April 29, 2014 Tuesday Night, Emerald Isle Retreat, Barbara's talk "I want " versus "I choose".

“I Want” versus “I Choose”; living from the Open Heart

Barbara: Good evening. Years ago I used to spend hours preparing a dharma talk, reflecting on what I wanted to say, looking up sutra references, just putting it all together. On a day like today when I'm teaching all morning and afternoon, and then it's 6:30pm after dinner and I need to shower and dress and give a dharma talk in an hour, there's not much time for preparation. It's good practice for me, the one who wants to give a good, clear dharma talk. It's not so much from me wanting approval or praise anymore; that would have been 15, 20 years ago. It's just the one who wants to share the dharma in the clearest way.

Frustration, watching the frustration. There's so much I want to say but I don't have time to put it together. Let it go. And somehow, and this is true whether one is giving a formal dharma talk or whether one is simply living the dharma in one's life, we might trust the ability of ourselves to simply let the dharma pass through us. It may not come out with the most perfect articulation, but people will get what we're saying. Trusting ourselves, trusting others, trusting the dharma itself.

We did the guided meditation last night, asking, “What are we carrying?” What old burden that we might wish to release but don't know how to release? We need support to release it; we carried it up the steep mountain and put it in the fire. This is like Aaron's lifejacket metaphor. When he comes to the point where you're putting on a water-logged, moldy, ancient lifejacket, and he inquires, “What are you doing?” You see that it pulls you down. At one point it supported you but it no longer supports you. It drowns you. But you're still not quite ready to take it off. So we say, “I want that, more kindness, more ease, more love;  but to get what I want I'm going to have to take off that old lifejacket, of fear and old habits.” We will have to release some old preconceived notion about ourselves, that we are not good enough, not adequate, that we have to fix everything for everybody and carry all the burdens, that we should be stronger, smarter, kinder. The same old burdens you carried up the mountain yesterday.

The challenge is, we get into a place where we say, “I want.” I want to get rid of this. I want more loving relationships. I want more meaningful work. I want better health. Good! We want this. What old lifejacket are we not willing to let go of? And we don't see the conflict. We feel if we say “I want” firmly enough, we should be able to get it. But we have to ask ourselves, what is the cost?

And the cost is not a real cost. A friend  (Ross Bishop, in his blog) wrote something that I really liked. “You are never asked to sacrifice anything real. You can't give up those things anyway. All you can sacrifice is the false stuff you hang onto that gives you the pretense of security.” So what are we hanging onto?

For me, I came up against this a long time ago with feelings of unworthiness grown from experiences of abandonment, that came in my childhood. Many of you have heard me tell the story of how at a month-long retreat, instead of looking away from people I tried to catch people's eyes. And they of course looked away because that was the retreat instruction. The aversion of their eyes brought up shame, “See? I'm no good. They don't love me.” Perhaps the thing I most wanted was the release of these old feelings of unworthiness. But I wasn't willing yet to look at the conditioning out of which they grew. What does the unworthiness protect me from? What does the belief in unworthiness protect me from?

Talking to hundreds of students, I find for many people, people who grew up in abusive homes, maybe not physically abusive, maybe not even outwardly abusive, simply parents not present for you, but, there was anger. “I'm not getting what I need.” And if as the child you said, “You're not treating me right,” if the parent was verbally abusive, saying, “No, I am not bad!” it really would get you further from the love you wanted. Being able to accept the parent's statement, “You're inept, you're hopeless. You're not smart. You're clumsy.”—whatever; if you said, “Yes, you're right,” and you continued to act inept and clumsy and dumb, it confirmed the parent's belief about you. It allowed you to feel anger, but not to project it at the parent but at yourself. “See? This is what's wrong with me. And if only I were bright, dexterous, whatever, then the parent would love me. It's not the parent's fault, it's my fault.” So we picked up that lifejacket. The self-negation became a way to release the intense anger at what seemed un fair, yet allowed a way to survive.

