Being the Stillness – Deconstructing Yourself
Mantra chanting: Om mani padme hum
Okay, just settle in with that energy. Simply allowing yourself to be whatever way you are right now. Just feeling that openness and uplift from the chant. Just settle in with exactly the way you’re feeling—however your body is, it’s the perfect way for it to feel right in this moment. However you’re doing emotionally, it’s the perfect way for it to be in this moment. However you’re feeling mentally, psychologically, is the perfect way for it to be in this moment—even if it’s really messed up. That’s the way it is in this moment, and, just for the time being, just for the meditation, give up on trying to fight that, or change it, or control it, or judge it, or make it different, or struggle with it, or whatever. Just let it be exactly what it is, and just be with that.
Feel it very directly, letting go of any interpretation of any kind—just, “it is what it is,” and stick with what it is. There’s always the urge to grab on to, change it, to try to drive, to try to make it different—all that, but the biggest urge is just to try to get away from it. So that’s when we start thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, because we just just want to get away from exactly the way it is right now. So, just let it be the way it is right now, and see if you can allow just a little room. Just a little tiny bit of room, to accept whatever way you are right now. What if it’s just okay to be exactly the way you are right now?
If you wanted to you—don’t have to, but, if you wanted to, you could go just a little bit further than that and actually like the way you are right now. Like this flawed, beautiful, human being—a little bit. But, in order to like this flawed, beautiful, human being a little bit, you have to let them be just the way they are. Otherwise, it’s all conditional. I’ll like you if you become enlightened, or I’ll like you if you quit being so confused, or I’ll like you if you’re this way or that way—and that’s not really liking. You know how you are with a real friend, which is, even when they’re fucked up, you still love them as your friend. Even when you recognize that they’re crazy or wrong or doing something destructive—of course, you’re going to help them, but you still love them just the way they are, not some other way they need to become. So I’ll just put it out there as a question, it’s just a question, “can you like yourself like a friend, just cutting yourself the slack to just be the way you are, and like that person, at least a little bit.
We’re all in the same boat, right? Every one of us is in the same boat. We’re in a boat that’s sailing out to sea and is going to sink. That is what will happen—we’re all sailing out to sea together, and the boat is going to sink. But, the weird thing is, we don’t know when—have no idea when. So, just take a moment, sitting here, being with yourself, just the way you are, just feel into how that strikes you. All of us are sentenced to death, but we don’t know when. Just feel that. You may notice how, when we look at that for just a moment, that something just stops and opens. Just to the best of your ability, let that just stay open, and, sitting in that openness, allow your mind to disengage from all the stories. The stories get to keep happening as much as they want, but we’re just disengaging from paying attention to them.
Instead, just let that openness be there, and just feel your body. You can either feel your breath moving in and out, or you could feel your guts, but, instead of paying attention to all the spinning stories, which is all you ever pay attention to, just let go of that, and pay attention to some feeling in your body. Tonight, I would say feel your guts—and then just keep feeling your guts. You might feel full, or empty, or kind of warm pleasantness there, or maybe nausea. There are lots of different feelings that can be there, but the invitation is to just feel it, and let go of any story about it. Feeling it from a place of real openness, just noting that the sensations in your belly just appear in awareness. You don’t have to focus on them, or make it a special object of attention. We’re just feeling it. Notice those sensations in the belly, the sensations in your guts, are 3D—it’s not like a flat thing, it’s there in front and in back, as well as up and down, and side to side. You may also notice, as you feel into that, a kind of tingly life energy. Our belly, our guts, it’s not just plumbing—it’s alive, and there’s a kind of kernel or core of real vibrant aliveness there, that you can just feel. You don’t have to imagine it, or visualize it, or something, you just feel it. It’s right there, very direct.
If you find yourself engaging with the story, just let go of it, and come back to just feeling, just feeling in a lot, with a lot of openness, with a lot of ease. Just feel your guts, or feel your body, and notice if you have an urge to run away from it, and just come back back. Notice if you have an urge to bounce off it, and get involved in something else, and just come back. Let’s do this together for a little while. Even if it’s not comfortable, just sit with it. If you’re tired, sit up straight, open your eyes, stay awake. I’m a big fan of nap time, but this is not nap time.
