Teachers: So our topic of the day is perspective or view.
Teachers: most of the days. This week
Teachers: I'll be on topic with you.
Teachers: I'm going to go off piste a couple of times, but still very relevant to our pain.
Teachers: But today I'm on track. So I want to talk about uncertainty as part of our perspective.
Teachers: So we've talked about an ethics of uncertainty already a few times the last 24 h. So this uncertainty issue is pretty key to our theme.
Teachers: so uncertainty, our relationship to uncertainty.
Teachers: and the consequences of that relationship.
Teachers: And in particular, I'm going to take a bit of a deep dive into the selfing process. In relation to this topic.
Teachers: I live in
Teachers: a safe liberal seat for those who are joining us from outside Australia, and don't know our political system.
The Liberal party in Australia is the Conservative party, slightly right of center. We're fairly centrist.
Teachers: our major parties, but they are the they're the right right side of politics. and ever since my electorate was founded in
Teachers: 1950, whatever it was, it's been a safe.
Teachers: Liberal seats. So for many years I felt quite powerless.
Teachers: and my vote didn't count, and was pretty frustrated, and
Teachers: didn't know how to engage ethically in at least, that element of my world
Teachers: just as a broad thing. And I'll come back to this a few times as I've pondered this
Teachers: topic of engaging ethically in a world in crisis, I've sort of thought about it as having 3 concentric circles. our immediate life and the people that we live with, that we come into direct contact with
Teachers: the next circle is our kind of community.
Teachers: However, you might define that. But this story is in in that layer, the community layer. And then we've got the outside circle being our global
Teachers: world. And all 3 can be in crisis. So
Teachers: so anyway, I was feeling quite powerless. And so this is rewind. Maybe about 3 years or something.
Teachers: and I came across this
Teachers: movement. I guess you'd call it called kitchen table discussions. And it was these people who'd organised
Teachers: to literally meet over someone's kitchen table and talk about the issues that matter to them.
Teachers: And I explored it enough that I remember looking at the website and seeing photos of people literally sitting around kitchen tables and talking. And the demographic was not dissimilar to this room. It was mostly older. People were smattering of youngies.
Teachers: and I, you know I wanted to do something.
Teachers: but I felt really uncertain about it. I thought, what difference is it going to make
Teachers: sitting around talking about what we're unhappy with preaching to the converted it just, it felt really uncertain to me whether that was something that was going to be effective.
Teachers: and so I didn't act. I didn't. I didn't
Teachers: get involved
Teachers: about 2 years, ish! After that.
Teachers: That movement
Teachers: transformed into a woman offering herself as an independent
Teachers: candidate at our Federal election last year.
Teachers: So those people who were sitting around kitchen tables in an equal amount of uncertainty, no doubt that that I was.
Teachers: They acted anyway. And here we had this amazing
Teachers: independent candidate standing at the Federal election, and that story is to be continued tomorrow.
Teachers: But in essence my uncertainty led me to do nothing in that instance. Others acted anyway. and eventually this inspired me to get on board.
Teachers: That's to be continued tomorrow. I think
Teachers: so. Uncertainty as we know. It's quite central to Gottman's teachings. He taught that there are 3 characteristics of life on Earth that we routinely fail to integrate into our perspective.
Teachers: They're traditionally called the 3 characteristics of conditioned existence. I call them the 3 faulty beliefs, or the 3 tragic misunderstandings
Teachers: and the failure to really take them in and really integrate them causes a whole bunch of problems.
Teachers: So just to recap. I know many of you would be familiar with them. but I know we've probably got a variety of experience in the room, so let me, at the risk of boring you, recap.
Teachers: So the first one is so I'm turning these on their head and stating them as faulty beliefs. So some things are reliable, stable, and permanent
Teachers: is faulty. Belief. Number one, I call it the Rsp. Delusion.
Teachers: reliable, stable, permanent. There are some things.
Teachers: and the other 2 are kind of embodiments of this one actually so. The next one is people and things can provide me with constant, indelible happiness.
Teachers: And the third one is who I am that is me. The identity. Lenori is a fixed
Teachers: independent.
Teachers: That's how I get to be fixed, because I'm independent of conditions.
Teachers: enduring and congruent.
Teachers: that is, you know, I all make sense. I'm all tied in together nicely identity.
Teachers: So
Teachers: each of these is a faulty belief because it fails to see something we've already touched on today. the principle of dependent arising.
Teachers: So that principle just simply being the principle that everything only exists
Teachers: because the conditions were ripe for it to exist.
Teachers: So now the knock on effect of this principle is that everything is always changing.
Teachers: Reality is a constant interplay of many factors in any given moment. We've got our internal conditions, our
Teachers: character structure, our personality, our physiology and neurophysiology.
