[music] Hey fellow GTers, those of us who like our spirituality with a twist. So we're doing kind of a special episode. Daniel did a presentation uh in this past week. Um and so you know we had the idea of really kind of covering some of the same issues that he did in this presentation. you know, he does these teaching events in Chicago, and this was kind of an interesting one for him, and the inspiration was there to do it. So, um, I'll throw it over to you, Daniel, and you'll walk us through. You know, you have a lot of stuff you want to cover, so I'll like, uh, I'll seed the floor right away, and I'm curious to hear everything you want to share.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, as always, for everybody who's tuning in, uh, if you're here for the first time, if you're here for the thousandth time or whatever, uh, like, comment, subscribe, do all the things everybody asks you to do. Cost you nothing. Definitely helps us out. uh helps our message, you know, to reach more people. So, uh thanks for tuning in. We'll uh we'll get right to it. So, I gave a a speech kind of talk to a a group of lawyers uh maybe about a week and a half ago and I was just asked to speak on meditation. Now on you know for those who've been here for a while know we talk about this you know regularly off and on throughout the years and for those who are new uh we talk about meditation quite a bit and I'm going to start this conversation with what is meditation overall and the way that I describe this to basically complete people who have they've heard of it obviously have heard the word but might not know what it is usually when I bring this up and Eric you could totally you know chime in at any point usually when I bring up meditation people will say Oh, I I'm terrible at it. And I'm like, well, everybody is terrible at something they never do. So, yes, but the goal is not to get good at it. It's not to be a good meditator. And I said, but let's let's move away from the word and move to what it actually is referencing. I said, meditation, the way that I discuss it, I'd like to discuss it is like exercise. Well, exercise can mean a lot of things. Mer think of runners and hell, even think of people who are sprinters. Think of the 100 or 200 yard dash versus the marathoners. Body's completely different.

Think about powerliffters versus gymnasts versus boxers versus wrestlers versus pole vaultting versus shotput versus snowboarding. Bodies completely different. They look totally different, right? But they're all going to say, "I'm going to go exercise." Now, they might say, "I'm going to go train." But they're going to say, "I'm going to go. I'm exercising." Right? But that exercise looks looks so astronomically different based on what that person chose to to perform that it's almost as if it's under a different category, but it's not. And this is the way that I describe meditation for people because I think the standard view for most people is that meditation is an attempt to quote clear their mind. Mhm.

That is the that is the fallacy. That seems to be the goal when really

maybe before you move on, Daniel, I'll just throw my two cents in. Like I think that's a very relatable thing you said because I think people need something analogous and if you make a comparison to something that everyone can relate to like a working out.

Yeah.

Especially the idea like okay there's lots of ways you could do this.

Yes.

You know there's not like one way to meditate. It doesn't mean one thing.

Correct.

And uh that'll like just produce different effects. And you can kind of get the idea by the analogy of like you wouldn't expect someone to be training to be like an offensive lineman for the Bears to look the same as the guy who's training to be like a marathon runner. That wouldn't make any sense, right? Correct. Yeah. I think it's I think it's I just want to give you props. I think that's very relatable.

Yeah. I try to like make that connection because people think they they have this one idea

of what it is. And you could do meditation walking, you could do meditation seated, you can do I mean there's all kinds of things like meditation is the act of being in a state.

You're also doing different things with your mind too with your body as well, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I like it. It sounds good especially for people who are like just trying to get their minds around it. Seems nice. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of like the over the overarching thing. Okay. So the talk is on meditation and I start with there and I said all right well what are we working with in meditation we're working kind of with two pieces awareness and attention you know what we consider like the mind the the sort of localized view of the mind not the you know the the greater kind of mind of the spirit if you will or the subconscious mind or the universal mind hive mind however you want to describe this but our own our own mind. And there's other ways of describing this. The Tibetans have their own ways. The yogics, the yogic people have their own ways of describing layers of mind and whatnot, but I'm I I like to keep things in a a language that people understand. I think it's helpful. Um, and so awareness and attention, right? And sometimes I use the word thinking for both to to combine both of them. But attention, I could say, is where you're putting your focus. All right? And the awareness is is we we the Tibetan term is like meta awareness, right? This kind of observing what's happening. So you have these two two pieces happening simultaneously. One is the attention. This is what am I focusing on? Am I focusing on my feet when I'm running? Or am I focusing on my breath when I'm doing some breath work? Or am I focusing on a picture of some type? Or for people who like, you know, manifestation, am I focusing on the feelings of what it of the outcome that I want from this thing that I'm working on. Okay, no problem.

So, kind of like what you might call like concentration, the focusing of the mind on certain things, right?

Which is a piece of like

any meditative technique in some way or another, right? Versus Maybe what you might call I'm just throwing out words and you might have your own ways you do you did this but like what you might call like a mindfulness or something, right?

Where I'm I'm more uh attentively perceptive of what's happening around me. Those are like almost like two different kinds of like uh mental processes or something like that, right?

Yes. Yep.

One is to gain awareness of things and a kind of I'm in a receiving mode and I'm I'm gaining awareness of what's happening. I'm like that mindfulness idea, right? Mhm.

where I'm going to be perceptive what's going on or I can go and say, "Well, I'm going to focus my mind on on something particular, right?" Yes.

Whatever that particularity might be. And that will kind of play off of each other anyways and practice, but that's that's that's I mean, I get what you're saying and those are those are other ways of may maybe using those words or something. But yeah,

I I vibe with those kinds of words, too.

