together. You had to communicate with your body to make it happen.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Carolyn or Bud?

Bud: I thought I knew what to do, but I was not the leader [laughter] so I couldn’t do anything.

Ken: Okay. Dave then Carolyn or Alex? Sorry, let me go again. Yeah, Alex.

Alex: I thought that we were going to head to the last wall and so we were turning, but then she did a 270 instead of 90 degrees and so I wound up heading off in a different direction than the others. [laughter]

Ken: Carolyn?

Carolyn: Someone else said, I like the coordination with the shared governance. We all were interdependent on us getting somewhere. So we all, wherever we went, we were going.

Ken: Okay, Christina?

Christina: Our first leader did something really surprising as soon as it started, he handed over leadership to someone else. And it was a good choice because we finished very quickly, but it surprised me. I wouldn’t have done that. I would have kept going.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. Guy. And then Janet.

Guy: You know, it was very interesting and it reminded me of flocks of birds or schools of fish and the way they move.

Ken: Flocking algorithms … that’s how they figured out how to do computer animation. The birds on the outside decide at random which way to go and everybody else follows the movement of their neighbor and that’s how you get all of those things.

Janet: I was going to say what Guy said and that I felt the movement in my belly. It wasn’t from thinking in my head that I knew where to go. I felt something that told me—this is where we’re going. And it was really a very fun feeling.

Ken: Yeah, everybody seemed to have a good time! Okay, what’s the connection between this and your meditation practice? [Inaudible comment and laughter] I’m going to let everybody consider that for a while. What I’d like you to do is consider your experience in this exercise and what you usually do when you practice meditation. Carolyn.

Carolyn: Well, if the flock, i.e., my attention while I’m sitting, if I notice some pain comes up and I just go into the pain, I can be a twisted wreck by the end of it instead of just including the pain and meditation and coming back to the breath. I mean, I can crash into a wall if I don’t just stay, come back to the breath and I guess the flow of it rather than …

Ken: What I’m going to suggest is that when you start experiencing pain, one part of you takes over and doesn’t listen to anything else. Okay?

Betty: The unexpected seemed frustrating at first because it didn’t get to my goal. But then I saw that there were just different ways to getting to the goal and I went with it.

Ken: Okay, Stephanie

Stephanie: Well, as you’re always giving me a hard time for—I like looking for the algorithm, what’s the rule, how do you do this? What’s the thing? And I did that and I saw that if we absolutely shared the leadership, it would work cool. And then what came up is, oh my God, what if my teammates don’t get it? And so I decided, test and trust. And I saw an obstacle if I were to stay in leadership. I had the baton and I passed it to Guy who grasped it and we were off because everybody got it and I just glided along very happily for the rest of it.

Valerie: I’m thinking about how when you sit down to meditate, you begin with an intention, for instance, in this retreat to do the primary practice. And yet I sit down on the cushion and maybe I start with that, but then something comes up and it’s like the group turned and a new leader came forward. And there’s no point in fighting with that leader, it’s better to work with that leader. She said, be present with the emotion. I mean, whatever it is, work with what it is before you, and eventually perhaps your intention to do the primary practice again or whatever, will come up and you can do that.

Ken: I’d like to take that a step further. I think if we were to do this again I’d probably strew the room with a few more obstacles, things that couldn’t be moved, but there were a few groups that ran into each other here and there, right? Now, everybody in the group was clear about the intention. If you ran into this table or you ran into another group and the leader held on to their position, what happened? [inaudible reply] Yeah. Everything stopped, but if the leader trusted that everybody else in the group shared the same intention, passed the leadership off, what happened then?

Student: Flow continued.

Student: Because they not only trusted, but their trust was accurate.

Okay. How many of you trust the other parts of you in your meditation? Melissa?

Melissa: I guess this means I have to stop manhandling my mind back into place and just let other things lead.

Ken: What would that be like for you?

Melissa: Based on this, I think it could be good.

Ken: Okay. What I want to point out here: you just ran into the man with red eyes. What’s he like? Hand the mic back to Melissa please. What’s he like?

