Craig Hamilton┃The Wisdom in Fear: How Anxiety Can Become a Path to Awakening

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He wanted everybody to feel a constant stream of evolutionary tension,
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which meant wake up, show up, rise up, you know.
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What if fear and anxiety aren't always signs that something
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has gone wrong, but sometimes invitations to become more fully alive?
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Today I sit down with meditation teacher and spiritual educator
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Craig Hamilton to explore why the goal of spiritual practice
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is isn't necessarily to eliminate anxiety, but to transform our
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relationship with it. Craig introduces the idea of sacred anxiety,
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the awareness that our lives are finite, our choices matter,
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and we don't want to reach the end having held
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ourselves back from our deepest potential. We also explore why
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taking meaningful risks can become a powerful spiritual practice, and
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how Craig's practices of allowing and not knowing can help
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us stop controlling and labeling and resisting our experience and
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discover a deeper kind of freedom. I'm really happy to
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be here today with longtime friend and colleague, Craig Hamilton. Welcome, Craig.
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Hi, thanks. Great to be here again.
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Oh, great to have you. I always look forward to
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our conversations. So I'm going to share your bio and
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then we'll jump right in. Okay. Craig Hamilton is an educator,
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renowned meditation practitioner and spiritual trailblazer, who brings enlightenment to practicality,
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unlocking the codes to our highest human potential. With over 16,000
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graduates in 85 countries, his online courses offer up-to-date spiritual
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tools grounded in a deep understanding of the human condition.
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Craig's insights stem from decades of research at the forefront
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of spiritual practice and consciousness exploration. Craig began his journey
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in Eastern ashrams and monasteries, later contributing to cutting-edge conscious
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evolution laboratories in the West. With over 17,000 hours of
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personal meditation, he integrates intensive spiritual practice with expertise gained
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from his role as senior editor of What is Enlightenment magazine.
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He is also a founding member of Ken Wilber's Integral
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Institute and recognized as a teacher of teachers. Hamilton's influence
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extends to leading spiritual figures, underscoring his role, decoding our
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highest human capacities. So, Greg, you've been... doing this work,
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as I described in your bio, of really integrating East
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and West, the spiritual technologies, the psychologies, the insights, the wisdom,
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from both Eastern and Western cultures, and really bringing this
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into kind of cutting-edge human evolution, which is really grounded
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in today, when we have access, this amazing time, when
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we have kind of access to all the world's spiritual
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technologies at once.
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So.
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I'm wondering what kind of core lessons maybe having to
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do with experiences of period anxiety were catalytic in your
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journey in becoming the teacher you are today and what
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you're able to offer today. Maybe sharing some experience that
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was catalytic in that.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It's obviously something that you know, all of us wrestle
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with and that certainly some people feel really debilitated by
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and struggle with deeply. And, you know, I do think
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that enlightenment traditions and just the whole path of spiritual
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awakening brings a unique lens to the question and ultimately
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brings perhaps the most profound kind of liberation we can
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experience from those things, which isn't making them go away.
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It's not making fear and anxiety go away, but it's
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coming to a different relationship to all feelings.
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Including those.
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But I, uh, in, in reflecting, and I'll take this
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into your question, but just kind of reflecting on this
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theme a little bit, I was thinking about a quote
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from Brian Swim, who you may, you may know he's
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an author and kind of evolutionary visionary, but he, uh,
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he tells the story of the Hawk and the mouse
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and how the mouse wishes that the Hawk would, would
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fly slower and, not be so fierce so that it
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wouldn't have to work so hard to escape the hawk.
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And he says, but if we took that all the way,
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the mouse would eventually become kind of an inert blob,
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lose all of its agility and not reach its potential,
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whatever a mouse's potential is. And that in some way,
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the pursuit of the hawk, having the predator, having that
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fear drives the mouse to be its best. And So
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he takes a quote from that story, which is something like,
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we should wish one another as much stress as we
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can creatively assimilate. As much stress as we can creatively
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assimilate being the key, because of course, too much stress, which,
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and I'm going to, I'm just using the word stress
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because that was the term he's using in that quote.
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Take that into, you know, what is... In a sense,
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fear and anxiety are responses to stressors. They're responses to
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the pressures of life and they're a place we go
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with that. So, the reason I'm bringing it up is
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because you asked me about my own journey.
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And as you know, I.
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Was 13 years back in my 20s and 30s, I
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was a student of a spiritual teacher named Andrew Cohen.
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And he was a teacher who sort of tried to
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take that idea, you know, all the way.
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Teacher as hawk. Teacher as hawk.
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You know, and of course, he's not the first to
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have done that. We read some of the Buddhist literature,
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you know, we find stories of Zen masters who took
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that approach with their students or, you know, in the
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Tibetan literature, we have some stories of teachers who were
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incredibly fierce, had their students living in terror. in a sense,
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and saw that as the most potent way to catalyze
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spiritual awakening and or higher evolution. So when you asked
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about my own experience, you know, because you wrote, you
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mentioned in an email yesterday that you were going to
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start with this question and I might want to reflect
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on it. And I kind of thought initially, I was like,
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I didn't think of like a moment of fear, but
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I kind of thought, but my, you know, much of
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my early spiritual training was living in a context where
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you know, the, yeah, where we were being put under, put,
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put to the fire all the time and kind of lit.
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And what that means practically, I mean, to just boil
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it down, it means somebody, you know, you're, you have
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a person in your life, a teacher, or, you know,
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this could be a spiritual partner or a friend or
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spouse or whatever, but you have a person in your
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life who is going to hold you to your highest
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potential in every moment and, And is going to challenge
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you anytime you deviate from it or anytime they perceive
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you to deviate from it. And is going to push
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and push for you to always show up from.
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Your best self.
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Which to the ego, to the contracted self, the small self,
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the conditioned self that feels so wedded to its limitations.
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And so defending of all of its kind of weaknesses
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and challenges. You know, this is the ultimate challenge. You know,
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it's the ultimate test and challenge. And obviously one that
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we could go on and on about how fraught it
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is with potential for a lot of damage and wounding
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to people who aren't maybe ready for that challenge in
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a given moment. And so I'm not advocating that approach
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in my own teaching.
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I'm very different from all that.
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But it's interesting because, see, in the traditions world, You know,
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in the Western traditions, we have the idea of fear
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of God as a deep.
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Core kind of thing.
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That's in the monastic tradition, you know, that they wanted
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their monks to live kind of in fear of God,
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which means fear of, you know, making mistakes on a
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soul level that would, you know, in that theistic context,
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you could argue leads to punishment. But in the East,
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it was kind of that we had an analogy, which
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was fear of karma. And fear of the ripple effects
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of one's errors into other people's lives, but then ultimately
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into one's own, you know, psyche and.
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Life, etc.
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So, these ideas are deep in the spiritual traditions. And
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I just kind of wanted to anchor our conversation in
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that for a little bit because, of course, most of
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the ways we would tend to talk about fear and
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anxiety in a spiritual context or a transformational context would
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be about, well, we can use meditative practice to observe
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our fears and anxieties and see them as just arising
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phenomena that ultimately have no influence over us. And ultimately, therefore,
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we can gain a kind of deep inner peace that
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survives the vicissitudes of life, including our emotional ups and
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downs and We can reach this place. And that is
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the goal. So, I mean, I'll probably talk a lot
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about that today. I'm sure you've been talking a lot
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about that in your summit. But there's at least a
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perspective in which things that cause us fear, certain things,
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might be our most potent transformational catalyst. And there's another
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conversation about fear and anxiety and internal tension and You know,
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my teacher Andrew back then used to call it evolutionary tension.
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He wanted everybody to feel a constant stream of evolutionary tension,
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which meant wake up, show up, rise up, you know,
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which again, you know, is part of the picture.
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So maybe I'll pause there and we can Well.
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I'm actually very glad and grateful you started there, Andrew,
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because I think that is part of our discussion is
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fear and anxiety is very much being part of the
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human condition and catalytic to our growth, to our evolutionary growth.
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And at the same time, as you acknowledged, can be
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debilitating for people at times. And so how do we
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titrate that for ourselves and when we're holding spaces for
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others to be at that place where people have the
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creative ability in that moment to to have that serve
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as a catalyst rather than it be something that's debilitating
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or damaging, right? And in some ways, I kind of
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lean in a little direction of buyer beware, student beware.
