Power adjusts to feedback

Ken: The general impression was that I totally confused everybody yesterday. This is October 9th. This is our first morning teaching, the first teaching on power and presence. And I did a good job confusing everybody yesterday so Jeff’s going to straighten you out.

Jeff: So that exercise we did yesterday, pushing on your partner, it’s pointing at a really, really subtle thing. It’s the ability to get feedback from the environment immediately and adjust. I don’t know whether it is cultural or just the way it is; we get progressively dumber about that in many situations. And then in some areas we’re pretty good at paying attention to feedback. But doing it with your body is a way to learn to start to notice subtle changes. So that acceleration Ken was talking about is what happens when we exert a force—which could be pushing on someone, or it could be deciding to carry through with a project—and we pay no attention to the environment. We just keep pushing stronger and stronger and stronger, and things just get pushed further and further out of balance.

I frequently run into this—daily, over and over—with people I work with who have an injury. I say, “Reach for something up above you.” And they go like this [demonstrates]. And they have bursitis, say, in their shoulder and they can’t figure out why they have bursitis, but they’re doing this movement. Actually, I was doing that too well. They’re doing it like this [demonstrates again]. They’re leading with their shoulder. They’re doing something that has nothing to do with the feedback they’re getting. They have forgotten that if they make subtle adjustments throughout their entire torso, as they reach, they take all the strain out of their shoulder. If their whole ribcage moves, if their chest moves, if their arm rotates as they go. Just try that.

Just imagine something’s on a shelf above you and you’re going to reach for it. But first try it in sort of a dumb way, unless you’re injured. Do it gently, but just lead with your shoulder and toss your hand up there and don’t let anything else move and just do it slow enough that you can really experience, what’s going on here as I do this? How does that feel? What happens to my breath? Can I breathe as I do that? Breathing is always a good clue. If you stop breathing, you probably don’t know how to do what you’re doing.

And then try involving your whole self in the movement and go slowly enough that you can make subtle adjustments. When you start feeling resistance, what can you change? What can you change? You just keep going with it. That’s what power is about. You keep getting feedback. You keep adjusting. You keep exerting force in a way that leads towards fulfilling your intention in the most elegant way possible. Let’s try it again. Just try it gently. You could try reaching in different directions.

I think we get a confusion about efficiency, and I think that gets in the way of power. We think that the most efficient way is somehow a mechanical way, like a bulldozer bulldozing ahead. We often think of bulldozers being powerful. Well they’re powerful. They can exert great force, they’re not powerful. Let’s put it that way. So just notice how much I move my torso. I don’t have to do that. It just feels better, works better. Nothing happens inside of me. When I do this, there’s—in the description we used last night—an acceleration of energy, if you involve yourself in a way that works. Let’s come back up, partners again, and do the same thing we did last night. So come on back up to standing and get with a partner again but maybe not the same person.

We’re going to try the same thing we did last night, but do it with a soft hand. And let’s just say you stand in front of a person and you are just going to first notice the moment when your hand makes contact. Do you make contact with a hand like a board? What kind of contact is that? Notice what it feels like to you, and the person that has that hand, notice what it feels like. Then notice with your hands softening to the contact, becoming aware of what’s going on. And then just very slowly and without much force, exert a little force and the person you’re pushing on, your partner, not so much resist as don’t do anything, don’t go with it, you don’t have to push really hard back. And both of you notice what happens throughout your whole system, as you push a little bit and then slowly release the push. Just try that out.

So this first time the person being pushed on is not necessarily going with, they’re not going with the direction. The reason I said “don’t necessarily resist” is I didn’t want you to push really hard back. Just don’t go with the direction of the push.

Ken: Notice all the impulses that arise in either of you. That is when you’re pushing, notice all of the impulses, maybe there are ones that don’t want to push. Maybe other impulses that want to push harder to really feel the connection. If you’re the one being pushed, maybe there are impulses to get out of there, maybe there are impulses to push back, maybe there are impulses to freeze. Notice all of that and just be right in either experience, you’re going to be switching back and forth so you’ll get both sides of it. Because power is the ability to stay present in all of that experience and work with your intention at the same time. Jeff.

Jeff: So now try it with the partner who’s being pushed upon going with it. So you feel that pressure and you go with the direction of that force, and notice what that’s like. What do you experience? So both the person pushing, how does this person going with your push affect how you continue or do you continue? Did you already accomplish your end? The person being pushed on, notice your pathway of going with. Is it just mechanical or are you actually going in a way that is fluid? Okay, go ahead and switch partners and just try it. First try the “pushee” not moving along with it. Go ahead and switch, not switch partners, excuse me, switch roles. Thank you.

