Transcription
Okay, so let's continue this investigation of the inner critic. And what I'm particularly interested in is, what are skilful ways to practise with this? There really, really is the possibility -- despite what we might feel from the inside of that whole dynamic, there really is the possibility of freeing ourselves from this, absolutely and definitely. And what I'm really interested in today is, what moves us towards that possibility, towards manifesting the reality of that? What are the skilful approaches in practice that we can bring to bear?
If you're one of the minority who don't suffer from this mechanism of the inner critic, I would hope that this is still interesting to you, partly to see what most of Western humanity deals with ... [laughter] But also because a lot of what I say will be applied generally to all kinds of difficulties in our lives.
So I touched earlier, before we broke in the morning, on the practice of mettā. And I'm not going to say too much about it, but how important that is, and how powerful that is as a tool for freeing ourselves. Sometimes, when we talk about the inner critic, we can talk, and it can be helpful, as if it's an inner character. It's like a character on the inner stage. And that can be helpful. So some of what I say now and this afternoon will be as if it's that, and relating to it that way. But actually, ultimately, it's not that. There is no -- you know, I can't find that in here. What this inner critic really is, you could say, is also just an amalgam, a constellation, a dynamic of thoughts, beliefs in those thoughts, certain feelings, etc., memories, and projections, all of that together. In a way, as such, the inner critic, or whatever we call it, is a habit. It's a habit. We have habitual thoughts of a certain type -- self-demeaning, self-critical, etc. And that stream -- they're habits of thinking and habits of believing certain thoughts, with the associated emotions, etc. One way of looking at it is, that's what it is -- there are many ways of looking -- that's what it is.
When we're doing the mettā practice, this loving-kindness, and if you know, repeating phrases to yourself -- "May I be well. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be peaceful" -- whatever it is, what we're doing, one of the things that we're doing with mettā practice is actually eroding unhelpful habits of the mind. The mind has lots of unhelpful habits. The inner critic is one of the most unhelpful. And we're just -- this is a habit. Let me just replace it by a much more helpful habit, the habit of thoughts of kindness, the habit of intentions of [kindness]. And it perhaps doesn't sound that glamorous, but actually that goes a long, long, long, long way. Here's a habit structure just reinforced over years, probably decades, lifetimes if you're into that philosophy, and we're changing that, changing that. And that's extremely powerful. And that's a big part of what practice is: changing unhelpful habits.
But what I want to go into today more is not so much the mettā route, although that is extremely powerful, but more the role of mindfulness and explorations through awareness of the actual structure of inner critic. So when we shine the light of awareness on that whole dynamic, how can we investigate? And what can we see? When we talk about mindfulness, it's important to realize mindfulness is not just one thing. So mindfulness also has a dimension to it that is about kindness and kind of inclusivity. So when I am mindful of the inner critic, I'm also interested in, so to speak, befriending it. Usually that's not the relationship with the inner critic. It's more -- I was going to say war, but it's more like bullying. It's more like how we would relate to a bully in the school playground. But what is it, what would it be, to quote another teacher (I think Ajahn Sumedho), what would it be to bring a kind of "affectionate curiosity" to this structure, to this constellation? In much the same way, many of you know from practice that we do when we pay attention to body pain. You're sitting, and you've got a pain in your back or your knee. So what is it to open to it and be interested? Can I do that with this, in a way, more painful dynamic?
So what does that involve, this particular level of mindfulness, dimension of mindfulness? It involves actually letting it be there. Sometimes the inner critic is doing its thing. It's haranguing us, harassing us, saying, judging, judging, judging. Even, perhaps, sometimes -- and I know this happens -- as a person's even listening to a talk or something, listening to something. We're trying to pay attention, and actually this thing, monster inside, keeps judging. And partly it's actually letting it be there. Something happens, and there are thoughts of self-judgment: "Oh, I'll never be able to do that," or "I've messed up again," or "This couldn't possibly apply to me," or whatever, and actually just giving it lots of space, and letting it be there.
So this aspect of giving it space is hugely important. Usually one finds, when the inner critic is there and doing its thing, there's something in me that wants to get rid of it. We call that 'aversion.' I push it away. I reject it. It's normal and natural, understandable. But is it possible to actually just restrain that impulse to want to get rid of it, and let it be there? Let it do its thing. Just let it yap, yap, yap. It's okay. And give it plenty of space.
From another perspective, the inner critic is a manifestation of aversion. It's self-aversion: "I don't like myself. I don't like this about myself. I don't like, don't like, don't like, not good enough." It's all aversion. If I react to that aversion with aversion, I'm putting aversion on aversion, and what happens? I'm only going to get more aversion. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire. It's not going to help.