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I mean, we're all kind of responsible to figure out
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how to take care of ourselves and meet our lives.
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And at the same time, for a lot of different reasons,
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many of them tied to various forms of injustice, a
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lot of people are in a situation where they're just
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you know, they're, they're challenged to handle, handle those things.
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So I, I think, you know, we're always in that
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tension between what, what can really serve, uh, the challenging
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wake up now message, as well as the compassionate, nurturing, supportive, uh, message.
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And I, I don't think we can land squarely in
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one or the other. And I'm also very grateful myself.
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My old, my first teacher, my root teacher, Trump was
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renowned as being very fierce. He was, uh, he had
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this idea of continually being on the spot. And, uh,
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If you were around him, you were on the spot
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and you never knew what was going to occur and
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what you're going to be called to do. But he
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was also the kindest human being I ever met. So
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that was a nice balance there. But I think that
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is very much part of our conversation here. And so,
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you know, in terms of anxiety can show up in
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different ways for us. We can experience mental anxiety. We
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can experience emotional anxiety. For some of us, it literally
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becomes a physical experience. And sometimes I think when people
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are suffering from anxiety in a very debilitating way and
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people try to tell them, well, it's in your mind
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or it's psychological or emotional, they're saying, no, this is
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a physical thing I'm experiencing. You're not getting it, you know.
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So it can be physical. And then there's also a
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kind of existential anxiety, which I think is when we–
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if we find ourselves in a spiritual path and working
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with contemplative practices and practices of embodiment and awareness, we
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very often start, even as we relax more and open more,
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sometimes we get in contact with this ground-level anxiety and
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fear that's kind of part, it's in our biology, it's
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part of the human condition, and there's this almost existential
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anxiety that is, we could experience oh that's bad it's
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uncomfortable or oh that's actually the life force that's the
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energy that's right right and so learning how to learning
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how to be with that and So I think what
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we're talking about in this summit is very much how
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to help people heal some of the trauma that may
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be the root of a lot of the more debilitating anxiety,
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how to work with anxiety overall so it just doesn't
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become overwhelming. There's a lot of environmental anxiety today in
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our world because the world's so polarized and there's so
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much things going on. But then also very much how
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to not demonize fear or anxiety, realize there are human
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experiences or human emotions are part of our experience. which
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can be a call. They could actually be calling us
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to deeper work. And so I'm wondering if you could
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talk about, you've kind of been pointing at this already,
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but the whole relationship between human evolution, evolutionary consciousness, as
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it was described by Andrew and you, and then this
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this ground level fear that's pretty baked into our biology
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for good reasons to keep us alive. I mean, there's intelligence.
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I wonder if you could talk about that kind of level. Yeah.
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And I mean, you gave a really nice kind of
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overview of many of the different forms of anxiety, which
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is great. Let's not pretend we're talking about one thing, right?
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We're talking about a lot of things.
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Yeah.
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And I think it might be interesting to make a
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distinction between, because you talked about existential anxiety and that
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could kind of refer to two different, you know, a
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couple different things potentially. And I might, you know, in
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that category, let's just say in that existential category of anxiety,
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which is, you know, kind of like The anxiety of living.
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You know, the anxiety of, wow, I'm a human being alive.
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I'm vulnerable. I'm in this world that's beyond my control.
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All these things are happening and, you know, my life
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is limited and, you know, my opportunities are limited and
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just this kind of base level anxiety. I think I
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kind of want to almost talk about two different kinds
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because I feel like There's a kind of existential anxiety
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that is, I think someone coined the term sacred anxiety
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for this. It's our, like, if we're all really honest, right?
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If we're spiritual practitioners or we're people who are somewhat awake.
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To the context of our lives.
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There's a part of us that if we're healthy, is
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kind of like, wow, I don't want to blow it
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with my life.
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You know, I want my life to matter. I want
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it to mean something.
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I don't want to look back on my life and
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feel like I compromised my values or I didn't reach
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for my potential or I didn't take shots that I
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could have taken, but instead I held back in fear.
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And, you know, I don't want to.
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Realized that I frittered away my time and I didn't,
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I didn't devote myself to my spiritual growth and, and,
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and development. And I didn't like take the risk to love.
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In the ways my heart wanted to love.
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You know, there's this, this kind of anxiety, which you
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were talking about, which is a driver of our, of
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us being serious about the path. And I think at
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their best moments, the teachers that we've talked about who
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had that kind of pressure push and you know, we're
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trying to be a stand for that.
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Like, you know, stay awake, be aware.
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Like why in the Buddhist precepts when one is doing
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all the preparatory practices, do they have so much contemplation
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on like the state of this world, the shortness of
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our lives, the potential to create karma, the, you know,
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all the, the preciousness of our lives, you know, all the,
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there's all these contemplations designed to get us awake to, hey,
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it matters.
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Hey, this is, this is serious.
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Don't, don't treat your spiritual practice as recreation or as
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just something that might make you feel better. This is about,
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you know, your soul, for lack of a better word,
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you know, this is about the, the, you know, and
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your contribution, right? You know, to this event we're having now,
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that Bodhisattva ideal. You know, all of that, I think
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we can look at it through that kind of lens
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as a kind of healthy.
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anxiety.
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But again, always in that caveat of as much as
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you can creatively assimilate, right? Because that could overwhelm one
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and make one fall just, oh, it's all too much.
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I can't get out of bed. Life's too, you know,
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one gets too attuned to the fragility and intense sacred
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context of every move we make. And every action we take,
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every word, you know, and we start to feel that
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Indra's web ripple of everything I do matters.
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So much that could be debilitating.
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So, again, how much can we creatively assimilate in our growth?
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And that takes containment in all kinds of ways. But anyway,
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so I think there is that piece that's really worth
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acknowledging and looking at. And then there's another kind of
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existential anxiety. which you could argue is what spirituality is
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designed to cure, to awaken us out of. And that
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we could talk about as kind of the, you know,
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it's for lack of a better word, it's kind of
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the ego's anxiety. You know, we have a false constructed
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idea of self that we've invested a lot of emotion
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in defending and erecting and beefing up. And And yet,
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in some way, we all know, you know, on some
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visceral level that this is something that's constructed, that it's
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very shaky, that whatever self we imagine ourselves to be
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is probably, you know, isn't going to stand the test
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of time and eternity, you know. And there's like a
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kind of Yeah, angst, I would almost call it an
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existential angst in being alive, which is kind of just
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full of kind of self-doubt and doubt, a lack of
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trust in life and a lack of trust in ourselves
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and our potentials. to fully meet the moment. And there's
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just this kind of nut ball of angst that tends
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to also exist inside us that our spiritual practices are
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really aiming to unravel. and have that fall apart and
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fall to the ground and be left behind forever. And
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then that would be a definition or a way of
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looking at what spiritual liberation would be as this liberation
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into this profound life of trust, openness, flow, freedom, resilience,
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creativity that can all flow when that knot has been released.
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So, I mean, those are two pieces of this. Yeah,
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maybe I'll pause there.
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I'm very glad you brought that up. I think it's
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a really great way to position the conversation. I love
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the term sacred anxiety. Yes, you know, in many ways,
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you could say that the psychological self, the limited self
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that we create from really from birth, the minute we
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have a body, it just, you know, kind of It's
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an inevitable process. We can't go back to the womb.
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We have to start figuring out how to, you know.
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And really, what probably instinctually our being knows at that
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point and recognizes is the impermanence and groundlessness of life,
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the complete fluidity and temporal nature of it. And yet
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at six months old, we have no way of being
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with that, right? So we start creating some place to
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live where we can feel safe and feel okay. And
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everybody else is doing that. So there's this kind of
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co-navigation going on out of which we create the self.
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And to the extent that our upbringing was very benevolent, loving,
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and there was good bonding and attachment, then we'll build
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a fairly functional self-structure, but it's still a creation. It's
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a psychological creation. If our upbringing, our home situation, our
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childhood was less benevolent, less, you know, then often that
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self-structure has a lot of kinks and holes and it's
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not well constructed and we really struggle in life. But
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even for the most high functioning of us, and this
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is what we recognize on the spiritual journeys, that separate self,
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that individualized self, even though it's something that inevitably we have,
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if we have a body to navigate life with, it
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is a constructed thing. But in many ways, it was
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constructed to ward off the experience of what you're calling
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sacred anxiety. Intelligently, that same self-structure knows that it's a creation.