Ken: Carey, do you see how much of your body’s involved in that? Okay. Now go with it and see, okay. Do it again and let all of your body be involved in going with it.

Jeff: And if you haven’t tried it, the person being pushed upon, go with the direction of the push. All right. Does everybody have a taste of that? Let’s come on back down to sitting, please. So what was your experience? Anybody notice anything that might relate?

Caroline: Yesterday someone made an observation about the breathing. So the first time I was pushing somebody, I made an effort to think about my breathing. And then that dropped away and I stopped breathing. I went back to my old habit of when I’m trying to experience something else, I don’t breathe. I’m a breath holder.

Jeff: That’s quite common. Do you ever notice that when you’re resting attention on anything in meditation practice, that you tend to bind up a little bit? There’s hard attention and there’s soft attention. You might experiment with lazily paying attention, almost sleepy attention.

David: I noticed that when resisting, even my eyes participated in that, the opposite of the soft eyes that you were talking about yesterday.

Jeff: How did your eyes … say more, it’s the opposite, but—

David: It’s like tensing, or staring, or not being as aware through the eyes.

Student: Last night when I was the pusher, it felt really adversarial to me. It kind of brought up the fight in me. I got pushed back on and I just wanted to push more. [Ken and student chuckle.] I didn’t want to say that last night. This time, slowly and in more attention, it felt more like a communication. I pushed, she met me, I fade, I push a little more. It was more of a dialogue. It didn’t feel forceful or adversarial. It felt more like, can you go this way a little bit? Okay. Let’s wait. And it was really nice.

Jeff: That’s great.

Betty: I felt like when I pushed and my partner let me push, there was a moment of, oh, I didn’t mean to push that hard. What happened? Sort of got out of hand. [Laughter] Then, I can relate to this.

Alex: There was a feeling of aggressive striving for contact when I was pushing.

Student: My sense was, on contact, first of all, a great warmth. So I was very aware of warmth. And then I also had a sense of wonder about, what next? A level of intensity. So that’s with the pushing. And then when moving away, I also had a sense that there was a disequilibrium with moving away that was different, entirely different from the contact of pushing.

Jeff: Disequilibrium when you were being pushed upon and going with the push?

Student: So as I’m giving, then there’s actually, with contact, there’s pushing and resisting, or at least there’s a certain stasis or stability. When there’s just a sense of movement then I’m moving away and that person is moving. So just more dynamic.

Jeff: I don’t know you quite as well as Ken. So could you actually say your name unless, you know, we know each other?

Sophie: Hi, I’m Sophie. I found it was interesting, I found when I started to push, I thought, how far can I push her? So I was kind of exploring and I kept going and going and thinking, “Wow, I wonder how far this goes?”

Jeff: This has come up a couple of times already. There’s discovering what is the actual intention in operation here? Betty had a similar experience in a way. Things got out of hand. Well, what were you intending? Maybe your internal intention is unbeknownst to you, that you’re going to push against resistance. And if they go with you, well, “That’s not what I was intending.” So you begin to notice if you’re carrying an internal agenda that has nothing to do with the intention you think you have in the moment. You begin to notice there’s these internal agendas constantly operating, that skew your experience of what actually is going on, and skew your ability to follow through with an intention.

Sonia: I’m Sonia. Similar to what you were saying. Yeah. There was a place where internal and external feedback met. So what I was feeling inside and what I was picking up from the outside, weren’t that different. It wasn’t like they were different stories, that just the sensations and what was going on, wasn’t that different. And also the point of contact, wasn’t just the point of contact. You start to feel other pathways around that point of contact. If I think the resistance is here, I realize others, not, there’s actually a movement happening somewhere else, or even inside of me.

Carey: I’m Carey. At one point I formed an intention to hold still and not be pushed. And as he pushed on me, I began to get shaky, in fact so much so that Ken noticed me and intervened and asked me to go with the push.

Ken: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that’s what you were doing. Come up here. Who was your partner? This is about intention. Now push on him very gently. But as Jeff was describing earlier, if your intention is not to move, then involve your whole body in it. Right down to your feet. Different? What was different?

Carey: What was different was I was using my whole body. Before when I thought I was using my whole body, I was only using certain parts.

Jeff: Carey showed that really beautifully. I’ve been looking at movement for a long time, so I saw it. I’ll amplify a little bit. What Carey did was, his push, his resistance, at least as I saw it, began up here at the point of contact. It travelled clear across his chest, down to his hips all the way down to the ground. There was a sequence. He kept letting more of his body become involved. He didn’t immediately go whole body. He kept adjusting and kept adding and kept adding, kept adding. That’s what we’re talking about. That was really nice.