If I give it only a little space, it's going to take up every last inch of that space. If I try and squash it in small and put it in a corner of the mind, it will probably take up all the space that seems to be in the mind. If I give it lots of space, actually throw open the shutters, wide open, give it lots of space, it actually is not able to, it lacks the capability and the capacity to take up all that space. And then there can be other qualities around as well, because there's space around the inner critic. So perhaps other qualities -- interest, or perhaps a bit of kindness, or whatever -- can be around that.
So sometimes, you might be doing something, and the inner critic voice is coming up and says, "You'll never do this. You'll never be able to do this. You'll never do it. You can't." Or something like, you mess up a little bit, a little mistake: "See? See? You failed again. Useless, just like you always were." Whatever it is. And it can be a loud voice, almost shouting at us. Oftentimes it's not. Sometimes it's non-verbal, and I'll come back to that, but sometimes it's just a quiet kind of, I don't know, hissing, like a little serpent or something, very insidious whisper, little voices.
One possibility, if there can be more space with that, is then, actually -- and it takes a little bit of sensitivity in the mindfulness -- what happens if, here are those voices, and I pay attention to, so to speak, the reverberations of the hurt in response to that. So if I'm telling myself I'm a failure, somewhere inside, there will be the echoes, the tremors of hurt in response there. There has to be. It's painful. And it may be subtle, but they're there, kind of vibrating in the body, this sense of hurt. Is it possible that to allow them to be there, and almost, so to speak, can there be a kind of tenderness or compassion or holding around those reverberations of hurt? It's almost like giving them lots of room, feeling in. They might be quite delicate. They might be, or they might be stronger. And around that, it's almost like holding something.
Sometimes that might feel impossible, or as I say it, it might feel like, "I can't do that." But sometimes even just asking the question very lightly, "Can there be compassion, tenderness, holding?", and just dropping it in as a little question, rather than a demand, can open things up. Sometimes I call that 'poached egg practice.' It's like you've got a hurt. It's right there. The hurt is there, and we're feeling that. We're in touch with that. But around it is the white of the egg, and that's a kind of awareness that is imbued with a little bit of kindness, a little bit of tenderness, a little bit of love or compassion. That makes a big, big difference. We're not ignoring what's in the middle, but we're putting something else around it by giving it space.
So there's an aspect of mindfulness that's kind of got kindness in it. It's kindness and spaciousness and allowing -- that's also included in mindfulness. And there's an aspect of mindfulness, dimension of mindfulness, that's really about clarity and seeing and penetrating: "Let's investigate that." With this inner critic, it's important to actually have with the mindfulness a kind of probing questioning: "What's there? What's there? What's here? What's actually going on?" So for example, oftentimes when it's there, we don't actually recognize fully what is actually present in the moment, in terms of the emotions that make it up or colour it, or the thoughts, etc. For example, oftentimes, or sometimes, when the inner critic is quite strong as an ongoing pattern in a person's life -- in other words, it comes up really quite a lot over time -- with that, because of that, it's very common for a person to feel that their self-expression in life is really repressed, because of the self-dislike, self-hatred, because of the contraction of that, because of the fear associated with being seen with others there, one's self-expression is, again, shrunken and contracted, put in chains, imprisoned. One's creativity, and also perhaps one's -- all this is very common -- one's intimacy, one's capacity and openness for genuine intimacy, authentic intimacy with others. Expression, creativity, and intimacy all feel locked in this prison because of the inner critic -- very normal.
Now, with that, a human being, naturally, would feel frustrated, naturally, has to feel frustrated. We want to express. We want our own natural creativity. And we want intimacy. And when it's not there, of course we feel frustrated. If it goes on for years like that, of course we feel deeply frustrated. Frustration is just a short step to anger and to rage -- actually, rage on one side, or depression, so it can go both ways. This blocking that we feel, our life force is blocked, actually can very easily go into rage or depression. But it's important, if that's there, to check out: "What is there? What is there?" And actually, if there's rage, what would it be to actually feel the rage of that? Feel the heat of the frustration of it. And feel the rage as an energy inside. And feel that rage, and know, "This is rage," and know that. What happens when we do that? We're getting more specific and more clear with actually what's there that makes up this whole constellation.
If I take this even more thoroughly, I see something with this whole dynamic of the inner critic that's absolutely crucial and really important, and pervades a lot of other areas of difficulty in our psychological life. I begin to see, if I really pay attention with mindfulness, that this structure -- it may have its roots in the past, in family, or early childhood, or whatever, like we said before. But actually, I begin to see how, you could say, the mind -- how it is being built and fed in the present moment. In other words, yes, it has roots in the past, for sure, but I can actually catch and see and witness how I'm building it in the present.
