In the Buddhist tradition, a sutra refers to the meeting of the teacher’s mind and the student’s mind.

What makes being here unacceptable?

Ken: January the 9th, 2011. Happy New Year, everybody. Here we are at Against the Stream. As we usually do, we’ll engage in an extended question and answer period. Will somebody pick a theme for this morning? There’s so many things we could discuss in Buddhism. So, let’s have some some suggestions as a theme that we can focus on today. Agnes.

Agnes: New Year’s resolutions.

Ken: New Year’s resolutions. Okay.

Student: Fear of change.

Ken: Those are connected. Anybody else? Yes.

Student: Getting out of our old story.

Ken: Getting out of our old story.

Student: Resentment.

Ken: Okay, now I’m curious. Okay, so you’re interested in resentment. Why are you interested in resentment?

Student: Because it comes easy to me. [Laughter] And I just resent people and things just by nature often enough. And then I notice it later and say, “Oh, that made me feel really bad.” And it’s the wrong thing to do. And then I have to work on it and, feel compassion and love. And then it’s something.

Ken: I don’t know. Is it along the lines of the whole world is an affront to your existence?

Student: I’m sorry. What?

Ken: The whole world is an affront to your existence.

Student: Well, I sometimes I feel everything’s against me.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. You’re interested in getting out of old stories? Could you say a word about that, please?

Student: Something I’m doing to get out of my old story is dressing differently. Dressing more nicely. Doing something that gets out of my comfort zone so I can … Trying on something new.

Ken: You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?

Student: Yeah, I am. I’m not hiding.

Ken: Very good.

Student: So, same with dressing differently. I’m in this place of in between being Mr. T-shirt and jeans guy and being more fashionable.

Ken: Mr. Suit?

Student: In my own sort of way, you know, Mr. Artsy.

Ken: Oh, okay. Can I go a little further here? What are you trying to change?

Student: I’m trying to let go of my old story. I want to be my authentic self and I want to let go of being a victim.

Ken: Ah. Thank you. That’s very helpful. Okay. That’s very helpful. Okay. Anybody else? Yeah, I was looking right at you, so don’t look away. The woman in front of you. Come on.

Student: I didn’t have a thing to say right now.

Ken: Her Majesty was a very nice girl, but she didn’t have a lot to say.

Student: I’m not that nice. But thank you for calling me Her Majesty.

Ken: You came here to learn something. What would you like to learn today?

Student: Probably the same things that I try to learn every day.

Ken: Okay, what are those?

Student: Just to stay. To stay. Stay instead of leave. I leave a lot.

Ken: Oh say just a little bit more about that.

Student: I think that I enjoy leaving. It’s like there’s something pleasurable about the act of departure and all the various things that I find, like just thinking, planning, a lot of planning.

Ken: Well, let me ask, do you space out? Do you daydream? Do you check out or do you go to sleep?

Student: Not sleep. Sleep’s the only thing I don’t do.

Ken: Okay. Do you do all the others?

Student: Oh, yeah.

Ken: Does this have anything in common with this gentleman?

Student: The resentment? Well, I do experience resentment. Does it have to do with that? Well, I think, yes, sometimes, definitely. And other times I’m not sure.

Ken: Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. And we had two others. There was fear of change and New Year’s resolutions, which is also about change or the fear of change. Okay. So, let’s start with resentment, which I think will be somewhat connected to leaving. That’s what you said, right? Okay. One thing, and this also has something in common with your getting out of your stories. The theme that’s common here is, or what I’m picking up here is that being here the way that we usually are is just not acceptable. Does that fit?

Student: A lot of things are not acceptable.

Ken: A lot of things are not acceptable. Okay. Well, let’s just start with that one. So let’s sit for a moment with that. And everybody of course can join in on this. But let’s just sit for a moment with the fact, the feeling, let’s say, not the fact yet, we’ll get there. The feeling that being here right now is not acceptable. Just breathe for that for a few minutes. This is not acceptable. Well, I’m feeling resentful already. Anybody else?

