I made it myself

Ken: There is No Enemy, October 22nd. Afternoon session. Here we are see. You’d think that living in LA I’d know to do that all the time now but …

So, one day Nasrudin was sitting in the tea shop with his buddies and they were having a philosophical discussion which is what they tended to do and a newcomer came in and listened to them and offered his opinion which everybody looked at him rather strangely and so newcomer took umbrage to being questioned and said, “Every word I say here is true and if you don’t believe you can read it here,” and slammed a book on the table and said, “That’s my book; I wrote it myself.” Well everybody was impressed because Arabic is difficult enough to read but a person who could write it, that was really somebody. And here was a person who could write a book.

So the next day Nasrudin came into the tea shop and said, “Well anybody want to buy a house?” People said, “What house are you talking about Nasrudin?” And Nasrudin says, “My house of course! Do you want to buy it or not?” Everybody said, “Nasrudin you don’t have a house.” “What do you mean I don’t have a house?” He reaches into his shirt, pulls out a brick, slams it into table, and says, “There’s the proof of it—that brick—and I made it myself.”

Now, the significance of the story may or may not become apparent as we go forward this evening. Everybody thinks these Nasrudin stories are just kind of weird jokes but they all point to something. Sometimes it’s just a little difficult to tell what.

Deepening attention

Ken: So this morning we talked about building attention and opening to the world of experience. This afternoon, now that you’re thoroughly rested and really here, and just raring to go right? We’re going to move things a step deeper and that is how to take attention somewhat deeper into experience. So one of the things we talked about is when you’re opening to the experience and of breathing or whatever experience is arising there’s a qualitative difference between opening to experience and collapsing down on a particular aspect of experience. Whether it’s a thought, an itch, a pain, a memory, whatever. Everybody know what I’m talking about? Okay.

Now when you experience being open and present with the breath what’s that like?

Student: Freedom.

Ken: Say a bit more about that. I mean what’s changed? There you are and you’re still sitting there. And you know you’re not free to leave coz it’s a meditation session, so what’s different?

Student: Well I think of it as being open as the sky as opposed to being closed down, and all you can see is what you’re hanging on to.

Ken: Okay anybody else? Ann.

Ann: So for me it was much easier to ignore that director voice in my head that’s always telling me to sit up a little straighter or to, you know, put my chin down and that kind of stuff. So that voice went away.

Ken: Now there’s two different things there. Did you ignore it or did it go away?

Ann: Well I started ignoring it, and then by the end it had gone away.

Ken: And when you say ignoring it do you mean shutting it out?

Ann: No it was still there, but I didn’t do the things it was telling me to do like I usually do.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Thank you. Agnes.

Agnes: Just more intensified experience.

Ken: In which?

Agnes: In …

Ken: Collapsing down or being open?

Agnes: Example: I was doing walking meditation, noting breathing, attending, and then everything seemed to be much more simplified.

Ken: Okay. So in very general terms when attention is open as opposed to having collapsed there is a subjective experience of freedom. Things feel or experience is being more open. There isn’t the same compulsion that operates. And when things collapse down then things feel constricted and our choices are very limited. Usually we’re already doing one thing. And I would also say that we’re less aware of other things. You know when we collapse down to something we aren’t aware of anything except the world of that particular thing. And I mean when you’re lost in thought how aware are you that you’re in a zendo? [Laughter] You know the zendo ceases to exist right? It’s gone. The body’s still warm but you’re gone.

Okay, so in both cases attention is operating but it’s operating in very different ways and when attention has collapsed so that you are involved with one thought, or one sensation, or something like that then [pause] we can say there’s generally speaking no awareness. There’s just reaction, and you immediately find yourself in a world of enemies because everything that tries to dislodge you from that fixation is an enemy. Ever tried to reason with a kid who’s losing their temper? Well not even a kid, your boss. You know you don’t get very far.

How enemies disappear

Ken: So, what we’re going to talk about this afternoon is how to make an enemy disappear. And the simple way to make an enemy disappear is open to everything you experience. Then what you felt you were opposing becomes an element in that whole set of experiences. Now this has a lot of practical applications.