Long ago you learned--perhaps in your meditation practice, perhaps in therapy—that it was not your fault, that the parent was simply not capable of loving. But there's still the anger there, and the anger-turned-on-the-self in this situation is the lifejacket. It was skillful way back then. Maybe it was not the most skillful thing, but it was all that 5 or 6 year old could do to try to survive. So they picked up this lifejacket, “I'm stupid,” “I'm inept,” whatever. They agreed to be that.

Now, 40 years later, why are we still carrying it? Thus, we can say, “I want to be respected by people.” But there's this small part of us that doesn't yet respect ourselves, and it's too scary to respect ourselves because this has been our armor. If we respect ourselves, what might we experience? The rage at the parent? The rage that was totally unmanageable, crippling, if it was allowed to surface? So instead we worked out this whole process. “See? I'm inept.” I can't do this, I can't do that. I'm ugly. I'm not skillful. I'm dumb. We just keep it going.

Now in our present life, when we say, “I want to respect myself and have others respect me,” there's that “I want.” But it's more of a grasping at it because we're not ready for the conditions of release. As my friend said, “All you can sacrifice is the false stuff you hang onto that gave you the pretense of security.” Are we ready to look that in the eye and let go of it? Are we ready to cart it up the mountain and drop it into the fire? Are we ready to drop off the lifejacket?

You've heard me tell this, most of you. In that retreat, it's good I had a month. I needed the whole month. Every time somebody looked away, contraction came and I asked, “Anybody unworthy here?” No, it's just old conditioning. And here's where our practice comes in: literally knowing there never was somebody unworthy in the first place, it's just an idea I picked up for some reason of self-security, safety. It was more comfortable than the alternative. What must be sacrificed to let it go? This old belief about myself. And our practice shows us right where it is.

I personally came to this next during all the years I spent looking at my deafness. Being able finally to find equanimity with the deafness, to really honestly be okay with it. And then I went to Brazil, and the question that came to me that first year in Brazil was, “What if you could hear? What are you afraid of in hearing? What does deafness protect you from?”  It just rolls on.

So we talk about right effort:

The effort to give rise to wholesome mind states not yet arisen.

To sustain wholesome mind states already arisen.

To release unwholesome mind states already arisen.

To release the conditions that might lead to the formation of other unwholesome mind states.

As I explore the unwholesome mind state here the question is: What does the deafness protect me from? What old attitude or belief about myself? And as I investigated this question over several years during trips to the Casa and in meditation at home, I began to see that not hearing protected me from what I felt was the unmanageable cries of the world, the ten thousand sorrows of the world. There was still this belief, “I have to carry it all. I should be able to resolve at least some of it.” What if I hear those cries and I can't do anything? I am not saying I became deaf because of that; I became deaf for a multitude of reasons—genetic, physical, karmic, conditions in the body, whatever. But one of the things maintaining that deafness, supporting that deafness in me, was, while I could say yes, I want to hear, there was also the fear, what if I actually do hear? And if I do hear, it will prove that I'm inadequate to the task of handling all the pain I hear.

It's ironic because I (do) hear, not with the ears but with the heart. I hear so much, and I do hear these ten thousand sorrows. It was just a myth. But I really had to get to it and see: this is what's sustaining the deafness. And then instead of “I want to hear,” I was able to say “I choose to hear.” Can you feel the difference? “I want to” contains grasping; it wants to ignore the conditions that are blocking hearing. Just “I want this.” “I choose with free will, with a loving heart. This is my intention.”

So right effort, all of these four parts, must involve the intention of the heart. It can't start with, here's a wholesome mind state not yet arisen and I want to make it arise. Here's an unwholesome mind state that's arisen and I'm going to get rid of it. How do we come into the heart and truly do this work from the open heart? It takes enormous self-honesty, and patience with ourselves. The whole mix of vipassana, Braham Vihara practices, pure awareness practices, wisdom and compassion serve us here.

The dharma path is vast and it's so beautiful, because all the tools we need are there. We develop the tools that seem most useful at the moment. Sometimes we forget about those tools, and years pass by. But as I said at the beginning, if we trust the dharma and the dharma's ability to speak through us and to us, we begin to trust from the years of practice that all of you have, that that seed is inside and also the tools to nurture it. When I bring attention to the seed and I'm ready, I water it, I bring sun onto it, it begins to sprout, and the fruits of the practice will emerge.

