Ending the Inner Critic (3)

Let's explore a little more and move into the next list of five. We might not get to it all, but that's fine. As I said earlier, the first group of five approaches that I was talking about, they're really available in the middle, so to speak, of an inner critic attack, and what might be really helpful to kick in as antidotes, as ways of addressing what's going on. These second five, in a way what they really are is shifts of view that we can practise at the times when the inner critic is not so strong, when we feel relatively okay. We actually practise these approaches, and something shifts in the view that undermines the power of the inner critic, generally.

It's a feature of the inner critic, just as much as it's a feature of the self in general, that -- well, one view of what the inner critic really is is it's a kind of manifestation of the self-belief, of the self-view, of the ego-structure. So it's a generalized manifestation of self-view in a certain form. Self-view -- in other words, just the feeling that I am a self and I'm a particular kind of self, whether that's a fantastic self or a terrible self or whatever it is, this kind of self or that kind of self -- that has a particular way of functioning that's true across the board. It's that we have a self-view, whatever it is -- I'm like this, I'm like that, good, bad, whatever it is -- and that self-view functions to make the attention selective. In other words, I have this self-view that I'm a boring failure, and I look out at the world from that self-view. Of all the totality and the complexity, the sort of myriad impressions that are available to me in any moment or through the day, this self-view is like a filter (I mentioned this before), and I start selecting. So I look out at the room and I start seeing, focusing, if you like, on certain people's expressions who seem to be looking at me in a way that seems to be saying, "You are a boring failure." [laughter]

The view creates the selection of the attention. That's the information, so to speak, that I filter out and interpret a certain way. That's what I concentrate on. Where does it go? It goes right back in here, reinforces the groove, it goes out again in terms of the attention, and so it goes around. Dependent arising. It's part of that.

So in a way -- I mean, first of all, we need to know that's going on. It's a very powerful force. And again, it's something that's going on all day, and maybe most of the night as well. Can I practise seeing differently? Can I practise a different way of seeing? Can I practise seeing other stuff? In other words, my attention goes like a magnet to this kind of thing, can I actually steer it somewhere else? That's one thing. And can I practise seeing more of the totality of things, and not being so selective to this thing and that thing, which only corroborates my self-view, only ties the knot tighter? There's something about practising putting the attention in different places and seeing more of the totality. In a way, those two movements are part of what meditation is. So I'm not just tied down and locked into, reinforcing over and over, this self-perspective, the self's perspective, the inner critic's perspective, the self's perspective, over and over again. That's all I'll ever see if I'm locked into that.

So we need to see something different, dwell with my attention on something different. (1) One of the things is, am I seeing the good that is here? Am I seeing my own goodness? Am I acknowledging, am I taking the time, to sit in and with the sense of my own beauty and my own goodness? Have you ever had a conversation, perhaps with someone you care about, and you're listening to them when they are in the throes of an inner critic attack? Listen to what they're saying. "I'm terrible, da-da-da-da." And you're sitting there looking at this person, and you think they're not seeing this, they're not seeing that, they're missing all the good, beautiful stuff that you know is there. Well, you see that happening in someone else much more clearly, but you can guarantee that when you're having an inner critic attack the same thing is going on. There is this kind of blinkering of the attentiveness. It's locking in the attention to certain things, and they just keep getting reinforced.

So what would it be to really sit in, or as we say in the Dharma, incline the mind, incline the awareness, to dwell in a recollection, an acknowledgment, an admittance of our own beauty and what is beautiful within us, the beautiful qualities within us, that which is lovely within us, which is there, totally is there? It's interesting saying this because, again, you think, "Oh, that's going to be completely ineffectual," but also a person might think, "Wouldn't that be egoic? Wouldn't that be some kind of ego trip?" It won't be at all. Funnily enough, the inner critic is actually a kind of ego trip -- trick and trip. It's just turned upside down. The ego is actually massive when the inner critic is there. The self-sense is massive. It's way overblown, but it's all negative.