I'll explain this. What actually happens is, I glue together the different constituent parts of it, the different felt experiences that make up this whole experience of the inner critic. I glue them together. And then I've got something that I then stagger under the burden of. I mash it all together, and what I've got is -- for most people, it's actually quite a vague, black cloud that I then feel oppressed by, of negativity, and that burdens and oppresses me. When I look more closely, these constituents -- what I actually see, if I look: "What is the experience right now? What's here? What's the experience?" It will have a physical component. Oftentimes, it will have something, somewhere in here between, say, there and there, here, that feels heavy or tight or pressured, something in the body -- may of course be other areas in the body as well. That's really important, because we do something with that. And what we do with it makes it worse. So much rests on that, so much, so much, so much.
Then, there may be also a kind of, so to speak, texture in the mind. The mind feels very assailed and shrunken or brittle or contracted. There may be thoughts. There usually are thoughts with it, but not always. But there usually are thoughts with it. All of this -- do you remember, when you were a kid? I remember we used to have those drawing books, and on every page it would have these dots with numbers. And you would join the dots and make a drawing. Do you remember that? Dot-to-dot? That's what we do with the constituent experiences of this inner critic -- body sensation here, other body sensation, a thought, another thought, the texture of the mind. We join the dots, and then we've got a thing.
Even more than that, you ever seen, like, a one-year-old try and do that? Or a two-year-old? They don't. They just go like this. [laughs] If I'm reacting to the dots and reacting to the picture that's emerging, that very reactivity -- I don't just join the dots and the numbers. I do this. [laughter] In the end, what I've got is a big mess of black. So the reactivity ends up over-solidifying something.
This we can see is going on. So everything I'm talking about is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. It's not enough to hear it from me or someone else or whatever and say, "Ah, yeah, I can see that," or "Oh, that's interesting." It's to be seen for our self, and in the witnessing, in the mindfulness, aha! Can I actually begin to defuse that process, to deconstruct that process? Which sometimes just the mindfulness itself begins to deconstruct it.
So what would happen if I looked at, if I actually just split it up into sub-experiences, constituents, and actually gave each one a little time? Really give each one some bare attention. So let's say, here's the inner critic: yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. Feel into my heart centre or my throat, or wherever it is that feels heavy and contracted. And just stay there, and be with a really simple, open, bare attention to the physical pain there, the physical heaviness. And just stay there, bare attention to this, for some time. And then maybe a bare attention to whatever other aspect, and another aspect, maybe eventually even the thoughts. That's going to stop this kind of gluing together -- I mean, scribbling the dots together. Really, really important. Really powerful.
So there's the place for loving-kindness. There's a place for the kindness and spacious dimension of mindfulness. And there's a place for the kind of -- I don't know what you'd call it -- the precise sort of dissecting quality of mindfulness. All of this has its place. There's also the place for questioning this whole dynamic and this whole character of the inner critic, and bringing in the intelligence of the mind, the actual thinking mind. So we have heart in the practice, we have awareness in the practice, and we also have, so to speak, head, intelligence, thinking. There's a real place for that.
When it's there, when it's going, when it's running and spinning, what am I believing? Am I believing it? So sometimes just dropping that question in: "Am I believing this?" And allowing doubt to enter. We talk about doubt being one of the hindrances. Doubt is actually a very powerful ally. Can I just let a little doubt seep into the picture around this whole thing?
And what am I believing, exactly? What would it have me believe? And what exactly am I believing? So being very clear about this, because it has huge consequences. If I believe there's something bad in me -- this is very common. Different people have different variations of this: I believe that somewhere, perhaps deep inside of me, there's something a little bit rotten, bad, impure, not good, whatever. I've become afraid of myself. I become afraid of what I might do, of my actions.
And in different ways, that -- believing oneself bad, and the fear that comes out of that -- will cause different effects. I've seen it manifest as a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It looks like we're afraid of something out there, of impurity, etc. I was just talking just a few weeks ago with someone beginning to realize, actually, she was afraid of herself, this belief that she may be impure. And it's all projected outside. Someone else with addiction -- and again, this fear that "I'm bad," and there's fear, and it's part of a spiral of what causes, what can cause relapse when there's addictive behaviour. Many, many ways it can come up. It's huge. It's really important to know, what am I believing? Oftentimes that's hidden.
Again, in the spirit of questioning, what is this giving me? What is this inner critic, this character -- what is it giving me? And it's a very open question. Is it giving me a kind of familiarity? Is it giving me a kind of identity? Oftentimes, one begins to look into this. One realizes it is something like that, that somehow we're grasping at a kind of identity, even if it's a really painful identity. Better that than nothing, it feels like. That's the mistaken assumption. And the inner critic gives us this kind of identity that's difficult, that we still cling to. So sometimes a person begins to look and question, and feels like, "Without it, I wouldn't do anything. The inner critic is what gets me out of bed in the morning." That's not very nice. [laughter] And we actually believe that, that without it I just wouldn't do anything. Is that really true? But to expose this.