So it takes a true letting go to allow ourselves to open to things as they really are and have the courage to invite change. It's the courage to carry that load up the hill and drop it in the fire; the courage to take off the lifejacket. That's what we're all doing.

This sounds like a lot of doing, and it can become a lot of doing. As I said, we have to trust the dharma, and part of that is trusting the already awakened essence of ourselves. It's not that we proceed in a linear fashion and finally we're going to conquer these unwholesome tendencies so much as right there with fear, right there with anger, right there with greed is that which is not afraid, not angry, not greedy.

John read a quote the other day, the daily Aaron message that some of you subscribe to on your computers. I don't remember the exact words but it was one about, can you give one half the attention that you give to the unwholesome mind states in your trying to discipline them and get rid of them, to the wholesome mind states? Can you really pay attention to that which is beautiful within?

I remember a similar message from Stephen Levine, hearing him once in some kind of a meeting. He was talking about working with people who are dying, and he said, often people who are dying, they're so busy dying 24 hours a day, they forget that they're still living. The message he gives them is, can you just die 15 minutes every hour and really be alive the other 45 minutes? What's happening in these 45 minutes? There's a little bit of laughter, something delicious to eat, a friend's smile—can you really open to that? As long as we're denying our true selves 24 hours a day or even 20 hours a day, we really lose the beauty in ourselves. Can we open to that? So it's a matter of balance, in part.

We don't always express what we learn. We learn some things and then we go back and do the same thing again. So I thought I had managed some degree of openhearted wisdom with my deafness, and with feelings like unworthiness. And I really have—much of that is resolved. But here I was last summer feeling virtually crippled after the brown recluse spider bite, the body collapsing, literally; I couldn't walk, feeling scared, and angry at my body for failing me. In September my doctor offered physical therapy; the physical therapist gave me exercises that I was doing, and I was also going to the gym every day. I was more or less doubling the exercises, with the idea, if I do it harder, if I work harder, I'll overcome this.

So I was working on an elliptical trainer and my knee started to hurt. Instead of backing off, I said, “Do it harder. Push on!” It took me a while to look at this, saying, “I want.” I want the body to become strong. What's hiding behind this? The whole of aging! Aware, this body is never going to be a 60 year old body again, even a 70 year old body again. And it's going to progress. I have a 97 year old mother. She gets along very well. She walks with a walker. Her mind is clear. She lives in an assisted living facility. She's a loving person. But I see also the pain that she has in her life. Through the years she has refused to exercise although movement is painful. She says, “I'm too tired.” So I have this determination, “I'm not going to be where she is. My body's not going to be like that at 97. Keep going!”  (as an aside; 3 weeks after I gave this talk, Mom died in her sleep on July 11)

So I see the “I aspire to” from a loving heart, and the “I want, I will” that just comes with force. It comes when I am not paying attention. In January and February I was at the Casa; they were doing surgery on me every week, so I had 5 weeks where I could do almost no physical exercise. I was riding my bike the mile back and forth to the Casa each day. But not doing the physical therapy. And I had abundance of time to meditate. I began to see this war on myself of the body aging. Can I treat this body with kindness? Slowly the body began to heal.

It was important to recognize that the present conditions of the body are both karmic and genetic. I've got my father's body. He had very severe arthritis through the last 20 years of his life. It looks like I could head toward that. Maybe not; I'm not resigned to it. I'm doing everything I can to avoid being crippled by it by swimming and walking in the pool and keeping in motion. But we have to accept that the body will age. Can I make peace with it? Deal with the fear, really a fear of losing control? Who will I be if I can't walk, if I can't function, if my hands become crippled, and so forth? My vision isn't great, although it's much better after the cataract surgery, and I'm delighted with the clarity. I enjoy the motion of dolphins out there that I have not seen for several years; it's wonderful. But still I'm virtually blind in one eye. It's scary. Can we open our hearts to ourselves, to this human form we're in, the body that ages?