This is an interesting one. I have to be careful what qualities I acknowledge and what qualities I kind of choose to celebrate and dwell in acknowledgment of. The cultural pressure will be for worldly qualities -- what kind of car do you drive, what do you do for a living, what's your social status and all that. And again, it can feel like, "I'm not influenced by all that. I don't buy into all that." But we live in that culture where that is what determines people's opinions of each other, oftentimes, in terms of celebrities and all that. What would it be to respect ourselves for the right things, for the important things? So for our ethics, for instance. You know, you don't open a newspaper and there's a whole list of celebrities who get celebrated for their ethics or their care of ethics. It just doesn't register in most people's consciousness as something that's worthy of bowing, worthy of devotion, worthy of celebrating, unless someone really does something in flagrant violation of agreed-upon ethical codes.

Or not even ethics, but my intention to live ethically, or inquiring into what it means to live ethically, to explore that. Just that those intentions come up in me is something extraordinarily beautiful, that I care about that and I have the intention to kind of -- especially these days with globalization, very complex ethical issues, that I care about trying to navigate through that in some way. It won't put you in the newspaper, it won't make you famous, it won't make you rich. But there is so much more beauty in that than any of that other junk that we can very easily be kind of brainwashed into believing that this is what we should be respected for.

[9:01] The intention to cultivate qualities of mind like kindness, like goodness, like concentration, all of that. These are beautiful, what the Buddha called noble, noble intentions. Something so worth celebrating. Very easily we can lose touch or -- this came up in the question period earlier today -- not even fully be aware of what it is that we care about most. Occasionally someone says, "I was at this party, and I looked around the room, and so-and-so played amazing guitar, and the other person just published a book, and so-and-so was a great juggler" and whatever it is, "and I couldn't do anything." This person is just missing that stream of intention in them, the stream of how deeply they care about something that's beautiful.

And it's weird saying this, because sometimes I feel it's like, it can feel sometimes hard to convince people that that would be significant, that that would make a difference or that it's even worth dwelling on that. But sometimes the things that don't sound like a big deal are actually way more a big deal than they seem. There's so much potential for a kind of unshakeability here. We're rooted in what we care about the most. If we're going to play the game of respecting ourselves and kind of judging how much respect we're worth -- which is a very dangerous game to play anyway -- if we're going to play it, at least let it be for the right things, for the things that are really beautiful and really important, that our hearts care about.

(2) In a way, this moves into the second one, which is to do with aspiration. Maybe they're not separate. Something happens to the being and this deep health and stability of the consciousness when we are in touch with and aligned with what our deepest yearnings and deepest direction is in life, what we care about most deeply. Again, it can seem like it maybe isn't that significant, but it makes so much difference, so much difference to whether we'll be bowled over by the next attack from the inner critic or the outer critic, or some comparison in a social scene or whatever it is. Am I rooted in that which I care about the most?

Some time -- this was actually quite a while ago; it's really stayed with me because it was such a strong example. And there are many of these and others. I was working in an interview. Someone was at Gaia House, and they were there for quite a while. They were in and out of quite some nice stuff, and also a lot of struggle with this inner critic, really haranguing them. She came in one day, and it was really at her, and she felt very beaten down by it. A lot of pain, a lot of pain wrapped up in it.

It was very much about not feeling worthy, not deserving, not deserving happiness, not feeling worthy in life. She had a boyfriend, who I also know, and like I said much earlier today, there was this pattern operating of the inner critic projecting outwards and feeling that the boyfriend was putting her down, feeling put down in that relationship. We were talking and she was sharing some of the pain. I asked her at some point, "What is your deepest desire in this life? What is it that the heart longs for more than anything else, right at the base of the root?" She was quiet for a bit, and she gave an answer so beautiful. She said, "I want to live in service to love." That was her answer. "I want to be in service to love." Beautiful. I'm not saying that's everyone's answer; it was just her answer. "I want to live a life that's in service to love." That was something completely different come through.

Now, in that moment, she could very easily have just let that come and let it go. In a way, kind of keeping her, "Stay with that. What does that feel like? Put the words out there. Hear the resonance of them. Feel it in the body. And actually, can you align with that deep desire? What does it mean for the being and the consciousness to feel the depth of that, the beauty of that, and feel the being coming into alignment with it?" There's a devotion moving there. You feel something aligning with a beacon, with a direction that we care most deeply about. It was quite a dramatic shift. It was wow. She was quite surprised.