People are different. There's quite some complexity here. Sometimes a person looks and actually has the feeling that "The inner critic is protecting me. If I beat myself up first, maybe I won't make mistakes in public or with others, and then I won't be so vulnerable. And that will stop me from feeling unloved or rejected." And so, one actually gets the sense that, twisted and warped as it is, it's actually a self-protection mechanism, trying to protect us from hurt. It's actually trying to do us a favour, trying to protect us from suffering, but unfortunately causes us much more. But to really be conscious of this.
Sometimes, still on this questioning thing, for some people it can be helpful -- I don't know if some of you may be familiar with, say, types of psychotherapeutic work, like Gestalt therapy, etc. -- we can actually dialogue with it. And sometimes a person in therapy might do this with different inner characters in chairs in a room. You put your inner critic there, and your inner rebel there, your sort of wise character here. And you inhabit the chairs, and kind of speak from them and find out about them. Well, you can also do that inside in the meditation, and actually have a dialogue with this whole character inside. This superego, inner critic -- it has its power, it gains its power through its vagueness. It's actual lack of clarity is what gives it its power. So partly the function of dialoguing with it is not to let it remain a kind of vague, shadowy force. That's what happens. It's so unpleasant that we feel like there's just a black cloud, vague black cloud that's there, that we're just cowering under. And we feel oppressed and harangued by it. We very rarely actually turn fully to it and give our whole attention to it, and perhaps through dialogue actually helping it to be really specific, really be specific, rather than just a vague force.
By dialoguing with it, I can actually slow it down. I can slow down what it's actually saying. So instead of just this black cloud that I'm not really looking at and just feels, "Stop, stop, stop," instead of that, the odd thought of -- you just feel general criticism. You can actually slow it down, and begin to ask it and find out: "What exactly, exactly, exactly, is being judged? What exactly is being judged here?" Get very, very specific by asking it. And then going even further, asking or imagining -- it's saying, "I'm judging this," let's say, and you get a response. And questioning further. So whatever answer one gets, asking another question. "I'm judging this. You should do this. You should have got this far. You should have achieved this." And then saying, "Oh, okay. So you think I should ... okay. So if I had achieved this, X or Y or whatever it is, would you be satisfied?" And actually asking it: "So you're saying this. And if I get it, would you be satisfied?"
Now, it might say yes. [laughter] If it does, slow down. It's probably not true. Hang out there. It's probably not true. Just, actually, "Really? Really?" I am pretty sure that if we question it in this way and hang out long enough, we'll actually find it's impossible to satisfy it. It's actually completely impossible. It's an irrational and unhelpful and impossible dynamic. It's not that if you get this, it will then pick up its bags, saying, "Okay, I've done my job," and "Great," and "I'll see you -- well, I probably won't see you again, but it's been good." [laughter] It's not going to do that! [laughter] It's just not going to do that. However, let's take just breath meditation. "If only I could have a calm sitting, then it would go away." "Then I would be quiet," the inner critic says. Rubbish! You get this calm, it wants to be this calm. You get this calm, it wants to be this calm. It will never end because it's not a rational voice that's based on anything rational. It's impossible.
This doesn't work for everyone, but if one starts dialoguing with it, you'll actually find out that you are a good deal more intelligent than it is. It's not a very intelligent mechanism or character inside. Once I start dialoguing with it, and keep pushing the questions -- it says something; you just throw a question back. It doesn't have, actually, much substance to it. This is the nub of the whole thing: something, somehow, this whole mechanism has gained much more substance than it actually has. And we've been -- and again, don't blame ourselves for this, but ignorance has been party to that. We've somehow given it more substance, solidity, clout than it actually has. And partly, the dialoguing with it is exposing that, or can expose that.
So just by way of example, remembering this, I think it was about a year ago, and a woman was on retreat at Gaia House. We were talking. And she was struggling a lot with this pattern as well as a lot of other stuff, and good work she was doing, and different kinds of areas. And exploring this inner critic, she says, "I realized I need to be perfect." That was, this was, "I need to be perfect." So already, like, hoo. "I need to be perfect." That's quite a tall order! When she looked at it, she said she was also aware of fear of punishment for not being perfect. And looking into that a bit more in detail, punishment by who? By herself, that she would punish herself? Others? And then she said, "And God. Self, others, and God." And then she said, "And I've never been religious, and I didn't grow up in a family believing in God, and I don't believe in God." And still, when there's fear, when there's this kind of thing, superstition comes in. And she doesn't even believe in that. "If I'm not perfect, I will be punished that way. So I try to be perfect, and then ..." And she finds, every time she tries to be perfect, she fails, of course. And with that comes the suffering. And it's sad to see that, sad to see that dynamic. But also good to see the pattern of it, good to see in more detail exactly what's going on there, exactly what beliefs are operating, although it's painful.