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There's always a fundamental kind of doubting, right? We can't
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really convince ourselves that we exist completely. And so that's
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surrounded with a kind of egoic anxiety, that the ego
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realizes its own... self-created nature and there's anxiety around that.
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But the whole thing was created to avoid that deeper
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level of what you're calling sacred society, which I really like.
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And I just want to point out two things and
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then ask you to continue. What if transformation isn't just
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about thinking differently, but feeling differently? Science shows us that
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true change happens when we align not just our minds,
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but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
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This HeartMind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
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00:23:20.089 --> 00:23:24.049
and expanded awareness. That's why I created the HeartMind All
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00:23:24.150 --> 00:23:27.500
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00:23:27.619 --> 00:23:31.660
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380
00:23:31.700 --> 00:23:36.569
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00:23:36.650 --> 00:23:41.809
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00:23:48.170 --> 00:23:52.329
powerful tools to help you shift your mindset and heart set,
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00:23:52.750 --> 00:23:57.410
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00:24:13.740 --> 00:24:16.799
and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click
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the link to learn more and start your journey today.
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by her own acknowledgement, suffered from anxiety much of her life.
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And in the Tibetan tradition, we have various deity yoga
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practices where you relate with a meditational deity. It's a feminine,
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a masculine manifestation, representation of enlightened energy. In the Vedic traditions,
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this could be related somewhat to the Ishta Devata in India.
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in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, it's some kind of representation
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of your language gets a little bit higher self or
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more authentic connection to beingness. And there are very many.
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The first one that I worked with in my own
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tradition was Vajrayogini, which is a feminine deity that you
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work with. So at any rate, long story short, Pema
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was describing to her Tibetan– one of her Tibetan teachers
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this anxiety that she felt. And she was kind of
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describing it with all her years of practice. There was
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still this kind of anxiety there. And he said, that's Vajrayogini.
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Meaning that's your higher– that's kind of your higher self that's.
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Aware of Yeah, exactly.
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You're getting in touch with this fundamental energy at a
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deeper level, and that's the doorway in. It's not around
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that or avoiding that. That's the doorway. And also, just
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another example, I don't know if you're familiar with the
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teacher Mingyur Rinpoche, he's a beloved kind of second-generation Tibetan teacher.
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I mean, given that the first generation that left Tibet,
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like Trungpa Rinpoche, and then the next generation of teachers,
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Mingyur Rinpoche, who's one of the sons of the great
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Ugin Rinpoche, the great Dzogchen. So Mingyur Rinpoche is a
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beloved teacher today, many, many best-selling books, and was renowned
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for having snuck out of his monastery and spent four
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years homeless in the very dicey areas of Nepal and India,
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and almost died in the process, wrote an incredible book
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about that. At any rate, he acknowledges that he suffers
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from anxiety. He suffered from anxiety his whole life. And so,
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you know, his practice is very much in... That's why
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he's a very accessible teacher to many because, you know,
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he's obviously a teacher with profound realization. And the example
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of what he did, leaving the security of his, you know,
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his lineage and his well-supported monastery and all the protections...
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go out and be a wandering Siddha in the wilds
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of Nepal and India. And at the same time, he
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acknowledges he's a human being with a body and he
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experiences anxiety. So I think both, you know, this whole
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idea of this interplay between, you know, being able to
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realize the artificial nature of the self-created self, which liberating
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that we can then connect with source at a greater level.
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But part of that pathway is going to be ultimately
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to deal with this sacred anxiety you're talking about, that
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level of fundamental anxiety. And so in some ways, wherever
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we are in our path, whether we're in a more
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therapeutic direction of just trying to get ourselves into a
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workable place where we have some level of creative ability
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to assimilate, be with, or whether we're dropping into the
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deeper levels of spiritual practice, This whole thing about fear
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and anxiety and having a body, it's an inevitable part
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of our journey and potentially incredibly rich part.
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Well, and yeah, I love that story. It's very interesting
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to hear that both of these, you know, beloved, renowned
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teachers shared their anxieties. I think that is kind of
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profound and helpful. And the reason, obviously, it's kind of
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profound is that most of us on the path are
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secretly or not so secretly hoping we're going to get
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to a place as soon as possible where there is
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no anxiety.
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And so when you kind of go, Oh.
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Oh, well, what would it be to live from a
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place of consciousness, wisdom, love, et cetera, even with that
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current of anxiety running through me, it, it kind of, uh,
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it can maybe help us reframe our understanding of what
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the goal might be. Because, I mean, as, as you know, well,
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as a teacher, you know, dealing with our misperceptions of
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the goal is one of the biggest things we have
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to keep clearing away because those are taking us in
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the wrong direction. And if we have a, if any
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of us have a paradigm that says, well, I'm on
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the spiritual path because I want inner peace and inner
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peace to me would mean I would never feel fear
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or anxiety.
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And then I'm.
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Looking for that state that's without it. You know, in
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many ways, I'm going to do all the wrong things
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in my practice because I'm going to try to repress
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those feelings. I'm going to try to get away from
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them when they come up. Whereas what how much more
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profound would our meditation be if we knew, oh, actually,
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The goal here is to come to a transformed relationship
475
00:29:59.490 --> 00:30:03.750
to all experience and to be able to be a
476
00:30:03.789 --> 00:30:07.519
big enough container to hold any and all human emotions
477
00:30:07.640 --> 00:30:14.440
I might experience without reaction, without falling into reactivity to
478
00:30:14.500 --> 00:30:17.529
these feelings, to be able to hold all that. that,
479
00:30:17.769 --> 00:30:19.950
you know, it's a, it's something we can then bring
480
00:30:19.990 --> 00:30:23.009
into practice. Whereas the other thing that what's the practice,
481
00:30:23.069 --> 00:30:25.329
if the practice is try to have inner peace and
482
00:30:25.390 --> 00:30:27.529
no anxiety and no fear, then you're just trying to
483
00:30:27.589 --> 00:30:31.740
control your feelings, suppress your feelings, you know, hold on
484
00:30:31.799 --> 00:30:34.720
to positive feeling, you know, you're doing everything but the
485
00:30:34.759 --> 00:30:39.259
awakening practices. So I, I think it's, uh, I think
486
00:30:39.279 --> 00:30:43.519
that's actually really instructive. Um, the other thing I was
487
00:30:43.599 --> 00:30:45.940
feeling like might be good to bring in here, um,
488
00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:50.240
to kind of maybe almost operate, bring this down to earth,
489
00:30:50.259 --> 00:30:54.680
you know, operationalize a little bit, is that there's a
490
00:30:54.740 --> 00:30:59.269
way of looking at transformational practice. And this would be
491
00:30:59.390 --> 00:31:02.349
sort of, you know, most of the time what I'm
492
00:31:02.390 --> 00:31:05.490
saying would be outside of meditation. It can happen in
493
00:31:05.509 --> 00:31:11.109
meditation too. But, you know, there's a lens on transformational practice,
494
00:31:11.170 --> 00:31:14.599
which is that one of the most transformational things we
495
00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:19.740
can ever do is take risks. You know, take risks
496
00:31:19.819 --> 00:31:22.960
for the right reasons, you know, that are all in
497
00:31:23.019 --> 00:31:27.619
alignment with the better angels of our nature, you know.
498
00:31:28.039 --> 00:31:34.230
And that idea can also help us reframe our experiences
499
00:31:34.309 --> 00:31:37.390
of fear. Because, you know, what are some of the
500
00:31:37.849 --> 00:31:41.450
anxieties and fears that are very common? They're like social fears,
501
00:31:41.990 --> 00:31:47.440
social anxieties, right? people, you know, are almost universally afraid
502
00:31:47.569 --> 00:31:49.880
of standing up in front of a crowd and speaking,
503
00:31:50.140 --> 00:31:53.970
for instance. And that's probably because somewhere back in our
504
00:31:54.029 --> 00:31:56.450
evolutionary history, if you were in front of the group,
505
00:31:56.529 --> 00:31:58.289
there was a chance you were going to end up
506
00:31:59.609 --> 00:32:03.690
as dinner or, you know, or, you know, killed or something. So,
507
00:32:03.730 --> 00:32:05.730
we have this tremendous fear of speaking.
