Ending the Inner Critic (2)

So let's continue this exploration. Remember from this morning, I wanted to go through this list, if you like, of approaches, some of the approaches that could be very, very powerful for us, very, very helpful in combating and overthrowing, dissolving this inner critic. So we touched on (1) the first one, the practice of loving-kindness. Some in the list, I kind of just want to mention in passing a little bit, so I didn't really go too much into detail with the loving-kindness. And some I want to go into a little bit more detail. But the loving-kindness, the mettā practice, is the first one.

(2) What about mindfulness? This is the second one, mindfulness. But, if you like, I want to draw out two of the qualities present within mindfulness, and kind of separate them for the sake of our purposes today. (2.1) So the first one kind of comes from the mettā, in the sense -- what does it mean for the mindfulness, for our very attentiveness to have kindness in it? In other words, that is, you could say, a natural quality of mindfulness, but what happens if we emphasize that a bit more? Emphasize the quality of kindness within awareness, within attentiveness. So I think Ajahn Sumedho, a very well-known monk, monastic teacher, he actually defines mindfulness as affectionate curiosity. This is very good, because that captures some of the qualities. Affectionate curiosity. We could say befriending.

So what would it be to bring attention to the inner critic and this whole constellation of the inner critic, this whole inner working of this self-judge, and bring the mindfulness to bear on that but with a quality of befriending this personality inside, this character, the inner critic? What would that be? What would it look like? What would it mean? Sometimes, if you know from other meditation instructions, we talk about, for instance, you're sitting in meditation or walking, and there's body pain -- pain in the knees, pain in the back, whatever -- and we say, is it possible to get to know it, to bring the mindfulness to it, in a way that's a befriending energy?

So what this translates as with the inner critic is, can I remember to let it be there? Can we let it be there? Which will be the exact opposite of the kind of knee-jerk reaction -- it's so unpleasant, it's so tormenting, that we don't want to let it be there. Even if we're not thinking about it, very understandably we want to get rid of it. So what would it be to just see? Is it possible to let this be there, let it do its thing, let it spin, let it say what it needs to say or wants to say? What would that be to let it be there?

(2.2) What would it be, if we use other language, to give it space? When it's up, to give it plenty of space, and not to kind of go along with the initial, understandable, knee-jerk impulse of trying to get rid of it. Of course we're going to want to get rid of it -- it's horrible, it's a nightmare. It's an absolute nightmare, this thing. What would it be to see, I want to get rid of it, I feel that force in me to want to get rid of it, but I'm just going to hold back and see if I can open to it, give it space, and let it be there? Not try and get rid of it. If I go through with that reaction that wants to get rid of it, that reaction, in Dharma language we say it's basically a movement of aversion. The reactive movement to get rid of something is what we call aversion. Now, if I think about what the inner critic actually is, what is it made of, what's the stuff that it's made of, it basically is aversion, isn't it? It's a force of aversion -- in this case, aversion to ourself, or to what I'm thinking or feeling, or how I am, or my body, or my whatever. It's a movement of aversion itself. Do you see that?

So here I am with something, there's aversion, and I'm going to try and get rid of it with aversion. So I have aversion and I pour on aversion. What am I going to get? More aversion. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire. That will be the understandable reaction, the impulse, but it's probably not always going to be helpful.

And it's interesting. If the inner critic is around, and here it is saying these things, screaming at me, whatever it is, if I give it only a little space, if I only allow it a little space, very easily it has within it the energy and the momentum to kind of grow and take up all the space, all that little space that I give it. However, if I can give it lots of space, really find a way of being spacious around this upsurge, this inner movement, really give it a lot of space, I'll find something very interesting, which is that the inner critic cannot take up all the space. It can't take up all that space. It doesn't have what it takes inside of it to take up all that space. It cannot. There will be space around it. And then I'm in a very different position in relationship to it. Because in that space around it, it's actually possible that other qualities of heart, other qualities of mind, can come into that space. It's not just completely jam-packed with the inner critic and the voices of criticism. There's space around for other qualities.