All this comparing mind just dissolved. Openness came. Joy came, the complete opposite. And strength came -- again, a quality that wasn't there at all; she was feeling very downtrodden and very weakened by what the inner critic was inflicting. A strength, joy, openness came. Dissolution of the comparing mind. Very, very strong. Radiance came. Quite dramatic. Now, it's not of course that it was just a one-off, "Right, that's fixed it. That's the end of the inner critic for her for the rest of her life." But again, she discovered something. And the more that we can be in touch with that direction and the purity, beauty of that, the depth of that, the more we can live close to that, the less the power of the inner critic. Unfortunately, the more the power of the inner critic, the harder it is to even get connected to that or know what it is. There's something so powerful in asking ourselves -- as I said earlier this morning, one of the beautiful capacities I have as a human being is to ask myself, how do I want to live? How do I want to live? I've got this existence. How do I want to live? What do I want to give? How do I want to express? Asking that question and sticking close, doggedly, to the answer, and living from there more and more. The inner critic is completely ineffectual in relationship to that. It just doesn't have the power in relationship to it. This is something we need to do over and over and over.

(3) The third one has to do with the whole notion of self-view again. Sometimes people ask me, what is insight meditation? What is this thing, insight meditation? Is it like a technique, or like a certain thing? To me, to sum it up, it's learning to see differently, learning to look at experience, to relate to experience differently, and to look and see and relate in ways that take the suffering out of experience, that drain the suffering out of experience. That's insight meditation. There are many different ways of looking, many different ways of relating. Unfortunately, a lot of the time in our life, we look and relate and see experience in ways that actually bind the suffering there, that create more suffering. Insight meditation is actually learning different ways of looking that decrease the suffering.

Now, one of these is actually seeing that what manifests out of me, in terms of speech and behaviour, comes not so much from a self as from a web of conditions, a whole array of inner and outer conditions present and past. All that together co-creates what gets expressed. So, you know, you're working in the office or at work, and you say something to someone, or you make a mistake in some way, perhaps in how you speak to someone or in some administrative task, whatever it is. Very easily, the self gets judged. We make a conclusion about the self: I'm rubbish, I can't do it, I, I, I, I, I. We make a conclusion about the self rather than seeing this action came together out of this whole web of conditions coming together. Maybe I was tired. Maybe there was a lot of pressure on me. Maybe all kinds of things, inner, outer, present and past. They come together and bloop comes the action. Not the self. Where is the self?

[18:27] Something happened -- I can't remember when it was, it was only a couple of months ago. I was going to one of these day-longs, just like this, somewhere else. It must have been in the autumn, I think. I was leaving on a Friday to go and get the train to teach the day-long. I had worked in the morning on Friday and tried to do too much. It got a little bit late, and then I rushed to get my things together, da-da-da, get in the car, go towards the station. Halfway towards the station, ugh, the train tickets. [laughter] I rummaged in my bag in the country lane. No train tickets. They were in my desk. Back to Gaia House, found them in my desk. By this point I was really quite late. So driving like a complete maniac through the country lanes. You have to park quite a ways from the station, and walk -- in this case run -- to the station. So I parked, and then I ran to the station.

Train was late anyway. [laughter] Go up to the station, waiting for the now-late train [laughter], and then thought, oh, did I close the car window? I couldn't remember. Now, technically, the reason I couldn't remember, technically speaking, is because there wasn't enough mindfulness in the moment of leaving the car to remember. Mindfulness and memory are connected. There wasn't enough presence around "Did I close the window or not?" I'm sharing this story for two reasons. One is to puncture a view, perhaps, that mindfulness is the point of the path. The point of the path is freedom. Freedom comes from deep understanding being absorbed and digested. And one of the things that leads to deep understanding being absorbed and digested is mindfulness. One of the things. If I make the whole path about mindfulness and being in the moment or being with what is or whatever it is, I've actually missed the point of what the path is.