Yeah. So So you made a distinction, right? like focusing on a particular thing and I just I'm doing this on purpose because I I for people who heard it. I want them to sometimes it's nice to go over it a couple times just so that you get the thing right. You're saying that there are two kind of major ways in which you can use your what I'm calling attention and one is to focus on a particular thing like I said the breath or your feet or an image or something else like this. The other one is to be receptive, practicing receptivity. And then so that that's kind of like the attention piece. The other half then is the aware like overall awareness, the thing that's observing what is happening. So if you're being receptive or you're being focused or whatever it is, there's there's something that is watching this. It's still within us, but it's sort of watching what's happening. And you know, it's like the parent watching a child play or something like this. And I always like to point this out because sometimes I think people have a very difficult time doing and being simultaneously, but we're always doing and being simultaneously. And I think it's important to highlight this so that it doesn't not that it comes at a shock because people do have some familiarity with themselves, some more than others, but on the on the in the trying to create a larger picture, you want to try and highlight as many of the pieces that are already there that we're aware of that we can talk about relatively easily. So as I think to give people a sense of calmness that when they're going into something that might seem foreign that there are we're like okay if I'm describing a house it's like these are the walls, this is the lighting, this is the floor, that's a carpet, those are pictures. The more that you can kind of help people uh feel comfortable going into something new, the less reserved they're going to be and the more they're willing to walk with you. Is that

I know when we did our I'll give a little plug and we'll hopefully we'll do one again, but we did kind of a G&T gentonic uh meditation [clears throat] retreat

kind of like basics of tantra, we did some pretty cool uh special meditations and the tantra tradition. Yeah. But what I noticed like for the things that you were leading, you would make it very concrete,

right? And uh like very descriptive. So there's parts of like a meditation where you can become aware of your environment and then maybe even let yourself kind of let that environment fade. But you were very conscious of like, okay, let me really describe this environment and have people tap into this

which was I thought was a very kind of unique thing that you did and you're kind of to my ears building on that uh thing that I saw there when you were like doing the things that you were leading which was to create this setting and I guess part of what you're saying is that gives a certain level of the mind and the person a lot getting to be able to settle into that space right before they start the journey of wherever that's going to go.

Correct. But that was kind of I thought that was very unique the way you did that. I mean, you know, uh different ways that people can talk through things. I thought, "Oh, that's cool. That's a different way of what Daniel's doing there." And you just gave a little bit more of the reasons why you thought that was important.

Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing you brought up kind of and I I don't know if you want to go down this route or you'll get back to it whenever you want, but sometimes you're right. People will use this word like metacognition.

Yes. And I've been spending a little bit more time thinking about that because I'm listening to stuff on like the great psychologist Carl Jung and

the philosopher Schopenhau. It's like there's a certain set of books by this author I've been listening to and he's been doing deeper dives in this and this metac cognition thing is really interesting because it's kind of like having an awareness of the of the person who's aware or something, right?

Yeah. Anyways, but I'm sure you'll get to it, but I just wanted to back your like back your play on that. I think that's an incredibly interesting subject matter. People have different opinions on what that means.

Yeah. But you were kind of referencing that too, that kind of meta awareness,

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Um, and and you know, just as not an aside, but I, you know, I know over the last few months, um, the bulk of the year, we trying to, you know, cover not recent events, but things that are happening. Um, and you know, we'll still continue to do some of that. But one of the themes that is coming coming out of that is the sense of ownership of our awareness and attention and where we put them. And so why it is that I wanted to do this is be we're sort of slotting it in our kind of Chinese medicine look at the body and the mental processes and things like this. And I am regularly more and more inspired to talk about to talk with people about what they put their focus on, what they allow influence themselves. And this is my, you know, and this is including for me as well. So I'm sort of doing this as a personal practice that I find um useful to share with people because I'm not quite sure how conscious people are about where they lend their attention to. And so in uh like I talked about with the with the lawyers, meditation decreases the variables of the outside world basically to eliminates them basically and so you're aware of your own inner world and it behooves someone to have a relatively good working relationship with their inner world such that they can have a good relationship with their outer world because the outer world has far more variables than we can ever account for, let alone interactions with other people, but we never leave our inner world. Our inner world just gets sort of superseded by the our environment. And so for the for us as you know people who would like to be as conscious as we can with our words and deeds and actions and everything else this is the place in which you get to practice that without any sort of I don't want to say consequences but without any extra inputs uh from other people or other situations or anything else. It's like this is practice meditation in one sense is also a practice for life and I I'll give you a little room here. Yeah, there's like two things that jump out uh to me in that

Yeah. one part is um that in a certain sense like we have an inner world and we have an outer world and I think that's so true and then on the other hand what the point that we made is like there's a filtering mechanism for how you see that outer world and it's going to go through however your inner world is functioning right

so if you can start to reorientate your inner world you can start to you know it's not it's not necessarily like the secret you know like those books where like changed my whole outer world just because I changed my mind around I things may flow in different ways for you more smoothly as your inner world gets more smooth and so on. You're not going to be able to totally control what's happening in the outer world and the last year shows it.

Right. But on the other hand, you know, there is that point that what you see of the outer world is like through the prism and filter of the inner world.

Yeah. The other part that jumped out at me and uh I don't always think of this phraseiology but it shows up in the Tibetan world in a very kind of unique way there where they say like

sometimes you get the the definition of meditation is like concentration on a virtuous object.