For example, you've done something, or forgot to do something, or whatever it is, and it didn't go well. Here it comes, there it is again, on cue, the voice of the inner critic. Maybe it's screaming at me, maybe it's shouting, badgering me. Maybe it's hissing. Maybe it's whispering insidiously. However/whatever its manifestation. "Failed again. You can't do it. You'll never do it. You'll always be a failure. You're a loser," etc. When those voices are there, there will be in the body -- what could we say? -- the reverberations of hurt. Those voices land in the psyche. They're not just floating around without landing on anything. They land, so to speak. They go to the body, and we'll start to feel the ouch, the pain of that. Each criticism, each voice, each opinion, each conclusion about ourself, there will be a pain felt, usually in the body.

Sometimes it's really strong, and sometimes it's very, very subtle, the pain. But it's important to connect to that and to feel it, to actually feel the bodily -- what's actually emotional pain felt in the body. It might be subtle. And then, kind of step two, could there be, can there be, a kind of tenderness, a kind of compassion or holding, a caring for, around that hurt? So here in the body, maybe in the heart centre, maybe in the belly, there is this pain, this contraction. Can there be, around that, a kind of care, a kind of warmth that comes in to hold around it? Sometimes we can bring that forth or allow that to flow around what's going on. And sometimes it actually helps not to demand that to be there, but actually just posing very lightly, to drop a question in, like a little bit of fine pebbles into the water. The question is, "Can there be that compassion? Can there be some warmth around this pain?" So the first step is feeling the pain, and the second step is just to lightly drop the question in: can there be a holding of this? Can there be some care around this? I don't know the technical term for that, but I call it poached egg mindfulness. [laughter] It means the yolk is the pain -- you know a poached egg, it's like a big white around ... The yolk is the pain. That's the hurt. That's the reverberations of the pain of this voice. And the white is some warmth that can actually come around it because of the space.

[9:44] So the mindfulness then -- it is mindfulness, we're being present with what is and feeling what is, but we are trying to allow and emphasize the quality of love and compassion in the mindfulness. It's different from formal loving-kindness practice; it's a kind of mixed practice, if you like.

(3) Now, to the degree that we can do that, or as we begin to do that -- that's a better way of saying it -- as we begin to let it be there, to give it more space, to see if there can be just a little bit, just a little bit of warmth, a little bit of holding this pain, instead of just disconnecting, actually holding the pain, then we can begin using the mindfulness more investigatively. This, I think, is number three. Yeah, number three. So number two is giving it space and bringing kindness into the awareness. Number three is actually using the mindfulness to investigate.

And we can begin to ask, what actually is there? What actually is present when this inner critic dynamic is up and running? What's there? It seems obvious: I know what's there. But actually when there's a little bit of space, I can begin to, in a way, look with more clarity, look with more openness, look without the veils, look with more intimacy. What's there?

Now, when I start looking, I will begin to see there's all kinds of stuff going on. And it's actually different for different people. That's partly what makes this inner critic a little bit complicated. It doesn't come in one manifestation. It's quite a complex animal. So as I described some of the manifestations of having the inner critic, you know, some people have some, some people have other, but lots of possible things that are present as part of the structure.

For example, oftentimes when the inner critic is there, some people, especially when it's been there for years and years and decades, it's been doing its thing, we've been under its thumb, some people will look inside and they'll begin to acknowledge something a little bit more clearly. Because when we are under the thumb of this inner critic, it ends up strangling and repressing certain of our more natural kind of outpourings, more natural expressions as human beings. Some of the most beautiful aspects of our being get strangled, suppressed, squashed. Two of these that oftentimes get squashed, we might find, one is our self-expression, our capacity for self-expression, our freedom of self-expression and creativity. Not everyone, but oftentimes that goes with the inner critic. Because there isn't the self-respect, the self-love, there isn't the honouring of who we are and what we have to say and what we have to express. There's too much fear in relationship to one's self and in relationship with other beings. So the self-expression gets squashed. The creativity gets repressed. There's one.