Just keep feeling your guts in the simplest way possible, and, if it’s available to you, notice that tingling aliveness, that energy feeling there. It’s very pleasant, and if you’re able to tune into that tingling, alive, energy feeling in the belly—which is there without you doing anything. You’re not generating, it’s just something you’re noticing. But, if you tune into that a little bit, you’ll start to feel it here and there around the rest of your body. So, just notice that tingling aliveness, anywhere you can. If you’re not noticing it, that’s fine, just, from the center of the belly, just feel the rest of your body. Also, just feel your bones, feel your joints, feel your muscles, feel your head and jaw, just feel your body. But, if you can tune into the energy quality, tune into that. Notice, the more you tune into it, it will start to get a little bit more prominent.
Now, you can keep sitting with this, or, if you want to do something quite a bit more challenging, come back into noticing the thinking, the stories which have been going in the background, going on in the background the whole time. But notice them, too, as just tingling energy. Don’t get involved in the meaning at all, even though it will be there, just let the energy of thought, the activity of thought, be its own kind of tingling energy. It feels very very similar—maybe even identical to the other energy we’ve been tuning into. Just this flow of thought is its own kind of stream of sparkly vibratory activity.
In order to notice that, we’re not visualizing that, or making it some kind of imaginary thing. We’re just not fixating on any of the thoughts themselves. If we let the thoughts roll by in an unfixated way, their energy, activity, movement, dance, quality becomes prominent, rather than the meaning quality. So, just tune into that—don’t try to make it happen, or imagine it happening, just keep noticing activity of thought without grabbing onto it.
You’re sitting with the body as a flow of unfixated energy, and the mind as a flow of unfixated energy. If that’s not your experience, you can at least be sitting with the feelings in the body, and maybe the movement of thought without engagement. If you’re noticing the energy quality, let all that be just one big field of vibrating, dancing, life energy. The thought activity and the body energy aren’t somehow different, it’s just one field of energy, one field of activity, one field of movement, unfixated, undefined, continuously changing activity.
Again, don’t try to make anything happen. This is just something we’re noticing, not something we’re inducing, or trying to ramp up, or imagining, or cultivating, you’re just noticing. Doesn’t have to be a big deal. Notice how tuning in in this way keeps bringing a little bit more relaxation and openness into the overall experience. Most of the tightness and rigidity is imagination of a tight and rigid body, and a tight and rigid mind. When we allow these to show their inherent unfixated, flowing, quality, a lot of the tightness in our being just relaxes, opens, releases, settles. It’s possible to give up trying to manipulate everything so much, and just let ourselves be.
This room has a beautiful wooden floor, like a sailing ship that’s going out to see, and going to crack in half, and sink—and we never know when. We have no idea, it could be one second from now, could be one second from now. So, see if you can tune into, or notice, what’s aware of these energy sensations in the body? What’s aware of this activity of thought? Find the thing that’s aware. Find the thing that is having this experience. It’s easy to say, well, me, or, my brain, or something, but find it. Look and see if that’s true. Look directly in your own experience, right this moment, without engaging with thought at all. Just look. What’s even having this experience? And, I invite you to make an interesting move, which is, we’re used to imagining that we are the thoughts and feelings—which are there, but we imagine that we are the thought and feeling being. But I invite you to simply be what knows that. Be what is aware of the thoughts. Be what is aware of the feelings.
It’s not really a thing—you can’t find it, or touch it, or define it, but you already are it. So, come from the place of what knows, rather than all the stuff that is known. If we think of the tingling life energy in the body, or the waves of thought activity, or all the stuff happening in the room around us—for that matter, as movement, it’s just movement, stuff moving and changing. Be the stillness that is aware of all that. Don’t try to look at the stillness, just be the stillness that is aware of all the movement. It’s just clear, empty, knowing. Clear, undefined openness. We’re not imagining stillness and looking at it, we’re being the stillness.
We’re not trying to, somehow, make everything still. There’s all kinds of movement—there’s the energy of the body, there’s the thought activity movement, all of that. There’s a lot of movement, but we’re coming from the stillness, being what knows. You can’t do it by thinking about it. We’re totally disengaged from any thought activity. It’s fine to notice the thought activity, notice the energy, but we’re not trying to figure anything out using it.
Be what knows. Be the stillness that is wide awake. It takes zero effort. You don’t have to stare, or put your mind in a special state, just be the stillness. Tune into that already, always-existing, wide awake, wide open, stillness and clarity. It’s what knows. It’s not the thing that’s looking, it’s not the thing that’s trying to figure anything out, it’s not the emotions, it’s not the imagining of a position, it’s what knows all that.
You don’t want to try to place your mind in any particular way, because that’s the movement part. Just be what knows the mind. Trying to do a special thing with attention or thoughts is just not necessary. Just be what knows attention and thoughts. If you’re having a blissful experience of radiantly delicious body energy, what is aware of that? If your back and knees are in agony, and your mind is in chaos, what is aware of that? You’re not going to figure it out by trying to get it from me. Be the stillness that knows.