So we were talking, and I think I said at some point, "So, can you show me someone who's perfect? Or some thing that's perfect?" I don't know. Can you? I don't know anyone perfect. Depending on what circles you move in, someone might say, "Oh, Brad Pitt is perfect." [laughter] Or maybe he was fifteen years ago. [laughter] Or Angelina Jolie, you know. If you move in spiritual circles, the Dalai Lama often appears: "I want to be like the Dalai Lama. I should be like the Dalai Lama." But I don't know, is he perfect? Someone else might say, from a different tradition, if you know the Burmese tradition, Mahāsi Sayadaw and all that, they wouldn't consider the Dalai Lama perfect. And the Dalai Lama wouldn't consider them [perfect]. They're actually operating by hugely different criteria of what's perfect. What does 'perfect' mean, exactly?
So actually using the questioning, really to probe, to be almost tough, really to be specific. So very easily, you know, she could've said, "Yeah, I know it's silly. I know, yeah," and leave it that, but that won't liberate anything. It's not got enough force behind the intelligence, and this kind of probing of questioning. So if one's using this particular aspect, this intelligence and this questioning, we need to be really relentless and really tough. Now, the inner critic is relentless and tough, so we can be, too, in response. There's something about using our intelligence and our thinking mind from a very firm, energized place, which is different than the usual relationship we have with thinking, which is very not strong, very pushed and pulled by thinking. Using the intelligence fully, actually, we begin to trust our thinking mind and the power of it.
The way the whole ego works anyway, or the self-sense works anyway -- I'll just throw this out and be a bit more particular about it -- is that it tends to pick out something from the whole field of events and experiences, or the whole field of awareness. It tends to pick out particulars and then cling to them, and from that, form a view, a view of oneself, of the ego. And the inner critic does this even more strongly. We might be at work in the office or whatever it is, and make a mistake, and it's one little event in the whole day. And that gets selected out, and it's almost like the attention just keeps going there, as if nothing else happened in the day. I need to see this operating.
I was talking a while ago, someone, and she was saying she had a friend who was dying and in hospital. And she went to visit her, but she noticed that, in the visits and around all that, that mostly she was thinking about herself. And what was there was fear of getting it wrong, fear of being the wrong way with her friend or saying the wrong thing, doing it wrong. And that made her mostly think about herself in this context where her friend was actually dying.
So it's very important to see a bigger picture here. It's actually very human to have mixed motivations. Do I know that? Do I realize that? It's actually very human to have mixed motivations. And certainly, the motivation "Am I doing it okay? And how will other people see me?" will be there until a very deep level in practice, where it's actually cut. So that's going to be there. But can I see the totality and the humanity of a situation like that? What would happen if I allowed myself to look at my own suffering here? And again, I give it space.
So for her, in this situation, this example, she was losing a friend. That was suffering for her. She also said that, in being with her friend in the hospital, it was as if she was also recognizing her own mortality: "I look at my friend who's dying, and it makes me think of my death, my mortality." There was the suffering, as I said, of not knowing what to say, or the fear of getting it wrong. And there was also, she said, when she really reflected on it, instead of just cramping it, as I'm saying, actually opening it out and seeing what's there, began to see there was also this kind of feeling of the suffering of powerlessness, that she couldn't control her friend's health. It was out of her control. All of that was there. All of it. And in a way, all laying equal claim, equal right to be there. If I can include my suffering, if she could include her suffering and all the different strands, then organically and naturally, the compassion will come to include her friend. If I'm trying to block it all out, it won't. It will be blocked.
And when the compassion comes, it's rarely pristine and perfect. It often has in it mixtures of fear or pity or rage at the person suffering -- all that. All that is part of the humanity of compassion. And we talk about purifying compassion, and that's important. But it's also important to realize that we expect all these, what we call 'near enemies' of compassion. We expect that to be there and to come in, very normal. When I can expect it and allow and open to it, then the whole thing softens, and actually there's organic compassion to the friend as well.
Also, in relation to that example, the self-sense anyway, the ego-sense anyway, particularly the inner critic even more, it has a tendency to overestimate. The self has a tendency to overestimate its significance. Self, not always, but tends to think of itself as the star of the show: "Everything depends on me." And with that brings suffering. So to see this situation, in her case, with her friend, "It doesn't totally depend on me alone. It doesn't. There's much more going on here." So she was reflecting, "I am just a part of her kind of web of relationships. She has other relationships, too, and I'm just a part of that." And definitely, this time now, when she's dying, she's in the hospital, this time now is very important. It's a very precious, poignant time, of course. But also, it's only one part of the whole history of the relationship. It's only one part, whole history of the friendship.
So the other thing, one other thing that the inner critic -- actually the self -- does is, it exaggerates time, either something in the past, or something in the future, or something in the present, and kind of takes that time out of the whole continuum of time, takes it out, and exaggerates its importance. To see that, to see the bigger context of what's going on.
