APPRECIATE, TRANSCEND & IMPROVE - OUR 3 HUMAN JOBS

We can think of the human condition, as having 3 jobs imposed upon us.

That's like what should we do what do we need to do in this human life? Well, I would I would say 3 things?

One thing

Is?

To learn how to appreciate I'll just use an aide to abbreviate that.

Appreciate Sensorially.

The world of 4.

Actually, there's 2 worlds of 4, there's the form of the outside.

What we see physically what we hear physically and the physical sensations in the body that is the apparent object if world and then we react to that object if world.

Also with see, hear feel we have mental images, which is our visual thinking. We have mental talk, which is auditory thinking and then we have emotional type body sensations that are sort of.

Typically have a little different quality from the simply physical type sensations, and that inner system is.

Form it has its sensory and its visual auditory and somatic. So when you see a flower for example. There's see out of the flower and typically there's see in here in Feelin.

Reactions to the flower there's thoughts and emotions those thoughts and emotions, maybe on the surface of awareness so that they are fully conscious or they may be subliminal. They may be below the threshold of awareness, perhaps not immediately observable at the beginning of your practice. But as your detection skills grow you will start to be able to detect these subtle levels of subjective.

Activation.

So let's say that you wanted to have a truly satisfying experience of looking at flower well. Actually, there be sort of two ways. You could go about doing that one is.

You could so fully focus on the outer form this the C out.

That, it expands and the Inter reactive system. the C in here in Feelin contracts and so there is just there's an experience of flowering.

Without a sense of an eye observing so that would be a kind of.

Merging or non dual experience with the flower that would come about through out expanding while in contracts into an all rest or even on all gone situation that would be one way of going about having a really satisfying experience of seeing a flower or seeing anything how about hearing same thing about having physical contact with something.

Uh.

Including hunger or sleepiness OK? How could we have a satisfying experience of other outs, one way is this just the out.

And little or no in form, even great physical pain if there's no reactive see in here and feeling if it's just feel out there's really good. It could be anybody's body that's going through that and therefore it's everybody's body and therefore.

There's an Oak anus within that, so that would be 1.

Way to experience in a very satisfying way what we see here and what physically impacts. Us see here on the outside feel physically. However, another way to have a satisfying experience is that the outer and the Inter activate at the same time, but the outer.

Is experience with a lot of mindfulness and also the inner is experience with a lot of mindfulness so the entire sensory experience is mindful. We are deeply appreciating not only the form of out, but the self. In this case, and we could also have experiences. You have probably notice that the inner system doesn't just react to.

Up the outer it also sometimes goes proactive it spins memory plan fantasy etc. Have you notice that So what about that? Well guess Wat. The outer tends to actually contract notice it but sort of the sites in the sounds and even your physical body. But physicality of the body can sort of go into the background and the memory plan fantasy sort of self.

The subject of self gets very, very large.

That's fine as long as it's experienced with a lot of concentration clarity and equanimity. You are approaching a complete experience of the rising of thought and emotion.

You're in the world of memory plan fantasy, but you're not lossed in that world.

You are in the absolute present as past future fantasy are rising.

You are sensorially in the present so.

These are a number of different ways in which we can have. We can appreciate the self in the world every one of these involves 3 core skills.

Concentration power sensory clarity and equanimity.

So.

One of our jobs would be to sensorially appreciate the self and the world just as it is.

So, sometimes People have a lot of difficulty appreciating the self just as it is I have a lot of difficulty with that I.

Tormented myself for probably the first 15 years of my practice.

Are somehow trying to suppress or get rid of the inner activations? I thought that's the enemy of meditation?

All thought and emotion is the enemy of meditation. That's the self well and so I gotta get rid of it and I was fighting with it in suppressing it and trying to get everything cool doubt and Flatlined etc. Etc took me along time to get over that and to realize that.

The goal is not to get rid of that stuff, the goal is to get rid of the unconsciousness. Coagulations and scattered nahs associated with that stuff that's the enemy. So we train away. The unlined fullness and then you can have you can have the Full Monty that complete eruption of thought and emotion.

In the volcano of in.

And it's not a problem at all. It just tastes like catharsis.

Cleansing.

So it turns out that to appreciate the cellphone world sensorially.

As they arise in the present.

Um.

Key attentional skills for this task are the mindfulness tasks are the mindfulness skills. So I look upon this is one of our jobs.

Um.

What's another job?

T.

This stands for transcend transcend his Latin for go beyond.

Go beyond appreciate form go beyond for what's that, well, we could philosophically speculate but that's not what we're interested in here? We're interested in app actual experiences.

So.

Can I describe in words? What is beyond form certainly?

Will those words necessarily map on to every human beings experience not well in the sense. Yes, will those words map on to every human beings conscious experience. No.

But as you continue to practice the words register.