508
00:32:05.470 --> 00:32:06.329
In front of groups.
509
00:32:07.130 --> 00:32:10.230
And many of us also have just social fears around like,
510
00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:15.099
talking to us, having a meaningful conversation with a stranger or,
511
00:32:15.539 --> 00:32:18.930
or in a, or not in a relationship with a stranger,
512
00:32:18.970 --> 00:32:21.789
with a relationship with an intimate, but speaking about something
513
00:32:21.849 --> 00:32:25.369
very difficult that feels like it's putting the relationship at risk,
514
00:32:25.670 --> 00:32:29.069
potentially confronting someone. And a lot of people will live
515
00:32:29.109 --> 00:32:32.059
in these relationships where they won't say the difficult truths.
516
00:32:32.099 --> 00:32:35.259
They won't confront the difficult things because they're afraid, well,
517
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:38.259
maybe that person would withdraw their love from me. Anyway, there's,
518
00:32:38.650 --> 00:32:42.589
Just all these kinds of social fears and anxieties that
519
00:32:42.609 --> 00:32:43.670
we live with.
520
00:32:43.690 --> 00:32:45.519
And you could.
521
00:32:45.460 --> 00:32:48.900
Argue on a spiritual path for a conscious person who's
522
00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:53.990
doing spiritual practice, meditation, awakening, to go into their day
523
00:32:54.970 --> 00:32:59.480
determined to take every good risk. And speak the truths
524
00:32:59.519 --> 00:33:02.880
that are really hard. Go ahead and, you know, talk
525
00:33:02.920 --> 00:33:06.839
to the stranger and engage them. Go ahead and, you know,
526
00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:09.259
step up in front of that group when someone's asked
527
00:33:09.319 --> 00:33:11.700
and say something. That all of these things have a
528
00:33:11.740 --> 00:33:16.410
tremendously liberating effect on our actual psyche and free us
529
00:33:16.450 --> 00:33:20.670
from our actual conditioning. Because those fears and anxieties are
530
00:33:20.730 --> 00:33:27.150
like almost the most locked in, the most potent kind of...
531
00:33:28.369 --> 00:33:32.869
knots that make up our lack of freedom, that make
532
00:33:32.930 --> 00:33:37.940
up our unenlightenment. And so, because often we kind of think, well, okay,
533
00:33:39.170 --> 00:33:42.420
I want to do meditation because it's, and I mean,
534
00:33:42.440 --> 00:33:44.799
and I encourage this too, you know, meditation is a
535
00:33:44.839 --> 00:33:49.059
very safe context to confront one's everything because you're just
536
00:33:49.099 --> 00:33:51.140
sitting there. You're not going to hurt anyone. You're not
537
00:33:51.180 --> 00:33:52.880
going to create any karma. You're not going to say
538
00:33:52.920 --> 00:33:55.990
something you deeply regret because you're just sitting there and
539
00:33:56.009 --> 00:33:58.529
there's a way we can open to our, the entirety
540
00:33:58.549 --> 00:34:03.769
of our experience in that safe context. But you know,
541
00:34:04.589 --> 00:34:09.130
Any given half hour of meditation is not as likely
542
00:34:09.190 --> 00:34:13.590
to be as profoundly transformational as the kind of radical
543
00:34:13.860 --> 00:34:17.219
acts of risk that I'm talking about that really deconstruct
544
00:34:17.579 --> 00:34:21.099
your stuff. They really prove to you, oh, there was
545
00:34:21.139 --> 00:34:24.380
nothing to fear. Oh, I actually came alive when I
546
00:34:24.420 --> 00:34:27.820
took the risk. My whole system came online because I
547
00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:30.039
stepped out through that wall of fear.
548
00:34:30.199 --> 00:34:30.949
And so there is a....
549
00:34:32.489 --> 00:34:37.980
A kind of spiritual practice that is like face the fear.
550
00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:38.559
And do it anyway.
551
00:34:38.639 --> 00:34:42.420
You know, it's the, I think the cliche, but it
552
00:34:42.780 --> 00:34:45.699
runs pretty deep, I guess is all I'm wanting to say,
553
00:34:45.780 --> 00:34:48.139
that kind of approach. If we're doing it in a
554
00:34:48.199 --> 00:34:51.300
deep context, meaning we're on a path of awakening, we
555
00:34:51.340 --> 00:34:57.429
have those frameworks, we're, you know, deconstructing ourselves actively and
556
00:34:57.610 --> 00:34:59.389
through contemplation and meditation.
557
00:34:59.409 --> 00:34:59.489
Yeah.
558
00:35:00.769 --> 00:35:00.929
Yeah.
559
00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:04.460
Yeah, so I think, yeah, it's really important. And I
560
00:35:04.519 --> 00:35:07.940
love this part of our conversation of how, you know,
561
00:35:08.900 --> 00:35:11.800
in order to take more risks, we need to cultivate
562
00:35:12.460 --> 00:35:15.889
some quality of inner stability. And that can be our
563
00:35:15.949 --> 00:35:19.610
own healing and contemplative work that we create a greater
564
00:35:19.650 --> 00:35:22.670
resource in ourselves to be able to take greater risks
565
00:35:22.789 --> 00:35:27.090
and then metabolize what happens there. And then also relationally
566
00:35:27.210 --> 00:35:30.900
and community, there's lots of ways that we access that
567
00:35:30.940 --> 00:35:33.559
resilience and strength and stability to be able to take
568
00:35:33.599 --> 00:35:38.489
greater risk in that way. That's an interesting frame for
569
00:35:38.610 --> 00:35:43.929
our entire path because although when we're born, although I
570
00:35:43.969 --> 00:35:46.469
think most of us probably realize and suspect we all
571
00:35:46.570 --> 00:35:51.139
come into this life with some imprints already. unique from
572
00:35:51.179 --> 00:35:53.750
the get-go, as well as, you know, we know a
573
00:35:53.789 --> 00:35:57.190
lot about collective trauma and the whole transmission collectively and
574
00:35:57.250 --> 00:36:00.570
ancestrally of all that today. But nonetheless, having said that,
575
00:36:01.030 --> 00:36:03.369
most infants, you know, when you see them in their
576
00:36:03.429 --> 00:36:06.760
early weeks and months, they're pretty fearless and wide open
577
00:36:06.820 --> 00:36:10.199
and uninhibited and so forth, right? That's why we have
578
00:36:10.219 --> 00:36:12.019
to really keep a close eye on them to keep
579
00:36:12.059 --> 00:36:16.380
them from harming us. And they're pretty wide open. And
580
00:36:16.420 --> 00:36:20.300
then The natural bumps and bruises of life, the ordinary ones,
581
00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:24.150
and unfortunately, some of the really unnecessary ones through poor
582
00:36:24.210 --> 00:36:28.710
parenting or trauma or different situations. But even within a relatively,
583
00:36:29.190 --> 00:36:32.170
you know, good upbringing, the bumps and bruises of life,
584
00:36:32.610 --> 00:36:36.449
you know, we start retracting a bit. And, you know, oh,
585
00:36:36.489 --> 00:36:38.989
that was embarrassing. I won't do that. Oh, that didn't
586
00:36:39.030 --> 00:36:41.519
feel good. I won't do that. Oh, I felt shame
587
00:36:41.559 --> 00:36:43.400
around that. I'm not going to do that. And we
588
00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:47.019
kind of start shrinking. and we develop all the avoidance mechanisms,
589
00:36:47.099 --> 00:36:50.880
then our whole personality part of ourself in some ways
590
00:36:50.940 --> 00:36:54.199
becomes this adaptation around how do I stay safe, right?
591
00:36:54.239 --> 00:36:57.320
Don't leave me, don't hit me, love me, don't leave me,
592
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:00.760
don't hit me, you know, all these adaptations. And we
593
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:03.199
shrink and we shrink and we shrink. And I love
594
00:37:04.059 --> 00:37:08.260
Dan Siegel's, Dr. Dan Siegel's framework of the window of tolerance,
595
00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:11.460
some call it the zone of resilience, that bandwidth of life,
596
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:13.800
not the comfort zone, but that bandwidth of life, and
597
00:37:13.860 --> 00:37:16.550
hopefully even the more challenging parts of life, that we're
598
00:37:16.570 --> 00:37:18.710
able to handle in a very relational way, to have
599
00:37:18.769 --> 00:37:22.369
our social engagement system online, our best self online. The
600
00:37:22.429 --> 00:37:27.710
problem is it shrinks throughout life. Now, as traumas, like PTSD,
601
00:37:27.789 --> 00:37:30.920
combat veterans, others, it can really shrink to the point
602
00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:33.900
of agoraphobia, which can trigger and even leave our homes, right?