Melissa: About 15 minutes ago. I was going to ask you what you meant by this, was it the devil. And I decided not to ask because I didn’t want to get to this position right here. Scary, very scary.

Ken: What does he serve?

Melissa: Deadness I think, status quo.

Ken: Status quo, yeah. Guy, then Sophie then Alex.

Guy: Yeah. I had an experience on this retreat about trust and really that balance is impossible without trust.

Jeff: Can I step in here? I mentioned a few days ago, the idea of following a thread. What happens is we think that we know what the thread is. The thread might be that massive pain you feel in your back, that might be what leads you through. And if you ignore it, you’re stuck. You can’t go forward, nothing happens. But if you begin to include that, you find the next step. So those things that come up that we think have nothing to do with the practice, they are the practice. That’s what helps you find your way.

Ken: Okay. Sophie,

Sophie: I’m kind of confused because if you get caught up in a storyline, you know, you’re caught up in something that’s happened and all of a sudden you catch yourself, you know, oh, I’m thinking, and you try to come back to the breath. But what you’re saying, well, that may be a thread. If you follow that thinking and it’s making you tight in your chest …

Jeff: I wasn’t suggesting you follow anything. I was suggesting you include it and maintain attention. I didn’t say about following the thinking. I said, following the thread. If the thinking comes up, hmm, let that be there, what’s going on? Oh, there’s this pain down here that I’ve been ignoring. Very frequently thinking is triggered by something that you’re ignoring in your body. It helps you come back to what’s going on in your body. You include that feeling. You return to your breath. You include the feeling. You don’t follow the thinking and go down and get trapped in it.

Sophie: I guess I’m getting a little stuck on, is the thinking a part you don’t trust at all? I mean, is that a part with the guy with the red eyes, the thinking part?

Ken: You can’t know.

Sophie: I’m really confused who the guy with red eyes is.

Ken: Hands up, those who’ve met the guy with red eyes. Pick someone to tell you who the guy is, hold up your hands, please.

Student: The guy with red eyes is every little shadow and every corner that you’re not looking at.

Sophie: That’s not answering the question for me.

Ken: Okay. Let somebody else, all those were willing to help Sophie, hold up your hands. Microphone for Carey.

Carey: For me, one of the guys with the red eye was my religion, giving control and following that, taking that to be truth and ignoring what was going on inside of me.

Ken: That beginning to help?

Sophie: Yes.

Ken: Oh good. Okay.

Jeff: Remember that David Byrne, I think it was an album, Stop Making Sense? Listen to that song again, it’s an important teaching. Stop making sense. Stop believing in sense. Worshipping sense, thinking that making sense will make everything good.

Ken: Michelle then Alex.

Michelle: I think the idea of a cooperative exercise of all of us walking around in diamonds to achieve a shared end is really interesting because we’ve been doing it all the time with the microphones. We automatically pass around the microphones to achieve a shared end, which is we get to hear other people’s questions and insight. But it requires all of our cooperation.

Alex: So, you can’t know whether some part of you is a conditioned reaction; by that, do you mean you know it after the fact when everything … falls apart?

Ken: Well, you serve what is true to the limit of your perception. And in the story that Jeff’s been relating, the prince’s perception is limited by his sense of duty. We’ll find out what happens to him shortly, but it didn’t turn out so well up to this point. That’s always the case. We never have complete information. So we serve what is true. If we brought all our attention to that, one of two things happens. Either things flow as everybody experienced in this exercise that we did. You kept serving what is true, no one person could accomplish the goal by themselves, so just let that be, it all worked out. Or the whole thing blows up! You’ve got a big mess. And then the fourth instruction comes, you receive the result, whatever it is, because if you’ve brought all your attention and things do blow up, what you get to see is what you couldn’t see before. You get to see where you were blind. You get to see what was preventing you from seeing. Nobody said this was a safe path. Christina.

Christina: So, we’ve been talking about the guy with red eyes and it occurred to me when there were still three giants in this story …

Ken: How many have run into the giants, those big guys with those big clubs that knock you senseless?