Student: Agitated.

Ken: Agitated. Okay. Anybody else?

Student: Judgmental.

Ken: Judgmental. Yes. Okay. Anybody else?

Student: Angry.

Ken: Angry.

Student: Impatient.

Ken: Impatient.

Student: Aggrieved.

Ken: Aggrieved.

Student: Uncertain.

Ken: Uncertain. That’s the pleasantest one we’ve had yet. All the others were decidedly negative. That one sort of, maybe not. But that’s the best we’ve done so far. So this is really a difficult way to be in life, isn’t it?

What are the alternatives?

Ken: Okay. So let’s go a little further. Go back to, being here is unacceptable. But now, I want you to consider, what are the alternatives? Now what I want you to pay attention to here—I don’t necessarily think about the alternatives, but I want you to rest in that feeling, being here this way is unacceptable. And when I ask the question, “What are the alternatives?” I want you to observe what happens in you. So we’ll do that again. Being here this way is completely unacceptable. What are the alternatives? Okay. What happened?

Student: Well, I started wondering, you know, there are no real alternatives. Because everywhere I would be instead, would be also not acceptable. I mean, that’s just the way it is. And I can just escape to some weird place.

Ken: Oh, now you’re talking her language.

Student: But that’s also not acceptable, because that’s not acceptable behavior. So, I’m in a trap and nothing’s acceptable.

Ken: Okay, now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty here. What are you going to do about it?

Student: Well, I accept it. I accept everything.

Ken: Well, yes. Everything?

Student: Well, except the things I cannot change, for example. Accept the truth. Accept how things are.

Ken: I’ll accept that the sky is usually—

Student: For example, I accept gravity. I kind of have to accept it.

Ken: I resent gravity. [Laughter]

Student: Often enough, I do as well. But that would be the first step.

Ken: Okay. How do you go from resenting to accepting?

Student: That’s a good question. I was asking you.

Ken: Well, at least we’ve got down to the question. Now, hand the mic back to her.

Student: Am I on a game show? [Laughter]

Ken: There aren’t any prizes.

From the head into the heart

Ken: So what happens when I asked the question, what are the alternatives? What happens for you?

Student: I had a really intense emotional reaction, actually it was like, really painfully sad.

Agnes: Go on.

Student: I think it’s because of the way that that question was like a shortcut to the acknowledgement of how much time I spend feeling that way. Like it skipped over this part and went to this part.

Ken: Go on. Let me say, everything you’re saying here, the reason this isn’t a game show, is that everything you’re saying, everybody else in this room is wrestling with the same issues. So you’re talking about this, and the way that you’re talking about it, you’re actually helping everybody else in this room at the same time. And more than that, but I’ll get to that in a minute. But please continue. So it moved you. What I understood you to say there, it moved you out of your head and into your heart?

Student: Uh-huh. I didn’t come up with examples of why this is the way that I don’t belong here. It was really this pure … And actually, when I have that feeling, I don’t push that feeling away. I don’t consider that to be an unpleasant emotion or something that is difficult to feel. It just happens really strongly, that feeling, because there’s this whole well of sorrow, you know, everybody has this really deep well. And somehow the way that you phrase the question, it was just like dipped in there.

Ken: Yeah. This is what makes me so popular. [Laughter] Okay. But the thing is, we go about ignoring this, or trying to get away from it all the time, don’t we?

Student: That’s what the departure is, right? Yeah.

Ken: And we can’t possibly be free. We can’t be at peace if we’re doing that all the time. Like a person who’s escaped from jail. He’s constantly on the watch out for the law. Right. Okay. So, how do we accept? You also said something very interesting, at least I thought you said, about not belonging here.

Student: Mm-hmm.

Ken: Is that a feeling too?

Student: The not belonging, there’s so many different levels of that. There’s like the physical not belonging. And then there’s the experience not belonging. Like the experience that I am having right now, or that I have had at certain moments, that is that’s unacceptable, and maybe totally relates to the resentment thing. Because if I’m having an experience that I see it as not belonging, or it’s not the right way, then there’s like, an eddy of resentment.