They line up, they register with your actual experience so it will be talking more about this.

If I had to put it into words. Well, I could put it into words. A lot of ways, but let's just briefly.

Say this.

Um.

That, which is beyond form.

Is the source of form it's also the?

Ultimate destination of 4.

So moment by moment.

Uh.

How does our sensory experience work when viewed under the microscope of enormous mindfulness it works like this?

There's nothing.

But nothing is inherently stable because it's not this isn't a bleak nothing.

This is the nothing that comes about when all the Yeses and all the nose needed to mold this, or any conceivable world.

Mutually cancel out.

So.

Uhm it's inherently unstable.

And therefore.

Breaks apart spontaneously.

So there's this special rich nothing that all the mystical traditions of the world talk about every single one of them and the the when I say mystical I mean, contemplative I don't mean mystical in the sense of like.

You know.

New AG kind of power round stuff, I mean, the classical contemplative based spirituality's that we find all around the world in every agent in every culture. Some People have called it the perennial philosophy because it just comes back over and over again. The cultures are very different. Often the Phyllis philosophes and theology's are very different. But amazingly all.

Sufficiently.

Attained contemplatives talk about the source as a kind of special nothingness. Nihill Parec Silentium. Nothing par excellence is as opposed to Neil Preventive am nothing. That's just an absence. These Latin words. You might guess are part of the Catholic tradition, which is part of Christianity in the Eastern Orthodox, they talked about.

Apophatic contemplation OK, it's like.

Nothing but it's a special now.

Uh.

Meister Eckhart talked about Nice Sound Hondola Cruise talked about Nila.

Um.

In Jewish contemplation, I in.

I am which means nothing Aynor Iron not a non existence. That's the word that's used or sometimes it's another Hebrew word.

I'm forgetting it'll come to me, OK how about Taoism.

Uh in 1000, they talk about.

Sometimes they talk about, she.

Xu it's browned shoot first Tom which means vacuous.

But more frequently, they talk about Gucci this is really great word.

Gucci OPS.

Bats belly.

Who she Ji both rising tones?

And if you write it in Chinese.

Siri.

Pretty all it means depolarized this literally means a poll like literally means a polar ridgepole. In a house. This is and then was without so a depolarized state and then how does creation come about when the depolarized state?

Polarizes then you have tychy the great polarization.

OK.

Uh do you know how the great polarization?

Right that really crummy.

You all know that Tai Chi tool.

The tool the diagram of the great polarization right.

We in the West call it the Yin Yang, which is what it portrays because that's the great polarization expansion and contraction pulling apart.

Interacting each containing the other some Watt even though their polarized.

There's still

Some hint of the original neutralization.

OK.

What is the?

See coming Christianity covered.

I.

Taoism Oh boy ***** what else.

Recover Judaism Islam.

For now.

And whoops.

FANA.

Now I'd really be impressed if I could remember how to write in Arabic, but can't OK for that means.

Annihilation.

Into the source.

OK, what else do we have around the world like that, well Buddhism Shunyata.

Uh.

Yeah, I'm dumb.

Narrow down which means the same as finance cessation and Hinduism Yoga for example, neuro to same word cessation.

Uh.

The yoga sutras began.

Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodha.

Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness.

So all over the world there's this sort of special nothing.

Are you special kind of nothing?

Breaks apart.

So now there's 2 things.

There's

Space effortlessly spreading and space effortlessly collapsing simultaneously.

It's two things it's not the one nothing.

But it's pretty close to the one nothing.

And in between the 2:00 so there's the one nothing.

Which is obviously beyond form because it?

There's no timer space inside of it, so how could you have a form?

All that it breaks apart and creates a cleft.

That that cleft.

Is?

A volume of time space.

Volume of space time.

And that spacetime experiences.

The.

Antipodal forces of expansion contraction and therefore, that spacetime vibrates.

Into see here field.

We 1/2, creating the impression of a self inside.

The impression of self inside the other half, creating the impression of a surrounding scene.

However.

If you are able to.

Still have one foot in expansion and the other foot firmly planted in contraction.

While the self and seen are arising then you will not have completely lossed your connection to the source.

Uh.

So.

There's nothing too.

Get in the way of the 2 sides coming back together.

Digesting that volume of time space self world.

Back to the primordial state and then the cycle starts again over and over and over and over, so the extent to which you are able to be in contact with 0.

Or be in contact with the 2 sides of 0, even contact with the 2 even when the 10 billion.

Are arising in between the 2:00 to the extent that you are able to be in contact with the one nothing or the 2:00 doings to that extent, you are abiding beyond form, even though you may be walking through form talking.

Two form driving your car.

Inform.

But not completely.

Cutting the umbilical cord to your source.

So that would be.

Ah.

Living Nirvana so to speak what I'm talking about is something that happens on the cushion. But ultimately something we want to be able to have happening us we're just bopping around.