Now, notice something very interesting. From the place of being the stillness that knows, is the energy of the body—this tingly, dancing energy of feeling alive, is that really separate? It’s different, it’s in motion, but is it separate somehow? Is it a totally separate thing from this awakeness? Feel—is it somehow totally separate from the awakeness? It’s just in our imagination that the body energy and the awakeness are seen as two different things. That’s a thought. When you’re just in the experience, there’s no separation at all. There’s not one thing looking at another thing, there’s just the still knowing and the dancing body energy—as different, but never separate. Never separate at all.
And then, notice the thought activity, the continuous stream of flowing, bubbling, gurgling, thought activity, the babbling brook. Is that somehow actually separate from the awareness of it? Or, is the awareness of it and the activity itself, are those two things always together? Even if they’re different, one is movement, one is stillness, they’re never separate. It’s not one thing looking at another thing, they’re just together.
Then, notice the room around you, the sights, the sounds, everything. That’s a lot of movement and color, and is that really separate from awareness? Is it like awareness is aware of that from some other place that it’s looking from? Or is all the movement of the world around never ever separate from the awakeness that knows it? Look right now. We’re used to building out an imaginary, three-dimensional box of the world around us, but if we let go of that, there’s just the appearance and the sounds, totally one thing with the awareness of them. Just awakeness itself and the display of awakeness, never separate, never ending.
Let’s go back to our mani chant, like we did at the beginning, more energy this time, for a few minutes. Remember not to suddenly go back into engaging with thought, but feel that there’s no difference between the awakeness that knows the chanting, and the sound of the chanting. They’re one thing. The awakeness and the chanting are one thing.
Om mani padme hum
Okay, let’s end that there for now. Noticing, as always, that nothing is changing, there is still just wide awake, wide openness, totally not separate from, and yet aware of, all the activity. It’s just really easy for us to get focused in on only the activity. Then, eventually, we imagine that we only are the activity, just the thoughts, and just the feelings, and that’s all there is, somehow. That’s who we are, and that’s not wrong, it’s just partial, but in that just partialness is a lot of difficulty, because we’re not paying attention to the other part, which is this total openness, total stillness, total awakeness. That is what knows. And that’s just as much, if not more, who or what we “are” than the activity. I say the activity is actually not separate, they’re not two things, or if they are two things, they’re two sides of one thing.
And so, if you’re listening, and have been listening for minutes or years, all I’m ever saying is, hey, notice that awakeness, that’s you. I say it a lot, because it’s hard to remember, and everyone needs to hear it a lot, because we’re really really really focused on being the thoughts and being the feelings, and it’s just really helpful to remember this other thing. That is, what is aware of the thoughts and feelings?
It has this odd relationship—if you want to call it that, an odd relationship to the activity, because it’s reflecting the activity constantly. Without that reflection, we would never know anything. It’s the reflection that’s the knowing. And, what’s interesting is that, not only seeing that it’s a reflection, but then noticing that what is reflected is utterly transparent, in the sense that you can’t grab an object in a mirror. Even though you can see it perfectly, still utterly there as an experience, but you can’t ever really grab it. That’s really interesting, really amazing, and enlivening to notice that.
So you don’t have to be in a meditation, just notice it now, notice that all that all this experience is, like, reflected. That’s just cool. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Hey, I’m pointing that out, so you know, worship my dirty socks, or whatever—it’s just not necessary. Please do not do that, but please, notice the thing. It is what’s noticing, and, because of that, it’s weirdly invisible. So, you can’t ever actually point awareness at itself, you can’t take it as an object of attention. You can just be it. That’s why it’s hard to see because everything else we take as an object of attention. You can pay attention to your thoughts, or pay attention to your body, or pay attention to what somebody’s saying, or pay attention to something super important—like do you really like the ending of Game of Thrones or something. You can pay attention to everything else, but to this, you can’t really do that in that normal way of aiming your attention at it. All you can do is be what’s paying attention.
So, it’s funny like that. That’s why, to point it out, I have to say things like, what’s aware right now? Instead, what everyone tries to do is point their attention at the awareness, and that doesn’t work. Try it right now. Point your attention at your own awareness, really try. All you can do is point attention at the imagination of awareness, or thing that you think of as being awareness. It’s a concept. Try it again. Point your attention at your own awareness. I used to try to do that all the time, and I’m like, okay, I’m turning my mind around, and looking at itself—that’s not how it works.
