Transcription
So, sometimes a person, in the inner watching of all this practice, or just anyway in one's life, in one's awareness, notices -- sometimes, sometimes -- a person may notice that receiving love feels more difficult than giving love. And that's actually quite common, and a few of you have brought it up in the groups. And I wonder if it's a cultural phenomenon. It wouldn't surprise me. But it often feels more difficult to receive. So I just want to say a few words about that.
First of all, if that is the case, you're very much not alone. And just to notice that, and to be, again, interested in it. And then, I wonder, is it possible today, even, to begin gently recognizing and tuning into the different ways that we are actually receiving, as a beginning? So, for instance, right here on the retreat we're receiving food and shelter, and the food is very lovingly prepared. That's a receiving. You step out into the grounds, and then automatically, organically, by virtue of being alive, we're receiving from nature. We're in that state all the time. And can there be an openness to that? And we're receiving air, receiving light, receiving water -- all of this from nature. We are in a completely dynamic openness of flux with the whole ecosystem. And sometimes, and understandable, we lose sight of that. We get too tightly bound and wrapped up in our self or our stories or our little trip. So today, if you want, when you're outside doing the walking meditation, just stop, and you can just let yourself be. And even, maybe, let the mettā phrases go, let all that go, and just open to the sense of being, the sense of nature, the sense of what we take in. The sense of beauty, the sense of osmosis and permeability with the ecosystem -- there's so much beauty. In a place like this, we're so lucky. We're so lucky. There's something about actually just practising opening and receiving from nature, in nature that way.
And then, of course, we have the support of others. And certainly, I said right at the beginning, we have the support of others in this hall, coming in and practising together and really committing together. And again, it's the sort of thing that we can ... not tune into, we can kind of just take for granted and lose consciousness of. And in our life, we may feel like, "Well, I don't have anyone that supports me." If I reflect a little bit, actually, I have plenty of support in my life, plenty. It's a matter of tuning into it a little bit. And then there's the mettā of the others in the hall. So there's all that. But also, a little more subtly perhaps, when I give mettā to myself, I'm in a funny sort of position of giving and receiving at the same time. Have you been aware of this at times? When you give mettā to yourself, I'm giving it to myself, but I'm also receiving it. So I'm the giver and the receiver. Now, in that, I can become aware of that kind of duality, or whatever we might call it, and decide to sometimes lean into the feeling of giving, and sometimes lean into the sense of receiving. And receiving -- what is it to receive the love? And actually begin to get familiar with the sense of opening to receiving. And that's part of the playfulness that's possible in practice.
Sometimes, and again, you know that exercise that we've been doing at 2:30, sometimes what's really difficult for people in that, in the contact, is the receiving, sometimes. So another possibility is perhaps reflecting or bringing to mind someone -- perhaps while you're sitting, or another quiet time, or while you're walking -- someone who you know cares for you. And you know that their care is pretty constant. That could be a friend or a loved one. It could be a teacher. And thinking of them, and bringing their care into your consciousness, and in a way, seeing, because of the very constancy, it's almost like I can tune into it, I can leave it, I can tune into it, I can turn away from it. And it's minus the sort of charge and, yeah, the pregnant charge of the immediate interaction, the eye-to-eye contact, etc. So in a way, it's a kind of safer thing. "Well, that person" -- I don't even maybe know where they are right now, or they're there somewhere in the distance, or whatever it is, and just tuning into that constancy that I receive, in my own space, in my own time from a source that I trust is more constant.
[5:50] When I have enough nourishment inside -- and I keep going back to this theme of nourishing ourselves, nourishing ourselves; brought it up in the opening talk -- when I am nourished enough inside, or to the degree that I feel nourished enough inside, I can receive. To the degree that I feel nourished, I will be open to receiving. When the mettā to myself, the self-love -- as that grows, and I feel, again, that I have enough self-love, to that degree I will be open to receiving. Because when I have enough self-love, again, if we think about that exercise that we've been doing at 2:30, and yesterday it became clear, you know -- what's getting in the way here? Why does this feel so difficult sometimes, for some, for many, in fact most, probably? It's the self-consciousness. Something comes in at the moment of contact, and it's self-consciousness, and somehow not maybe feeling good enough or feeling exposed in all our perhaps imperfection, all of that. Not perhaps even that verbal or conscious.
The self-consciousness blocks the ability to receive, blocks the openness to receive. And when I have enough self-love, that self-consciousness can just -- it almost, it gets inundated with the self-love. And then it just quietens. When I, or the more I see through the whole illusion of a separate self, again, the less the self-consciousness, naturally. And we'll talk more about that as the retreat goes on. So we have this sense of separate beings walking around, and that gets very solidified and tightly bound. And as that begins to be exposed, dissolved, the whole sense of self-consciousness begins to dissolve, and we're open to receiving. And eventually, actually, the whole sense of receiving begins to dissolve. It begins to, at one level, not really mean much.