Ken: And it just spirals.

Student: Yeah.

Experiencing yourself without mediation

Ken: Yeah. Okay. There are a couple of themes in here, and and we’ve already touched them, but I want to name them explicitly. There’s anger, there’s a sense of opposition, and it arises sometimes out of a feeling of not belonging, or not being seen, or not being understood, or all of these kinds of things. Now, how do we work with this? How is meditation helpful with this kind of stuff?

The way I’ve come to see things through my own practice and efforts here is that we learn to experience the world a certain way by the way we were treated, or have been treated, in our lives. So when when we feel we don’t belong, or we feel resentful, and we just think everything is an imposition, it’s because that’s how we were treated at some point. And most of our ideas about ourselves come from other people. And this makes meditation really interesting, because when you practice meditation, there isn’t any other person.

One of the great aspects of meditation is that we experience ourselves unmediated by any other person. And that’s in the beginning a completely—for many people and I will say it was for me—a completely bewildering and confusing and disorienting experience. And so much so—and I do not exaggerate—that when I first started to meditate, I literally could not sit still for more than a minute. “Okay, well, that was nice. What do we do now?” In fact, it wasn’t even, “That was so nice.” It was like, “This is boring, let’s do something else.” And one minute was all I was good for.

This is a story I tell myself

Ken: Now, what I’d like you to just try and we’ll all try this together, is, we’re just going to sit for a few minutes meditation. But, when any any feeling of resentment, any feeling of this is unacceptable, any idea about the world itself, actually, quite generally, whenever it comes up, I just want you to say to yourself, “This is a story I tell myself.” And then go back to your breath. Now, this isn’t to try to push it away. This isn’t to try to make it different. This is simply naming it as something. “This is a story I tell myself.” Okay? And then we go back to the breath and just rest in the body.

So let’s just do this for a few minutes, and then I want to hear your experience, okay.

So I said, just rest with the breath. Rest in the experience of breathing.

[Pause]

Maybe call to mind something that happened yesterday or today, brings up those feelings. And then just say, “This is a story I tell myself.”

[Pause]

This is a story I tell myself.

[Pause]

This is a story I tell myself.

[Pause]

Okay. What was your experience there? Anybody?

Student: That experience was very compassionate and forgiving. I couldn’t even make it through meditation today because my brain has latched onto an idea, and it just will not let go. And I was really mad at myself. My resistance was, “Why aren’t you letting go? You’re supposed to be meditating.” And when somebody was talking about that well of sorrow, I was so desperate to name it and let go of the idea, and get back to my breath, and just could not, would not, do it. So, that story, it just felt very compassionate.

Ken: What happened?

Student: Actually, I could almost cry. I have a lot of sorrow that my brain just can’t … I’m so panicky about this idea. I got an email this morning that was about a possible job. And I’m just like, oh, the job would be great. The job will be terrible. I can do the job. I can’t do the job. The job is going to … it was so painful. And to be able to practice meditation, and see it, and name it, oh this is craving.

Ken: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t go there, oh, beat yourself up, talk . No, no, no.

Student: Oh, see, now I’m doing everything wrong.

Ken: Let me come back to that. But thanks very much. And I will come back. Somebody else, your experience here. Yes.

Student: I had this sense of really resisting it. You know, I would tell myself, okay, this is a story you tell yourself. And then part of my brain would say, well, no. Here are examples of why. And I had to keep sort of stepping back, and stepping back, and reframing, and saying, no. I mean, even that, it’s in a context, that’s a story.

Ken: Yeah. And we really cling to those stories, don’t we? This is touching on your topic, isn’t it? Yeah. So how do you feel holding on to those stories like that? What does that do for you?

Student: It’s not super productive.

Ken: It makes you miserable, doesn’t it? Yeah, but we do it anyway. Yeah. Okay. Back to you. What was this like?