Now that word virtuous can have so many different layers of meaning but what they really mean is like an object that's

good for you that's brings up more of the positive qualities of mind. Right.

Yeah. that like moves you more in a positive direction. And I was just thinking as you're talking through like where do you put your where do you put your concentration? And part of the point that they're raising there is like you should have your concentration on an object that's actually good for you

that's going to push you forward that's going to

bring benefit and like that wasn't always that language wasn't always super obvious to me uh from previous experiences. You know, sometimes we do dowist things. We've been talking about Chinese medicine. You might just meditate on the body. That's not a virtuous or unverirtuous thing. You know, that's a neutral thing, right? Bodies are bodies, right? So, you can talk about things that are negative, things that are positive, things that are kind of neutral. That's neutral.

In the early part of my Zen thing, it was like concentrating on like your breath and counting one to 10 just to build up a lot of concentration,

right?

And so, it's concentration driven, but that's definitely like a neutral object. There's nothing that great about concentrating on one to 10, right?

Except it builds concentration. But this So this idea of like attention on something that is like edifying to the person,

that's an interesting way to frame that. And just it just struck me because you were kind of talking about like where are you putting your attention and it should be on things that are

that are edifying.

And if it's not, then that's worthwhile looking and saying, "Hey, where is my mind actually being led?"

Yeah. All right. So

I I or I so I'm this brings me back to this this kind of piece that I want to talk about here. Now thinking and thinking we can say is a is a continual stream of what I'm going to call patterning. And patterning we could say is a group of reflexes um an outpouring of conditioning things like this. And why this is important to understand is because the way in which we see the world is often patterned by our emotional reactions. And so my teacher Andre always likes to use this uh analogy of the brown colored glasses. If you wear brown colored glasses, everything looks like [...] right? We rose glasses, everything looks rosy. But but to your point, our inner world influences the way in which we see and perceive the outer world. And our inner world is really in large part a pot a product of patterning, reflexes and conditioning. Some of which is from society for sure. Some of which you know working from outside to in. Some of which is from our communities. Some of which is from our families. who are also a product of those previous things and some of which is a product of our inheritance of our genetics. And I I made this point to a couple people uh when I was giving this talk because there was a question about this and I said you know the tendencies that you have your mother had her mother had her mother her mother's mother her mother's mother's it goes on continuously so yeah I mean there's some interesting quirks that we have that are passed forward but a lot of the trauma and adaptations we'll call them adaptations I won't even call them trauma a lot of but a lot of it is trauma cuz life is is just traumatic, you know. Um, a lot of this trauma is passed forward and the adaptations that people make in order to be able to survive. Then that those are some of the things that get passed on. They might not fit in current society like they did 500 years ago, 800 years ago, because we're, you know, people think that, you know, the the movies that have medieval stuff in it was like some distant time. That's not that long ago. The dark ages were not that long ago. And there was a whole other period, multiple periods that were before,

especially compared to like the history of like the human species or something like that. That's like that's like a second and a half ago or something like that, right?

On the time frame,

you know, I would just say one thing for people who are listening to this, you know, uh we might all come from like different sort of spiritual vibes.

Yep. what when we've had when we started doing this podcast, what I started to realize was this was this this particular point in my mind I've always associated with the aspect of like your work that's very shamanic,

right? So if that resonates for other people listening to Daniel talk, I just wanted to throw the word out there because that's the word that sometimes occurs to me

happens like through the lineage. I always feel like that's a very shamanic observation though there's that's not just there but I always associate that part of your work especially, right? Because not everybody emphasizes that as strongly.

And that's like kind of like the shamanic principle as far as I understand it. Not a shaman per se,

but been hanging around with someone for a long time. [laughter]

Well, I don't say that I am. I You know what I mean? That those words don't

I'll give you your props. I'll anoint you shaman there. Medieval Medieval Times. I hereby dub [laughter] the shaman.

So for those who don't know,

sir shaman

medieval times is a is a place outside in uh outside of of the the Chicago, a local suburb where they perform like a medieval themed experience with, you know, complete with jousting and horses and wenches and turkey legs and mead or beer or whatever the case is. So, yeah,

I was giving you I wasn't even trying to like go that kitsy, [laughter] but it's true, right? You can go that way, too. I was giving you a full Not that I like am the king in this conversation, but I was like, "Okay, let's let's give you your props." Yeah, I'm a I like I'm a medieval times shaman. That's good. [laughter]

That's like the Qanon shaman but worse.

Come on. Dressed like Merlin.

Yeah. Big buffalo. What did that guy wear on his head? I forgot. Buffalo horns or something.

Yeah, definitely.

U Yeah. Uh but you know that idea of like tracing things back to the family lineage, there's a truth to that, right?

The other thing that hit me and I don't know how you'll double back to it, but I'll throw it out to be considered later maybe. I've again like thinking a lot about this metacognition stuff and listening to these things about the yungian perspective you know there's a lot of like this idea that this subject that's viewing things is an interesting phenomenon you might say because it can be on the one hand it's the filter through which you see things so it's part of the subjectivity right but it's also something that you can then look at too it's has a funny quality to it can be both the subject and the object you can look at your way of seeing the world and kind of go okay this is how I filter things but if I decide to turn my attention a certain way I can also look at that thing

and like challenge that and say hey well that thing is looking at the world a certain way maybe that's not entirely right now I have like a metacognition on top of a metacognition or something

but it is like that you know our identity if you want to say it that way or our ego or whatever word you want to use is both the filter through which we see things acting as kind of like the subjective side of things and it's also something that we can take a step back and actually look at too. And that's kind of interesting observation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. It can become an object and then you can change and evolve it. So you don't always have to see things the same way. Yeah.