So this is -- not for everyone, but for many, it's a challenging aspect of the practice. But hopefully, you can pick up a few threads, if it feels like you want to play with that a little bit, and explore. And is it possible to encourage that sense of receiving a little bit? And just play with that and what might be possible.
Today we're going to add two new categories: (1) the so-called neutral person, and (2) the so-called difficult person. Remember, with these categories, we're moving, just very simply, from what's easy to more what's difficult. We're going, we're stretching into that boundlessness that I was talking about, the boundlessness and the unconditionality.
I'll just throw something out because a couple of people have said it, and it may be helpful. Sometimes when we're doing the mettā towards, say, the easiest person or the friend, sometimes, at times, for some people, what can actually come up is sexual feelings, or sexual thoughts in relationship to this person. That's actually very normal. It's a very normal part of the practice, you know. We're human beings, and the heart opens, and in a way, other dimensions of the being open too. So, you know, not to panic if that happens. It's fine, and it's normal.
The thing about it is oftentimes when we have sexual feelings, what -- again, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or what, but we tend to go up to the mind and the thinking and get caught on the level of fantasy and imagery. And especially if it's mettā and we think, "Oh I shouldn't be having this," and trying to push it down, or just get lost in the fantasy. And we've been talking a lot about body energies. And actually, it's possible that, like I said, the mettā and the sexual feeling might be quite close in terms of body energies. So what would it be to just open? Just open the body and be more in the body with the expression of what's just basically, you know, lovely life energy moving. And not get too trapped in the thinking or in trying to repress anything. So letting it open and letting it fill the body. And that very opening to it allows it to move and fill, and you can actually enjoy it in a certain way, and it can shade -- you can shade it into mettā. It becomes something -- Chris used this phrase, and I used it as well: interpreting an energy in a different way. It's malleable.
[11:07] Okay, and then we have these categories. I think I'll just talk about the neutral now, and what we'll do is instead of that exercise today, we'll add the difficult person as a guided meditation at 2:30. So 'neutral,' what does that mean? Probably, very probably, most of the six billion plus people on the planet are going to be neutral to us, that we don't really have much feeling for them one way or another. 'Neutral' really means that: there's not really much like or dislike for or against, reactivity going on. So we want to pick a person who falls into this category. It might be someone on the retreat. Now, it's interesting -- in a group of people, there are some people, you walk into a room, or you get used to a group of people, and there are some people we just perhaps feel drawn to or have an affinity with or are attracted to. And others we have the opposite, for whatever reasons, conditioning, etc. We have some irritation with or judgment of or dislike. And then there are some people that we probably barely notice. We probably, it's like we screen out certain people, and others we take in. So maybe your neutral person could be someone on this retreat that you just haven't really paid much attention to for whatever reason. Or it could be someone in your life. Maybe someone works at the supermarket or something like that. Someone you have contact with but you've never really given that much attention to, and that doesn't really kind of rub you one way or another.
In practice, this is quite interesting, in a way. Because we don't have particularly this feeling or that feeling for them, it's almost like the self finds it hard to get engaged with them. It's like, they're not pressing the buttons in the self, which usually the self feels it needs to get interested in something -- either because I want something from this person, or I like them, or I don't. And so with that, interestingly, when the self isn't engaged, we often get bored. So one can be doing the neutral person and ... [mimes falling asleep] "Oh!" Like that. Or spacing out a little bit. So watching out for that. Might take a little bit more energy to inject into the practice. And it might be that after a while, and this is very common, if we were on a long retreat, you stay with a neutral person, and after a while, they feel so dear to you, and so adorable ... [laughter] that they're no longer neutral at all. And to practise the neutral category you need to pick someone else. So that can happen. I hope it happens today. But it often will happen if this was a longer retreat.
Reflection can really help too. So we've touched on this before, but -- "I don't know anything about this person!" Okay, here I am, for the first time noticing, "Oh, goodness, this person's here. I didn't even see them before on the retreat," if it's someone on the retreat. And what do I know about them? Very little. I might try and guess stuff from the way they dress or whatever, which is not a good idea on retreat, which is not a particular fashion show. [laughs] But what I do know is that there's this commonality there. There's a real commonality of they want well-being; all beings want well-being, wanting happiness, wanting peace and physical ease and all of that. I know that. I don't have to know anything about them in any detail more to know that. So tuning into that commonality, tuning in: they want happiness.