Student: I never go for the mic. Is it because I’m sitting or anything?

Ken: No, it’s because when you sat down, you looked at me and said, “I want to talk today.” So that’s all.

Student: This stuff?

Ken: No, no, it was just the way you sat. You’re not complaining, are you? No. See, there you are.

Student: I think it’s good for me. It’s good.

Ken: But it’s also extremely useful to everybody. So, I appreciate your generosity.

Student: Good. That makes me feel good. My experience, actually, I got distracted because of the other things—

Ken: Yeah, so we’re going back. And in the instructions I said, these things come up, and you say, that’s a story I tell myself. So what happened?

Student: Well, the mini broad view is I did the exercise. This is just an observation. I sort of did the exercise, and I went through the steps, and then I left. And I kept trying to like do, “Okay, now I can do the exercise again,” because you were repeating it. And I was just like, ooh. But, the first part, actually, it was pretty straightforward, because I’m like, “Oh yeah, my belly is full.” The breakfast that I ate, I could see the whole little pan of the breakfast that I got at this organic cafe. I don’t live around here. I’m not from here. I don’t know where I am. It was this cafe over here.

Ken: On many levels, you don’t know where you are.

Student: And they served me this pretty large breakfast. And we were talking, and I was eating it, and I ate the whole thing, which I’m sort of like a finisher of things. I really like to finish the food.

Ken: That’s a story I tell myself.

Student: That’s a story I tell myself. And, I’ve been trying to work with not eating beyond where I’m actually full. But then I run into this challenge point when there’s the full plate of food, and I want to finish it because it’s tidy and not wasteful to finish the food. But actually my body is done eating. So there’s like a million that’s a story I tell myself things in there. That’s it.

Ken: Do you feel lighter? I don’t mean because of the food. But when you say, “That’s a story I tell myself,” do you feel lighter?

Student: It was sort of emotional for me again there because, it’s something that I’m actively working with. And even though the exercise was being able to say, “That’s a story I tell myself, ” which is a pathway to forgiveness and forgiving myself, it’s like, and there’s the wall, because in the moment that I say that, I’m looking at the judgment.

Ken: Right. Please hand the mic back here. What was this like for you?

Student: Well, it was kind of, very powerful when I was thinking about my resentments against other people. And, like, traffic and whatever, it relieved me from the resentment immediately. But when it came to resentment against myself, I was just, “Oh, that’s just a story I tell myself, ” because I’m a loser. [Laughter] And then I saw that as well. And now, of course, I was a loser because I was saying that.

Ken: Okay, so now I have to get out the really heavy machinery. [Laughter] So it’s persistent, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That’s great. How’s this? How are you connecting with all of this?

Student: I like this phrase, “Oh, this is a story I tell myself.” It’s like putting my finger on it, and not attaching to it. One of my stories is, I hate the US government. I’m always thinking about, “I hate this, I hate that.”

Ken: Oh. You’re right in this guy’s alley.

Student: I hate gravity, too. I want to levitate the Pentagon and float it away.

Ken: You could just levitate yourself, and you and she could float away.

Student: I was going to say, one of these little black flapjacks could levitate, and I could fly around town on it.

Ken: Yes. Yeah. If you go into Second Life, you can do that. I gave a talk in Second Life once, meditation talk in Second Life. And there were people flying around all over the place all the time while I was giving the talk. I didn’t do it again. Okay. Please. Absolutely.

Trying to work through experience

Student: I’m having a little bit of a different experience than what I’ve heard. So I just wanted to see if anybody else was having that experience. I’m having, I guess it’s a resistance. But honestly, when I was saying, “This is a story I tell myself,” I was like, “It’s not a story, this is real.” And then I’m like, “Oh, God.” And then I go back to planning, or whatever, distraction. And then your voice chimes in, and I’m like, there it is. “There’s this story I tell myself,” and I’m like, “That’s not a story. That’s not a story; this is real.” And then I start going into, “This is rhetoric.” And I can get a little resistant to phrases, even though they’ve helped me in a lot of cases. So I don’t know if anybody else has, I guess it’s a form of resistance, or it’s a disagreeing, or it’s some sort of like, “No, I’m not like this.”