That's the hope. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Very cool.

Yeah. So we have these kind of like these patterns, these reflexes, these emotional responses that began as coping strategies that were useful for survival or success um in this time in this lifetime or previous ones. uh they are they develop resiliency. However, they're always ready. They're always ready. They're always continuous. And you can knock one down and it'll come right back up. It's not a thing to be killed or anything else. It's you have to adapt to the adaptation. And so I kind of call this organized chaos.

And then I asked the people I I said, "All right, well, I want I want everybody to think about this, right? So we have all these emotional, psychological, whatever these patterns, these responses, these influences inside of us that are there that are latent that are waiting for a stimuli. Okay, I use the image of like a a dinner table. Okay, so you have to kind of use a little im imagination here. So dinner table, we got Thanksgiving coming up here pretty soon. This episode will come out just before Thanksgiving. So um perfect. And we are recording it. We we rarely do this, but uh we're recording this on Veterans Day. So, happy Veterans Day to anybody who uh little little little belated by the time this comes out, but thank you for everybody who served and thank you everybody who uh is a family member and helps support or friend and help support those who serve. So, uh brief aside,

I should say that goes for Daniel, too, because he served. So,

we're all we're all in service of something, you know.

Yeah. Well, you you you did your you did your thing. So, yeah. And you've talked about in previous episodes, so you know, thank thanks for what you did. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. So, we have this this uh dinner table. All right. And in each of the chairs is one of your patterns. And we'll just use them. We'll call them emotions for now, but they're really more patterns. So, in one chair, there's anger. In another chair, there's jealousy. Another chair there's guilt, there's sadness, there's joy, there's whatever. I always like to ask the question uh and it is a bit of a a bit of a joke but um look who's talking now which is a movie from the 80s where there was a talking baby.

Oh yeah yeah yeah

yes John Travolta

like John Travolta

yeah John Travolta and Bruce Willis or whatever else you know

uh Ted Dansen maybe

maybe you know so something like this but there was a talking baby look who's talking

the one where like the the or is that three men in a baby I can't remember. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway,

okay. Now, this is the one where he's just the dad with the talking baby. Got it.

Yeah. That John Travolta is the dad with the talking baby. Correct.

Okay. Okay. Throw.

But, so I asked that question. Look who's talking because it is it. You do have the ability to turn your attention like Eric talked about a few minutes ago towards the inside and see who it is that has the microphone, who's sitting at the head of the table, who's making the decisions, and is that the right pattern or we'll say emotion. Is that the right emotion or the right response for all of these situations? And if the answer is no, well then why is that one why does that one particular thing have the largest chair or why does it always have access to the microphone? These are questions that you can ask and should be asking so as not to be subject to the a very similar response for different situations. It doesn't make any sense. You know, they say uh if uh you're a hammer, the world becomes, you know, a na everything in the world becomes a nail. Well, the same thing goes for us. If we respond to the same things or we respond in the same way to different things, that's literally the definition of insanity. So, there's a bunch of crazy people running around, us included, because we have these very similar responses. So part of my bringing this up is to help people see the repetitive nature of our own identity essentially you know and the desire hopefully to change and work on some of the perspective that we have so not to always do the same thing over and over and over again. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I was teaching I teach a class on psychology for like traditional Chinese med student medical students, right, as part of my teaching stuff. And um we were just talking about personality disorders today,

right? Where you get the real extreme of that where the person has one chair is so dominant that like it it's always on like that person will never give up the mic.

They're always holding the mic, right? and uh and uh even when it doesn't make any sense anymore like drop the freaking mic and give the mic up to somebody else they can't. So you know you get to the extremes of that we can diagnose thing those things as like different kinds of personality disorders the person can't turn it off and they can't adapt

right um so you know that did come to mind right you know we all have maybe little potential mini versions of that though right where is that why is that particular aspect of myself always like hogging the mic

you know like drop the mic let somebody else get up there and like sing a tune or two right

this also kind of struck me as a little bit as of a zen thing too. Um, and I think Dowist stuff as well. We've been on a little bit of a a Chinese Dowist mode in some of our Chinese medical things we've been doing in the last few episodes. But, you know, there is a kind of an idea of like flow and part of the the ability to be able to flow is to like pass the mic

to the other parts of yourself that need to react in that situation so you can respond in the most uh effective way possible. Even that word effective doesn't really fully cover it, but the most spontaneously powerful way possible. Well, if you're always like singing the same song, right? You know, you just grab the mic and you just sing that same tune.

Over and over and over again. What is love? Or whatever the song is you're just singing over [laughter] and over again. People like that isn't appropriate for this particular get together anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the funeral, sir. You got to like lip lip the thing, you know, flip the jukebox onto something else. That energy box has to go someplace else. But I think in the zen of it, they do make that as kind of the virtue that like you can move in a fluid way.

Right. You're not stuck in that one mode with the one speaker with the big ass on the one chair.

Yeah. Um Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

So all of all of this is kind of the background and then

can I say one more thing about Daniel? I didn't want to confluent it. But the thing that's interesting about that too, again, I was thinking about the Jung book when you were talking about it well, is that it's almost like you can have different centers of consciousness. And that seems like a weird thing to think about because we always feel like we're just us.

I'm just me.