Taking care of business.

So a person that's able to do that.

Um.

It is.

Uh.

Could be called a deeply enlightened person?

OK, so appreciate forum appreciate that means appreciate sensorially self in world.

Get over the self and get over the world.

So there's only one verb left.

Let's really appropriate to apply to self in the world or form.

Appreciate transcendent,

And the other verb is in proof.

You may have heard the.

Expression first there is a mountain.

Then there is no mountain.

Then there is a mountain? How many People have heard that.

Sounds cool what the hell does it mean?

Well, when we begin our practice.

We can, we can be working on this will talk about this in some detail.

We can be working on this.

Up.

We may get some sort of hints of this, but we're probably going to be mostly working on this because.

Uh there's as we'll see as time goes on and see how our time is OK.

There's complementary relationships between all these things but when you start out.

You might be doing some loving kindness practice but.

Mostly just observing stuff and if you're doing mindfulness practice and what's the stuff you're observing is just probably more or less ordinary stuff.

Uh.

So there is a mountain seems like there's the external world exists. It seems like there's something called a self inside. That's in relationship to that.

Uh so there's a mountain.

Then you start to get some hints of this so there's no mountain.

Uh.

At least occasionally actually quite frequently actually everyone experiences this.

Just not consciously.

That's why I said, well if you sort of live this way, you're deeply enlightened but The funny thing is anyone that.

Doesn't live that way?

They don't think of themselves as in light because they see that everyone experiences 0.

But just not consciously.

A dogs barking?

And you listen to it, you listen to it, and then the dog stops barking.

Moment when the dog stop barking?

You returned to the source.

Just for the dog returned to the source just briefly for a fraction of a second but.

First of all People don't pay attention to it, and Secondly, even if they didn't pay. It did pay attention to it. It would seem like a Trivial Pursuit. So who cares big whoop the dog stop barking?

But as time goes on one's palate changes when develops a taste for certain things.

One develops the taste for moments of vanishing.

You probably heard me say this each.

Time you know notice anything, however, banal coming to an end.

Each time you consciously notice that you've made.

A deposit in your xen bank account.

But then accountancy has a very strange mathematics, it's a nonstandard mathematic.

First of all the account always equal 0, but but there are different sizes of 0.

Now that's non standard mathematics, however, it was a couple people in this room with actual advanced mathematical training and for those of you that are in that category I will point out that.

The set theoretic construction of the integers actually does sort of imply an Infinity of zeros because every pair of of of positive and negative integers taken together as an ordered pair.

That's how you create the notion of polarity by an axiom in set theory called ordered pairs. Now I better stop right. I'm starting to get off on a riff here, but anyway, there are an Infinity of ordered pairs.

The same thing 5588, ten ten OK, except one of them is negative and one of them is positive.

Uh.

The set of all mutually cancelling.

Numbers are integers.

Um.

Set of all such things is is the #0 so the number 0 the bigger the polarity.

The bigger the Gump.

The bigger the deal that you can stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, stay with that stay with that stay with it, stay with it, stay with it Gaga.

That's going to be a bigger 0 in your bank account.

Um.

So.

What were we talking sorry? I stayed with it too long I got?

No.

The mountain first, there is a mountain then there is no mountain occasionally.

Then there is.

No mountain whenever you want.

At which point you realize.

Everyone experiences no mountain.

They just don't notice it.

Um so you can think of yourself is enlightened because you can't think of being enlightened as being so different from anybody else, 'cause you see the alignment at everyone.

Whether they see it or not.

So there's no button.

Then there is a mountain Oh half Rican Big Mountain.

For the rest of your freaking life there's a mountain.

And that mountain is.

Becoming an ordinary admirable person by the canons of the culture that you live.

That is a huge mountain how you might think our experience nothingness on a consistent basis.

Then.

It's automatic that.

You're going to improve the self in the world, Well, there's going to be, it's going to certainly make that job easier. A lot easier and it's certainly going to give you a proclivity to want to improve yourself.

An improved the world, yes, but does it guarantee it. No, it just gives you the proclivity and makes it easier at least in my experience.

Usually about 10:15 years after some sort of Enlightenment, you realize how unenlightened you really are.

Um.

And then you just keep working so let's say improve.

South.

And world.

So how can we think of improving ourselves now mind. You you don't have to have this in order to start doing this, you'll notice that.

But this is the first day of the retreat and we're working on this.

I were noting things and we're doing, Metta Lovingkindness.

So.

Improve the self, I like to think of this with an acronym ABC.

The ABC's of being an admirable person.

Affect just a fancy word for emotion.

Behavior that's what we do in the world our relationship with People substances.

Cognition. What are our go to thought patterns are they adaptive rational?

Or are they not that.

So.

Week.

I mentioned that.

CCNE.