Ken: I’m different?

Student: No, because I always know there’s other people that share what I feel. But, it’s sort of this feeling, then how do I know what’s what’s real and what’s true? That’s kind of it. So if this is a story … so he was talking about resentment. I’m struggling with a resentment right now. In the meditation I was like, “Should I write this person an email? Should I talk to them? They’re not listening.” And you can’t change people, and just accept and da da da da. And then I was like, “This is a story I tell myself. ” It’s not a story. I’m resentful. And then I’m like, I’m going to have to talk to this teacher after the class, because I must be really un-evolved because I’m feeling really very much like this is not a story I tell myself. But at the same time, wanting it, wanting to have that resolution, or that peace, or that lightness, or the sort of resolve from that phrase. So, I don’t know if that helps anybody in the room, but I feel a little of that stuff.

Ken: Well, sure helps me. Okay. Now, thank you very much. There’s really a lot of meat here, and I also need to sort a few things out. The first thing, and this is rather important, if we approach meditation with the idea that we’re going to work through things, we’ve already jammed ourselves in a box. And the more that we try to work things, the more deeply we jam ourselves in the box and the smaller we make the box. It’s really not a good way to approach meditation. So I heard that in a couple of comments that were made. And so I really want to emphasize, and it took me a very long time to appreciate that that isn’t what meditation is about.

Meditation, the way that we approach it here, is about experiencing what’s actually going on. And Thich Nhat Hanh says this very beautifully. He says, “The practice of meditation is the study of what is going on. What is going on is very important.” Because half the time we’re ignoring it, or checking out, going somewhere else. And the other half of the time we’re trying to push it away. Now, this is qualitatively different from trying to work through something. And the reason that trying to work through something is problematic in meditation, is that the idea that “I’m going to work through this” actually prevents us from experiencing what’s going on. Because we’re sitting there, is it gone yet? No, no. Is it gone yet? No, no. See, that’s the box we get in. And there’s no holier than thou there. I’ve spent decades doing that. So I know how it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work.

Okay, so that’s one very important piece. And maybe I should have said a little bit more about that earlier. But when you’re meditating, and this applies to your email, and that’s why I say—this is craving—don’t beat yourself up this way. This is terrible; that’s what you’re experiencing.

bell hooks is … ebing a student of Buddhism forever, in 2001, the year that the World Trade Center was bombed, I happened to be at the World Trade Center, four or five months before that, there’s a big conference on Buddhism there. And I was talking to bell hooks, and she told the most delightful story. One day she was she was in Nepal with Lama Yeshe, and she was really angry. I don’t think she remembers what she was … just really angry, and so angry that you could just tell she was angry by looking at her. And nobody, of course, was going up to her because they were afraid. Lama Yeshe goes up to her, comes up from behind, whispers in her ear, and says, “Buddha mind very angry today.” And, she goes, “Oh.” It was such a wonderful way of allowing her just to be in the experience of being angry.

So here you are, totally caught up with this email about your work. All right. Don’t try to get rid of it. That’s your meditation practice. Be right in the experience of being all excited and churned up about this email, or about this possibility of a job. That’s what’s going on. And what happens when we meditate is we try to replace what’s going on in us with what we think should be happening, and now we’re just fighting our experience. And we cannot find any peace that way. And we bring this idea that I’m I’m going to bring my peace to this experience. And the experience rebels against that, you know? “No, no, I’m not about peace. I’m about anger and resentment today. And so I’m not interested in peace.” And it pushes the peace away.