All I can say about that—and it’s true—is you can’t find it. Because, no matter where you point attention, it’s the thing that’s looking. It doesn’t point at itself, so all you do is relax, and be what’s looking. So, quit trying to find it, and just relax, and be the awakeness, be what knows, be what’s looking. Do it right now. Do it. It’s not like a big meditation technique, it’s just it. Like I was saying towards the end, you then weirdly notice that all the stuff that is known, all the thoughts and feelings, and even the room and everything, isn’t separate from that.
So, in a weird way, even the things that we’re used to paying attention to are just more of the same. It’s just more awakeness. We have a concept that it’s stuff, but what’s really happening is the awakeness is looking at the display of awakeness, which it’s not separate from. There’s no distance and there’s no looking happening. It’s very odd, but apparent, once you notice it. That might all seem kind of meaningless, or pointless, or who cares, I need to go get out my roller skate key and polish it, or something. Actually, noticing this really changes your day—won’t change what happens in your day, necessarily, but it’ll change your relationship to your day, or your relationship to other people, or your relationship to your own feelings, or whatever. Turns out your relationship to what’s going on is a lot more important than what’s going on. And what’s going on is important, but your relationship to that is much more important.
So, here we are on this ship together that’s about to get pooped, right, the waves will break over the stern over the poop deck, and just sink it, and we’ll all go down together. But, what’s weird is we’ll go down together at different times, and we never know when. So just tune into that again. It’s not like, oh I’ve got 50 years to figure this out. You don’t know that. You don’t know that. Often this is used as kind of a goad, like ankusha, right? To goad people into, you better meditate really hard, because you don’t know when you’re going to die. I’m not saying it like that, but you better meditate really hard because my socks smell. You’v got to be ready to deal with that. [Laughter] I’m using it instead to just point directly at the thing, and notice, if you bounce off that into a lot of rumination, it’s like, oh, you’re uncomfortable with the thing. I want you to get real comfortable with the thing.
I can talk like this all night, but maybe you guys want to say something. As always, this is being beamed live to other planets via the Internet, so remember that whatever you say will be recorded for eternity.
Questioner 1: Hello. I just want to share a really interesting experience I had tonight, and kind of relating the way that I experienced it based on what you were saying. When we first started out thinking about your guts or some sensation, your body as energy field, as a flow. Kind of imagined it as an energy field of waves.
Michael: Even though I kept saying, “Don’t imagine it; don’t imagine it.”
Questioner 1: Yes, I’m getting there. So, yes I was imagining some waves. I was experiencing the waves, but there was still some imagining. Then the second step, bringing in your thoughts, and seeing those, not necessarily as thoughts, but also as part of this sensation, as these waves. I was like, okay, I’ll add my thoughts to this kind of energy wave field, so I was feeling my body and I was feeling my thoughts as waves. Next, when you talked about, then notice that, so position yourself or your awareness as a still center and kind of notice this activity happening around you. I was kind of able to take myself out of my body and into this position of stillness to notice not only my thoughts and my body as this kind of wave field, this tingly sensation. Then, after that just saying, well, what is what is noticing this? What is awareness? Then, being able to kind of incorporate my awareness into this energy field of waves. So my awareness and everything that was going on was kind of incorporated within this feeling field. Next, incorporating the room and all the surroundings, you know, imagining that, like you said, not as an actual space, but just as part of this collection of energy wave fields, and experiencing all at the same time. Then, when we got to the end, when we were chanting, also noticing that as just part of this experience of waves, then I found that at that point I couldn’t actually place the physical boundaries of my body, because I was all just encapsulated in this wavefield. I was having a hard time seeing where my body began or ended, and where like the wall ended or began. So, it was kind of this cool experience, to just feel that everything was just this field, and I couldn’t figure out where my physical body started or ended until I opened my eyes, and I was like, oh, well that’s where my legs are, that’s what my hands are. So it’s a great experience, thank you.
Michael: And it turns out, you still can’t find them. That’s just more of the visual, it’s just more waves. Very good, thanks for sharing that. Hint: that might be part of what we’re pointing at, right? That you can’t really locate it. We think it’s obvious where our body is, but the more you feel into your own experience, it’s a little different than that. So, very good. What else is out there? What other stuff is coming up? What other burning questions or scathing critiques are you grudgingly nursing out there?
Questioner 2: Yeah, so you’re talking about knowing, and you’re talking about being in awareness at some point. We’re kind of dropping the conceptual filter around everything. So the question here is, usually, if you’re trying to know something, you see it through subject-object. You’re looking at objects of attention, you’re noticing them, you’re observing them, or you’re knowing them, or you’re noting them. In this case, how can you know it, because you can’t really know awareness when you’re being it. When I’m being it, it feels more like it fills up. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like it fills up a room, except there’s no room, so I don’t know what it’s filling up.