603
00:37:34.239 --> 00:37:36.960
But we're all somewhere in there, right? We're all somewhere
604
00:37:36.980 --> 00:37:39.820
in there. By the time we reach adulthood, we've developed
605
00:37:39.860 --> 00:37:43.599
our own set of avoidance mechanisms to feel safe, right?
606
00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:48.139
And so the path you're talking about is we're beginning
607
00:37:48.179 --> 00:37:50.929
to deconstruct those, to heal those, to understand them, to
608
00:37:50.949 --> 00:37:53.329
develop insight. And there are some people that are in
609
00:37:53.349 --> 00:37:56.150
the super high performance, right, that suggest, well, you should
610
00:37:56.190 --> 00:37:59.809
do something that terrifies you every day. That's the thing
611
00:38:00.110 --> 00:38:03.079
we're talking about. Now, that may be a little extreme
612
00:38:03.139 --> 00:38:03.380
for me.
613
00:38:03.380 --> 00:38:05.639
As much as you can creatively assimilate.
614
00:38:06.360 --> 00:38:08.559
At least do something that makes you a little bit
615
00:38:08.619 --> 00:38:11.119
uncomfortable every day, right? Because then we're growing and we're
616
00:38:11.139 --> 00:38:14.409
learning because I think most people realize by nature, learning
617
00:38:14.659 --> 00:38:18.130
happens mostly outside our comfort zone. Again, we have to
618
00:38:18.170 --> 00:38:20.489
be able to titrate it, that which we can creatively
619
00:38:20.510 --> 00:38:22.869
assimilate and work with, right? But I think it's an
620
00:38:22.929 --> 00:38:27.170
interesting understanding here that fear and anxiety is not some
621
00:38:27.409 --> 00:38:31.989
isolated problem or experience that somehow got left in us,
622
00:38:32.570 --> 00:38:34.969
that it's really part of the spectrum of our whole
623
00:38:35.010 --> 00:38:39.730
life journey of how we work with our learned tendencies
624
00:38:39.789 --> 00:38:45.679
to avoid and to constrict versus our innate longing to open, right?
625
00:38:45.909 --> 00:38:46.820
And to experience.
626
00:38:47.699 --> 00:38:47.940
Right.
627
00:38:48.300 --> 00:38:55.679
And as you said earlier, it's information like, like, you know,
628
00:38:55.880 --> 00:38:58.449
the problem with these things is if they become, as
629
00:38:58.489 --> 00:39:02.150
we've said, debilitating or they're not, they're not, they're not
630
00:39:02.210 --> 00:39:06.030
tied to reality. They're tied to some program that we
631
00:39:06.190 --> 00:39:09.860
developed early on, some adaptive strategy we developed early on,
632
00:39:10.010 --> 00:39:14.139
et cetera. But like, If we were to just say, okay,
633
00:39:14.239 --> 00:39:19.760
but if we were no longer in a pathological relationship
634
00:39:19.800 --> 00:39:24.429
to our fear and anxiety, we're an awake person, we're
635
00:39:24.510 --> 00:39:28.050
not just playing out these conditioned patterns, we're not just
636
00:39:28.170 --> 00:39:34.360
in reactivity, we're actually you know, one definition of awakening
637
00:39:34.380 --> 00:39:39.329
or enlightenment is radical sensitivity. You know, we become a
638
00:39:39.530 --> 00:39:43.250
highly sensitive attuned instrument the more we wake up out
639
00:39:44.130 --> 00:39:48.659
of all of that conditioning. And that means we're we're
640
00:39:48.800 --> 00:39:53.949
feeling things more deeply, we're feeling things more accurately. And
641
00:39:53.969 --> 00:39:57.590
our anxiety, when we feel it might be a sign,
642
00:39:57.610 --> 00:40:00.570
there's something that we should be afraid of, you know,
643
00:40:01.050 --> 00:40:04.650
like we, you know, we, we feel, you know, anxious
644
00:40:04.710 --> 00:40:07.110
around a certain person. Well, maybe we're tuning into the
645
00:40:07.150 --> 00:40:09.610
fact that their motives aren't so great, you know, or
646
00:40:09.670 --> 00:40:13.210
we feel, you know, fear around taking, you know, a
647
00:40:13.269 --> 00:40:17.900
certain action, um, And it's probably a good, you know,
648
00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:22.239
I'm taking fear around, you know, someone's telling us, hey,
649
00:40:22.260 --> 00:40:24.340
I've got this great investment thing and you should take
650
00:40:24.420 --> 00:40:26.639
all your money out of retirement and put it in
651
00:40:26.679 --> 00:40:29.800
my thing because it's going to go 10x. And, you know,
652
00:40:29.820 --> 00:40:32.409
a lot of people have fallen for these kinds of
653
00:40:32.489 --> 00:40:35.150
things over and over because the promise is so great
654
00:40:35.210 --> 00:40:38.090
and they'll believe it. But they might have had some
655
00:40:38.150 --> 00:40:41.360
very strong feeling about it that was sort of like,
656
00:40:41.440 --> 00:40:45.039
this feels dangerous, this feels risky. But they didn't listen
657
00:40:45.059 --> 00:40:46.619
to it because they didn't know what to listen to
658
00:40:46.659 --> 00:40:49.849
because they had so much kind of greed was getting
659
00:40:50.070 --> 00:40:53.329
welled up that they kind of listened to that. But
660
00:40:53.349 --> 00:40:57.889
I'm saying as we become a more conscious, present, attuned instrument,
661
00:40:58.369 --> 00:41:02.320
like let's just acknowledge that our fears and anxieties would
662
00:41:02.340 --> 00:41:06.139
then theoretically just be better sources of information for us
663
00:41:06.320 --> 00:41:07.539
about the world we're in.
664
00:41:08.320 --> 00:41:10.480
And the the objective risks that.
665
00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:14.039
We don't want to take for good reasons etc so
666
00:41:14.159 --> 00:41:17.699
i think again to your to your point about how
667
00:41:17.739 --> 00:41:21.239
this if we can relate to these things as just
668
00:41:21.340 --> 00:41:24.309
part of our natural parts of our humanity not aberrations
669
00:41:24.369 --> 00:41:27.869
that we're trying to you know overcome so we can
670
00:41:27.909 --> 00:41:30.989
live that lot that fearless anxiety free life.
671
00:41:32.690 --> 00:41:34.769
I'd like to bring it to a path quality if
672
00:41:34.809 --> 00:41:39.539
you will um This ability to lean into discomfort or
673
00:41:39.579 --> 00:41:42.659
lean into fear and anxiety at whatever level, jumping in
674
00:41:42.719 --> 00:41:45.769
and jumping into the fire if we feel confident in
675
00:41:45.809 --> 00:41:48.449
our capacity or just leaning in a little bit if
676
00:41:48.489 --> 00:41:52.510
that feels right. It's all relative to where we are,
677
00:41:52.530 --> 00:41:55.610
what we're experiencing and so forth. But in terms of
678
00:41:55.809 --> 00:42:00.349
overall path quality, we're developing a certain stability and inner stability,
679
00:42:00.369 --> 00:42:04.829
a kind of capacity to lean further in very simple terms.
680
00:42:04.869 --> 00:42:07.010
You could think of it that way. So I wonder
681
00:42:07.110 --> 00:42:10.730
in terms of the– and there are many body-mind disciplines
682
00:42:10.809 --> 00:42:13.630
and life experiences that we can make use of in
683
00:42:13.670 --> 00:42:16.230
our spiritual journey in that way. But in terms of
684
00:42:16.269 --> 00:42:23.579
meditation in particular, as a stabilizing, resilience-building, resourcing kind of practice,
685
00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:25.449
I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.