So I've been watching this at this retreat, the grief, really, that I can no longer just wade into the ocean and jump in. I can no longer freely walk on the beach; I need my walking sticks for balance. And I probably need somebody on each side of me to help me walk into the ocean deep enough to swim. It's a real loss because I love the beach, I love the ocean. Grieving.

This year is 10 years since that wave accident. I know some of you were here then, watched me go through that. My body was badly battered and it did lasting injury to my body, to my spine, to the eye that is blind. My body has never been the same. I spent a little time sitting on the balcony up there just looking out at the ocean, forgiving the ocean, opening my heart. Allowing grief. Realizing there are limits to what we control, as individuals. We participate in this whole world of impermanence, including the impermanence of the body.

So, two nights ago, I had a very powerful dream. I was driving in a car on a highway, a big four or five lane highway. Traffic going along at 70, 75mph. Cars were close, not bumper to bumper. Far enough apart to be moving, but there were big trucks and cars passing me. I was in a kind of middle lane. Feeling confident in my driving, comfortable, driving along like that. And suddenly in the dream the car came into a thick dense fog. It happened just like that. There was clear vision and suddenly there was this fog.

I was not in the right lane. I couldn't just pull off the road. What's beside me? What's behind me? Can't see anything. And the first thing that came up was fear: what am I going to do? Wanting to control it. This whole idea, “I can fix it if only I will it hard enough.” And then a deep wisdom that simply said, “This is how it is. There is nothing you can do. You don't know what's behind you. You don't know what's in front of you. If you try to stop, something may smash into you from the back. If you keep going you may smash into something in the front. Can't go to either side. Just let it all go and hold the intention: whatever is for the highest good of all beings; myself and those around me. Go into the akashic field and hold that vision, of nothing crashing into anything, no harm to anyone. Knowing that as a possibility.” It was an immensely powerful dream. It lasted maybe a minute or so in that state. I don't know how long; I was dreaming. It was not really a lucid dream, but it was sort of a lucid dream. And then suddenly there was vision again and the traffic was going on and the fog lifted.

It was a very powerful teaching. Sometimes me as ego, I can't do anything. But when I connect to everything around me and hold the intention for the highest good for myself and others-- let go of all those old beliefs of I can't do this. I don't know how. I'm not good enough. I'm afraid. I shouldn't be afraid. Let go of the “I”, whether helpless or powerful. Just am present in this moment with an open heart. Sometimes everything's going to crash. There's no guarantee. It's the best we can do.

But this is the point where we're really taking that old baggage and dropping it in the fire. Letting ourselves come back to our true nature. Open our hearts to our true nature, and trust if I'm going to die in this moment, I'm going to die with love. It really is as simple as that.

I said half an hour ago I had not much time to do preparation for this dharma talk. And I think that's about it, that's about all I have to say at the moment. So I'd like us to just sit silently for a few minutes and then we'll open the floor to questions...

(sitting)

I confess in my room at 6:30 the thought came up, “But they expect me to talk for an hour! They expect a good dharma talk!”—I love Aaron's, “Is that so?” Just holding it out and letting it go. Old conditioning.

Any questions or comments?

John: Sometimes the short ones are the best!

(sharing of real-life experiences similar to Barbara's dream)

Barbara: We have a place of such deep wisdom inside ourselves. To me one of the greatest fruits of vipassana practice is we learn to trust that wisdom, not to override it as we are prone to do. The ego says, “No, do this.” And when it comes from the ego, often it's not the most skillful move.

I'm thinking of a story, this has to be 10 or more years ago. One of my sons was living in Washington, D.C., and was moving back to Michigan. He had all of his belongings in the car and a rented U-Haul trailer. One of my other sons had gone down with him to help load his car and drive back. His car overheated on the highway and he smelled smoke. He stopped and pulled off. They opened the hood and flames shot out 20 feet in the air. He didn't have a fire extinguisher. Car stopped, two or three drivers; nobody had a fire extinguisher. They were pouring on water from a water bottle!  Flames started shooting up 20 feet. Davy said, “All my worldly possessions are there! Everything is there!” The ego of him wanted to put the fire out, to do something, and a different part of him said it's just material goods.