Following on from that, when this inner critic is there, as it's there as a pattern in our life, and the self-judging, and all that -- very, very easy and very normal, with all that, not to see the good that is there, not to see the good and the beauty that is in us. Right away, the whole lens of the inner critic, like a telescope, goes straight to the stuff that we don't like, the stuff that we think is not so good, and actually does not see what is valuable, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is lovely within us. And there's this kind of complete skewing of the attention to what we don't like. And actually to see that that is going on.
Very small example: it was when the run-up to the last US elections -- this was a while ago, when Obama got in -- and I was talking with someone. And he said he kept -- he was trying to work, etc. -- he kept logging on to the internet to read reports of how the campaigns were going, and the responses in America, and he kept saying, "It's terrible. I just keep distracting myself, and I don't have the discipline, and da-da-da-da-da." We were talking about it. Actually, what was also being expressed there was a lot of genuine care about the results of the elections, and how it would affect different groups, etc., in the States and more worldwide. And actually, he didn't voice, he didn't recognize that that was going on. He was just seeing in negative terms, not seeing that there's actually something caring and lovely there in the concern.
Where there's self, where there's a sense of ego, there will be self-measurement. They go together. Where there's self, there's self-measurement. Where there's self-measurement, there's self. They feed each other. The inner critic has gone bonkers with that dynamic. It's just, the whole thing is just like a fire fuelling itself, self-measurement, kind of finding ways to disrespect ourselves. If we're in the business -- perhaps we shouldn't be at all -- but if we're in the business of "Am I worthy of respect? What can I measure in me?", it's important that we respect ourselves for the right things. And mostly, that's not the case. So what might that mean? What's worthy of respect here, if I'm playing the respect-measuring game at all, which is a very dangerous game to play? But if I am, that I care about ethics, that that's there, that I care not to steal, and to respect life. It could easily overlook that. From the Dharma perspective, that's hugely worthy of respect, massively worthy of respect.
In our culture, very often we measure others, and we feel like we should be measured or get respect at purely worldly achievements. Actually, better to respect my intentions to be kind, my intentions to be honest, to respect life, not to take what's not given, etc. That those intentions are there, and that I care for the intentions, even if sometimes I cannot act that way, but respecting ourselves for the intentions that we care about. Actually, that's the best thing to respect ourselves for.
That's really important, because it will go somewhere else. The natural, normal -- not natural: the unnatural but normal, unfortunately, mechanism is for it to go somewhere else, and to measure our self-respect, measure our self through other criteria, which are usually frankly rubbish, complete rubbish. They're culturally absorbed, culturally reinforced, etc. Not respecting something -- it's quite subtle: I care about these intentions, and I care about nourishing these intentions for caring about ethics. That's something hugely worthy of respect, self-respect.
The intention to practise meditation, to develop my inner world, to develop my beautiful qualities inside, to develop my goodness -- all this is massively worthy of respect. It's interesting, as I say it, it's like, I'm not sure if this is really landing, because we're so used to thinking, "Yeah, sure, but, but but but." And the but is much louder. And yet I feel that this one of the most important things, most important. And it doesn't seem like a big deal. And oftentimes the things that don't seem like a big deal are the things that are the most big deal. And the things that do seem like a big deal are really not the things that are a big deal.
So what would it be to actually dwell on this a little bit, to dwell on our goodness, on our own dedication to goodness? And actually let the mind sit there a little bit, sit right in that, basking in it, realizing it, acknowledging it, respecting it over and over, appreciating it over and over. We don't tend to let the mind dwell there. In our culture, we would tend to think that's egoistic or something. And again, as I said, the tendency is to judge [?] more worldly concerns.
If we take this even deeper, am I in touch with, and am I appreciating, am I connected with my deepest direction in life, my deepest sense of alignment, what I care most deeply about? When the inner critic is there, it's very hard to do that. It's very hard anyway, in our culture. Do I know what I really, really, most deeply care about in this life, what I want to align my whole being with, my whole existence with? And am I in touch with that, with what's most important to me? Oftentimes people say, "Oh, I was at this situation or this party, and my friend so-and-so, she can juggle. I mean, you should see her juggling. So-and-so can play the guitar. So-and-so writes poetry. And so-and-so does this. You know, one has got a fantastic business or whatever. And I was sitting there, and I felt like I can't do anything." A person's completely lost contact, completely on the level of what's worldly, worldly renown, worldly appreciation, and lost contact with the depth of what's really precious to them. That very same person, you ask them, "What do you care most about?" And it's qualities like goodness and love, and caring, and wakefulness, and being alive. And the commitment to that somehow got dragged off, and started measuring in terms of the other criteria which, actually, I don't really even care about that deeply. Something about staying close with that -- to me, that's one of the most important, precious things there is.