686
00:42:25.480 --> 00:42:27.900
Because I know in your teaching, you often talk about
687
00:42:27.960 --> 00:42:30.719
some of the– I mean, you mentioned a minute ago
688
00:42:31.179 --> 00:42:33.489
some of the misconceptions about the goal that can get
689
00:42:33.510 --> 00:42:36.690
in the way. But there's other kind of classic misconceptions
690
00:42:36.750 --> 00:42:40.769
about practice or mistakes that are common when we start
691
00:42:40.989 --> 00:42:45.150
practicing meditation approaches that might get in the way of
692
00:42:45.230 --> 00:42:48.510
it actually being something that is deepening our stability, that
693
00:42:48.570 --> 00:42:52.179
is deepening our resilience, that's increasing our capacity to lean
694
00:42:52.239 --> 00:42:54.599
into the challenges of life. I wonder if you could
695
00:42:54.639 --> 00:42:57.920
talk about that in terms of some of the maybe
696
00:42:57.980 --> 00:43:01.820
common misconceptions about meditation that might get in the way
697
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:05.610
of it really being And if we have a better
698
00:43:05.670 --> 00:43:08.739
understanding of the practice, how that could accelerate this process
699
00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:12.159
of deepening and stabilizing and resilience building, that will then
700
00:43:12.199 --> 00:43:15.440
allow us to lean into the challenges of life in
701
00:43:15.460 --> 00:43:20.880
ways that can be evolution, can support conscious evolution. And,
702
00:43:20.920 --> 00:43:23.780
you know, even in our moments of when we feel
703
00:43:23.820 --> 00:43:26.559
like we're pulling back or withdrawing or constricting, at least
704
00:43:26.860 --> 00:43:29.380
to have awareness around that, not beat ourselves up, but
705
00:43:29.719 --> 00:43:32.789
even have that awareness be transformational in some way.
706
00:43:33.309 --> 00:43:33.949
Absolutely.
707
00:43:34.769 --> 00:43:35.110
Yeah.
708
00:43:35.289 --> 00:43:41.210
Well, as we both know, meditation refers to thousands of
709
00:43:41.250 --> 00:43:43.170
different practices.
710
00:43:42.710 --> 00:43:43.449
That one can do.
711
00:43:43.610 --> 00:43:46.980
So I think for me to kind of comment on
712
00:43:47.059 --> 00:43:49.539
common mistakes, I think maybe what I would say is
713
00:43:49.980 --> 00:43:52.019
I'll speak about it in the context of the approach
714
00:43:52.119 --> 00:43:53.260
I take to meditation.
715
00:43:53.280 --> 00:43:53.420
Mm-hmm.
716
00:43:54.039 --> 00:43:57.340
Which is, as you know, a very direct approach, a
717
00:43:57.360 --> 00:44:00.639
non-dual approach. I call it the practice of direct awakening.
718
00:44:01.159 --> 00:44:06.420
The idea is that we're sitting in meditation, practicing the
719
00:44:06.900 --> 00:44:13.989
natural inner postures of awakened consciousness. As awakened consciousness shows
720
00:44:14.070 --> 00:44:17.429
up for any of us, we take the position that, well,
721
00:44:17.449 --> 00:44:22.130
I'm going to practice those gestures in my meditation directly. So,
722
00:44:22.150 --> 00:44:26.400
we're not I'm not teaching mantra practice of repeating a
723
00:44:26.679 --> 00:44:31.539
phrase to develop concentration or breath practice for concentration or
724
00:44:31.619 --> 00:44:34.780
any of that, but this is much more of a kind.
725
00:44:34.659 --> 00:44:38.099
Of direct approach. So, if we take.
726
00:44:40.550 --> 00:44:43.550
This whole idea or this whole theme of fear and
727
00:44:43.630 --> 00:44:49.590
anxiety and look at what are some very, what are
728
00:44:49.610 --> 00:44:57.090
some kind of profound meditation practices practices in relation to
729
00:44:57.150 --> 00:45:04.429
fear and anxiety. So one of the most essential kind
730
00:45:04.449 --> 00:45:08.150
of meditation movements or kind of inner, I call them
731
00:45:08.230 --> 00:45:11.989
inner postures, kind of like yoga asanas, but they're asanas
732
00:45:12.030 --> 00:45:16.889
with your psyche. So, one of these postures is, and
733
00:45:16.929 --> 00:45:19.449
this isn't unique to me, this is, you find this
734
00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:23.239
in all the kind of advanced traditions, but one of
735
00:45:23.260 --> 00:45:26.340
the postures we will be taught, we will be encouraged
736
00:45:26.380 --> 00:45:31.500
to take up is a posture of allowing, of allowing
737
00:45:31.559 --> 00:45:35.610
our experience to be however it is. without any attempt
738
00:45:35.670 --> 00:45:44.389
to manipulate or contrive or construct or control anything. So
739
00:45:44.449 --> 00:45:47.679
it's this very radical, it sounds very simple, but it's
740
00:45:47.699 --> 00:45:51.380
a very radical practice to sit, say we could all
741
00:45:51.460 --> 00:45:54.860
today say, go sit for half an hour and no
742
00:45:54.940 --> 00:45:57.880
matter what your experience is from one moment to the next,
743
00:45:58.739 --> 00:46:03.150
don't lift a finger to try to change it. don't
744
00:46:03.389 --> 00:46:07.119
try and we step into this kind of a posture
745
00:46:07.159 --> 00:46:11.800
and we pretty quickly notice, well, yeah, but I'm doing
746
00:46:11.860 --> 00:46:14.679
all this so that I can feel really good and peaceful. So,
747
00:46:14.719 --> 00:46:18.360
then we start trying to steer our practice toward feelings
748
00:46:18.429 --> 00:46:21.309
of peacefulness and we start trying to, we feel tension
749
00:46:21.349 --> 00:46:24.469
or discomfort or anxiety or fear and we, oh, I'm
750
00:46:24.510 --> 00:46:27.409
trying to kind of gently steer away from those under
751
00:46:27.449 --> 00:46:29.949
the idea that that's what allowing is. But that's not
752
00:46:29.989 --> 00:46:32.909
what allowing is. Allowing is allowing all of it to
753
00:46:32.969 --> 00:46:37.090
just be as it is. And if we can really
754
00:46:37.150 --> 00:46:41.039
do this, even for a few minutes, there's this discovery
755
00:46:41.559 --> 00:46:45.019
of a kind of immense liberation because we suddenly, oh,
756
00:46:45.639 --> 00:46:49.019
none of these things are a problem. No experience I
757
00:46:49.059 --> 00:46:53.039
could ever have would be an obstacle to my natural
758
00:46:53.159 --> 00:46:54.099
awakened state.
759
00:46:54.699 --> 00:46:55.360
It's all possible.
760
00:46:56.070 --> 00:47:00.610
It's all just phenomenal experience arising. I'm not trying to
761
00:47:00.679 --> 00:47:03.829
detach from it. I'm not trying to get away from it.
762
00:47:04.280 --> 00:47:09.460
I'm literally just allowing it all, letting it be. So,
763
00:47:11.239 --> 00:47:14.079
when we can take that relationship up to.
764
00:47:15.460 --> 00:47:19.190
And so, then often I'll say to people, well... Because
765
00:47:19.210 --> 00:47:23.000
someone will say, okay, but I'm doing the practice, but
766
00:47:23.119 --> 00:47:25.840
then I feel all this fear like I'm losing control.
767
00:47:26.519 --> 00:47:28.929
This fear wells up, who am I?
768
00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:31.119
If I'm just letting it all be, I'm not, I'm
769
00:47:31.179 --> 00:47:35.250
no longer the one controlling my reality. And, you know,
770
00:47:35.289 --> 00:47:38.349
I feel a loss of self and And, you know,
771
00:47:38.469 --> 00:47:40.710
I'll encourage people, I'll say, look, it's not that we
772
00:47:40.750 --> 00:47:43.539
want to wish those moments upon ourselves, but if you
773
00:47:43.619 --> 00:47:47.579
have a moment of tremendous fear in meditation, kind of
774
00:47:48.039 --> 00:47:52.489
that fear of letting go, that fear of the unknown,
775
00:47:53.190 --> 00:47:56.130
that is a That's your most potent meditation you'll ever
776
00:47:56.170 --> 00:47:58.050
have if you can hold to the practice.
777
00:47:58.070 --> 00:47:59.849
You know, if you can stay.