And the other one is our capacity for genuine, deep intimacy with other human beings, when I love a human being. That can also -- again, because of the fear, because of the lack of a sort of inner climate or a landscape of self-love -- that also gets strangled. Now, it's hard to think of two more deep-seated longings of the being or deep-seated needs, actually, of a human being than to express oneself freely, creatively, express who I am in this life and how I feel existence, and my desire to be close, to be seen and to see, and to love and be loved. It's hard to think of two more precious movements from within the being. When these get strangled and inhibited, very understandably a person feels an enormous amount of frustration. When this has been going on for years or decades, it can be profoundly frustrating. It's a very small step from frustration to anger to rage. Frustration is actually quite close with anger and rage. So sometimes -- we're saying, "What's there? What's there?" in the investigation -- sometimes a person looks inside, and there's an enormous amount of anger, rage. Sometimes what happens, when we feel inhibited in this way, instead of rage going outwards, it's rage going inwards, which in some mechanism actually goes into a kind of depression. For some people the manifestation of rage towards oneself is actually a kind of depression. So it could go to rage or it could go to depression.

But what would happen if, in looking and uncovering this, I actually begin to pinpoint, "Ah, there's rage there. It's rage"? And be very clear. Instead of just this amorphous onslaught of the inner critic, it's actually, "Aha, rage." And I begin to feel rage as rage, feel the energy of it, feel that quality in the body. Then, in a way, I'm being much more specific about the different components that make up the inner critic. What happens? What then happens? Something can start freeing up, getting more clear, and actually start disempowering the inner critic a little bit. If I can do this, and I can bring that space and that clarity of investigation through the mindfulness, I'll actually see something really, really interesting, which is: although the inner critic may have its roots in childhood, early childhood, maybe even its roots historically before I could even speak or understand language, maybe, it's still the case, I will find with careful attention, that I am building it and constructing it every time it manifests. I'm building it and constructing it in the present. Its roots may be historical, but every time, I'm building and constructing it in the present.

How? It's actually that I kind of glue together all its component parts. It's made of lots of different things, this inner critic, lots of constituent parts. And somehow the mind unwittingly glues them together. And then what I end up with is a kind of vague, black cloud that's burdening me and oppressing me and haranguing me and harassing me. It's all these sub-parts glued together. But what would happen if I began, through the clarity of mindfulness, to actually tease out the sub-parts: "Ah, yes, there's rage. And what's that physical sensation? And what's the hurt? And where do I feel the hurt"? Maybe I feel a heaviness or a tightness in the chest. That's very specific. It's a sub-part of this whole glued-together constellation of the inner critic. What is the texture, so to speak, in the mind when the inner critic is operating? What kinds of thoughts, exactly, are there? Exactly. What's the tone of voice, if it's a verbal inner critic? What's the tone of voice? You get quite specific with all of this. Perhaps there are other sensations in other parts of the body that go along with it, not just in the heart area.

[18:01] Did you ever have those drawing books when you were younger? They were dot-to-dot. You would get these numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and you would join the dots, and that would make a picture of something. Yeah? So that's what consciousness actually does all day long. We join the dots of different factors within our experience to create, in this case, a monster. We join the dots, we glue it together, without realizing that we're doing it. If I can begin teasing them apart, through the space that comes, little bit of space, little bit of allowing, and then investigating with the mindfulness, I begin to see, "Ah, there are individual dots here that I've joined together." There's no blame in that; it's how consciousness works whether there's an inner critic or not. It's a factor of the way consciousness works. There's no blame. But it's something we want to expose and then learn to look at differently. Learn to choose, perhaps, one of these, and focus in.