Student: I experienced it as increasing resistance.

Ken: Yes. How much effort did you feel was involved in that Carey?

Carey: It didn’t feel like there was as much effort.

Power, acceleration, and force

Ken: This is very important: that staying present in the acceleration. If you stay present in the acceleration, you will have the experience of exerting little, if any effort. You might consider this in your meditation practice.

Student: So speaking of the meditation practice, I was noticing a similar sort of acceleration in the series, through the sensations, vision, etc. of acceleration and beginning to push on it. And I was also noticing that this sort of model applies to all the active poles of corruption in the four measurables. And I was wondering, is there a corresponding meditation for the passive poles or, have I just not noticed the passive side of this? [Laughter] It looks like I might be over thinking it.

Ken: Not really. Carey was the passive side. He was the one being pushed. And when his intention was not to move, and he stayed present in that, as we just observed, involving his whole body, then you actually lose the distinction between active and passive. Something isn’t being done to you. You’re actually meeting what’s arising and staying in the experience and implementing intention. So, you say the active aspects of the four immeasurables, the corruption there. Do exactly the same thing with the passive. Be present in the experience of falling out and see what happens. That makes sense to you?

Student: It seems like a sensible thing to try, I just don’t see how it’s going to operate. I can see the acceleration in addiction or control. I don’t see the acceleration in envelopment or despair.

Ken: Ah, that’s a very good point because—

Student: There is none, right?

Ken: No, because the devolution into despair is the acceleration. I mean, you want to be very precise mathematically, it’s deceleration. But in the same way that in a car, you can have a lead foot on the accelerator and it’s going to cause the car to go too fast, too quickly. You can also have a lead foot on the brake which is going to cause the car to slow down too quickly. You follow? So there’s an acceleration in falling into despair. In Jeff’s terminology, or the way he’s been presenting it here, that’s another agenda taking over and that is the accelerating one, the ones driving you down into the despair.

Student: I understand.

Ken: Okay. Back to you, Jeff,

Gail: I’m having some difficulty with the word acceleration because it’s associated with time. And I’m wondering, this might not be appropriate in this moment, but I’m going to bring it up anyway. To me, acceleration indicates a time sense. But I feel the same intensity can happen spatially or on a level of flow or on a level of pressure. I haven’t quite found the right word, but I’m just presenting that acceleration makes me feel like it’s only happening in time, in a sense of time.

Jeff: I’m in the lucky position that I’ve been going back and forth with Ken and with Gail about that word. I haven’t come up with another word to describe it. I agree with Gail that it also leads into what could be a misconception. As you bring attention into the evolving situation, as you engage your intention, there is an acceleration—or you could call it a vivification. It gets more vital and alive. So that acceleration Ken was talking about is what happens when we exert a force—which could be pushing on someone, or it could be deciding to carry through with a project—and we pay no attention to the environment. There’s more energy available in the system. You could describe it a lot of ways. The acceleration, I don’t think—and I’ll check with Ken on this again—is completely about the car going pell mell down the street faster and faster.

Ken: I’m trying to understand. I think I understand what you’re referring to Gail. If you mean time in the sense of speed, then I think I understand. And it’s not always about speed. It can be the increase of force. Is that what you’re referring to?

Gail: Yeah. The increase or the decrease of force. Both feel charged. So both the passive and the active aspect of it, both feel charged.

Ken: Yes. And this goes back to Alex’s question. There is change that occurs in time, I don’t think one can get away from that part. But it isn’t about necessarily going faster. It can be about getting heavier.

Jeff: Does that make sense to everyone?

Students: No. [Laughter]

Jeff: Whoa!

Christina: So I’ve been listening to this conversation and thinking, where have I been for the last 45 minutes? I’m completely lost. I keep hearing “acceleration” and I get stuck on that because last night, what I thought was meant by acceleration was that moment where you, where you’re not present. You get sort of sucked in and you just go forward with whatever’s happening without being there. So it’s that moment when you’re starting to push and you get pushed back on and you just push harder.

Jeff: It’s the moment just before that.

Christina: It’s the moment before that?

Jeff: Just before that. One way you can react to that sense is by pushing harder and falling out.

Christina: So in acceleration, you still have a choice?