They managed to unhook the U-Haul and tow it back 20 or 30 feet. Then they got far out of the way, waiting for the car to blow. Flames were shooting up 40 feet now. He said once he realized, “I can't save it,” the whole ego let go and he just said, “It's okay. There's nothing there that I have to save.” He said he was so peaceful, so relaxed. I remember he called because they were late, and he said calmly, “We had a little overheating problem in the car. We'll be home in a few hours.” Coming to that place of wisdom.

Others?

Q: You said in your dream you flipped into the akashic field with the intention for the good of all beings. Is it that easy, to flip in and out, as we are driving or walking?

Barbara: It's not so much flipping in and out of. We learn to stay grounded, those feet a hundred feet down. Then the flipping in and out is more just dropping down into that ground. We never lose the connection.

This is part of the fruit of the pure awareness practices, which are taught as three parts: seeing the view-- recognizing pure awareness, or rigpa in Tibetan-- stabilizing it, and then action, bringing it out into the world. We learn how it feels to stay connected with the pure awareness mind, never to lose it. Then in a moment of trauma we can remind ourselves, in this moment, where is rigpa? Where is awareness? Can I re-ground into the heart? And we know as long as we're screaming and running from the place of ego, it's not going to work for others or ourselves.

This to me is a wonderful fruit of practice. It's not just the pure awareness practice, it comes through vipassana too, because in vipassana we learn to see the ego mind coming up and all the tension and agitation, and we just remind ourselves: Come back. Come back to center. Come back to the breath.

I had an experience 7 or 8 years ago. I was pumping gas into my car and something happened to the nozzle so it didn't shut off when  I finished. Gasoline started pouring out and squirting out. The nozzle jumped out of the tank because the tank was full. It was like a hose writhing around, spraying me and everything with gasoline. I screamed, and the attendant came out. He saw what was happening and he shut it off from inside. I immediately asked him to lead me inside, and I washed my eyes out while he called an ambulance. So they removed the gasoline saturated clothes, wrapped me up in a sheet and took me to the ER.

I had washed my eyes very well, but I had gas in my hair and my skin was saturated with it. I got into the ER and they pretty quickly took me into a room. I sat there and meditated. My skin was burning. My scalp was burning. But I was just deep in this still space, not getting caught up in it. I figured they have emergencies and they'll take care of me when they can. Now, I should have said, “My skin and hair are burning. I need to shower. I need to wash this off.” But I meditated. Finally after an hour or so I said to a nurse, “I have a lot of burning sensations.” She said, “Didn't they wash you off?” “No.” The doctor came in eventually and said, “You were so calm I figured they had washed you off!”

We have to also ask for what we need. It doesn't have to be from a place of hysteria, but we have to speak up, not “AHH!” but “I've got gasoline all over my body and it burns. I need to wash it off now.”

Others?

Q: A few months ago I was on sabbatical and was having writer's block, and then feelings of unworthiness, “I don't deserve this sabbatical.” I realized that holding onto beliefs about unworthiness supported an illusion of control. That I controlled when good things happen to me. And I began to see that holding on to the beliefs of unworthiness gave me a strange sense of control.

Barbara: I can understand that. And then what happened?

Q: I realized why I was still holding on to the unworthiness: to support an illusion. And it was time for the illusion to dissolve.

Barbara: And it's not that easy. You can't just say, “Okay, goodbye!” But there are many different ways to work with it. I'd be curious how the insight gave you the start, and how you then worked with it. What helped it to dissolve?

Q: Well, it's in process.

Barbara: So we're not talking about an instant dissolution, but we start the process. And this is the “I choose” rather than the “I want” that's coming from the ego. Thank you, that's a helpful example.