What would it be to give, for example, here is that pain in my heart, what would it be to just bring a really simple, intimate, bare attention to that pain? Or just listen to the tone of the voice and just stay with that. Choose one factor and really stay with that. And then perhaps another after a while. What happens then is we're not joining the dots. We're actually separating them. And the thing cannot take that quantum leap into extra power that comes from joining the dots. Do you understand? Yeah? It just comes with a little bit of space and the sustaining of the mindfulness and the kind of precision, really, of the mindfulness. We're being more precise in teasing out certain qualities from the experience.

Okay. So that was number three. Remember, with all this, I'm talking about practice, practice, practice. With practice, these things really do begin to manifest freedom, to open up the sort of calcified structures and bring some fluidity, bring some space.

(4) Sometimes even before the mindfulness is that strong -- this is the fourth one: the capacity we have to question it [the inner critic]. In some cases, it's actually helpful to view it as a sub-personality. It's like a different character inside. Or for some, it feels like who I am. But actually to begin questioning the inner critic. Particularly in the first and the second of this list of five, we talked about loving-kindness and bringing kindness into the awareness; you could say they are movements of the heart or the heart opening, the heart expanding. Of course that's so important and so essential to our practice. If we can soften here, everything begins to change. When the heart softens, the heart opens, everything begins to soften and open from that place, the eyes and everything.

But as much as the heart is important, we could say the head is important as well. That's our capacity to question, our capacity to probe, our capacity to use our thinking and our intelligence, in fact. There's heart and there's head, and they're both important. So what kind of questions might be liberating? What kind of questions might shake up and begin undermining some of the power that goes with the inner critic?

First one, one might ask: am I believing it? Am I believing it? And just to drop that in. Am I believing it? Can I allow doubt to enter? So we talk about doubt as a hindrance, one of the five hindrances. Actually, doubt has a positive side, a beautiful side -- our capacity to be sceptical and doubt what's going through the mind, what we're believing at any time. Can I allow doubt to enter? Am I believing in it? Then I might get more specific in this line of questioning. I might ask, what am I believing? Be really clear. What am I ending up believing when this dynamic of the inner critic is going on? Exactly what am I believing? It might turn out to be all kinds of things.

Sometimes it's just a conclusion about myself that I may make based on a lot of different stuff that happened in the environment; I'll come back to that. Sometimes it's almost more deep-seated. It's like I'm believing that deep down I'm bad. There's something wrong with me. And people tell me this, and actually I know this from the past. People say, "It's just a matter of time until people find me out, and they'll discover what I'm like, and they'll realize that I'm bad, deep down." That kind of fear wreaks havoc in one's existence. It's such a deep, existential wrong belief, basically, about myself. But when that's there, it has so much power wrapped up in it, so much pain wrapped up in it, so much pain. If I believe I'm bad, I cannot live in the world free of fear. When that belief is there that I'm bad, when that's hidden, that's lurking down there, or that there's something bad in me, I will be afraid of myself. I will be afraid of what comes out of me in life. I will be afraid in relationship. All of this. Its power is enormous in the way it leaks out.

Similarly, you know, I've seen that particular belief, that I'm bad, has its place in addiction, in the repetitive cycles of addiction, because to believe one is bad is a kind of shame, and it's like when there's shame it's part of the repetitiveness of the addictive cycle. One needs to repeat, to kind of prove the shame to oneself, which one actually can't tolerate. I've also seen it, very interestingly, with someone -- actually a few people -- with obsessive compulsive disorder, things like compulsive hand washing. It looks like, and a lot of times they believe, "I need to do this because all the impurity is out there," and after a lot of investigation they begin to be like, "Actually, it's that I feel impure, and somehow I'm projecting it out." It can manifest in lots of different ways.

There are so many questions. There's this -- I keep stressing this -- capacity to ask questions and be creative in the questioning and strong in the questioning. I could also ask, and kindly, I could ask kindly, "Is this giving me anything? Is this pattern of the inner critic giving me anything? When it's around, what does it give me?" And that's a very interesting one. Again, people are different. They find different things. But someone might find, for example, that it gives me a feeling of familiarity. It's become familiar over the years, over the decades, even. I know my way around it, painful as it is, contracted as it is. It's familiar inner territory. It actually shapes my outer life along familiar lines. And it's a place of home, in a way. It's a place of familiarity. That's really, really interesting to see. Then I could take the question further from that, if that's what I discover.