In my business consulting—and I’m sure you run into this in organizational settings all the time—somebody says, “Well why don’t we do this?” And people say, “Well we can’t do that because of ‘x’.” Well they say, “Well why don’t we do it?” “Well you can’t do that because of ‘this’.” “Well why don’t we do this?” “Well we can’t do that because of ‘z’,” and so forth. This is the world of enemies, and you end up unable to do anything except what you’ve always done because everything else is blocked, and so you get the result that you always got, which is unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and so forth. And that’s it—no other possibilities. And that’s because we’ve collapsed into the world defined by that organization’s thinking, culture, whatever you want to call it.

Now, there’s another way of viewing that. “Why don’t we do ‘x’?” And somebody says, “We can’t do x because of ‘y,’ or because of ‘a’.” “Well, why don’t we do ‘y’?” “Well we can’t do ‘y’ because of ‘b’.” “Well, why don’t we do ‘z’?” “Well we can’t do ‘z’ because of ‘c’.” At that point you can say, “Okay a, b, and c are simply features of the organizational landscape. They don’t actually prevent us from doing what we want. We just have to figure out, given that this is the landscape, how to do it. And you can see, you can feel the difference in that because there you’re opening to the whole thing in which what seemed to be absolute blocks and now are just elements of the landscape. And now you can start to think creatively.

Now, this is a setting in which I do some of my work, and I’ve had to present this over and over again. It’s astonishing how long it takes for that change in perspective to sink in—three to five years usually. But it applies to families, it applies to any aspect of our life, because whenever attention collapses down we are fixated in a certain world and everything appears fixed in that world and there are no other possibilities. The only thing to do is to step out of that world, and the key to stepping out of that world is to open to the totality of your experience. Which isn’t that hard to do.

Now, why do we collapse? Some of you have heard this before in a different setting, but just visit the same old things over and over again. You collapse down on things usually for one or more of three reasons: We are concerned for our survival. We are concerned about getting our emotional needs met, and/or we are concerned about our identity.

I had a hilarious conversation with a colleague of mine. He’s very very well trained, very knowledgeable, and he’s a very good teacher. This is I guess three or four years ago. He’d come to visit me, we were going for a walk in my neighborhood, and he was talking about certain problems that he was having with his organization, and how he just was totally stuck and trying to figure out what to do. And I said, “Well what are your concerns?” And so he started taking about exactly these three things. He says, “Well, you know the organization needs to continue, etc. and I’m concerned about it from that point of view. And all these people, they need to meet what they’re looking for etc., and and we’ve developed a certain style and approach and we want to make sure that we stay in integrity with that.” And I looked at him and I said, “Have you ever heard of the three marks of existence?” You know impermanence, suffering, non-self which is what these three are. And he thought for a moment, and then he just started to laugh [laughing] coz he’d got completely caught up in it with respect to what he was trying to do with his organization.

So these run through all of us and not only do they run through all of us these are usually the triggers or the levers that are pulled by various factors in our lives to flip us into reactivity. They’ll usually come down to one or more of those three. So let me say a word about them.

Expecting to live forever

Ken: How many of you plan to live forever? Okay.

Student: Plan or expect?

Ken: Oh okay, how many of you expect to live forever? In fact there’s a Nasrudin story on that topic which I just caught in glancing here, [at a book of Nasrudin stories] but it’s perfect. That’s strange I thought it was right at the end here. Oh yeah, here we are.

Mullah Nasrudin supervised the building of his own tomb. At last after one shortcoming after another the mason came for his money. “It’s not right yet builder,” said Nasrudin.

“Whatever more can be done with it?” said the builder.

“We still have to supply the body. [Laughter]

What were the chances of this poor guy getting paid?

Okay, so how many of you plan or expect to live forever? Okay, so being concerned with your own survival—we’ve already lost that game. And this is actually quite important because and it’s a terribly old-fashioned way of thinking that I’m going to talk about right now—it’s certainly not how people think these days—but it’s very much how say the Stoics thought, and probably people up until recent times. If we’re going to die anyway the appropriate question about our life is not, “How long can I live?” but, “How can I make maximum use of my life?” That’s a very, very different question. And as we can see from looking back historically there are people who chose, in a certain sense, to die because that’s how they could make maximum use of their life. That’s a different way of thinking.

Getting emotional needs met and concern with identity

Ken: Then the second one. How many concerned about getting your emotional needs met? [Laughter] You’re free from this are you, Stephanie? Okay, how are you doing with that? [Laughter] How’s it going?