Q: There's a concept in psychoanalysis, Alice Miller, called the “fantasy bond.” I think from both my own experience and that with my patients that it explains a lot of why we cling to old feelings of unworthiness. Because the alternative is to give up the idea that somehow, somewhere, some way, we could still win Mother's love, Father's love, but mostly Mother's love. And the coming face to face with that means confronting the defectiveness of Mother's love.

Barbara: Unless we feel worthy of the mother's love we can never open to it, no matter how much it's poured onto us. And a lot of this comes from past lives. We've been working with it forever.

So what do you do with patients who are in that situation?

Q: It is a grief process, of revisiting certain critical incidents from childhood. And I do use mindfulness of body sensations as a pathway to emotions, which is often very blocked for survivors of abuse. So then the emotions are freed and release. And compassion can then be developed for self, and eventually, to some extent, for the victimizer.

Barbara: I would assume that the grief is also tied in to rage, and that the grief served as a shield against the rage. So that when the grief is allowed there's more access to seeing the origins of the rage and releasing that, toward the mother and toward oneself.

Q: It goes both ways.

Barbara: The rage hides the grief, the grief hides the rage. Thank you.

Q: How do you suggest working with past life unworthiness? I'm assuming that your current life unworthiness is similar to your past lives' unworthiness.

Barbara: Yes, but I find that unless you clearly see a past life, and some people do in meditation, but unless you do it's not necessary to go searching for it or have a past life reading or whatever. Just simply assume the roots are there. If I heal it in this life, I release it in the past. It can be useful to see past lives, but I don't think it's ever essential to see past lives.

The Four Empowerments practice and Seven Branch Prayer give us a way to release these karmic tendencies now and back and back and back. I find people working with the Four Empowerments and/or Seven Branch Prayer sometimes catch a glimpse of something. It's not clear, “Oh, I was Joe Smith in this life England in 1620.” It's more a sense of something that happened, a place of old holding. You don't need any mundane world details about it because at some level you are that person, and in meditation you pick up the experience of that person. You can really see how it's compounded itself on this life's experience.

So usually just touching it in this life is sufficient. But if there's something really old and sticky, just hold the intention to gain insight into, and to trust what you see. Many people do see glimpses of a past life and then they think, “I'm imagining this.” If it's useful, treat it as if it were real, as if this experience really happened to you. How do I relate to this experience?

I think I described this in Cosmic Healing. I was working with opening the heart, the places where the heart was closed. Finding the places where my heart was closed to myself in this life, closed to others. The heart chakra was closed; the energy was not flowing through. In meditation I asked for clarity. I had just a brief image, and part of me, the logic part of me said, “Oh, that's ridiculous,” but a wiser part of me said, “Just watch it.” It was of a Native American lifetime. A man was tied to the ground, his arms staked out, his legs. What people did with enemies in those days was to cut their heart open and pull it out and eat the living heart. I saw this happening to him and how much hatred he had for his enemy. Can I open to my heart to this? This man is about to die. Is he going to die with anger or with compassion?

I saw a similar lifetime, I don't know how long ago or in what culture it was. He was put to death by being staked to the ground and his body cut open so that carrion birds, all kinds of birds, could come and eat out his organs. I could feel his fear and his anger, his hatred of these birds. The belly was cut open. There was no way he was going to survive.

So being able to ask myself, Can I feed these animals? This past body is going to die. Instead of dying with hatred of these animals that are feeding from this body, can I offer the body lovingly to these animals? That shifted the whole karma of it.

It can be challenging to trust these images that come up in meditation. Basically sometimes they won't be accurate. We ask ourselves, after we work with practicing with it  - like both of these examples  are the results helpful? Did something release here? Did the heart open more? Is there more wisdom and compassion? If there's not, then we don't want to go with that image. But usually it will be helpful.

We don't talk that much about these kinds of things that come up in vipassana but I'm sure all of you have had some kind of a powerful and unusual  image come up spontaneously. Maybe just noted “seeing” and came back to your breath. But if the image is persistent and is meaningful and you ask, “What is this about?” it's okay to be with it. Just watch it. So again, trust your vipassana practice.

It's 8:45. Let's end here.

(session ends)

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