A while ago, someone was on retreat at Gaia House, and she was in and out of this pattern with the inner critic. And quite marked, actually -- when she was out, she was really out. She was fine. And when she in, she was really in. And she came into an interview, in, one day, in that mode. And she was saying, "I feel so unworthy." And she felt unworthy of her boyfriend, and she felt unworthy of the Dharma, and she felt unworthy, unworthy, pervaded, shot through with the sense of unworthiness: "I don't deserve. I don't deserve." And again, in her pattern with her boyfriend, she was describing a certain dynamic, and felt like the boyfriend was putting her down, and that -- again, the inner critic looks through certain lenses and perceives self-judgment.
And we started talking, and I asked her about her deepest desire. I asked her about, "What is it that you most long for?" And she said something so beautiful. She said, "I want to live, I want to be in service to love." Poetic and beautiful, beautiful, and was really coming from a deep, deep place in her. And we stayed with that, and I didn't let her skim off it, and just stayed with that. And what a transformation, right there, in the very moment -- moments -- in the dialogue. I was just encouraging her to sort of really align with that, and feel the depth of that in her being, in her heart, how much she longed for that, how deeply important that was to her, and align with it. And what happened was, in that place, as it sort of took root, hoo! The other stuff began dissolving -- the whole comparing mind and the unworthiness just started falling apart at the edges around this, around the strength of this. Joy came, openness came, strength came -- exactly the opposite of what she was feeling just minutes before, a sense of real strength in the being.
Now, I know enough that a one-off, it's not going to be the end of the story, but something very, very significant. And usually we do not take the time to sit in that place, so deep: "What do I care about? I care about kindness. I care about love. I care about living fully. I care about wakefulness." However you want to put it. Not my words. Your words. Something about coming back to that, sitting in it, rooting in it -- it's a devotional movement. Everything else, the other rubbish, basically, starts falling away at the side of that. All the other measurements and all that -- it's not in the same league of power and depth and strength. So one needs to repeat that and sit in it.
The more I do these practices, and the more I teach, I kind of see Insight Meditation, this tradition that all this comes from, as learning to see differently. It's actually learning to see, learning to view experience in ways that bring freedom, that kind of drain the suffering out of it. That's basically what we're practising: this way or that way or this way, we're learning to see things so there's less suffering. Let's say I'm in the office. I make a mistake. Very easy for me to judge the self with that. One way of looking is actually to open it out and see, there are lots of conditions going on, lots of conditions. Actually, take this Dharma talk right now. I was very tired. Some of you seem tired. Some of you are very attentive, etc., some of you very energized. All of it together makes the Dharma talk.
Now, it could be very tempting for either me or you to think, "Well, Rob's giving the Dharma talk. It's either good or not, and therefore Rob is either good or not good." I don't actually think that way. Everyone in here, the whole thing, the traffic outside, the sunshine or non-sunshine, what we had for lunch, how you slept last night, what's going on in your life -- all of that makes the Dharma talk. Do you get a sense? [affirmative noises] You know, I could, if there was not wisdom there, I could very easily say, "That wasn't so good today. I'm not such a good teacher. I, I, I, I'm useless. I shouldn't be doing ... I, I, I, I, I," rather than "There's a whole web of conditions coming, and ... pllth comes the result." It's opening something out. It's learning to look differently. And again, not enough for me to just throw that out. To see, practise seeing that way over and over -- every time the inner critic judges something, how can I look at it differently? I'll go backwards in time, review that situation, look at it in terms of this web of conditions that gives rise to something. So that's one thing. I'm learning to look, not in terms of the self, but in terms of a wider web of conditions -- massively significant to practise, to practise, to practise.
But also, I can begin, following on from that, I can begin to learn to see and to describe not in the language of self, not in the language of 'I,' 'me,' 'good,' 'not good,' etc. So I was working a while ago with someone who had a lot of this inner critic judging, and one time he reported that it was around eating chips. [laughter] And he quite liked chips. And so something had happened. There had been a party or something. And he felt like he had overindulged. And so we were talking. What would it be to look at that -- okay, there was that behaviour, and actually look at it not in terms of the self? So you say, "I did this, and I messed up, and I, I, I," rather than "There was." There was what? There were these factors, inner and outer. So there was hunger. There was tiredness also, in that case. There was the pleasant taste of one chip, and then ... [laughter] There was not strong mindfulness because of the tiredness, and because also the situation -- it was a party and whatever. And there was desire, and then there was the moment-to-moment intention of the hand reaching and putting ... [laughter] All of that comes together, and all of that together makes the action. And there we go, and then a little bite: oh, goodness. I could, he could conclude, "I messed up, I, I, I was greedy, I, I, I," rather than, "There was this, this, this, this, this, and out of that mixture came the action." Where is the self in that? Where is the self to be judged?