Stephanie: Miserably.

Ken: “Miserably.” Well there’s a small problem here. It’s impossible, because to get your emotional needs met, the only way you can do this is to go back in time to the actual situations in which your parents didn’t understand you, or something else happened. And so far nobody’s figured out how to do that. Everything else, everything that we try to do in our relationships is either compensating or trying to relive that in a more satisfactory matter, and we inevitably get terribly upset with a person because they don’t come through at the crucial time with the right line or something.

I had this wonderful experience in a relationship, and my girlfriend said to me, “You’re the love of my life,” which is a very nice thing to hear. And I said something quite appropriate in response, and she just hit the roof, kaboom, and I went, “What the hell?” I couldn’t figure it out. After we broke up, [laughter] it was a few months later, I went to see the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. Now you remember after he comes back he’s with Holly Hunter is it? No. Helen Hunt. And they’re standing out in the rain and he says, “You’re the love of my life.” And she says, “You’re the love of mine.” And I listened to that and went, “Oh shit, I blew my line.” [Laughter] Then I realized why she was so upset: she had it all scripted and I blew my line. So I’d failed completely to meet her emotional needs because I didn’t know what my line was.

Now how many of you have run into similar experiences on either side of this? Okay. [Laughter] It happens all the time right? Again, and again, and again. And it’s because we’re living in the past.

Student: Post-projection?

Ken: Yeah. We want the person to be a certain way to fill our needs and they don’t know the lines. And of course we can’t tell them the lines because that would spoil it, so they have to read our minds, and [laughs] it goes on and on. Right? I mean that’s just one aspect of life, you know, intimate relationships but’s usually a pretty reliable one.

Okay, so emotional needs met. And people try to get their emotional needs met at work. How many have run into that? Yeah. How does that work? Let’s assume you aren’t trying to get your emotional needs met because you’re all more enlightened than that. What’s it like dealing with someone who’s trying to get their emotional needs met at work?

Student: Sticky and …

Ken: Okay, does it ever work?

Student: No. It feels like—actually it doesn’t—I mean the situation just [unclear] but I think good times in my life have been much more emotionally satisfying than others. I might have worked towards that situation at which I would say is making the most use of my life.

Ken: No argument there. You say that it been emotional satisfying in certain work situations, yes, but I’m not talking about those things I’m talking about those deep emotional needs you just want to resolve for ever and ever inside you. And basically the mark of a mature person is to recognize that that’s never going to happen in the workplace, or even in our intimate relationships, and actually accept the emotional satisfaction that you do get from certain kinds of activity, or working with people, or the emotional affection and love that this person is able to give you.

Student: You’re not aspiring not to have—so you’re defining emotional needs as those neurotic ones which can never be met rather than like the pleasure and …

Ken: Yeah. Right but you know they continue to wreak havoc in our lives all the time. Yeah.

Student: Okay, that’s true.

Ken: Yeah, and we can call them neurotic, but they’re very deep seated, they’re conditioned, and they very very much shape how we approach our lives.

I’ve worked with a number of CEOs, and it’s astonishing, and anybody who’s worked in entrepreneurial circles knows this. The first question that a good venture capitalist asks an entrepreneur is, “What is your relationship with your father?” And if he says, “Oh, I get along great with my father,” you don’t invest with that person. [Laughter]

Student: [Unclear] comes into play.

Ken: Why? Because you are looking for someone who needs to prove himself. And you want that drive going in there, and there’s so many people who are very successful in the business world. It’s all about proving themselves to their father, or to their brother, or to somebody. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. You know.

Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst, died feeling that he was a failure. Now this is one of the most influential psychoanalysts after Freud, who redefined the whole field in psychodynamics, and all kinds of stuff. Very highly regarded in his field. Trained scores of people, gave rise to this whole different school of psychoanalysis and psychological work. Why did he die feeling he was a failure? Because he hadn’t won the Nobel Prize. We’re talking about emotional needs here. This clear?

Student: I have known a Nobel Prize winner who’s obsessed with the second Nobel Prize.