But when you actually look more closely, you realize, oh no, I'm not just me. It is like

little different mini personalities inside the main personality and you can begin to get a vision of that. And I mean, I think it's a powerful observation. So I just wanted to throw that out too.

Yeah. Yeah. And I and I call all of this

Yeah. But I think when you first start meditating, you realize how true that is.

Wow. There's that. I I think I'm holding the mic, but this person is like they're shouting over there too, right? And they got their opinion,

right? And it's almost like

I mean, it's a little bit related to like in the extreme of like dissociative identity disorder or something, you know, where people get multiple personalities and

that's the extreme of that. But there's little mini versions of that kind of experience that you can kind of realize as you start to self-reflect. Right.

Yeah. And it's, you know, some people also have names for their other parts of their personalities. Usually it's the darker parts given by our loved ones. Oh, that's uh that's the Terminator, you know? Oh, look who's here. You know what I mean? Like it's it's a I don't know if you know I know a couple people like this. They have sort of pet names for aspects of their personality.

I sometimes call it like my inner dad or something. My dad was pretty volatile. [laughter] That was the Neil Baker personality coming out. Doesn't come out too often. Came out over the weekend on my son.

My son actually went for Halloween as Dexter. I don't know if you ever watched that show back in the day, but he had

I I I know of it.

He had like the dark passenger, right? Which was the always the thing that was like pulling him towards these kind of violent things. And he would kind of he would kind of debate his dark passenger inside of himself. And to be honest, he would talk with his dad or other people in his mind and they would show that in the show because he had an inner version of his dad, too.

You know, that was another person who was holding the mic inside his own mind or something. But anyways, it crossed my mind.

Mhm.

So all of this is in the background, but what is in the foreground? Well, in the foreground is the complexity of life, right? And that situations are not easily navigated just in general. And decisions have consequences and rewards. And we have to eventually come to a place in which we decide to do or not do to to act or not act. And if we are going to act and what decision are we going to make because things have to be done. We can't just stay in a state of like frozenness. We're always making decisions. We're always doing something. The question is is who is in charge primarily when those decisions are being made for ourselves, our work or or um whatever else. And so the goal then is to practice observation when there are lower amount of variables on us in in a state of quote unquote meditation so that we are are in better connection with the people at the dinner table with the person who's holding the microphone. So more regularly we can decide from a place that has benefit for more than just ourselves and sometimes even just benefiting ourselves benefits other people because if we think I I believe and Eric you could totally you know say as you like I think if it's in service to us it generally is in service to other people and if you're not choosing from a a place of like instantaneous choice that you think it through a little bit that more more beings, more people, the situation will end up better than not. If you take the time to actually see it through and I don't necessarily mean logically, you know, I think people are quite stuck on like using logic for everything. Logic works wonderful, you know, but it's not the only tool. I'm just saying whatever tool you want to use. If you're more a more of an artistic person and you like to feel things in your body or you like to take the time to journal about things or write about it or go for a walk or whatever, you do whatever it is that you need to do in order to help yourself come to a better place of ease with all of those uh emotions or patterns inside of you so that you can be I don't know in in in communion with the outcome, whatever that outcome might be. you're a little bit more uh open if that makes sense.

Well, I think part of it is like you're kind of making an interesting point, right? You're talking to a group of lawyers and part of what you're trying to say to my ears is like, okay, we're going to do this special exercise of like quieting everything down.

I think you used the word like in the the external environment there's a lot more variables going on. So now we're going to take away the variables. That's almost like sciency sounding language, but there's a truth, right? it turned down the number of variables so we can just concentrate on the things that we can work on like in the moment. So we're going to turn out these other things and they'll give us a chance to go through and focus our attention on like that smaller array of array of variables that now are sort of more internal or something like that. But in part what you're saying is you're doing that in preparation so that you can act on the world in a more effective way. So you're kind of bridging that gap. To my ears you're making that point, right? Mhm.

And then um you know once you have that you're able to do things again in a more again the word effective doesn't even really fully cover it but in a more powerful and beneficial way.

So um and I think that gets to the idea of like meditation is concentration on a virtuous object or something because the thing that you do to make yourself better is probably going to not only make things better for you but make things better for like other people too,

right? Right? So, if I make myself better, I'm probably going to be a better dad

or I'll probably be a better uh doctor or a better teacher or who whatever it is I'm involved with. I'm just going to be better at those things because I'm just sort of better,

So, you know, that can happen in that way. The division up into different aspects of the of like components of the self or something is kind of interesting to me too. And I don't want to take go us off off uh off flow with this but that is interesting because you know if you really are if you're talking to a group of lawyers for example they probably have like a lawyer part of themselves that they can tap into.

You know and that part of themselves again can be very quote unquote effective.

Right. You can get into that flow very easily. Right.

The same way like we were talking about athleticism earlier. If you're an athlete, there's a certain part where like, okay, this becomes so natural to me

that I can kind of do this in a flowing way, right?

In the Dowist world, this comes up too, or in the Zen world, I have like a certain kind of mastery then, right?

I've gotten to a point where

this part of who I am has is so well uh conditioned, is so welldeveloped that I can just let it work spontaneously, right? And that gets back to this idea of kind of like spontaneity. I do think that something happens meditatively where a lot of times our own minds will kind of creek and grind and like hold us up. But part of the zen point or the dowist point is when you can get over that creakiness, those things that like uh uh cause you to stumble, cause you to stick. You'll flow better. And then usually when you're flowing better in that fluidity, you know, you'll just be a more powerful, effective, and beneficial person to others, you know. And like meditation has that thing. And I so I imagine if you're talking to a group of lawyers, part of what you're saying is, you know, part of your mastery is like you master your own mind and you'll just be a more effective person representing your clients, produce better results in that sense, too. It's it's efficacious in that way, you know.