Now, if I think about this, "Well, it was in the intention, because that was, the self kept doing this. There's the self -- in the intention." But actually, if I look more closely, it's not even that, because the intention, first of all, is moment to moment. It comes and goes, and then it's gone. Where is the self? It's also dependent on the whole constellation of the whole experience, inner and outer. If I look really carefully, all I see is -- I don't know what to call them -- factors of mind, you could say, if we're being very clinical. Factors of mind -- there's no self there. And I'm unbinding this self-view. On the self-view, the inner critic is a reinforcement, basically, of the self-view. And the whole thing can just, I look at it differently, not in terms of self. Again, I kind of dissect it. I need to practise this. And eventually, it becomes actually more natural to look at things not in terms of self. And just see, it's just these things. It doesn't mean I don't take responsibility. It's just these factors going on. There's no self-blame. There's no self-judgment. Can make choices. There's not that contracting and solidifying of the self and the inner critic.
Okay, last thing I want to throw out. I know it's a lot of info and possibilities here, but with something as unfortunately powerful and unfortunately sort of long-lived as the inner critic, it's rare that one particular practice is going to completely destroy it. It's more likely that a few different things are going to do the trick. So last possibility is around thoughts. And I said earlier, one way of seeing what inner critic is is just a habitual stream of certain kinds of thoughts, with the belief in them and the associated emotions.
There's another practice. So today, we talked about being with the breath. There's another practice. What if I were to just sit or stand, whatever, be aware of the body sensations, open to the whole of the body sensations, the whole life of this bubbling away and dance of body sensations? And then like we did in the two-minute standing meditation, open even further, really wide, to listening. And just stay with that -- body and sounds -- right now. Sounds come and go, arise and pass, and it's all there in a big spaciousness, and I keep letting it be spacious, and letting the sounds arise and pass, and letting them come and go. Seeing: they come and go by themselves. Hanging out, body sensations come and go by themselves. Everything is coming and going in this space. [sound of bus driving by] Bus. Coming, dr-dr-dr-dr. Goes. Comes again. Voice, same. Getting used to that, getting used to that, hanging out there. Eventually, what will happen is it will open even further, so to speak, and thoughts will be included. You got body sensations coming and going, sounds coming and going, and thoughts coming and going. And in just the same way that a sound can arise and disappear, and not kind of disturb that sort of space, thoughts also. Get a sense of just letting them arise and disappear. And it's okay. It's just like a bird tweeting or a bus going by.
It's a practice. So we're practising hanging out in a certain, again, way of looking at thoughts. And the usual way of looking at thoughts is, "Oh, that thought means I'm terrible," or "That thought is telling me I'm terrible," and I believe it. So we believe thoughts. We hang on to them. We get entangled with them. And actually practising non-entanglement with thought and eventually non-belief in thought. A thought is just a thought. It's just like the bird tweeting. It's just like the bus going by. It's just coming and going, and letting it be, letting it be part of that space. When that practice is developed and goes deep, it's hugely powerful -- massive, massive. Thought is just a thought, and I don't have to believe it. So a thought of "I am useless" -- it's just a bird tweeting, with a little bit of an ugly sound. Very possible to develop. I don't know if it sounds like it would be difficult, but actually it's very, very possible, and I don't even think we need to be on retreat to do that. It's something that I could channel my daily practice in that direction.
So just to finish, it's actually good, I think, to be not satisfied with where one is. I'm not satisfied with where I am. I'm not satisfied with my development and my practice. And I probably won't be until I'm a Buddha. And I can develop more. We can develop more. I can let go more. I can understand more. There's lots more to understand. There's a kind of maturity in that, a mature dissatisfaction. The thing is, it's nothing to do with self-value or self-worth or self-judgment. It's just that I want more, and we can want more, we can be dissatisfied without measuring and valuing the self. We kind of separate it out a little bit.
I said this right at the beginning, but I'll say it again. I know it's a lot that I put out, but the possibility is really, really here. And I know that from the inside of that. I know, because everything I've talked about, I know from the inside. And I also know that, with practice, it's possible to completely dissolve this structure, completely and utterly dissolve it, to be completely free of it. That movement is possible. It can be that, in the process of dissolving it, that the sort of -- I remember going through a phase where the very self-critical mind, as I said, habitual momentum of thoughts, "You're an idiot. You're stupid." And someday you go through a period, as you're getting free of it, the thoughts come up, but they have no power, no substance. It's just like, "You're an idiot," but it has no weight to it at all. And then eventually, even the thoughts don't come up. It's completely drained of its power and its capacity to form. And sometimes, with practice, totally possible: the insight can go so deep, and something is cut. And this whole structure, the inner critic -- it cannot form. It cannot. It has nothing to form a basis on. It's absolutely impossible for it to come up. It's just a matter of practice. That possibility really, really is there for us.