Ken: Exactly. [Laughter] Okay, they can’t be satisfied. Okay, so let’s move on to identity. How many of you are concerned with your [laughing] identity? Yeah, how are you doing? Okay, and I mean it crops up all over the place. How is this going to make me look in the eyes of others? Well, this is a horrible state of affairs because as soon as we take that attitude to life we have handed over our life to others, completely.

Mind-killing

Ken: So I just wanted to revisit those because our own reactive patterns and many forces in our society engage in an activity which a friend of mine called mind-killing, which is a very strong term but he likes to use strong terms and it’s a very good term to use.

Mind-killing is the deliberate provocation of a person’s reactive patterns so that they will do something that is against their interests.

This is manipulation of course.

Student: Can you say that again.

Ken: The deliberate provocation of a person’s reactive patterns so that they will do something that is against their interests.

In other words you use their reactive patterns to work against themselves.

Now we see this in the political arena all the time. In fact modern political advertising is almost exclusively about this.

Student: Healthcare.

Ken: Well, the healthcare debate is a very good example, but the whole way the “debate,” in quotation marks, about the Iraq War was—in fact I’ll probably use that as illustration because it was so transparent, I just couldn’t believe people couldn’t see through it. In what I’m going to be talking about, I may use examples from the outside just to illustrate points, but what I want you to do is to focus on the mechanisms that operate in you doing exactly the same thing. So different parts of you or different elements in your makeup—we can call them reactive patterns—feeding you little lines, which cause you to react in ways which are in the interests of those particular parts, but not in you as a whole person or a whole being in the world. So let’s go through, and please take careful notes on this. There will be tests, and you’re going to be using this in your practice.

Now, I have two sets here. One is from Noam Chomsky, and I came across it in Manufacturing Consent. He was one of the first people to identify these quite explicitly. And the second is from Francis Bacon, who is an interesting bloke. Some time ago, Elizabethan Times, or a little bit later. The scientist, yeah. Not the artist. Scientists in those days they did everything, but okay.

Marginalization and Framing

Ken: Chomsky: they come in three pairs. The first pair is to marginalize and to frame. In marginalizing considerations or aspects that would get in the way of what they’re trying to manipulate you to do are dismissed as unimportant. They’re put on the margin. So in the Iraq war example: “Well, what’s the cost of this war going to be?” “Well, that’s not important, we’ve got to get rid of this dictator.”
“Well, what’s the effect going to be on our country?” “Well, that’s not important.” And so all of those considerations are marginalized, and so you can’t talk about them.

Framing goes even further. In framing you set up the discussion so that you can’t even ask those kinds of questions. If you want to read a couple of good books on framing, George Lakoff, his first book, Don’t Think of An Elephant, I think is the better one. His second book, The Political Mind, goes over much the same territory, and goes into a bit more detail in some cases in terms of the construction of metaphor, etc. But he brings on all of that neuroscience, which is very debatable. The first book is Don’t Think of an Elephant. His name is Lakoff, L-A-K-O-F-F. He’s a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, and I’ve heard him speak. He’s extremely articulate and this stuff just rolls off. And it’s just fascinating, he’s so steeped in this. It’s Lakoff, L-A-K-O-F-F. If you want to read his big book on the stuff where he grows into it in great deal, it’s Moral Politics, but that’s a big academic tome.

But he talks about setting frames and how to be aware of the frames under which a discussion is taking place. And when you find that you simply can’t ask a question, you go, “Why can’t I ask this question?” It’s because you are in a frame, and if you try to have a discussion within the other frame, you’re dead. That’s why the book was titled, Don’t Think of an Elephant. When I say, “Don’t think of an elephant,” what’s the first thing you think of? You’re stuck. Now we’re going to talk about elephants, whether you want to or not. That’s what’s on everybody’s mind. An example of this was the death tax. Instead of estate taxes, they were changed to death taxes. And so there are a whole bunch of questions that just couldn’t be asked because of that terminology.