So with the last So that's okay. So all of that's the thing, right? Big big long introduction in order to get us to a moment of decision, right? because that's what this is kind of like focused on. It's like choosing or or acting we could say in the in the regular world because I want it to be tangible. All right, the last maybe 10 15 minutes here, we're going to go over kind of how to and um I want to give a the structure for which people can or they'll say the mindset okay the kind of uh not boundaries but guidelines for people to approach basically any practice any kind of meditative practice whatsoever or any kind of practice at all really whether Whether you're working, whether you're talking with a friend, whether you're doing some kind of creative project, whether you're meditation, whether you're exercise, whether you're whatever for me, this is the way in which that you you do it. Uh some of these are kind of like traditional Tibetan ways of how they discuss it. Eric, feel free to add in at any point. Um, but I'm gonna kind of go over it and then give like my interpretation of how it fits for our language currently. All right. So, the how-to, there's sort of three uh three pieces to it. One is no distraction, two is no control, and three is no work. Now, I intentionally prefer not to use I just did it, but I prefer not to use negation when describing things. Why? And when I say negation, I mean no. So, I've been using this example for the last two week and a half now. So, I'll use it again. Don't think about the pink elephant. The first thing you think about immediately is the pink elephant, right? That is what now I don't want you to think about that. So I have to intentionally or we use a different word purposefully move somebody or myself towards where I want to go. So you know think about GPS and your car. You put your address in wherever you're going. It says at the light don't turn left. [laughter] You don't assume that they mean go right. You just know that they don't. But you you kind of want to now. You're like, why not though? Why can't I? I I sort of want to. That's all that you brought up. You could have brought up anything, but you said don't turn left. Okay. So, I'm intentionally going to try and not use negation because I want to focus on where we're wanting to go. All right. So, no distraction. I like the word present for this. Um, your mind is in the moment. You're aware of your surroundings or and your surrounding could just simply be yourself, but you're aware of your self, aware of your surroundings. To me, this is present. So, the first part of this is being in in the moment or being aware of what's going on. Eric, do you want to add anything to that particular part for no distraction? Another thing I would say is like there's a lot of different ways to kind of do this meditation gig.

And this definitely has a feeling of something if you're talking to a group of people where you want to get them something that's effective and again that word and powerful again that word.

But also accessible, this is a good way to do this, right?

Okay.

If you're going to meditate on like a mandelola or something, you'll be present in the moment meditating on the mandelola, but you're not really giving that kind of practice. I'm just saying for other people who do kinds of meditations. Yes. You're doing something and this has a vibe of like to my ears again of like a and I know you've been interested in this lately so I'm hearing it right of what they sometimes call like the great perfection zouen.

This has a bit of a zchen mind. Let's work out of the mind from a natural space or something

and we'll make the natural sort of process of things the meditative experience. So, I'm just throwing it out there, you know, because we people are listening, everyone's gonna have their own framework that they come from with this, you know, and I just wanted to use that word and use that phrase, Zoen, great perfection because it has that sound to it,

right? But again, if you're talking to a group of people who are uh like, you know, they're lawyers, they're new to this. You're like giving it also is in a in a strange way, even though it's a very deep practice, it's also accessible. Yes. Right.

To someone who are just like, okay, I'm just coming in. give you something that can be that has an accessibility to it.

This has that quality. Okay, cool. I just was hearing that. So, I just wanted to like use that phrase.

Yes. Yeah.

Uh, okay. So, that's that's the first one, no distraction or better to say aware, present in the moment. The second one, no control. And this one I call uh I like to say being with what is or being with what is arising. Shorter said you're free. Okay. You're boundless a sense of boundlessness. And the practical aspects of this or the practical components of this are meaning that like you are observing and again again this is in a meditative state or this is in a creative state or in a conversation state um that you're you are with what is happening. So first you're here then you're you're a witness or you're an experiencer to what is arising what is going on and you are simply aware of what is going on. you're being with it. So if it's pleasure, you're with pleasure. If it's discomfort, you're with discomfort. If it's with a conversation with someone that you're enjoying, you're allowing yourself to enjoy that conversation. And if it's a difficult conversation with a family member or something else as you know uh holidays are coming up so it's probably going to be some charged conversations with people who we uh are related to but do not see eye to eye on many things or anything. Um, can you be with that discomfort without immediately going to the pattern of reactivity, with the pattern of uh retribution or I'm going to show this person or they're so [...] wrong, what an idiot. You know what I'm saying? Something like this. So, having the spaciousness, if you will, to be with whatever is there. I guess the word freedom is interesting in that because that word freedom has again one of the words of the day. Um this is a drinking game. We have effectiveness and flow and and these other words but you know when you look at it part of the freedom of that is in the flow of the of the of the thing being allowed to go. You use the word freedom and that's a kind of a freedom

where the freedom is that I'm going to like allow the like this process to unfold in a natural way right

with a sense of like uh

yeah openness and flowh

has a zouani vibe to it for sure

oh yeah

or yeah a kind of a naturalenness to it meditating on the natural flow of the mind or something