Let the feeling be felt

Ken: So here’s my killer technique. Okay? So anybody here feeling a little bit of anger in their lives? Okay, so I want you to feel the anger. Take a specific instance. It can be a big thing if you want, but take a moderate, not a little thing, just a moderate thing that you’re angry about. You got one? Okay. Just checking. Do you have one? Okay, so I want you to feel that anger. Just sit and breathe. “I’m angry.” And feel how your body is. Usually the body tightens up when there’s anger. Now listen very carefully. I want you to say to yourself, “I’m angry and I’m glad I’m angry.” [Laughter] That’s what happens. So, what happened here?

Student: I don’t even know, just hysterical. Oh, God. It couldn’t be farther from what I usually say, you know? But, when you’re angry, you start to get into this whole judgment and now I need to let this go, and forgiveness. I don’t know.

Ken: No, no, no. What happened?

Student: What did happen?

Ken: You started to laugh.

Student: It was hysterical. It was funny.

Ken: But what happened? What happened between the time I said, “I’m glad I’m angry”?

Student: My body relaxed? I don’t know.

Ken: Oh, you’ve really got to work at your meditation.

Student: [Laughter] What did happen? I don’t know, I feel a little uncertain.

Ken: The secret here is, just as you said, usually when we’re angry, we’re trying not to be angry, because we’re afraid that if we actually experience the anger, then we’re going to kill somebody or do something really horrible. We’re actually afraid of our emotions, right? So when I said, “I’m angry and I’m glad I’m angry,” given the structure of the situation here, I was giving you de facto permission just to feel angry. Right? “Oh, he said it was okay.” Right? Okay. And what happens then is we allow ourselves to experience it all. Okay.

Now, we have to do a little sidebar here. If you’re a feeling, what do you want above all else? If you’re a feeling, if you’re a feeling. To be felt. That’s the raison d’etre of a feeling is to be felt. So here’s this anger, and now it’s felt. “I’m done. I’ve realized my existence. I’m finished.” Done. So when we’re sitting in meditation, and in the vipassana technique where you label things, the actual labeling isn’t to get rid of the things. It’s to put you in touch with them so you experience them. “Oh, I’m upset. Well, yeah, I am upset. Yeah, I’m really upset. Well, I’m so upset. Wow. I didn’t know I was this upset. Cool. Wow. Oh, what an interesting experience.” I mean, that’s meditation.

Now, the first time this really hit me, we were doing some weird deity meditation in the Tibetan tradition. And these are very complex meditations. You imagine yourself as this deity, with all of these accoutrements. And this wasn’t a really complicated one. There were only five deities that we had to imagine, and you’re all of them, in this palace, etc., etc. And this is a three-month practice if I remember correctly, it’s that long. Yeah, I think it was a three-month practice, which was a long period of practice for us. And it’s about a month into this. And you may be able to connect with this one. And I’m in my mid 30s at this point, early 30s. “You’re a failure again. You’re an utter failure in your life.” What’s this got to do with deity meditation? Let’s go back to the deity. “You’re a complete loser. Your life is over and you have failed at it.” This went on for two weeks, eight hours a day. That was my meditation practice.

This is where I learned, “Oh, this is a story I’m telling myself,” because it was. But it took me a very, very long time to learn that because it just kept coming up. And eventually I said, “Okay, well, it’s pretty early to be a failure in life,” and, “But maybe it’s true. Okay, fine. So that’s how it is.” And I just let myself feel that. And it was just absolutely miserable. But that was an old feeling that wanted to be felt. And if I fought against it, or tried to get rid of it, or tried to make myself feel better, no, it just kept coming up. So everything that comes up in your meditation practice, “Oh, I want that. ” Sure, you can say craving, but not with the idea that this is something I should get rid of. “Oh, I want that. Let me experience wanting that.”

An unediated relationship with experience

Ken: I said earlier that meditation practice is an unmediated relationship with ourselves. It’s also an unmediated relationship with everything that we experience. So experience it. Now, the trick here is that—particularly when we’re beginning meditation, I’m not sure it gets any better in practice; actually. I take that back, it doesn’t, it’s a mess all the time—is that feelings can come up and you can be totally caught up in the feelings and forget you’re meditating completely. We call that distraction. Well, all that tells you is, you don’t have sufficient capacity to experience what’s arising. That’s all, just says, “Oh, so now you have to do push ups.” That’s the one breath meditation—push ups. One breath meditation, that’s how you build capacity.