778
00:47:59.610 --> 00:48:02.170
Just with the simplicity of, oh, I'm just letting this be,
779
00:48:02.329 --> 00:48:06.510
even though I feel like I'm going to die, I'm
780
00:48:06.570 --> 00:48:08.469
letting it be and I'm not making a problem out
781
00:48:08.489 --> 00:48:10.090
of it. I'm not trying to change it. I'm not
782
00:48:10.139 --> 00:48:12.400
trying to control it or push it away. I can
783
00:48:12.420 --> 00:48:18.940
just be even with this, even this. Then, like, the catalytic...
784
00:48:18.949 --> 00:48:21.650
liberation in our psyche because the thing that we feared
785
00:48:21.690 --> 00:48:26.139
the most or the thing that seemed the most, you know,
786
00:48:26.159 --> 00:48:29.880
like the greatest obstacle we could ever encounter has suddenly
787
00:48:29.940 --> 00:48:35.699
been revealed to be no obstacle at all. So that's, say,
788
00:48:36.139 --> 00:48:40.329
one practice. Another one that kind of runs side by
789
00:48:40.409 --> 00:48:44.730
side with that would be, I might call it the
790
00:48:44.769 --> 00:48:49.420
practice of innocence or the practice of not knowing. And
791
00:48:49.519 --> 00:48:51.440
it's a practice, you know, again, because what are we
792
00:48:51.480 --> 00:48:54.550
doing all the time? We're labeling our experience. We're trying
793
00:48:54.570 --> 00:48:58.650
to interpret our experience. We're evaluating everything as good or bad.
794
00:48:59.010 --> 00:49:01.309
You know, it's like, what is it? What does it mean?
795
00:49:01.389 --> 00:49:03.190
And is it good or bad? And we're doing this
796
00:49:03.429 --> 00:49:06.650
all the time. And this not knowing practice is the
797
00:49:06.690 --> 00:49:09.889
practice of just sort of setting that down and saying, well,
798
00:49:09.949 --> 00:49:14.650
for this half hour, I'm not going to. label anything.
799
00:49:14.690 --> 00:49:16.610
I'm not going to try to interpret my experience. I'm
800
00:49:16.650 --> 00:49:19.369
not going to evaluate anything as good or bad. And again,
801
00:49:19.389 --> 00:49:23.380
you can feel how it runs parallel to that allowing practice,
802
00:49:23.409 --> 00:49:25.579
but it's a little more kind of cognitive in nature.
803
00:49:26.139 --> 00:49:31.940
But in a sense, again, what if... You have a
804
00:49:32.019 --> 00:49:34.449
really strong fear. You know, when we have some fear
805
00:49:34.530 --> 00:49:37.230
come up or some anxiety come up in our meditation,
806
00:49:37.869 --> 00:49:40.889
very often we're going to label it and we're going
807
00:49:40.909 --> 00:49:42.670
to try to figure out why we're having it.
808
00:49:43.230 --> 00:49:46.030
Like, uh-oh, I'm feeling very tense. What does it mean?
809
00:49:46.449 --> 00:49:49.190
Maybe, you know, oh, I didn't deal with that thing
810
00:49:49.449 --> 00:49:53.869
at work. Or maybe it means that I'm not meditating properly.
811
00:49:53.969 --> 00:49:57.969
Or maybe it means I'm afraid of letting go. I'm
812
00:49:58.010 --> 00:50:02.159
too attached to the ego in this world. We're interpreting,
813
00:50:02.179 --> 00:50:04.400
we're trying to make sense of it. What if you didn't?
814
00:50:05.099 --> 00:50:07.519
What if you sat there for that half hour and
815
00:50:07.539 --> 00:50:11.000
you didn't make any meaning out of any content? And
816
00:50:11.159 --> 00:50:13.179
you just, again, had it all there, it would all
817
00:50:13.239 --> 00:50:17.190
come up, but you just, it's a radical renunciation of
818
00:50:17.690 --> 00:50:21.340
the interpretive, you know, meaning making framework of our psyche.
819
00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:23.989
And we just say, no, I don't know. No matter
820
00:50:24.010 --> 00:50:24.949
what it is, I don't know.
821
00:50:24.969 --> 00:50:31.699
And I refuse to label, interpret, evaluate anything. And again,
822
00:50:31.760 --> 00:50:33.639
it sounds kind of like, oh, well, is this just
823
00:50:33.659 --> 00:50:36.619
some mental exercise? Try it for half an hour. Try
824
00:50:36.679 --> 00:50:39.989
to know nothing for half an hour and not make
825
00:50:40.190 --> 00:50:42.829
any meaning out of any experience you're having and really
826
00:50:42.889 --> 00:50:47.420
just be with your experience. Then You might experience all
827
00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:49.579
kinds of anxiety and fear. But if you don't know
828
00:50:49.639 --> 00:50:51.340
what it is or why it's there or where it's
829
00:50:51.380 --> 00:50:54.489
going and you don't know that it's a problem, then
830
00:50:54.530 --> 00:50:55.050
guess what?
831
00:50:55.150 --> 00:50:56.949
You might experience it in a whole new way.
832
00:50:57.469 --> 00:51:01.969
You might experience, oh, I've always related to fear and
833
00:51:02.030 --> 00:51:03.690
anxiety as something wrong.
834
00:51:04.190 --> 00:51:06.989
But what if I don't know what it is?
835
00:51:07.239 --> 00:51:10.340
And now then the energy transmutes into something else, into
836
00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:12.360
some kind of power and strength.
837
00:51:12.440 --> 00:51:14.840
Who knows? So, I mean, there's a couple.
838
00:51:15.420 --> 00:51:19.159
Kind of examples of maybe kind of ways we can
839
00:51:19.219 --> 00:51:22.489
practice in relation to this and ways where we tend to,
840
00:51:22.719 --> 00:51:25.429
you know, maybe, as you said, errors in practice that
841
00:51:25.469 --> 00:51:26.150
go the other way.
842
00:51:26.929 --> 00:51:29.750
Yeah, I love that. Allowing and not knowing. And, you know,
843
00:51:29.869 --> 00:51:33.150
it is even, you know, once we land in a body,
844
00:51:33.190 --> 00:51:35.469
we're going to be experiencing fear and anxiety. And the
845
00:51:35.530 --> 00:51:40.289
other thing is this constant storytelling, constant narrative making, constant labeling.
846
00:51:40.329 --> 00:51:42.860
That meaning making thing is just so baked into us.
847
00:51:43.389 --> 00:51:43.610
Right.
848
00:51:43.969 --> 00:51:45.929
Boycotting that on any level.
849
00:51:45.969 --> 00:51:47.030
Boycotting it, right.
850
00:51:47.110 --> 00:51:50.260
It's going to be transformative, right? And that's the practice
851
00:51:50.320 --> 00:51:52.719
of not knowing, which was very much emphasized by my
852
00:51:52.780 --> 00:51:57.719
Zen teacher, Bernie Glassman. And I think allowing is so important,
853
00:51:57.900 --> 00:52:01.480
whether one's a beginning practitioner, you know, we sit down,
854
00:52:02.420 --> 00:52:04.400
you could do a movement practice as well, but we'll
855
00:52:04.420 --> 00:52:08.159
take conventional sitting practice as an example. You sit down
856
00:52:08.380 --> 00:52:11.420
and you're there with your experience and And that's a
857
00:52:11.780 --> 00:52:13.800
beautiful guideline to begin with. Just let it be as
858
00:52:13.860 --> 00:52:16.719
it is. And if you notice yourself doing anything other
859
00:52:16.739 --> 00:52:18.659
than that, just relax, let that go, and come back
860
00:52:18.699 --> 00:52:22.460
to just allowing. That's good for a beginning practitioner. And
861
00:52:22.599 --> 00:52:26.840
even for the most advanced practitioners in various formless meditation practices,
862
00:52:27.500 --> 00:52:29.380
even when you really think you're at some level of
863
00:52:29.480 --> 00:52:34.199
samadhi or stability, the practice is always look closer. Is
864
00:52:34.239 --> 00:52:39.050
there still subtle clinging, subtle fabrication, subtle manipulation going on?
865
00:52:39.429 --> 00:52:43.809
And if you're sitting there thinking there's not, there probably is, right?
866
00:52:43.849 --> 00:52:47.219
That wishful thinking.
867
00:52:47.489 --> 00:52:48.219
I don't see any.
868
00:52:48.239 --> 00:52:54.599
You really want to see that next layer of fabrication, clinging, manipulation, right?