The Basic Skills of mindfulness are important for obviously important for appreciating the world. You want to your goal is to appreciate the food in front of you.

Do you need concentration for that? Well, it would be very helpful if you could focus on the sensory experience of eating if you want to appreciate the eating do you need sensory clarity? Well, it would be very useful if you could distinguish different flavors and textures? Maybe notice your emotional reactions to it. What part is image? What part is the emotional body etc etc? Do you need equanimity?

Well, when pleasure arises if you hold on for a moment.

You won't be able to experience the next wave of pleasure, you experience a little frustration if you.

Have things that are uncomfortable come up with taste that you don't like or something like that. If you have equanimity. They'll cause you less bother so to have an experience of appreciating your meal or appreciating another person or listening to music or whatever clearly our core skills are useful.

You have to look at the infrastructure of sensory experience with a very stable.

High resolution.

Sort of microscopic attention in order to.

See the fine level of how consciousness works zero. We have the one nothing. The 2:00 doings. The one nothing. The 2:00 doings the cycle.

You need a lot of CCD to detect this and a hold your awareness on it.

Uh.

Same skills are used here.

So how do we have our go to emotions be more in the love joy areas well.

Habits.

So habits are things how a habit is developed is we do it over and over again. It becomes a habit the Sanskrit word for Habitas Song Scara.

Um.

Ipoly pronunciation is some car so.

Habits can be positive or negative.

In a sense need to be free from all of them, but we want the positives to be influencing our life, but we need to actually break our identification with both positive and negative that happens here.

But in terms of what we want to be manifesting in the world? How do we definitely want positive handles so?

You can intentionally.

Create a momentum of positive emotion through practices like loving kindness and a whole bunch of related type things so that's the affect.

Cognition is sort of similar.

Well, I OK now let's organize it on the difference house. What about behavior. Well, we can use nurture positive to help us work with behavior also we could visualize.

A situation where we've changed the behavior and then we could have mental talk about how great that would be and then we can have pleasant emotion in the body and we could sort of use that apparatus to try to foster positive behaviors and in the same way we can use the same apparatus and by apparatus and I mean? what I call nurture positive where you choose a theme you choose one or a combination of the.

Inner activities and then you create that theme there and you maintain that theme there so that it becomes more and more habitual and we can do the same with cognition. Let's say that you have a fear of flying for example.

So then you can make the mental Matra flying is safe. Let's say, and you could have pleasant emotion in the body and then of course, when they gain say Nay say comes up. Now let's not say if I'm going to get killed for sure. If I'm o'clock. Then you just sort of let that have equanimity with that, you so you don't fight with it. You selectively attend to the positive and that could with time cause you to more habitually go to.

Well, the reality. The reality is I mean look at the statistics the chances of being killed in an air crash are.

I think much more than a billion to one considerably more than that, or less than that should say so.

OK, so we can use nurture positive apparatus, which both develops.

And our core skills and also represents an application of those core skills to a certain.

Job or goal so we can use the nurture positive apparatus for this kind of thing for improving our self is that enough now that might not be enough. We might we might need other things.

We might need for the behavior thing we might need us object if.

Accountability and support structure like a 12 step program. For example, there might be other things that we would need so I'm not saying that this is all but it certainly can help.

Also, when negative emotions come up negative urges come up.

All negative thoughts come up.

In addition to.

Replacing them with their opposites, which is technically called antidote meditation. An was discovered by the Buddhists along long time ago, 2500 years ago, they talked about antidotes. But they also discovered deconstruction. You can use the focus in technique divide and conquer break negative emotions or negative urges or maladaptive thought patterns.

Break them up into their pieces and then break those into smaller pieces until you experience the entire thing as just vibrating space.

Meaning that you can deconstruct the opposites of these back into this.

OK, so that's improving itself? How do we improve the world?

Well.

We could do material service.

This is how we normally think of improving the world material save up.

So what does that mean lot of things it could mean staffing. The soup kitchen you know archetypally or it could mean volunteering it can mean philanthropy towards.

Those kinds of causes it can be working for social change. However, you conceive up that that social change should occur.

Um.

That's you know.

People have different ideas about that.

Uh it can also be material service the most common form of material service that most People are going to do is raising a family. That's a huge service, creating new humans and helping them to be able to have a good life.

That's a huge improvement of the world.

So there's that which is sort of obvious. Then there is what's near and dear to my heart, which is you could teach mindfulness?

That definitely improves the world.

Allows People to do all this stuff and then some of them will teach mindfulness you see how I can spread right or you can and or you support People that teach mindfulness or related things that's the data so, give us Donna but that allow us to be full time specialist mindfulness teachers. So you can teach mindfulness yourself and you can support People that teach mindfulness.

That makes the world a better place for sure, and then you know, there's the obvious material services that People do.

So I call this improve the self and the world.