Ken: Acceleration isn’t dropping out of attention or being in attention. It’s what happens. And what Jeff’s pointing to is you can either be in that experience—and that’s when you’re getting feedback from the environment and you can stay present—or you can fall out of that experience because the experience of the acceleration just takes over. And that’s where you fall out of it and start either pushing too much or backing off too much. Does that clarify it?

Christina: In my head, yes. But I think I need more things about feeling acceleration.

Valerie: I’m Valerie. And last night, when you talked about acceleration, I think I understood it as the moment when my intention, I start to insist on the intention I had formed, without checking into what was actually happening, and perhaps adjusting my intention or responding. So it was that moment of a kind of anger, I would say. I’m pushing. I’m supposed to push her over. Or I’m pushing and she’s resisting. I need to push! Is that where we’re at with this?

Ken: You’re describing where things take over and you lose presence. Acceleration is … we’ll come to that. We’ll do an exercise on this to make it clear.

David: I had the same idea. She covered what I was going to say.

Ken: Gail. So, we’re going to do this both in terms of speed and heaviness so you see. Just what you were doing. Did you see that? [Laughter]

Gail: Just a soft push.

Ken: Well, you can do whatever you want. Now, she’s going to push. Now I’m doing what Carey’s doing, just not moving, and she’s applying steadily more pressure. Okay? Now, in the processes of applying steadily more pressure, she’s staying present in it. She could get carried away by, go ahead, get carried away. Okay. And just like [sound of physical effort], which is what you were describing. And that’s where that [sound] comes in. That’s where you fall out of the process. And that’s how most people experience power, is when they fall out of the process and they apply all of that force.

They can also do it in terms of speed. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. So I’m going to move with her this time and she may want to move faster. You notice how she has to adjust now. Keep going. [Laughter] You see what happens when she gets carried away? I’m having a fine time and she’s doing all of this work. It’s right out of balance. Do the same thing, but stay in balance. [Pause] It becomes a very different exercise.

Jeff: And now Ken, resist and come back to not moving but Gail don’t stick with the same vector of force. Make choices based on your feedback.

Ken: And I’m to resist?

Jeff: Yes. You can move anywhere three-dimensionally in space.

Ken: [Laughter] She switched hands.

Jeff: There was no constraint there. [Laughter] Okay. So that’s the other side of it.

Ken: It’s the heaviness part.

Jeff: Well, and that’s the example of the person employing the force adjusting to their feedback. Like when David was pushing on Carey and discovered that Carey had responded in a certain way, making another choice.

Sophie: I’m just curious when you’re talking about power and force, are you making a distinction here? Because it seems like, power has an idea behind it, of being conscious. And then when you get into force, that it’s your own agenda, but I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding this.

Ken: This is wonderful!

Jeff: That’s an excellent question.

Ken: Yeah. Perfect. You were led right into the definition.

Jeff: Power is about doing something and responding to what the environment feeds back to you as you do it. Force is about wanting to do something and utterly ignoring the feedback of the environment and just simply applying more and more of it.

Ken: Well, I’d like to refine that a little bit. Force is the experience of the acceleration.

Jeff: I wanted to stay away from that word.

Ken: Too bad! [Laughter] Power, as we’re talking about it, it is intention combined with force. I’m not using force the way that Jeff described it right there. Okay?

Student: Energy?

Ken: Yes, energy is the fuel. And as you start to exert force, there’s an acceleration. That’s where things start to speed up or get heavier or intensify in any way that you want. And the question is whether you stay present in that process or not. That’s the key. So this quality of, as several of you have described, of things increasing. And then something else coming up, taking over, like as you said, Valerie, you want to get angry and just push. That’s not staying present in the way that Jeff was talking about in the feedback that’s coming.

And when Gail and I were doing that thing, you noticed how there was all of those little subtle movements in all different directions, because she was paying attention to the feedback. Let’s do this again. Just don’t pay any attention to the feedback. Okay. And she’s going to get really angry now and push really hard. Come on. Really push! Okay. I’m having a gay old time, okay. However, if I make my intention, I’m not going to pay any attention to all the stuff that’s happening in my body. And she just pushes …

Gail: And I just stay stuck on pushing?

Ken: That’s what happens to me, because I get pushed off balance very easily. And so that’s what people usually get, they get pushed around. But if on the other hand, as she pushes—go ahead—she stays present in that, and I stay present in it, now she can push all she wants in all kinds of different directions and I stay present in it. Now something very different starts to happen. [Laughter] Do you see the difference?