Or another person, or the same person at a different time, might ask the same question, "What's it giving me?", and actually find that it gives me a sense of identity. Although it's a really crappy identity, it's a horrible identity, it gives me something. I know who I am: I'm a loser, I'm a failure, I'm the lousy one. And we cling better to some identity, tightly bound and painful as it is, imprisoning as it is, than no identity, perhaps.

Or a person, same question, "What's it giving me?", might discover a belief operating that if it wasn't there I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, I wouldn't do anything, I would be such a lazy da-da-da. Okay, good to see that. Is it true? Very interestingly, sometimes people find -- this is an example, but it's quite common -- someone was dialoguing with the inner critic, questioning it, and discovered that actually the movement of the inner critic and the strategies of the inner critic were trying to protect her from embarrassing herself or making a mistake in public, and so being vulnerable and vulnerable particularly to rejection from others. If the self-criticism could be strong enough and harsh enough to prevent her doing something, to repress her action, keep her constrained, then maybe she wouldn't put her foot in it and feel the rejection of that and feel unloved in relationship or in community or in a group. So it's actually coming, paradoxically, from this desire to protect us from feeling unloved, from rejection, sometimes, in some cases. But unfortunately, it's causing more suffering in the process, more suffering than it would if we actually did get some rejection.

This was interesting for her because she saw it, and she saw it once. [28:52] Sometimes -- this is a general point about insight now -- sometimes we think, "Okay, I'll see something, I'll see it once, and then that's it." But rarely does insight work that way. Rarely. It's more that this glimpse of something becomes then a platform, a seed, for future interactions with the inner critic. Sometimes I see something once, whether it's around the inner critic or around who-knows-what, it could be impermanence, could be anything, and that's enough. I'm just being mindful, the insight comes, bada-bing, bada-boom, it's finished. Maybe. Pretty rare, pretty rare. It's more that we take this insight and we put it in the consciousness the next time as a way of looking, as a way of relating.

So next time the inner critic came up, and she began questioning it, and she began dialoguing with it -- which we'll talk about in a second -- and she could ask it, she could actually pre-empt and ask, "Are you feeling afraid? Are you feeling that there's some threat that you need to protect me from?", and actually turn towards it, almost like holding out an olive branch to the inner critic, with some understanding, just seeing: is that going on? When you hold out an olive branch, it's a gesture, a movement of softness, of opening. What happens when we bring softness and opening towards something hard? Usually it softens and opens itself. So in this movement, in her capitalizing on a past moment of insight, deciding to use that as an actual way of practising in the future, it became a very powerful way to open up the whole structure, to dissolve it, and actually discover a whole new sense of herself, a whole new vantage point on the inner critic, of stability, of strength, of spaciousness, clarity. A different sense of herself. That's a general point about insight wrapped up in there. What we see, through grace or whatever, we need to start using, using it like a muscle, like a way of looking.

So it's possible not just to question it but also to dialogue with the inner critic and begin talking to it as if it was a separate character. So sometimes very fruitful to look at this as if it is a character inside. Sometimes we don't do that. We see it as a structure of thoughts, which I'll get to. Something about dialoguing with it, actually talking with this energy, with this manifestation, makes a huge difference. In the example I just gave, when she began to be able to ask it, "Are you feeling afraid?", it's bringing the energy of kindness into the dialogue and beginning to understand what is motivating the inner critic, beginning to get to know it through dialogue. This inner critic, it gains its power -- or rather, it's given power to us by virtue of it remaining vague and shadowy. When we dialogue with it, we can get very specific about it. We can really begin understanding aspects of it or how it's thinking, so to speak, how it's operating, and it does not remain vague when we dialogue that way. It doesn't remain shadowy that way.