yeah very that's a

and allowing it to flow

yeah yeah that's a good that's a good Okay. Okay. The last one then is no work. No work. So, and I call this one effortless or balanced. So, no work doesn't mean not doing anything. I think that is probably the dichotomy of of this particular description. I and I use the analogy of a teeter totter also known as a seessaw for those who are aware of such things. If you have or a triple beam scale, right? But you have something on one side and you want to balance it with something on the other side. Well, what does that mean? That means that you have to move those objects around on that scale or on that teeter totter or seesaw so that they're balanced. But that requires some amount of effort. However, once they are balanced, you only need to do minimal adjustments. Minimal adjustments to them in order to keep them balanced. And so that is the effortless part. That is the flow part, Eric, that I believe that you were discussing earlier. And it's not that it's without effort at all. It's just that there is some effort required to get us there and then we have to sort of maintain it. But that amount of uh we call it caloric expenditure should be very low in comparison to the amount of energy that it requires to get us to that point. And so this is discussing that place of being in balance and the effortless or the ease to which we should be able to um adjust one side or the other to keep us there. And I guess it's kind of like um I don't surf, but you know, like sometimes you could use this kind of metaphor, right? I'm going to ride a wave. So, in order to ride a wave, I'm going to have to put some energy into like maintaining myself on the wave, right?

But I'm also going to try to make maintain my flow on the wave. So, you know, if I were to say that like I got to do nothing, [laughter] that wouldn't be quite right either, right? It's going to take some effort for me to go through and

keep myself within the flow of the of that experience, right? To be able to do that. That's not totally totally effortless.

On the other hand, there's a naturalism in that, right? It's going to take a little bit to like

reenter myself on that wave or, you know, reenter myself within that flow of what's happening. Yes.

Right.

Yeah. And so all of this then is to say that we are intentionally trying to create the container for which things are arising within inside of us and acknowledging that we are the arising. Simultaneously we are the container. The arising doesn't necessarily have to affect or taint the container, but the container is not limited to the space that it occupies all the time. It can be greater or smaller, but better to go bigger because, you know, an eight pound bowling ball is nothing in the infinitude of space, but in a uh shoe box, it dominates the entirety of it. Do you know what I mean?

Very poetically said. [laughter]

Yeah. Well,

well, I mean, like, okay, because I don't

No, you got it. You got it. I got Well, you know, like uh I wouldn't be a good student of the Daly Lama if I didn't make this additional point because he talks about this. It's kind of interesting like this has a Z like a Zchin flavor to it and Daly Lama is kind of unusual in that he does uh vajayana tantric stuff, but he also like likes this zchen stuff too, right? He's he's an open person. The tradition he comes from is much more of one type, but he also, you know, is open to the zen thing. I've always respected that in him and I kind of like love these Zchen things too. Dowism and Zen had these qualities and I can remember talking to Gak Ripache rest in peace ripe about this and he was like okay yeah for you you know the Daly Lama does that so you know maybe you can try to do that a little bit too and like to whatever extent you can in your own way. Um but what the one of the points he'll make about this and he's very insistent on this is that there is this idea that there's a deepest part to all of who we are right nature or some core thing

and so on the one hand you're talking about this idea look I'm going to let things flow and I'm not going to

be forceful with this right

but one of the things he points out is that as you get into the spontane spontaneity of those things at the core of that you start to notice wait a minute there's this deeper part of who I am too. Right? So, it's a it's a it's a deep technique in the sense that like it allows you to flow in this natural way, but at the same time there you're able to have these moments of observation that goes like wait a minute who's at the core of all of this this huge expansive blissful part of me that's there and if I'm just allowing myself to like even look at the natural thought of my own mind I'll find that hidden

like within it or something right so it has that quality too it's not necessarily something you say to a group of lawyers when you're just giving like you know the the basic introduction to get a hold of this stuff. But that is the point that he raises, right?

Even in allowing that spontaneity to flow and you're dealing with what you might call in some ways the more superficial parts of the mind, right?

You know the if you want to use a water image, you're like more riding the waves on the top. You're not into the deepest parts, but that's all water.

You took you took the words right out of my mouth.

You'll find the water within it, right? If you kind of go that way.

Yeah. So that this then gives you the opportunity to tap into what they call like timeless awareness or direct sensing or non-conceptuality. This very authentic state of mind that everybody has such that you can cultivate your own authenticity which is again drinking game word we use all the time.

Right. But you you you dip into that place which has everything contained in it such that you can find out whatever it is that you need to find out about yourself or whatever it is that you're working on or whatever or just be in that place. And then when you then leave that place and you go back into the world of forms and decisions and chaos and brown colored glasses and all the things, you will end up being far more connected to who it is that you are. So now your decisions, what you bring into those, those are the colored glasses that you're wearing now. So if that's indigo or rainbow or purple or brown or whatever, you've made the effort to change your perception based on the on on going into the, you know, I don't know, the pool of infinity, if you will, and then coming out and taking that and having that influence your decisions. I tend to think of the like over our podcasting over the years, I tend to kind of think of authenticity as sort of that Zen Dowist flow.

I'm able to allow myself to flow. And then maybe in that you start to realize like, oh, that part of myself that wanted to hog the mic, they really aren't hogging the mic anymore.

There's a kind of a flow that happens and then nobody's hogging the mic.