Michael: Sure.
Questioner 2: It feels like it’s filling up my heart, but I can’t know it, I just feel like this tingling buzz in the heart.
Michael: Okay. Are you ready to have your mind blown? How do you know you feel that?
Questioner 2: Because I feel love for myself. I’m aware of it, and also you brought in the point of just being like with a friend. Then, it just felt like I was with the friend. I didn’t really know like I don’t think about, oh, I know my friend or I don’t know my friend. When I’m really feeling good, I’m like, I’m with my friend.
Michael: If you’re with your friend, are you aware of that fact?
Questioner 2: Yeah.
Michael: That’s all I’m saying. It’s not hard. It’s not complicated, okay, so don’t get caught up in the language. I’m using different words because different words help different people in different ways. If one of the words is sticking in your mind craw like that, just use a different one, okay.
Questioner 2: Sure, there you go.
Questioner 3: Thanks for that sit, Michael. I appreciated the chant at the start and at the end. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that with you. Toward the end, it was very interesting. What was coming to me, it was something, this is kind of a report, and there might be like a huge unanswerable existential question at the core of it.
Michael: Given enough money, I can answer any question. [Laughter] I’m kidding.
Questioner 3: I think it’s Ken Wilbur who says something like: hurts more, bothers you less, as the path unfolds. That was coming to me. I think just doing the Avalokiteshvara chant, and it’s like oh my God, we are on a ship together and it’s gonna sink, and a ton of it’s on fire—and it’s beautiful, and there’s an ocean of misery, and it’s so intense. The more I open up to it, and I can feel that luminous compassion, that just witnesses it, and can be more and more capacious, and there’s this part of me that’s like, uh,uh, I don’t want this. Get me off the diamond vehicle. I do not want to be on this, it’s actually, like, scary.
Michael: Yeah, but you’re on it already, so are we all. Welcome.
Questioner 3: Okay, so you know you’re…I guess I’m just curious about the idea of liberating that capacity.
Michael: You get a couple extra gold stars for using the word capacious. It gets more and more capacious, and then more and more capacious, and then it’s much bigger than you thought it could ever be. There’s a lot of room in there, and that’s the liberation part. A lot of room in there, but everything kind of has to break open, not just somehow stretch, it just breaks open. So there’s some breaking in there, yeah, doesn’t feel necessarily yummy.
Questioner 3: That makes sense, that was a satisfying answer. Thank you.
Michael: There we go, this is working, this is starting to work, yeah, who’s next?
Questioner 4: I’m gonna interrupt these existential questions with a kind of materialist one. Do you think that with sitting meditation, we’re kind of just letting every neuron associate with every other neuron, so that learning’s easier?
Michael: I don’t know. Maybe that’s a Kati question—you should chase her down before she can get away. Certainly, the idea is that the well-worn paths have gotten you here, into this mess, and that we want to open up to the new pathways. Those are unknown at this point, right, but all this, let’s say, more random association type stuff, is really really helpful and important, and starts to become more prominent. Not overly prominent, doesn’t go into just total chaos, but it’s less rigid by a lot. It’s always described as spontaneous childlike wonder, and unfixated flow-type stuff. So that kind of sense that you know your mind is always having the same thoughts because it’s having the same experience. That really disappears.
Questioner 4: Yeah, I’m trying to have baby eyes a lot. That makes sense, yeah.
Questioner 5: I just wanted to share an experience, which was, I was really excited to be back here in the Alembic. I’ve been gone for a couple months, and as soon as I sat down, I was like this, and I wanted to leave, and I started crying, and I was like what is happening, and I think it’s like, there’s this really weird, layered, grief happening. I’m grieving the past thinking the suffering I was going through is really real, because there’s some weird relief in the apparent gap between when you feel really bad, and you feel really good, and that’s real. Does that make sense?
Michael: No.
Questioner 5: Okay, well that’s what I experienced. It’s just weird, it hits differently. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say, is, everything hits differently, and it’s really mundane, and it’s like every expectation I’ve ever had in my life continues to be wrong, so that’s my other experience that I wanted to share. I’m wrong about everything, and there’s this weird grief that doesn’t make sense.
Michael: Wrong. [Laughter] Thanks for your report.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit for another hour? Thanks for coming out and sitting with me here tonight. I’ll see you next week, all right, thanks everybody.
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