Teachers: our
Teachers: and our histories. And what have you are all embedded in that character structure? We have what mood I'm in right now. We have, you know. Am I hungry or not? All those internal conditions
Teachers: moving, changing?
Teachers: And then we've got our external conditions where I am, who I'm with
Teachers: what went on 5 min ago.
Teachers: You know. Sense data smells. Am I in a beautiful place by the lake, or am I standing next to a garbage bin all of that sort of external stuff. So we've got these conditions and we've got our internal conditions, and they're coming together like a dynamic light show, and where they meet is
my experience right now.
Teachers: So if, of course, our experience is the coming together of 2 dynamic light shows, then
Teachers: how can anything be reliable, stable, and permanent?
Teachers: So faulty? Belief? Number one, everything is
Teachers: the unfalty belief. Number one is that everything is unreliable, unstable, and impermanent.
and because people and things change all the time.
Teachers: how can any person or anything possibly provide me with an experience of constant, uninterrupted happiness?
Teachers: And because I, Lenori Lambert, am also part of this system. So also in a state of constant change. the idea that the way that I show up in the world in any given moment.
Teachers: That is me with the capital of it. Capital! M. My identity.
Teachers: the idea that that could be fixed
Teachers: and always consistent, and always internally telling a cogent story is just craziness.
Teachers: Now, we all probably know this. You're probably sitting there going. Yeah, yeah, we know this.
and it's good in theory.
Teachers: but to truly take it in.
Teachers: to truly allow the flux or the uncertainty that is inherent in reality to infuse our lens on the world, our perspective. That's how I think of perspective. You know the lens through which we see the world.
Teachers: our expectations of it, our response to it, can be another matter. The impulse to reach for certainty is strong because uncertainty can feel unsafe.
Teachers: and you think about it. Most of our history uncertainty probably, was unsafe.
Now this is relevant to engaging ethically in a world in crisis, in 2 key ways that have captured my attention
Teachers: in recent times.
Teachers: The first one is.
Teachers: it's uncertain. And this came up today in one of the question time questions.
Teachers: It's uncertain whether engaging will achieve anything.
Teachers: and if I don't believe my effort and attention is going to make any difference.
Teachers: Why would I engage with a turbulent world full of problems?
Teachers: So if I'm unwilling or unable to be with uncertainty.
Teachers: that kind of unpleasant, slightly unsafe feeling
Teachers: I might be tempted to simply not engage at all like I didn't 3 years ago, with the kitchen table discussions
Teachers: so relevant to again some of the conversations we've already had today. I need to be able to accept that the world is going to stay messy and problematic.
Teachers: despite my efforts that my actions are not going to fix it and engage. Anyway.
Teachers: I need to be willing to accept unpleasant experiences and events
Teachers: as part of being an alive and literally sensitive, sensitive creature on planet Earth
Teachers: and respond ethically. Anyway.
if I'm not willing to accept the unpleasantness of uncertainty, I'll find a way to get rid of it.
Teachers: And one of the most common ways of getting rid of that feeling of uncertainty is to adopt a belief system that rules it out.
Teachers: And then, because that belief system provides me with relief from this unpleasantness of uncertainty.
Teachers: it gives me even if it's
Teachers: delusional, gives me a sense of safety.
Teachers: regardless of whether it's delusional. I'm going to protect it with a vengeance
Teachers: because it delivers a feeling of safety, and that's what I want.
Teachers: So you think about some of the some of the big crises going on in that third layer at the moment the war in Ukraine.
Teachers: I remember early in the piece reading that one of the beliefs that Vladimir Putin apparently has that drives one among many, but that drives what he does is a belief that
Teachers: Ukraine is and always was, a part of Russia.
Teachers: Certain he's certain about it.
Teachers: Now, all you need to do is what I did, and go looking for a podcast where some historian expert in Ukrainian history is being interviewed. And you find that this is nonsense.
Teachers: that that you know historical facts just don't support
Teachers: Vladimir Putin's certain belief.
Teachers: And yet, obviously, it's not the only one, but the least like that are driving untold suffering in the world at the moment.
Teachers: I mean clearly.
Teachers: Palestine. You know there are certain beliefs on both sides. There's certainty on both sides.
Teachers: Well, faux certainty
Teachers: that are causing hideous suffering over there at the moment.
Teachers: so uncertainty can be uncomfortable. It can also be actually desirable. Research on it shows that.
Teachers: you know. thrill seekers quite like it. You know, adventurers and people like that.
Teachers: But for a lot of us uncertainty might be uncomfortable, unpleasant even.
Teachers: But faux certainty
Teachers: is not only delusional. It's destructive and downright dangerous. When you look at those couple of examples that I just mentioned.
Teachers: so in order to engage it all.