869
00:52:54.619 --> 00:52:57.320
You have that third. And for me, that brings in
870
00:52:58.519 --> 00:53:06.099
another was allowing and not knowing, boycotting that tendency of
871
00:53:06.159 --> 00:53:09.110
constant meaning making and labeling. And then also for me,
872
00:53:09.170 --> 00:53:13.030
another core thing is kind of a profound curiosity, which
873
00:53:13.110 --> 00:53:16.840
is not an egoic curiosity, but it's almost consciousness, the
874
00:53:16.860 --> 00:53:20.019
natural longing of consciousness to know itself, which could be
875
00:53:20.039 --> 00:53:22.900
how we're all here in the world, right? But there's
876
00:53:23.079 --> 00:53:27.969
that deep longing to know. to relax into direct experience,
877
00:53:28.010 --> 00:53:32.150
direct knowing, that deep longing for consciousness to return to
878
00:53:32.570 --> 00:53:36.570
realize itself, to know itself, right? And in simple terms,
879
00:53:36.590 --> 00:53:39.050
to begin with, it might just really be a curiosity,
880
00:53:39.110 --> 00:53:41.800
like I'd really like to know and understand myself at
881
00:53:41.840 --> 00:53:44.219
a deeper level, and then it becomes more refined as
882
00:53:44.280 --> 00:53:48.440
this natural energy of consciousness, the longing to know itself.
883
00:53:48.500 --> 00:53:52.280
So To me, those aspects really could be at the
884
00:53:52.340 --> 00:53:56.420
core from the very beginning brand new practitioner all the
885
00:53:56.480 --> 00:54:00.179
way to a very evolved practitioner, if you will.
886
00:54:01.889 --> 00:54:02.449
Beautiful.
887
00:54:02.469 --> 00:54:05.789
I love that you're bringing in interest, curiosity and interest,
888
00:54:05.809 --> 00:54:08.690
because in many ways you could argue that's the pure
889
00:54:08.750 --> 00:54:10.139
driver of the whole path.
890
00:54:10.820 --> 00:54:11.059
Yeah.
891
00:54:11.809 --> 00:54:14.670
You know, and then we do these practices in that context,
892
00:54:15.070 --> 00:54:17.349
you know, do the practices of not knowing in the
893
00:54:17.409 --> 00:54:22.500
context of profound interest in the unknown. And, you know,
894
00:54:22.719 --> 00:54:26.099
that will fuel your willingness to let go of certainties and,
895
00:54:26.500 --> 00:54:27.559
you know, et cetera.
896
00:54:27.639 --> 00:54:28.639
So, yeah, that was a nice.
897
00:54:29.599 --> 00:54:32.809
Since we kind of already planted a couple seeds of
898
00:54:32.849 --> 00:54:36.469
practice here, why don't we take those up a little
899
00:54:36.489 --> 00:54:37.170
bit together?
900
00:54:37.389 --> 00:54:37.610
So.
901
00:54:39.929 --> 00:54:42.969
So I just want to invite everyone now to, and
902
00:54:42.989 --> 00:54:45.079
the great thing about these practices, you can do them
903
00:54:45.119 --> 00:54:47.800
for just a few minutes and get the entire result.
904
00:54:47.980 --> 00:54:50.300
You don't need to do them. I mean, it's great
905
00:54:50.320 --> 00:54:52.920
to do them for hours and weeks and months and years,
906
00:54:53.619 --> 00:54:55.579
but it's also great to do it for five minutes.
907
00:54:57.519 --> 00:55:00.440
So I would just invite you now to just settle
908
00:55:00.480 --> 00:55:04.550
into a relaxed, comfortable meditation posture. Your eyes can be
909
00:55:04.650 --> 00:55:15.079
open or closed. And Just let's begin with this very
910
00:55:15.159 --> 00:55:23.659
simple inner posture of letting everything be as it is
911
00:55:23.719 --> 00:55:33.530
in this moment. Your experience right now is what it is.
912
00:55:34.949 --> 00:55:40.010
Whatever thoughts are present, whatever feelings are present, whatever sensations,
913
00:55:40.829 --> 00:55:48.099
moving through your body. This is your experience. Allow it
914
00:55:48.199 --> 00:55:54.320
to simply be exactly as it is with no need
915
00:55:54.400 --> 00:56:16.519
to change it in any way. You're not trying to
916
00:56:16.599 --> 00:56:19.579
get to a better state of consciousness than the one
917
00:56:19.599 --> 00:56:26.840
you're in. There is no better state of consciousness than
918
00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:39.429
this one. So just allow it. Allow it to be
919
00:56:39.530 --> 00:56:42.289
and allow it to change from one moment to the next.
920
00:57:14.539 --> 00:57:18.760
And as we continue to let things be, let's also
921
00:57:18.780 --> 00:57:26.760
invite in this inner posture of not knowing, which means
922
00:57:27.179 --> 00:57:32.429
simply that we're not trying to understand what's happening right now.
923
00:57:32.639 --> 00:57:35.809
We're not trying to put a label on it. We're
924
00:57:35.849 --> 00:57:39.750
not trying to make meaning out of it. We're not
925
00:57:39.789 --> 00:57:42.880
trying to figure out if it's good or bad. or
926
00:57:42.920 --> 00:57:48.289
where it is on that spectrum. We just don't know.
927
00:57:49.829 --> 00:57:55.340
Give yourself the freedom of not needing to know anything
928
00:57:56.079 --> 00:59:05.099
at all. No idea. No need to have any idea.
929
00:59:11.489 --> 00:59:16.489
Just allowing this moment to unfold exactly as it is unfolding.
930
00:59:18.489 --> 00:59:53.340
No need to control anything. And now allow yourself to
931
00:59:53.360 --> 01:00:01.989
gently let go of the meditation. And just allow the meditation,
932
01:00:02.829 --> 01:00:05.389
as brief as it was, to just ripple into your
933
01:00:05.449 --> 01:00:07.690
life in whatever way it does naturally.
934
01:00:07.710 --> 01:00:10.250
And see what happens.
935
01:00:13.079 --> 01:00:16.099
Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful. Absolutely wonderful.
936
01:00:16.139 --> 01:00:16.460
Thank you.
937
01:00:18.110 --> 01:00:20.630
So how can people find out more about your work
938
01:00:20.710 --> 01:00:24.349
and your meditation programs and courses that you offer?
939
01:00:24.409 --> 01:00:30.929
My website's CraigHamiltonGlobal.com and there are a lot of free resources.
940
01:00:31.269 --> 01:00:32.670
I encourage you, if you're.
941
01:00:32.570 --> 01:00:36.590
A podcast listener, I have a podcast called Meditation Changes
942
01:00:36.690 --> 01:00:40.789
Everything that you can find on any podcast app. Meditation
943
01:00:40.869 --> 01:00:42.719
Changes Everything, which has.
944
01:00:44.119 --> 01:00:47.239
A lot of meditation discussion like this, and also a
945
01:00:47.300 --> 01:00:52.739
lot of guided meditations and resources. And if you would
946
01:00:52.780 --> 01:00:56.059
like to kind of do a little more in-depth dive,
947
01:00:56.079 --> 01:01:02.820
you go to freemeditationworkshop.com, freemeditationworkshop.com, and there you can download
948
01:01:02.840 --> 01:01:07.780
a 90-minute meditation workshop that I really go into this
949
01:01:07.840 --> 01:01:10.039
whole approach in a lot of depth and detail.
950
01:01:10.429 --> 01:01:14.019
That's a very good offering at 90 minutes. free meditation
951
01:01:14.059 --> 01:01:17.860
course that's incredible generous offering so really encourage everyone to
952
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take advantage of that and to check out uh craig's
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work because it really goes to the heart of uh
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how meditation can be really transformative and how we can
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bring that transformational posture, if you will, off the cushion
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and into our daily life in moment-to-moment direct experience. So
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I really encourage people to check out your work further.
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And thank you so much.
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Thank you, Fleet.
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It's always a pleasure to participate in these. Thanks for
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all the hard work you're doing to bring all this
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work to the world.
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Thank you. Blessings.
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Thanks. Take care.
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Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember,
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real change happens when we commit to our growth, face
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our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If
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you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe
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01:02:05.900 --> 01:02:08.980
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
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Until next time, stay grounded, stay present, and stay true
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to yourself. Take care.