When it's just a vague, shadowy force, that's what we feel -- there's just a black cloud there, and we're just looking the other way, cowering from it, battered down from it. And that not looking at it, we're not being specific, we're not opening it up. Its power is in its vagueness, in its kind of cloudiness, if you like. So if I can turn to it and help it to be specific by actually talking, by dialoguing with it. For example, what exactly, exactly, exactly, is being judged? If it says you're a jerk, you're a this, you're a that, whatever, but what exactly is being judged? One of the beautiful things about dialoguing, as well, is you can slow it down and take it at the pace that's most helpful. Sometimes the inner critic is whirring around so fast it's like a vortex that we're in with all this onslaught of thought. It's all too fast, and we can barely keep up with it. Dialoguing, we can slow it down. We take things at a pace that we can go and digest and understand and respond. Other times the inner critic feels like it's just stuck, like a block of cement. There's no movement there at all. The dialoguing, again, begins to introduce some dynamism, some movement into it.

So there are many avenues that we can dialogue with it along. But one in particular is really important. Can I ask it, or if it's difficult to actually dialogue with it, just imagine, imagine a scenario: I begin to understand it's demanding this of me, that I achieve X or I achieve Y, and actually asking, "Okay, so it's this that you're judging. You want me to achieve X, to be with the breath perfectly, to be whatever it is. If I achieved X or Y, would you then be satisfied?" [laughter] Ask it. It might say yes. But stay there. Stay right there. Hang out there. Because it's probably lying. [laughter] It's almost definitely lying. Ask it, "Really? Really?" We need to probe it a little bit. With time we will see that it doesn't tell the truth, it's irrational and unhelpful. It's an impossible tyrant. If I can pursue this question and kind of poke at it, probe it with the questioning, I'll see that I'm more intelligent than it. I, you, are more intelligent than your inner critic. Most definitely.

This is quite a rare thing in practice, to actually use the intelligence. We talk a lot about the heart. It's enormously important, of course. But what would it be to actually use my thinking mind, the energy of my intelligence, to duel with this inner critic, and to be relentless in that? After all, it's relentless. It just keeps going, haranguing. What would it be to just keep pushing with the questioning? It says this, you say, "Well, what about da-da-da ...?" and keep going. "Really? Would you be satisfied?" There's a kind of strength in our relationship with the thinking mind. That's difficult, because oftentimes for meditators we tend to think of thoughts as an enemy, and the whole thinking mind is something that we're very, very suspicious of, understandably. But in time it's possible to use the thinking, and have it be firm and energized and really our ally, really our ally. I was going to give an example, but I think that's pretty clear. Was it? Yeah? I'll move on to the last one.

(5) This is about our sense of power, reclaiming our sense of power as human beings. When the inner critic, when the self-judge is up and running and harassing us, we feel devoid and drained of our power. We feel very weak, very under the heel of what's going on. So how could we possibly reclaim this power? So important, and sometimes quite rare unfortunately. I want to take a way in through an example. Some time ago I was working with someone. He's a long-term practitioner -- decades in fact, probably longer than I have, I think. He was or is exploring a different tradition of shamanic spirituality and shamanic journeying, etc. Now, in that tradition, they're encouraged to give a name to these characters they find inside themselves. This inner critic, he looked inside and he was working with it, and the name he came up with was the Axe Man. So he called it the Axe Man, and then he was encouraged to actually feel into what does it feel like to be the Axe Man? What does it feel like from that end? Not to be just on the receiving end of it, but actually to inhabit the Axe Man, to get inside him, so to speak, feel how he feels and sees and thinks, and see from his eyes, out of his head, so to speak. After you've done that for a while, then you imagine some other inner character coming to your aid, if you like. So in this case, he bound up the Axe Man and gagged him, and then a giant eagle came, swooped down, and carried off this bound and gagged inner critic, and deposited him off on a rocky mountain crag a long way away.