Teachers: I need to be willing to accept that it's uncertain whether my efforts will fix anything
Teachers: I need to be willing to be. With that uncertainty
Teachers: I need to focus on the uncertain possibility that they might help something.
Teachers: I need to focus on helpful thoughts, like many drops, fill a bucket.
Teachers: I need to pay attention to the changes that are coming about.
Teachers: because people are acting amid uncertainty. And there are. You don't have to look too far to see some inspirational
Teachers: things going on because people are acting, even though it's uncertain
Teachers: and importantly, that doing nothing.
Teachers: that not engaging. And this might go to your question earlier. Gowen, too.
Teachers: is clearing the way for those who are reacting loudly, vigorously, and sometimes violently. on delusional certainties.
Teachers: There is kind of no such thing as not doing anything. because choosing not to act is clearing the way
Teachers: in a sense.
Teachers: So that was the first thing that had been mulling around for me when it comes to perspective and our need to integrate the reality. The uncertainty into our perspective is that if we don't, if we don't
Teachers: cultivate is that word again, the willingness to be with uncertainty, and I mean that in a really practical feed on the ground way, the physical feeling, that unpleasant tinge that you get when things are uncertain.
Teachers: If I'm not willing to be with that as a routine manner of it's part of my perspective. I know that uncertainty infuses life.
then I may just not be willing to engage at all.
And so if we're
Teachers: genuinely interested in engaging ethically in this world, in crisis, then it's an ethical issue. Our willingness to be with that feeling of uncertainty.
Teachers: The second thing, and what I want to spend the rest of our time together this evening on is
Teachers: a form of certainty, seeking that, I believe obstructs ethical engagement.
Teachers: and that is the selfing process.
Teachers: Now, I just want to maybe again do a little recap, and at least orient towards the way that I speak about selfings. So
Teachers: when I'm talking about selfing, Rick Hanson had a lovely way of setting out the definition of self.
Teachers: because not self. And the selfing process I found, as I was learning about the dharma was probably the one concept that was really confusing I found.
Teachers: and Rick Hanson laid it out nicely, he said. Well, self has 3 main meanings. There's the physical body, you know how many 1 billion of them that are running around the planet at the moment.
Teachers: We're not dying that exists. There's the consciousness that I feel is the chooser of my decisions and the agent of my actions.
Teachers: And we're not talking about that one either, in the helping process.
Teachers: It's the third one that we're talking about, which is the identity that I've decided is me.
Teachers: And we're going to work with that this evening.
Teachers: So
Teachers: been lucky to read
Teachers: bit over half so far of Steven's first draft of his next book, which takes a good long look at what was going on philosophically in Greece
Teachers: at around the same time that the Buddha lived.
Teachers: I think it's called Socrates, the Buddha and me. Isn't it stealing? Did I get that right
Teachers: or the other way around? So produce good. And us and us. Okay?
And it turns out that some of the Greek philosophers arrived at this same insight and the same realization of the importance of resisting that temptation to use views in particular, to PIN down with certainty
what is in reality quite uncertain
Teachers: which is reality.
Teachers: I've
Teachers: I've stolen a passage. This is. This is a passage that Steven quotes in his book. It's not his quote. It's from the verses from the chapter of 8,
Teachers: and I'm going to suggest that you just close your eyes, and as I read it out, just listen, listen to it and feel it for me. It really it gives me the feeling of uncertainty.
Teachers: So I'll read it, and I'll reread a few little passages of it, the ones that particularly spark that feeling for me
Teachers: wrong minded people do voice opinions as do truth. Minded people, too.
Teachers: When an opinion is stated, the sage is not drawn in.
Teachers: There's nothing arid about the sage.
Teachers: nowhere does a lucid one
Teachers: hold contrived views about is or is not.
Teachers: How could he succumb to them? Having let go of illusions and conceit. he's uninvolved.
Teachers: he does not take up or discard any view. He's shaken them all off right here.
Teachers: He lets go of one position without taking another.
Teachers: He's not defined by what he knows.
Teachers: nor does he join a dissenting faction.
Teachers: He assumes no view at all.
Teachers: He's not lured into the blind alleys of is, and is not this world and the next.
Teachers: for he lacks those commitments that make people ponder and seize hold of teachings.
Teachers: He lets go of one position without taking another.
Teachers: He's not defined by what he knows.
Teachers: nor does he join a dissenting faction.
Teachers: He assumes no view at all.
Teachers: He does not take up or discard any view.
Teachers: Let's go of one position without taking another
Teachers: quite literally. The imagery that came to me as I first started reading over that was of a monkey swinging between the trees in a jungle
Teachers: and letting go of one branch and then going. I don't think I'll take that next branch, and just kind of floating there in midair.