Student: Can I try a different word? Because I really want to make sure I understand this because if I blow it now, I won’t get the next three days. Again, going back to the word acceleration, which we’re going to try and stay away from. What I’m hearing now, could I use the word engagement? And there can be an engagement where it’s also characterized by delicate little feedback sensors that let me adjust how I engage. And there’s engagement that’s like a hammer where I’m not taking feedback, I’m just pushing through. And that would be where you’re using the word force. And engagement would be when you’re staying present in the use of the force? But the acceleration, I have too many physics formulas in my head and it gets weird. I’m trying to understand, are we talking about the moment—

Ken: Second derivative? [Laughter]

Student: Yeah, I’m doing the derivatives.

Jeff: Wait, wait a second. What was your experience when you did the exercise or when you saw Carey and David, did that make sense to you?

Student: Absolutely! I saw—

Jeff: Then that’s it, that’s it. Put this word accelerate up here. You’re going to keep considering it. But you’re not going to make the next three days dependent on you having a breakthrough. But, don’t throw it out.

Student: But what word shall I use to describe when Carey’s body flowed with connection and engagement?

Ken: I think Jeff is suggesting don’t use any word, go with your experience.

Student: I’m good with that. [Laughter]

Jeff: I’d like to move on, or do you think that we should stay with this?

Ken: To?

The four steps of standing up

Jeff: Four steps of standing up.

Ken: I think that’s a good idea. We’re going to be iterating this over and over again, and this is a very, very good start. We know it’s a very good start because you’re all hopelessly confused.

Jeff: But I saw an awful lot of light bulbs going off as people understood certain pieces of this. And then the light bulbs got switched off when we suddenly didn’t understand a certain word and it’s usage. So be aware of that. That’s feedback, right? It’s feedback from your environment, that I understood this in my body, I understood what I just saw. I didn’t understand that word at all and how it applied. Well fine.

Ken: In fact, one could say that you’re falling out of the experience of understanding, driven by another agenda to get it into words. [Laughter]

Jeff: It accelerates, I mean, you know! [Laughter]

Ken: I avoided the word accelerate there.

Jeff: Well done, well done. Could we move on or is it a really pressing question? I’m actually going to move to a slightly different view of this whole thing.

Student: Okay, well let me ask the question. Is the intent in this exercise that each partner continue with the intent that you guys give at the time, where the two resist or not, where the two push through and have that person make a change or not? Do you want us to maintain the same intention or do you want us to change that intention if we feel we want to?

Jeff: Many ways that can be answered …

Ken: Take the intention.

Jeff: Most of you might’ve noticed you got the feedback really quickly. That was it. Then you could either go back and redo that intention to find out what happened if you kept doing it over and over again, or you could move on to something else. You got the feedback rather quickly. You got the feedback of the resistance. You could tell what happened. So in terms of the intention of the exercise, as soon as you got it, you could stop. And then start again and see if there was a different experience or you could keep cycling the intention over and over again, like Gail just did with Ken, where she kept pushing and pushing and pushing and discovered something different. So new intention.

Ken: Four steps.

Jeff: The four steps of standing up, okay, this is part of …

Ken: This is how you actually do it in life.

Jeff: Do it in life and do it in practice. So the four steps of standing up. First step is you show up. Show up. You actually step right into your intention right in the moment. Okay? You don’t hedge your bets. You’re just right there. The next step is you open to what is. Whatever your capacity. Third step is serve what is true. And the fourth step is receive the results. Okay?

So, showing up. That has a lot to do with those secondary agendas that we carry into situations. Are you showing up right now in your present time intention? Are you aware of the other agendas that you’re bringing to it? Because we can’t always just totally be pure and get rid of them all. But becoming aware of them is a very, very potent step. So when you show up in a situation, are you aware of, you could call it the baggage you’re bringing to the situation? I think last night a number of you mentioned what we could call the baggage or the secondary agendas you bring to your relationship with power.

Show up in the body

Jeff: Let’s try something. Let’s try showing up in the body. Let’s do it this way. What I’d like you to try is perhaps with the same partners or different partners. Gail, could I show with you? Maybe try to find someone who was approximately your size. So all you’re going to do is arrange yourself so that you can just, both of you, gently increase the pressure and decrease the pressure. But what I’d like you to do is close your eyes as you do it. Okay? So you’re not getting all this visual feedback that you’re having to process. You’re just really coming into what is the experience in my body as we both increase, and then somehow we decide to both decrease the pressure. What is the experience all through my body? You can try it that way, or you could try it with opposite hands so that you’re just slowly increasing the pressure and then one of you decide, you’re going to go with it a little bit. Notice your experience in your body. You decide you’re going to come back. Does your partner allow you to come back? What happens? Experience it in your body. Okay. Simple enough. It’s just to bring you into your actual experience in your body as you’re showing up in this very simple exercise. All you’re doing is increasing pressure, decreasing pressure.