So, I’ll give you an example from my own experience. When I first came to Los Angeles, I had a lot of difficulty adjusting to being in a major city. I’d never lived in a major city before, let alone one the size of Los Angeles. I was not in terribly good health because I had quite considerable difficulty, particularly in the second three year retreat. And I didn’t know what I was doing, but here I was because Rinpoche had said, “Go straight to Los Angeles. Do not pass go.” And so I managed to find—I was very fortunate in this way—a group of people who gave me really, really good advice, many of them are still with me today. And they would ask questions like, “So why did you come to Los Angeles?” And my reply would be, “Well, Rinpoche sent me.” And they said, “Yes, we know, but why did you come?” I would say, “Because Rinpoche sent me.” “Yes, Ken, we heard that, but why did you come?” Because in the frame of Tibetan Buddhism, the question, “Why am I obeying my guru’s wishes,” is never asked. That’s just a given. You do that. There isn’t any question about that. So you can’t ask that question. And it took them six months of them asking me that question before I got the idea of, “Oh, I chose to obey this,” before I could break the frame enough to think that. Of course, then they unleashed a monster. But you have to blame them for that. But that’s an example of how within the frame of Tibetan culture, the question, “Why do you obey your guru,” that can’t be asked. It’s just a given in the culture and it works in that culture for a variety of reasons. It just happens not to work so well in the modern world. So marginalization, framing. So in terms of reactive patterns …

Okay, well, I’m going to use the example of relationships because it just comes up again and again. How many of you have gone into a relationship and when it ended, you realized you knew exactly that it wasn’t going to work out right from the beginning? Yeah. Okay. But something marginalized those concerns, didn’t it? That’s an example of marginalization. When you are completely stuck in thinking about something, take a look at how you are framing the topic to yourself, or how parts of you are framing it, because often they’re going to be framing it in ways that are completely unanswerable. Because if it’s not answerable, then there’s nothing can be done except to maintain the status quo. It’s how we keep ourselves stuck, or how parts of us prevent us from moving forward. So those are two examples of internal ways that this stuff manifests.

Seduction and Alignment

Ken: Okay, the next one, seduction and alignment. Seduction is where you are told that if you do this, it’s going to fulfill your dreams. So you get sucked in by the promise of having your dreams fulfilled. Right? That’s what seduction is all about. And alignment is not as extreme. If you do X, Y, and Z, then everything is going to go well for you. That is, if you go to this school, then you’ll meet these people, and then they’ll have this network, and you’ll have these business contacts, and they’ll be able to help you in your life, etc. And traditional society works very, very much that way. Or conventional society, you get into the right circles and things like that. But in the process, your behavior and your way of thinking is progressively, step-by-step aligned with that way of thinking. And after a while, you find that you’ve lost all freedom to think. You can only think in those terms. Peter.

Peter: The Tom Cruise movie.

Ken: Oh, The Firm. Yeah, that was The Firm about the attorney. Yeah.

Peter: That’s an awful … the movie just really …

Ken: You didn’t like that one? Yeah, there are a number of films on that theme, but that’s certainly one of them. So that’s alignment and seduction, and both of those, of course are based on desire.

Reduction and Polarization

Ken: And then the last pair are reduction and polarization. Reduction is where a complex matter is reduced to a single, emotionally charged issue. So, “Well, I’m not sure how I feel about the Iraq war.”

“You’re in favor of terrorism?”

“Well, no.”

“Well, then what’s wrong with you?”

And that was the level at which the was conducted. Polarization is similar except now your choices are reduced to two. Either this or that, and anything more nuanced is not allowed. You can’t get there. So it’s either this or that. And this is basically the whole thing in the slippery slope argument. “Well, if we do this, we’re going to end up in socialism.” Huh? You have a question? Okay. Yeah. So you take one small step here and you’re going to end up over there, and things are polarized to that extent. Anything in between doesn’t exist. And so you end up with a very, very reduced set of choices. Now, how many of you can recognize this kind of stuff operating you internally? And it’s … pardon?

Student: It’s not so easy.

Ken: Not as easy to recognize it internally? Well, for polarization, whenever you find yourself reduced to two unacceptable choices, get suspicious because that’s what’s happened

Student: Both unacceptable?

Ken: You won’t be comfortable with either of them, with the stuff that’s operating, but you won’t be able to see anything else. It’ll be this or that. So black and white thinking is an example of polarization, and things being reduced to a single, emotionally charged issue; well, how many of you have refrained from doing something because there is an extremely small chance of it going badly? I mean a really small chance. Yeah. That’s an example of reduction, because now that one little bit of fear completely consumes you. Yeah. Roger.

Roger: Yeah. As you’re talking about these, I’m relating to sort of a body component to these.