And you’ll know when you have the capacity to experience something difficult because you will feel absolutely wretched. Your stomach will be churned inside out and you’ll be tears pouring down, and your shoulders will be scrunched up so that you can’t tell the difference between muscle and bone, and things like that. And then everything will just go, and you go, “What was all the fuss about?” But if you approach it with the idea, I’m going to work through this—never happens. Meditation practice, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, it isn’t just about, “Oh, this is what I’m experiencing. I know that I’m experiencing it.” No. It’s about experiencing it completely in attention. That’s why we have to have the capacity.

Building the capacity to experience what arises

Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, “When you practice, burn yourself completely so there isn’t even ash remaining.” Well, that’s going to put you right in the experience of your life, isn’t it? And what we’re doing in meditation, and all the stuff that we do, is actually building the capacity, and to a certain extent, building the skills, that allows us to experience life that fully. That’s a little challenging. Questions.

Student: I have a question. Maybe I want to share about something. Well, it was the holidays. I went back to my parents, to Germany. It’s very interesting because I was in a spiritual, much more stable, state before I went there. But all these scripts that I was talking about, you know, I have obviously issues. I’m thinking “I’m a loser, ” exactly what you said. “My life’s a failure.” And although I’m developing in a good way, it’s all going to crash again, and everything is going to be horrible, and that’s a script that’s just going on in my mind. And it’s going over and over and that’s like the source of all the resentment, anger. And now I’ve been back here, I’ve been meditating more, and doing all kinds of stuff to get me back, not back, but off that script, because it was also getting more unconscious. And it’s getting stronger. And I mean, it’s just, it’s good to hear you talk about it so I can identify, and then I see it in myself, and I can distance myself. And it helps.

Ken: Good, good. Okay.

Student: Question, or?

Ken: Questions. Comments. This helpful?

Feel whatever arises. Don’t believe any of it.

Student: Yeah. It is. So my story is “I hate the US government.” But really what I’m getting from this is that that story is just about keeping myself from feeling what I’m really feeling. And I might not have the capacity yet to feel that. But, just a comment about meditation practice in general. This week I was experiencing, I had my to do list and I wasn’t getting it done, but I thought that I should be getting this done. And so there was this conflict, and I was just experiencing this massive resistance. I just hit a wall. The wheels had been burnt out to move forward. And I just surrendered to that resistance and totally—

Ken: Just accepted it.

Student: I accepted it, I fully accepted it. It was totally, what I’d taken in meditation practice and applied it to something that was going on. And I just fully let it in and felt it. And I talked to somebody on the phone and decided, “I need to take a nap. I don’t care about this to do list anymore.” And I took a nap. And then I woke up and I felt better, and I got a little bit of stuff done, and I said, “I feel like cooking something.” And so I just did what I felt like doing. And then I ended up getting a little more stuff done on the two to do list. It all came from accepting the feeling and really experiencing it.

Ken: Anything helpful in today’s discussion?

Student: Yeah, it was interesting when you were just talking about the capacity to feel things, and the way that you described physically, those feelings, which I relate to a lot, especially in the past couple of years, have some pretty specific examples where I was shown that part of myself. It’s like I showed that to myself and to other people. And that brought up a lot of challenges. It was just interesting to hear you talk about it, because that’s another thing I’m working with that right now. I don’t have a really concise thing to say right now, just that that the images that you said were very evocative. And so it just brings to mind how up that is for me. But also the question of capacity to feel it. How does how does that sit with capacity to feel it skillfully? And capacity to feel it skillfully in relation to other people, or in the company of other people? Or skillfully choosing not to be in the company of other people?

Ken: You’re getting into some practical matters we don’t have time for today. But for the first part, feel whatever arises. Don’t believe any of it. Any comments?