So I say that just because -- I could have a reaction, "I shouldn't be teaching the Dharma if I can't even be mindful enough to da-da-da-da ..." [laughter] I could look at it from a self point of view. One could look at something like that and say, "I wasn't mindful enough. I'm not good enough. I shouldn't be teaching. I blah blah blah blah blah." Or we could look at it from the point of view: there were all these conditions there. There was too much trying to be done in terms of work on the morning, on the Friday. Then there was the rush, etc. All these conditions, inner and outer, meant that mindfulness -- which is another condition; mindfulness is not-self, I can't judge myself for being or not being mindful -- that condition of mindfulness didn't have the supporting conditions around it, because there are outer and inner conditions, so the mindfulness in that moment wasn't there. That's all it means. That's all it means. To make a self-conclusion out of it, that would be what we would call delusion, and that leads to suffering. The point is freedom, from understanding; it's not about mindfulness, but more importantly, seeing it in terms of the conditions, the conditions rather than the self.

You can hear that and you can say, "I get that intellectually." But it's quite a dramatic shift of view for most of us, because we're habituated to looking at things in terms of self and just making these conclusions about myself: I'm not this, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, I, I, I, I, I. The conclusions are always about the self, rather than seeing the web of conditions. I need to repeat that way of looking over and over and over. And again, it might not sound dramatic, but if I keep doing this, and sometimes one might need a friend or a teacher to actually help one expose what's in the web of conditions: what's there that I wasn't seeing? I make these conclusions about myself; what was there in the web? And we look together, and actually see it differently, again and again and again. I get used to seeing in this way in terms of conditions, and the web of conditions, and the dependent arising rather than the self. Over time, that makes an enormous difference. The whole structure of self-view, self-definition, self-conclusion, gets opened out and dissolved. The inner critic is part of that. Without that kind of self-conclusion, the inner critic cannot function. It's impossible. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but over and over, something changes in the very way we see life and see ourselves.

One other thing I took from that is, okay, be careful how much you plan or schedule on the Friday morning if you're going away. It's not that one absolves oneself of responsibility. There's something about action in the future. It's not about the self. Which choices is it wise or sensible to make? It's a very simple example, but we do this a lot, and it's impossible for the suffering of the inner critic to be there without this kind of wrong conclusion-making. The attention is too tight, too locked into certain specifics, and making conclusions that are not actually true. We're not seeing the bigger picture.

Okay. (4) I'm going to skip one, and move to (5) the last one. I think I said earlier, the inner critic and the pain of the inner critic, actually the functioning even of the inner critic, it relies on a certain kind of relationship with thought and the thinking mind. It relies specifically on our gullibility in relationship to thought. In other words, we tend to believe the thoughts that go through our mind. Just because I have a thought, and oftentimes a charged thought, a painful thought, about myself, I tend to believe that. Something's got very locked in in the relationship with thought. That gullibility has locked it in there. So if I can kind of cut that automatic believability of thought, if I can take away some of that unquestioning authority that we give to thought, that undermines the whole edifice of the inner critic.

I just want to offer a practice. It's another way of practising that can be very useful for this. We did the standing meditation this afternoon; you can do this sitting down or standing, it doesn't matter. Be in the body, feel the body sensations. Maybe you feel them in one point. I'm talking about a specific kind of meditation practice now. Not so much when the inner critic is strong -- remember, the second list. Feeling the body, feeling the body sensations, and then one opens up the awareness to the field of the whole body sensations, and actually begins to see this almost like fireflies, this dance of sensation, or perhaps shading in and out, ebbing and flowing of sensations within the field of the body, just coming and going, getting stronger and morphing, disappearing, all of that. Awareness is open to that totality, with that, present to that. When I feel settled in that, then I can begin opening out even further, to listening, to sounds.

Sounds are very interesting, because they're coming from all different directions, usually, and all different distances. So what happens when we open up not so much to this sound and then that sound and then that sound and another sound, one sound at a time, one by one, rather just as we're opening up to the totality of the body sensations kind of globally, you can open up to the totality of listening globally, the totality of sounds. You've got the totality of body sensation and sound, all together. The awareness is 360 degrees, more open, more receptive, more allowing things to come and go. This is a practice. In time, what happens is we begin to feel quite stable there. It's not a fixed point of concentration. It's more an openness, more a space of awareness. That begins to feel quite stable, and as if it can kind of accommodate all this coming and going and changing of the body sensations and the sounds.