Ken: Mm-hmm. Well, this is exactly what I want you to do in practice, okay? Again, so I’m going to talk more about that. I’ll give you an example of reduction. How many have a little voice saying, “If you do this, you will be a bad person.” That’s it. Okay. You recognizing any of these? Okay.

Student: Develop a side that says, “And your point is?”

Ken: That’s a good thing. “And your point is?” I like that. Okay? It’s why I often advise people when you’re insulted, always agree. Somebody says, you’re the meanest person I ever met. And you say, “That’s probably true.” You should remember that.

Idols of the mind: the tribe, cave, marketplace and theater

Ken: Okay, now let’s turn to Francis Bacon. He calls these the idols of the mind. And basically, I think these aren’t an extension. I think they just look at things from a different perspective than Chomsky. The first one is the tribe in which you come to feel that there’s really some order or some structure, but it’s more than actually exists. Now, again, I’m going to use the corporate setting because it comes up again and again in organizational settings. And I’m sure many of you have experienced this. How many of you have felt betrayed because you felt you were really part of something and it turned out that you weren’t? That’s an example of the tribe. You assumed there was more structure, more order there. You were really part of it. Everybody was working together, and you found out that wasn’t exactly the case. And so we project this feeling of belonging to a special group, which is what the tribe is about. And that group can be very large or very small, but that’s what draws us in.

Then there’s the idol of the cave in which we find ourselves imprisoned in someone else’s idea of the world.

Student: The cave?

Ken: The cave.

Student: Plato’s cave?

Ken: Well, no. Well, it’s not Plato’s cave. It was quite a different … he was using it for quite a different thing. Yyou can work for somebody or you can be in a relationship with somebody, and their way of experiencing the world defines your world, and you’re imprisoned in it. And what keeps you in it is your desire to be connected with that person, but you can’t do anything outside of the way that they function or see the world. And this can be anything from someone that you know, a friend, acquaintance, a partner, or it can be a political leader. Those are two extremes. Everything in between as possible.

Third one, the idol of the marketplace in which you come to believe in non-existent things. My example for this: Obama’s death panels, it was completely fabricated, and yet large numbers of people instantly believed it. And this is what happens. We come to believe in things that don’t exist, because they’re at some level emotionally compelling or they trigger other stuff in this. Yes?

Student: Would derivatives be?

Ken: Oh, I think, well, yeah. Well, certainly there was a particular equation that a mathematician came up with, which was used to justify all of the prices of derivatives. There’s only one small problem with the equation. It had a parameter in it. And to make the math easier, you had to assume that the parameter didn’t change. But in real life it did. So everything was based on a complete fiction. It was used to justify all the pricing of the securitized mortgages.

And then there’s the idol of the theater where you believe or accept misleading demonstrations. Anybody here know what alternating current is? Okay, it’s current. It oscillates between negative and positive. It’s one form of electricity. The other form is direct current. Now, if the American electrical system was on direct current, we would be saving, or we’d have far more electricity available than we do now. Because when you transmit electricity with direct current, there’s no transmission loss. When you transmit it using alternating current, it sets up electromagnetic interference. And so there are huge losses in the transmission, and so you have to devise ways to avoid that. Why is America on alternating current?

Well, it goes back to a little confrontation between Tesla and Edison. Tesla was an advocate for direct current. Edison’s machines were based on alternating current. So what did Edison do? He invited a bunch of reporters in, hooked a cat up to a battery and killed it with direct current saying, “See what direct current does.” Well, the fact is, alternating current would’ve done exactly the same thing, but he didn’t do it with alternating current. He only did it with direct current, and all the reporters bought it. That’s what biased the debate.

I saw a similarly misleading presentation on the TED Conference. Everybody here know ted.com? Okay? A lot of the presentations are really good, but this one wasn’t. This guy had wanted to demonstrate how two things operating together will naturally converge. And so what he did was set up two metronomes at slightly different frequencies, and set them up so that they started off opposite and they gradually converged. And then he stopped them saying, “See, they converged.” But if he had continued, they would’ve diverged again. Pardon? Well, I think so, particularly to that audience, I think one person in the audience called him out, or at least it was on the comments on the TED page. But it was a completely misleading demo.