So someone roughly your size, and if you can’t find someone your size, that’s fine. So first with both hands, close your eyes if you’re comfortable with that. If that really brings up panic, then don’t close your eyes. You’re just both slowly increasing the pressure and then at some point you both somehow decide to start decreasing the pressure. Your intention here is to notice your experience in your body.

One part of your body is you’re breathing, it’s always good to check. What do you feel in your belly? What do you feel in your pelvis? Does your connection to the floor change? What do you feel in your jaw, your neck? [Pause] And then next time you come to a point of equilibrium, open your eyes for a moment. And then use the opposite hands. And try it with a single hand. Same idea, you’re both increasing pressure then decreasing and then at some point, one of you decide to go with your partner’s pressure. At some point, decide you’re going to reverse and push back your partner. Go with that. Just noticing what happens in your body. The intention is just showing up in what’s actually right now. [Pause]

All right. Come to equilibrium and let’s come back to sitting just for a moment. I’d like to hear just from two or three of you, what your experience was of showing up in your body, in that process. David, there’s a mic right there.

David: Two things. One is sometimes I was more active with my arm, so the relationship between my arm and my body could change. And sometimes it was with all of me, so the relationship wasn’t so much changing as I was moving as one unit. And the other thing is this reminds me of something that I haven’t done very much of, it was push hands in Tai Chi. And sort of mix between paying attention to oneself and the other and then ideas of strategies, like getting the other person off balance kind of thing. There’s a sort of a back and forth between.

Jeff: So at this point, in terms of what we just did, you were moving into other agendas.

David: Not so much now, other than just the two things about the arm being with the body or the arm moving away or toward the body.

Jeff: Exactly. Yes.

Michelle: I’m Michelle. I had a very different experience about pushing and being pushed on in this exercise than the first time. And Melissa and I did it together both times, so it’s a nice control. The first time when I was yielding, it felt very connected. And when Melissa yielded, I felt like what’s wrong with this picture? And this time there was something about having started in that state of equilibrium, as opposed to acting or being acted upon, where it felt very connected the entire time.

Jeff: Okay. Thank you. Yes, Sophie. Sonia, I was close.

Sonia: Does the intention change based on the feedback?

Jeff: Does it?

Sonia: Does it?

Jeff: Does it? [Laughter] That’s an interesting question to ask yourself.

Sonia: It doesn’t become about the intention. It becomes about the feedback or is that because I’m losing the intention? That’s my question.

Jeff: It sounds like you’re losing your intention, but that’s not necessarily true. It could be that the feedback is causing you to reframe your intention.

Sonia: That’s what I meant.

Jeff: Yes. And it completely depends upon your intention and your experience.

Sonia: So the intention or the response changes, moment to moment based on the feedback.

Jeff: Yes, and in this little exercise, I tried to keep the intention really simple, your experience in your body. So you could be virtually doing anything here, as long as it was leading to an experience in your body.

Sonia: If you lose the intention, if I lose the intention, is it because there’s a secondary intention? What you were talking about before, there’s something underneath that, there’s another agenda?

Jeff: Possibly. Yes.

Janet: I’m Janet. I found that the first, where both hands were involved, was very fluid and very much a dance back and forth. And we both seem to be able, or anyway, I was able to stay present. But when I began the single hand, I thought to myself, “I’m going to fall,” and then immediately I lost presence. But I was able then to go back to, this can be a dance or, or somehow I was able to recall my body and go back to it. And then again, get back to some feeling of the feedback. And so again, somehow, I felt the feedback and it got brought back to feeling the movement. And even though my thought was, “I can’t do this, I’m going to fall,” the feedback told me no and it happened that it was very wonderful.

Jeff: Good, good. All I’m going to say is now in our next sitting session, I’d like you to think about showing up in your body, in the practice we’re doing, the primary practice. Okay? We tend to believe that our ideas about our experience are far more important than our actual experience. [Laughter] They’re not. So showing up in your body is showing up in your actual experience. The ideas are simply to point you to actual experience. And if they work, they’re good ideas. And if they don’t work, they’re bad ideas. Okay? I really want to hear what Ken has to say about it.