Student: Just a question, I guess. So when you’re sitting with whatever feeling and you were saying like anger, for example.

Ken: Or desire, or jealousy, or pride.

Student: Exactly. So you’re sitting with it, and you’re just like, I forget the line you said already that made me laugh. But when you said, it’s okay.

Ken: I’m feeling this and I’m glad.

Student: Right. Okay, so here’s the question. How do you differentiate between that, embracing that, for example, you sitting for two weeks in, “I’m a loser. My life is over. It’s over.” And how do you differentiate between that in a productive way and just sitting in a victim place? Or a place where you know you’re losing, you’re actually hurting yourself and becoming, you know.

Ken: Experience whatever arises. Don’t believe any of it. We move into victim when we believe it. Now, this this can be very difficult. I’ve struggled with a lot of things around this, and I absolutely believed them for a very, very long periods of time. And that represents certain emotional blocks in me, which until I developed the capacity to experience everything that was in there, nothing changed. And so yes, and there are a couple of things here. There’s a Toltec teaching called The Four Agreements. It’s a very nice little book. And the first one is: be impeccable with your word. And how that applies here is, “This is a story I tell myself.” Well, you have to be very careful about the stories that we tell ourselves, because we may end up believing them. And we generally do after a while because we keep telling them to ourselves. So that’s very important. Please, Raquel.

Raquel: With things that we have a lot of resistance around, I almost wonder if, just fake it till you make it. I remember you said that a long time ago. I wonder if faking it, maybe just almost pretending that you don’t believe it, or just finding that little tiny piece in us that we don’t believe it. I don’t know, if it’s something there’s a lot of resistance around, and it feels like you’re just—

Ken: Well, we aren’t going to be able to change everything immediately. And that goes back to some acceptance that you were talking about earlier. But a good place to start is, “You know, this seems really solid, but maybe it isn’t as solid as it …” I mean, the way you’re saying. “No, this is real.” Well, maybe it’s real. So we introduced this little bit of doubt into what’s in some of us an extremely rigid system. And it’s amazing what happens when we just get a little bit of doubt in there.

And there’s a saying in Zen tradition, which is totally different on this subject from the Tibetan tradition. I rather like the Zen approach here: Great doubt, great awakening. Little doubt, little awakening. No doubt, no awakening. And so we have all of this stuff and we believe it all the time, but so much of it isn’t true. And so we begin to find this out when we practice.

One of my favorite expressions in hearing people speak is, “I’m not going to be able to handle that.” Well, I know that it isn’t true. They’re going to handle it. They may handle it gracefully. They may handle it skillfully. They may handle it by making a complete mess. But they’re going to handle it. Maybe not the way they want to or whatever, but they’ll handle it one way or another. So that’s that’s not even on the table. It’s how are you going to do it? And we don’t have any choice about this.

Become an active agent in your life

Ken: Was it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? “Some people invented the universe, and a lot of other people thought it was a thoroughly bad idea.” There it is. Here we are. And so we have this experience of life. We may not be able to do much about it, things like that. But here it is. And we can say, “Well, I refuse to participate. ” Okay. So resistance is futile, you know? But here it is. And so this is where I think it’s very, very important that we say, “I have this experience we call life. What do I do with it?” And we become an active agent in our life. And that moves us right out of the victim mentality. So we become an active agent, and we discover, “Oh, I can’t be an active agent there, I don’t … oh,” and that’s where it goes back to the developing the capacity.

Okay, how can I be an active agent? Well, the first thing is, I have to be able to experience it. If I can’t be in the experience, if I’m checking out from the experience, then there’s nothing I can do about it. And that’s where it starts. And meditation is all about developing that ability to be in this experience we call life. And sometimes it only takes a tiny little bit, just as you experienced with that anger thing, you know, just that little phrase and kaboom, everything changed. Okay, well, you’ve wasted a completely good hour and a half, so let’s just sit for a moment.

Goodness comes from this work we have done.
Let me not hold it just in me.
Let it spread to all that is known.
And awaken good throughout the world.