So I’ve given you two very physical examples of this, but we find the same thing again and again, where we don’t question what appears before us. Anybody see the film The Illusionist? It’s a very good example of this. It’s quite an interesting film.

So again, we tend to believe what we want to believe. And now, how many of you have taken as evidence for something that you wanted to believe—usually about another person or about your family or something like that—but there was really very, very little basis to that. That’s the idol of the marketplace. So oops, 5:30. I’ve still got another whole page of notes to go through.

Mind-killing collapses your attention

Ken: So, how do you avoid this? You avoid this because you’ll notice that all of these forms of mind-killing rest on a single principle, and that is getting your attention to collapse. Every one of them. It collapses in different ways around different things, but it’s all about getting your attention to collapse. That’s the key to reactivity. And if you watch commercials, you’ll see that every commercial is aimed at getting your attention to collapse around a very specific thing. So you forget everything else. So the principle to step out of this influence in our lives, whether it’s coming externally or internally, is to open to experience and bring attention into the moment.

Now, the Stoics were very, very clear about this. They regarded any consideration of the past and the future, a distraction. And by bringing attention into the moment, you gain three forms of freedom. You gain freedom of action, freedom from emotional reaction, and freedom from identity.

You gain freedom from action. Because when you bring attention into the actual moment, things become workable because you’re making things much, much smaller. The old question, how do you move a mountain? One stone at a time. You come up to mountain, you look at it, “I can’t possibly move that,” but you bring attention to, “Okay, what can I do? Oh, I can move this stone.” Done. Now, the next stone may take forever, but you can move the mountain that way. Emotional reactions that we already discussed are all about memories from the past or expectations on the future. They’re not about what is happening right now. And identity is similarly concerned. You only can have an identity if you see yourself existing through time. In the actual moment, when you’re fully engaged in something, there is no sense of identity.

Practice: when attention collapses

Ken: So I’m going to give you two different ways of practicing here, and you can take your choice or you can work with both. When you find attention collapsing, there’s generally going to be a sense of opposition. Maybe not in every case, but most cases when you collapse, it’s because you’ve found yourself opposing something. So three questions to ask at that point:

What am I opposing?

Do I need to oppose it?

Is opposing called for at all?

Let me repeat those. What am I opposing? Do I need to oppose it? Is opposing called for at all? And you may find after the first question, after the second question, or after the third question, something will have shifted. Your attention will be more open, and you have a different relationship with that.

Second form of practice, and this relates very directly to the various forms of mind killing that I’ve described. When you collapse, listen to the voices. What are they saying? What did they say to get you to collapse? So you actually listen to them. [Pause]

Open to the reaction that was elicited, the reaction that triggered the collapse. Open to that experience, which is going to involve what are you experiencing physically? What are you experiencing emotionally? What are you experiencing cognitively? And that goes to Roger’s point. Yeah, with all of these, there is a very definite physical reaction, which we usually skip over. Now, I want you to start bringing attention to that.

Identify the method. And the reason I’m throwing that one in—and you may or may not want to do it—but it can be helpful because when you name something, it tends to lose its power. “Oh, that was marginalization.” “Oh, that was polarization.” “I’m only seeing these two poles.” Just naming. That often allows more to happen. When you’re able to name the method, you’ll often be able to discern what was being protected, what the collapse in attention was intended to direct your attention away from. Now, if you can, open to that, and you’ll find that it’s a very different picture.

Now, that may be a little too complex for you to work with. Just to reduce it, when you find yourself collapsing, listen to the voices, open to the reaction that they’re eliciting. And if you can name the method, but even if you just open to the reaction they’re eliciting, and you open to that physically, emotionally, and cognitively, you’re going to find things change. Just by doing that, you’re bringing attention into what you’re experiencing in that moment, if you follow. Okay. Questions? Yes.

Questions about the practice instructions

Student: Even in the open awareness one, I find that I bring a lot of effort and that causes tightness. And I can highly suspect that this will engage that same type of efforting for me. Suggestions?

Ken: Yes. Work from a base of resting. [Laughter] So what was that?

Student: I have no idea.

Ken: No, but right there was a reaction.

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. So what’s the story saying? “I can’t rest.”

Student: Correct.

Ken: Okay. Open to that right now. Physically, what do you experience?