So, you can get into that space. the the music flows very smoothly and everybody's like singing in unison together maybe more often or maybe that's a stretching the metaphor but you know the idea is that you feel like okay there's a flow to this right

yeah and um and so I look at that as kind of the authenticity thing and you can find this you know as you as you begin to get more into this you'll find like oh I don't stumble over my words as much I don't freeze in the moment I I I'm able to respond in a way that feels natural to authentic is the word, right, in the moment, right? So, there's that piece and then there's this deeper piece of like, well, what's the core of every living thing? That kind of deeper spiritual question that's always like hovering around, right, within these exercises, too. And you can kind of get to both of those both of those sweet spots. Kind of get the authenticity flow thing and also get, oh, no, wait a minute. There's that underlying part that's there, too.

All right. I don't know if I was I very rare for me to do this, but there's kind of a Zogchun song.

Uh by song they mean just like verses. It's pretty short, so I'll just throw it out and maybe it's something we'll comment on foreshadowing. We'll do a longer one in future

future episodes, but as you were talking I was like, "Oh yeah, I was thinking about this."

Um so sometimes it's called uh it says a weird name, the wonderful cuckoo song of spontaneous presence.

Oh,

or song of awareness. So it says uh um oh magn I'll paraphrase but oh magnificent being listen we're all the magnificent being aren't we

that's right

we're the magnificent beings the nature of multiplicity is non-dual you've been using that kind of language a lot right lots of experiences lots of stuff but in the end they're all happening within the container of our own mind right is non-dual and things themselves are pure and simple right again that sort of spontaneous natural version of meditation, right? The the the feeling of like the puress and the simplicity of uh you know like the mind in itself or when you allow things to flow along uh being here and now is construct free. The spontaneous thing you were talking about there and it shines out in all forms always good. That's a weird thing to say, always good. But in the flow of the mind, there's a certain like there's a certain joy in that that can happen,

So regardless of what's happening, even if it is shitty and you don't even have to put your glasses on to notice it's shitty, there still can be kind of like a joy, a spontaneous joy or something like that, just in that feeling of the mind and the feeling of the flow of the mind. It is already perfect. So exertion is redundant and spontane spontaneity is ever present. something like that little paraphrase. So, I thought I'd share it because it's so much within the wheelhouse of what you were trying to

I think with these lawyers, it's like it's like that's the quality that you're trying to get.

On the one hand, like super profound, but on the other hand, especially, I think I get what you were doing. It's something to share with people that it's like it's accessible, right?

It's building on the natural kind of quality that you can kind of focus on within yourself.

All right. Cool.

Sweet. Yeah. Well, I want I want to give just the last two pieces here. Um

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no, no. It's it's it's all good. It's all part of it. Um, you know, again, slightly poetic and things like this. So, so some dichotoies, right? Because you're talking about being what's in the container and the container at the same time. So, always nice to have a bit of a [...] if you will, or some kind of puzzle to think about. Uh, and I just like these because they, you know, go together. But how do we be both stillness and movement? How do we be silence and sound? These are the kind of questions, the balancing of the yin and yang, the light and dark, the masculine, the feminine, the both sides, the action versus the non-action, right within us. So we can we can see what's arising and not also be it. And then can we be in the world and also not be a part of it at the same time? Can I acknowledge what's going on around me is [...] [...] but then not be sucked in such that I am um influenced in a way that I am not as effective as a helper as I could be as if I was not to be. This is the this is the challenge. This is the work. This is also the goal. And so I bring all of this as uh an outpouring of my own practice, my own understanding and having the wonderful opportunity to talk to people about it. It is always an honor to be able to share things that I have learned in a cohesive way for myself to break them down so that I can assimilate them and then in the hopes then is that I am a goofball and stupid enough to fall forward and get the first down even though I was totally stuffed at the line and that some other people uh might benefit from whatever uh dribble I have comes out of my mouth that is totally uh hacking up the fine people who put much more work in putting it forth so that I could learn something in the process. So, thank you for listening everybody. Eric, final words.

Well said as a closer Daniel. I don't think there's much to say after that except that I can like you know you and I know each other so well and uh there's always been this thing that this was sort of how do you say there's things that are so deep in people you know sometimes they say in the Tibetan world this is associated with not earth or water or fire but like energy right that give us sometimes the core things that who we are as a person and for as long as I've known you you've had that that energetic flow in that direction of like I want to like learn these things and be able to share them with others, right? I want to learn. I want to learn and share. I want to learn and share, right? And uh I'm just so happy for you that you have these opportunities to do these things because I know we've known each other for so long

and you've always had this as kind of like you might say a mission statement,

People have a mission and this is kind of the energy of a mission.

Right. Not energy of a mission,

energy [clears throat] of a mission,

right? to go through and uh you know uh share these deeper things with people you know that you've learned through yourself. So I'm just really happy for you and that's you you've done that right and that's a wonderful accomplishment.

Thank you. Yeah. And so the this this come this really came um from uh there's a guy author by the name we've talked about him before Ken Mloud. uh this was from his translation of uh Tokme Zong Po's 37 practices of a bodhic satta and specifically this was on a chapter on right speech. So you know maybe

appropriate for lawyers.

Yes. Yes. So a few a few phrases then inspired inspired all of this. Uh assuming people assume this is inspired. Uh you know [laughter] we got to be we got to keep it real. So anyways, uh Eric, thank you so much for uh

doing the thing, you know, always great. I definitely appreciate it. Uh audience, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Uh like, comment, subscribe, hit us up, jinantra@gmail.com. Find us on the gram at the jin and tantra podcast. Uh you know, questions, comments, all the things. We love it. For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.

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