That was quite interesting, because he had taken time to feel into the Axe Man, but could you also feel into the eagle? Could you feel -- because the eagle there is an embodiment, and that's a very key word, 'embodiment,' of power, of potential, of strength. What would it be to actually feel your way into the eagle, to feel that in the body, feel that strength and that dignity, if you like? If I take the time and I really dwell on that -- it could be something else, if you're working with imagery; you can do it without imagery, and I'll go into that -- to actually feel that power inside myself? And realize that that power, wrapped up in that, easily dwarfs, easily outpowers the power of the inner critic. There's no comparison.

That's just one way in. Eventually, we want to feel it's not the eagle's power; it's my power. It's my power. And I can feel that and have access to my power. I don't mean power over another human being. I mean power in myself, my strength, my rootedness, my vitality, my life force. Partly I'm mentioning this because this person was, is, a long-term practitioner. In ensuing sessions, he was talking about accessing this power at times, and feeling himself come into accessing power. I said, "Well, can you find it now? Can you feel that power now?" So he shut his eyes, and he went inside, and did his meditation thing. And I was sitting there with him. And I could tell that going inside through the meditation was going away from the power. He was losing power via his meditation. I'm partly saying this for those of you who have been meditating a long time. Sometimes meditation can become something for us, like anything else, that we're actually losing certain qualities or access to certain qualities via meditation. It doesn't have to be that way, but in this case, that's what was going on. He needed other routes into the power. To me that's very interesting. What, over the years, am I making of my spiritual practice, with my meditation, in a way that might be not serving me, not opening up my fullness and my potential?

If we think about -- just briefly; this could easily be a whole talk, but -- how do we reclaim our power? When the inner critic is strong, we feel like we have no power. It has all the power, and we're just squashed into the ground. We feel powerless in relationship to this. So one way that the power re-manifests is actually going back to what I said earlier about the inner rebel. We feel the onslaught of the inner critic, and the inner rebel, if you like, is a kind of manifestation of our power. It's our life force, our vitality, our chutzpah. [laughter] Do you know what chutzpah is? Do you know what cojones is? [laughter] Our strength, you know, our courage. It comes up in this way as a kind of -- it doesn't know what it's fighting, but it's the fighting spirit. So sometimes in this "no, no", it's like setting boundaries with someone. You just -- "I've had enough of this. This is not okay." One says no, and that no is power. One feels it. It's different from anger that's out of control. There's something harnessed. We're harnessing the vitality and harnessing the life force. It's very directed and it's very potent. It's not destructive and kind of frittering in different directions like anger usually is. Something transformative here. I have to feel it in the body. And I start to feel it in the belly, and in the chest, and in the legs, and in the limbs. I have to feel it in the body to absorb it and to have more and more access to it.

So it might come through this saying no to the inner critic. It might come through the inner rebel, and I have to come feel my way into the quality of the inner rebel -- maybe dialoguing with the inner rebel, and find that energy, and access that energy, begin to own that energy. It may come through the eagle or whatever other imagery one has. But I have to feel it in the body. That's one way.

Another way is almost opposite. Sometimes we gain our power, if we go back to the earlier ones on the list of five, actually gain it through opening the heart, through loving, through embracing the inner critic. Because I lose my power through the battle sometimes. It's almost the opposite. Sometimes there's a way one gains one's sense of power, re-accesses the sense of power, and it's almost just through the energetics of the body, through harmonizing those energies, going back to some of the breath meditation stuff we were talking about with the group this morning. When that comes into alignment, there is a natural, healthy sense of power, wholeness. When I open to the totality of who I am, I'm in my body with that, the power comes, centredness.

There are actually many more, but one -- in fact, I've already mentioned it -- is the thinking. If I can learn how to use the thinking and my intelligence, and keep probing and answering back and pushing, asking difficult questions, I actually gain power through my intelligence, through my thinking mind. That's very unpopular in the Dharma at the moment in the West. We tend to think thoughts are a problem. I also gain power through desire -- I'm not going to go into that -- if I have the right relationship with desire.

Okay. I think I'm going to stop there for now, and I'm going to go into some of the other list later today.