Ken: I think that’s very, very well said. Our culture tends to put a value on being able to express things in words. And actually it’s worse than that. Not only do you have to express things in words, you’ll also have to be able to write them down. And things don’t become true in our culture until they’re written down. And once they’re written down, then, if you have the ability to write things down, then you become an expert. This is why everybody likes to write books. It’s a quick path to fame and fortune. The irony is that an extraordinary number of people whose experience in many cases is deeper than those who actually have the particular skill of writing it down or speaking about it, their experience, their wisdom, their understanding is completely ignored. And we find this in all sections of our culture. So I think the Jeff’s statement there, the ideas about our experience are not as important as the experience itself. I think it’s very, very well said. So you want to go any further from there?

Jeff: No, I’d like to hear …

Ken: We’ve got a couple of things that we want to touch on. They say, in military terms—and this goes to Sonia’s point a few moments ago—the best battle plans last until first contact with the enemy. And there are all manner of military campaigns that have failed because there was no ability on the part of one side or the other to adjust to what was actually happening. The French are famous for fighting the last war brilliantly. They never fight the current war well, it’s always the last war.

So, what we’re trying to get across about power here is, it is doing something, exerting force if you will, and staying present in the intention and in the experience of doing so. So many people, they start off with an intention and they make the effort and then they drop out of experience. And it just keeps running. People do this in their meditation all the time. Okay, “I’m going to sit still. I’m going to rest with the breath.” And somewhere along the line, sitting still becomes far more important than experiencing the breath. Anybody fallen into that one? You know, [in strained voice] “I’m going to sit still whatever it takes.” And there can be all kinds of variations on that.

So in the practice we’re doing, the first part of it is opening to your experience of breathing. That’s the intention. Showing up in your body, in your experience, in the experience of breathing. Now, the experience of breathing happens to include everything. It’s everything you see, everything you feel, tactile and kinesthetic in your body, everything that’s going on in you, that is actually the whole experience of breathing. And in the way that Jeff showed you yesterday, last night, you can include more and more.

What I want to do right now is to give you a story about the way feedback—or one dimension to the story is the way feedback—operates in the actual exercise of power.

A story: The Thief, the Samurai, and the Warlord

Ken: In the home of a samurai, the wife and child, a young son, were sleeping. In the middle of the night, the husband samurai—and samurai you have to remember are hired swordsman, somewhat akin to hired guns in the West—became aware of a movement in his house. So he got up, picked up his sword and came across a thief who was ransacking, looking for valuables. As soon as the thief became aware that the samurai was there, the thief ran into the child’s room, grabbed the child and held a knife to his throat and said, “I want everything I’ve taken and a horse, or I kill your child.”

The samurai wasn’t quite sure what to do. He didn’t want his son to die. So he sent his wife to get the other samurai. They came, they weren’t quite sure what to do either. So one of them went to get the daimyo, the lord of the castle, the warlord. He came in and took a look at the situation. He looked at the thief and he said, “You’re a dead man. You know who I am. You know what I stand for. You know what I’ve done. You’re a dead man. The only thing that remains is what happens to the child you’re holding. But whatever happens to the child, you are a dead man.” When the thief looked into the eyes of the daimyo and saw what the daimyo said was true, he was dead. So he put the child down. The daimyo said, “Give him his horse, get him out of here.”

Stay with your intention. Stay in the exercise of your intention. Do what is required in your intention and no more. Stay right in touch with what is happening. Back to you.

Go into your meditation instructions then the glorious finale.

Jeff: I was just going to tell a nice fairytale.

Ken: Okay, as you wish.

The primary practice: a review

Jeff: So call me Buttercup pretty soon. [Laughter] Let me just ask first, any questions about how to bring showing up in your body into the primary practice? Or do you have enough to go on to try it out and see if it makes sense?

Student: Maybe the primary practice again. I found from this morning I forgot probably most of it.

Jeff: Okay. You start with resting. Okay. So you can rest on your breath. If in your practice, you rest on attention, you can rest on attention. You just take a few moments to settle. And then you go through the visual, auditory and kinesthetic fields of sensory perception. Maybe start with the one that you have the best contact with. So let’s say it’s visual. So you’ve rested on your breath, you’ve rested in attention, you’ve settled a little bit.

And then you bring your attention to your visual field. First you notice the space, you look at the space, the space that’s in between, the space that contains, the space that keeps going out the window if the window is open. You notice the space. And when you notice the space, there might be a shift. If there is you just rest there. And then still noticing the space, you open to the space. Opening, you include it, you let it in. There’s no inner or outer, you simply see this space and open to the space. And then you include the objects that are in the space visually. And you rest with both of those, the space and the objects in the space. Again, there could be shift. Rest there.