Very naturally, almost without even trying, if you hang out in that space long enough with the sounds and the body sensations, it will start to include thoughts. Thoughts will appear and disappear in that space just as sounds appear and disappear in that space and just as body sensations appear and disappear in that space. If you really hang out, it all becomes much of a muchness -- it's like just kind of phenomena, whether it's body sensations or sounds or thoughts. It's all just stuff, fireflies, fireworks through the sky. It's all just stuff happening in the space and disappearing. What one is really practising then is a kind of spacious allowing, allowing of things to be born, live, and die.

Everything I'm saying today is practice. In other words, a talk is only as good as how much a person practises it. You might be impressed by a speaker, bored by a speaker, but it doesn't matter, it's completely irrelevant. What matters is taking something on board, using it and finding a way that that burrows to freedom. So this is a practice and it develops over time. But eventually, once you're in that space, you've got a very different relationship with thought and the thinking mind. Just easy come, easy go. They come like micro-events, like fireflies, like shooting stars, whatever you want to say. And there's spaciousness around them. They kind of go by. They seem ephemeral and insubstantial, and I don't have to believe them. There's space around thoughts, which is usually what is not there, and when the inner critic is functioning it's definitely what's not there. There's not space around the thinking mind and the thoughts.

The more I can hang out in that space -- this is when the inner critic is not strong, remember -- something, over time, begins quite radically changing my whole relationship to the thinking mind. I see I don't have to believe all this stuff. A thought is actually just a thought. It's just like an impression in awareness. And if I hang out in that and hang out in that, it's like that wisdom, that insight, begins to seep into the heart and into the being. Over time, my whole relationship with thought gets changed. Even in the thick of the battle, even in the thick of the inner critic attack -- actually it gets undermined, because it relies, as I said earlier today, the inner critic relies on us believing thoughts. When we pull the plug on that, gradually, gradually, that drains out, my belief, my gullibility in relationship to thought. And the inner critic has nothing to stand on. No legs to stand on. Because I know, I've absorbed the insight, that a thought is just a thought. It's come through that spaciousness of awareness.

Okay. So going back to what I said this morning. I offered you a list; I could take different things, so this is by no means exhaustive. But there's a lot of possibility here in these different approaches. An enormous amount of potential for freedom. And I said this before but I want to say it again: the movement from feeling imprisoned by the inner critic to really feeling free in relationship to it and ending it, ending it, that is completely possible. It's completely possible. I don't usually -- I mean, this is a style of teaching -- I don't usually share about my practice when I teach. But I will say that I have made that journey. When I say it's possible, I mean it, I know it, because it's something that's happened, something that's happened through practice. It's just a matter of finding the right ways of approaching. They might be slightly different, different practices that different people cobble together to make a powerful package that delivers that freedom.

And it's interesting. You know, for some people I've seen, I've worked with people that literally from one day to the next the inner critic was there, was doing its thing, and the next day because of a deep insight, deep cutting, it's gone and it doesn't come back. Other people and myself, it was actually more gradual. It was interesting, I remember going through a period where the words of inner criticism -- you're a failure, you're this -- they would still come up for this period, but they'd been drained of all power. It was almost like just running on an empty momentum, just the words, but they were empty, they were meaningless, they had no power, they had no pain associated with them. It's just that there was a habit of criticizing myself and calling myself all this stuff. Meaningless and without power. Eventually, even the words stopped coming up. Even that stopped manifesting.

And even beyond that, very possible, very possible to get to the point -- it no longer comes up, but we even know, we absolutely know for sure, that it cannot come up. It cannot manifest. To paraphrase the Buddha, you cut something at the root. You cut this poisonous tree right at the root, and it cannot, you know in your heart it's impossible, no matter what, and you see it for years. It's been years since it's come up. All kinds of things have happened and mistakes have been made and whatnot, but it's been cut at the root, and one feels that, and one has that confidence. It cannot manifest any more. And that journey is absolutely possible, and it's possible for everyone. It's just a matter of practice, finding ways of practice, bringing heart and intelligence and dedication, inquiry, into practice.

Okay. Let's have maybe a little quiet time together.