Another one that you can try playing with, if you want, is tuning into mortality. So again, I don't know anything about this person, but I know that they're going to die, just like me. And it's a sense of including, kind of in the background of the mettā, a sense of our common mortality, the fact of our brevity of existence on this earth -- and with that, of course, our physical vulnerability. I don't know what illness I will get or this person will get. I don't know how long my lifespan will be. My body is very vulnerable to all kinds of things: accidents and injury, all kinds of things. There's a vulnerability, too, in terms of relationships and emotions. We are vulnerable beings. We are sensitive, open beings. So this person -- again, I don't know, but I know that they are vulnerable in their relationships to being hurt, to being lonely, to being rejected, probably -- unless they're quite evolved spiritually -- vulnerable in their emotions likewise.
I have to be a little careful with this. Chris tonight is going to talk about compassion. If I lean those reflections of vulnerability and mortality too much, I just have to watch what comes up. So it's actually possible that I can be aware of death, and what comes up is happiness. It's actually quite common and quite possible. Or I can be reflecting on death and vulnerability, and what comes up is compassion, because the sense of vulnerability and suffering is there. Compassion is, in a way, part of mettā but also slightly different. And I would say we want to, on this retreat, let it go there sometimes, but not too much, because we're wanting it to be more a mettā stream, which is a bit more buoyant and bright than ... It's not so much over-emphasizing the focus on suffering. So it's fine for that to come up, but just watching, if you are using that mortality and vulnerability thing, watching not to overdo it, that the thing actually morphs into a compassion practice.
But the contemplation of mortality and bringing that in can be extremely powerful generally in practice, and particularly for mettā and for compassion. And we've had that skeleton there for about a year now, and regularly people tell me, you know, at first it's a bit, "Wow, there's a skeleton." But spending a little time, actually how much compassion it brings up naturally. Just looking at death, looking at death and including death, opening the heart to death, brings that up.
Okay, I'm going to stop there, and we'll do a guided meditation with the difficult person at 2:30 instead of the exercise.
[19:03, guided meditation begins]
Okay, so taking a few minutes, a few moments to really establish the posture, taking a little time with it, even if it feels like it's very familiar now on the retreat. Just taking the time to set the posture. Finding, just as much as possible, that sense of openness and softness in the posture, together with a sense of uprightness, wakefulness. So even the posture is embodying a sense of the beauty, the dignity, of the practice. And feeling into that. Feeling into that quality in the posture just as much as it's accessible right now. And again, opening that awareness, stretching that awareness over the space of the body. And really filling that space with awareness, permeating it with awareness, and sensitive. Sensitive to the tone, the texture, the vibration. Lightly, delicately, without pressure.
And beginning to offer the loving-kindness and the intentions of care, of well-wishing wherever it feels easiest right now, to whomever it feels easiest: to yourself, to the easiest person, to the friend. Being playful in the way you work, finding what works for you. And nourishing that, nurturing the stream of intention.
Softening into the mettā, softening into the intention of kindness. Softening the body into that stream of tenderness. Just allowing. Sometimes just allowing the kindness to flow there quietly. Just wrapping yourself or whomever you are offering the mettā to in kindness. Wrapping in warmth, in care. Touching with tenderness, with brightness, with light, with healing. Just over and over, wishing well. Simply wishing well.
[32:14] And when you feel ready, inviting into the heart space, inviting into the awareness, the image or the sense of the so-called neutral person, someone for whom there's not particularly a strong feeling one way or another. Maybe someone here on the retreat, or at Gaia House, or someone at the edges of your life somehow. Just seeing if you can get, as much as possible, a vivid sense of them, just somehow, however that is. Staying sensitive to the whole body, your body. And not knowing much about this person's life, perhaps, but reflecting on the common, natural human desire for happiness, for peace, for physical well-being. This person must have their joys and their delights and their struggles and their difficulties; all of that. Their whole complex human life. Just like us, just like us.
Feeling the bond of that commonality. We share, we have in common so much more than we have in difference, so much more. Beginning to offer them the same well-wishing, allowing the same care and love and warmth to pour out over them, to hold them. This stranger; this beautiful, wonderful, complex human being. Wishing them well, their life, their being, their body.
Is it possible to get a sense of the preciousness of their life, the miracle, the wonder of their existence? Their very being, a miracle. Wishing them happiness. And perhaps seeing them happy, seeing them smiling, content, fulfilled. Wishing that for them.
And when you feel ready, just returning again to the simple, open sensitivity to the whole of your own body. Right here and now.
[44:00, guided meditation ends]