Student: So there was actually a second of ease, and then some tightening again.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. And how did you react emotionally to that moment of ease?

Student: It was sweet.

Ken: And? And we’re talking about the tightening again. There’s a whole bunch of other emotions in there.

Student: And so then, yeah, the disappointment like, “Ah, here’s the tightening again.”

Ken: Yeah, but there was something else. Was there something frightening about ease?

Student: Hmm. I don’t pick it up.

Ken: It is probably too fast at this point. Okay. But there you are. You’re open. Ha ah ah ah!

Student: Okay.

Ken: Okay.

Student: I think sometimes for me, there’s anticipation that it’s part of the contraction of, “Gee, what’s going to happen?” And what you’re saying is, “Oh, it’s probably fear.”

Ken: “Well, gee, what’s going to happen?” What’s that?

Student: Yeah. Kind of guarding.

Ken: Okay, so there, it’s open, and your first reaction is, “oh, what’s going to happen now?” You’re already in it.

Student: Got it.

Ken: Because as soon as we say, “Gee, what’s going to happen?” you’ve already tightened up. It’s that fast. And this stuff does operate that fast.

Student: Right. And so that’s mainly what I experience is that—

Ken: And so what I’m asking you to do—to the extent that is possible—bring attention to this level of reaction that’s operating in you. So I say, “So rest,” and you go, “Ha!” And there’s a whole reaction right there. There’s a whole story, everything. It’s all right in that one moment.

Ken: Okay? And now you just go back and, “Oh, that was interesting. I just blew that one off completely, didn’t I?” Okay, let’s do it, or let’s play it again. “I’m just going to rest.” “Yeah, right.” Well, okay, that was a fraction slower.

Let’s try it again. “I’m just going to rest.” “Ooh. I mean, that’s nice, but ah,” You see? And so by going through it again, again, you’re actually able to experience it more completely each time.

And I want to emphasize here, this is not analysis. And there’ll be a strong tendency to go there, okay? This is about replaying the experience so you become aware of the physical reactions. Always start with the physical reactions to it. Because the analysis, you’ll never get anywhere doing that. It takes us off, distracts us, gets us involved in stories. We come up with wonderful theories. The next thing we know, the whole meditation period’s gone by and we haven’t done anything. But you go through the physical reaction, and you’ll begin to see how fast they are, which tells you how potent the emotional material is.

Student: And they just go, and go, and go. And there’s—

Ken: The physical reactions don’t. They just go tschooo.

Student: Yeah, but there’s …

Ken: The stories. Yeah, the stories. Another matter. Yeah. Does this help?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. Thank you, Peter.

Peter: I just wanted to comment, I dunno if this is useful or not, but I’ve been having a lot of flashbacks to being a kid, and all sorts of other things recently, even before this retreat. And this just reminds me of learning to ride a bike, which was going along. Whoa, whoa, bam. Smash on the ground. It was my brother’s bike. It was a lot bigger. So it was like a big crash. And then I would do it again. Off the stoop, push off, no pedals. So I crashed into the tree, and I did it over and over and over again, but it was, “Oh, whoa.” As you crashed, you kind of went, “Oh yeah, that was what went wrong there. Lemme try again.” And it has this visceral effect.

Ken: Yeah, I think that’s a very good analogy. You’re going to crash into a tree a lot of times, but that’s how we learn. Did you eventually learn?

Peter: I did. And I didn’t do training wheels, and it was my impression as a kid, maybe that’s because I did the crashing. I saw the kids at training wheels; they took longer.

Ken: And that’s been my experience. They do take longer because they never learned to balance. And the only way you learn to balance … we sit down to meditate. What’s the first thing we do? We crash into activity, busyness, and we do that a hundred thousand, million times. And then the next thing we know we’re crashing into dullness. And very slowly we learned, “Oh, I can just be there, and be with it all.” And we stopped trying to control the experience, which is very analogous to riding a bicycle, because the trick to riding a bicycle is just get up enough speed. Then the gyroscopic effect of the wheels takes over, and you’re very unlikely to fall. Going quickly, you learn. Going slowly, it doesn’t work.” Okay, we need to close here for dinner. Do you have enough clarity about practice this evening? Okay. Basically, if it looks bad, jump into it and experience it. Okay. We’ll close here. I see you at 7:00.