Christina: Is there more than one guy with red eyes? [laughter] I know about one of them I’ve met but now I’m starting to be a little concerned that it might be guys with red eyes all the way down. [laughter]

Student: You said it was turtles.

Ken: Yes. I like the turtles. You may have to wield the sword more than once. And what Jeff was saying about cutting with attention. Many of you’ve done this with me before, but I’ll just give you a quick example. Take something that occurred over the last week or so that made you angry. Not necessarily ragingly angry, but you know, an unreturned phone call, a bank error. You know, there are lots. And feel the anger. Just recall it. Feel it in your body. And now say to yourself, I”‘m angry and I’m glad.” What happens? You heard it, okay. What happens Sonya?

Sonya: It dissipates. Something becomes clearer.

Ken: Yeah. And you look at that situation now, what do you feel?

Sonya: Not such a big deal and what can I do? Where’s the other way I can go instead of banging my head against the frustration?

Ken: That’s how you cut the head off the man with the red eyes, because that’s exactly what happened. There’s the anger. [makes slicing sound] How’s that feel?

Student: Confusing.

Ken: This clear Sophie? Good. There’s a question, Stephanie.

Stephanie: I didn’t experience that. I experienced a closing, a shut down, a push away. When I said “And I’m glad!” it felt in the overall context, like a way overreaction to the small incident that I had chosen, and it felt like it was amplifying something that wasn’t there. And so I felt a hardening, forcing.

Ken: Try it again. I’m angry and I’m glad!

Stephanie: Well, this time I feel more like yesterday’s giggles coming out.

Ken: There you are. Because we get locked, so locked into that mindset, right? When you say I’m glad, you’re actually just taking joy in your experience and the anger can’t hold.

Stephanie: When I did it the first time … [inaudible]

Ken: Ah yes, you see, you were just continuing the anger into the gladness. You weren’t taking joy in the anger.

Jeff: As Ken pointed out, it works for some things and not for others. It’s not a tool for everything. Other tools work too.

Ken: Yeah. I just wanted to give you a demonstration of how attention cuts. Okay. Last one, Carey.

Carey: So, this may not be related, but the football player or athlete who lost the game and hit Jeff, was he taking joy in his anger?

Jeff: No. He was ah … that’s a really interesting question. He looked very joyful taking the swing, but he let me experience it for him. I didn’t experience joy, I experienced shock. [laughter] But he didn’t experience it for himself.

Student: I was just going to say, it’s a good example of when you don’t take care of it internally, you end up chopping someone’s head off externally and that’s what he did to you.

Jeff: Yes.

Attention, intention, and will


Ken: Okay. What’s important—last point before we stop here—attention, intention, and will. Attention, intention and will. Attention can be viewed as a directed energy. It involves power. Intention can be viewed as directed attention. We start mobilizing the whole system in a given direction. Will can be regarded as directed intention. Commonly, people think of will as something that powers through. This is not accurate and misleading.

It’s maybe more helpful to say, at the level of will, there are no obstacles. Obstacles simply become part of the territory that needs to be negotiated. That’s what you experienced in this exercise. You had attention in the group. Intention was directing that attention in certain ways, but what Janet was referring to is the group also developed will. And so when something came up that blocked the immediate forward progress, the will of the group made the adjustments and there was no obstacle, there was just a territory to be negotiated in a certain way. But because the group will was there, the leadership could be passed off and with that fluidity, all of the obstacles disappeared. So at the level of will you include everything, but you actually make use of everything. This is very much connected with serving what is true. Michelle.

Michelle: Is it accurate to say all the obstacles disappeared or that the obstacles were just obstacles, they weren’t charged in any way?

Ken: As I said, the obstacles simply become features in the terrain which need to be negotiated. And the concept of obstacle disappears. It’s very interesting working with this in the corporate environment. One of the corporations keeps saying, well, we can’t do this because of this. We can’t do this because of this. And I’ve had to say to them, time and time again, all you’re telling me is the ground in which you have to work. None of these are actually obstacles, you just have to figure out what you can do in these circumstances. It’s a very, very different way of thinking. Okay, we’re going to break here.