And then you move to the auditory field, same thing. First, you listen for the silence. And you open to that silence and then you include the sounds that arise in the silence.

And then you come to your kinesthetic experience: kinesthetic, proprioceptive, touch, internal and external. You first open to the stillness that underlies all movement. And then you include the movements, the proprioceptive experiences that arise in stillness.

And then resting in that openness that you’ve been establishing, you become aware of the thoughts that come and go.And just let them come and go. And you bring attention to the emotions that come and go, or they might come and stay. It might be an underlying emotion that stays there. Just let it be, but don’t push it away, just open to it. And then you open your heart. There’s a certain sense, perhaps a vulnerability to your experience. And then you shift your attention to what experiences all this. You could simply shift your focus or you could ask that question, “What experiences?” The important thing there, if you use the words is don’t answer the words. Don’t start processing intellectually. Ask the question and pay attention. If you lose attention anywhere in the process, notice that you’ve lost attention. Come back to where you were. If you can’t remember where you were, start over. Okay?

Student: And just to be clear, you could start with the visual, the auditory or the kinesthetic sense?

Jeff: Yes. Everybody good with that?

Student: Can you say one thing about watching the emotion or the thought go and making it go?

Jeff: Just one thing [laughs]. If you get involved in making it go, you’ve immediately established a relationship with it and that has to develop and carry through. If you just let it be there, but also be aware of all your other experience, it doesn’t trap you into collapsing into it. So a thought comes up. If we just let the thought be there, and we’re still aware of our butt on the chair, we’re still aware of our breath moving, we’re still aware of our visual field, auditory, the thought is just another aspect of experience. As soon as you push on it, your attention probably collapses to it.

Student: Thanks.

The White Bird: part 2

Jeff: Okay. We left off:

The prince had knocked upon the door and it was opened by an old, old man, white hair, tatters, white beard. And the old man said, “Welcome, no one’s been here for 27 ages. Come in, come in.” So the prince stepped in and the old man closed the door and the prince looked around and indeed it was a neglected place. There was no wood, there was no fire, there was no stove going, no water in the kettle. So he grabbed an axe, walked outside, chopped some wood, came inside and started the stove going. Grabbed a pail and got some water, filled the kettle, got the kettle on the stove. Went out to the stable and found a white cow with silver horns. But the cow had no bed to lay on, nothing to eat so he threw down some straw and threw down some hay and left the cow very contented, munching away. He walked outside and found a rooster, a red rooster, and a white hen, but they had nothing to eat so he threw down some barley and left them pecking away, happily.

And then he went back inside and he and the old man made a very simple meal together and ate. It was quite satisfying, but not what he was used to, but it worked. And then he went up to bed. He was quite tired after his long day. Now the next morning he woke up and he was ready to go and he remembered the sign above the door, “Who enters here shall have what they need and pay what they can.” And he started digging for all the coins in his purse and offered them to the old man. The old man said, “No, no, no, you’ve already paid what you could. Let me give you some things you might need.”

And here he offered him a little book and he said, “Here’s the book of wisdom. You can open this book and read whatever you need to know. And if you go back out to the stable and look behind the white cow’s ear, you’ll find a piece of barley straw. Take that with you. And then step on into the manger and you’ll notice that the white hen has laid an egg. You might need that too.” And then he said goodbye and the prince stepped out the door and he closed the door and that was the last he ever saw of that old man. So he went out and he gathered the straw and the egg and put them in his pocket, walked across to the grand house, across the street, shouted up to his brothers and eventually they showed up at the window and he said, “Hey, let’s set out. Let’s go keep looking for the fruit of happiness.”

And they just laughed, jeered at him. “We’ve got a good thing going here, we need nothing of that. Fruit of happiness could not compare with our current situation.” They waved him off, closed the window and went back to bed.

So he set off, went a few steps and he thought, “What do I do with this book of knowledge and this piece of straw and this egg?”

So he opened up the book and the book said, “Throw your leg across the barley straw. It will take you wherever you need to go.” He thought that was sort of whimsical, but easy to do so he thought he’d give it a try. So he threw his leg across the barley straw, and it turned into a huge red-gold stallion. And off the horse thundered carrying him swiftly down the road. His hoofs were pounding, he didn’t even have to do anything with the reins, they just pounded away and they traveled and traveled and traveled. It came to a great, great desert, and the desert was strewn with bones. And somehow he knew that those were the bones of all the other people that had come this way, searching for the fruit of happiness.

And now it’s time to go take a little break [laughter] and turn to the next exciting episode.

Ken: Okay, it’s twenty past.