Teachers: I don't know. Did that sort of give you any sense of a feeling of uncertainty as you listen to that
Teachers: few knobs around the room. Yeah.
Teachers: so uncertainty is a bodily feeling. and it has a Vaden, a feeling tone. And
Teachers: for many of us much of the time it's slightly unpleasant.
Teachers: and that unpleasantness can be a sense of unsafety. It can. It can feel like unsafe.
Teachers: And I suggest that one of these commitments that makes people ponder and sees hold of teachings is the commitment to finding the safety of certainty.
Teachers: It's much more pleasant feeling.
Teachers: So I want to suggest that releasing the impetus of selfing. The grip that ego has on us
Teachers: is an ethical act, and one that's needed desperately in this crisis, ridden world abouts.
Teachers: This May. This identity is made up of a bunch of personal characteristics that we like to believe about ourselves, and often a bunch of views that
Teachers: coincide with those characteristics.
Teachers: And
Teachers: I often speak about this as our me brochure. You know we we decide what's in. and make it up into a nice brochure, and we offer it to passers by in the hope that they'll take it and believe it.
Teachers: and
Teachers: and we can get really hot under the collar if they don't.
Teachers: So here's why I see it as an important ethical act. So for a long time.
Teachers: we, as humans, have known about this human tendency of ours to create in groups and out groups.
Teachers: I learned it back in psych in the early. It's even got a name, social identity theory. And what happens is we take one or more of the characteristics in our me brochure, and we decide this is me.
Teachers: and we define ourselves as part of
Teachers: the group of people who have that characteristic.
Teachers: And what happens once we do, that is, we overemphasize our similarities with the in group we overemphasize and over attend to
Teachers: the differences between me and the out group.
Teachers: and then, voila! We have the conditions ripe
Teachers: for conflict.
Teachers: So
Teachers: the individual act of deciding this is me is one of the conditions
Teachers: that leads to in group out, group, dynamic in group, out group
Teachers: conflict.
Teachers: An easy example.
I'm not a big Rugby fan, but we can all at least understand this example. Let's say Australia are playing England in the Rugby Union.
Teachers: and that night, where all Australians. and then the next week, we have
state of origin
Teachers: in
Teachers: Rugby League. Just another Rugby code for those of you outside of Australia who may not know what I'm talking about, but it's a long standing rivalry between 2 States in Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales. And so that week I'm no longer an Australian.
Teachers: I'm a new South Welsh person.
Teachers: so all of a sudden my in group has changed from the whole nation. And now it's just the people in the State, because I'm focusing on a different element of the knee brochure.
Teachers: Now I want to clarify one thing, which is, I'm not saying for a second that there's no benefit to belonging to groups. Quite the contrary, and I'll talk some about that a bit later in the week.
Teachers: But it is the need to belong is in our DNA. You know
we didn't survive as a species because we were faster or stronger or even smarter. We survived because we were more cooperative.
Teachers: So
Teachers: the need to belong. It's it's deep within us
Teachers: now, as Rick Hansen says, and another little one of his that stuck with me is that self-organizes around threat
Teachers: self-organisers around. Threat. So when I'm feeling threatened. That's when I reach for the Me brochure. You can't speak to me like that.
And the same happens in groups.
Teachers: and once we start doing that in groups, we have othering. So whatever definition we've decided is my in group and I'll give you something we can create a group we can create. We can co opt anything into our identity. I'll give you a whole stack of examples in a second.
Teachers: But as soon as we have othering. We have sufferings, not okay for my group.
Teachers: But it's more okay, at least, and maybe completely okay for the outgroup.
Teachers: Now
Teachers: let me give you some examples of groups here. Gender, skin, color, nationality, religion.
Teachers: soccer team culture. political party. socioeconomic status. level of education. personality, type. species, species is huge. One.
Teachers: My, let's bring it closer to home level of spiritual attainment.
Teachers: I'm a spiritual person.
Teachers: and even within that, maybe I'm an advanced spiritual person.
Teachers: We can even create in groups and out groups around that.
Teachers: So we can Co opt anything into this identity making and that identity can then lead to the next step at a group level, which is the group belonging in group out group.
Teachers: It's not okay for my group to suffer. But it's okay for anyone outside my group to suffer.
Teachers: And can you see how the desire for certainty leads to this?
Teachers: Because reality is? I am not that thing in the brochure that is one of a whole stack of things
Teachers: that I can be in any given moment, depending on conditions internally and externally.
Teachers: But I've printed it up in a brasher, as if it's the thing
alright.
Teachers: So
Teachers: it's that desire to PIN myself down with an identity.
Teachers: That is that starting point for all of these.
So just stop and ponder for a second. What would the world be like
Teachers: if we viewed others through the lens of our shared experience of being sensitive creatures on planet earth.
Teachers: First and foremost. Yep, we're part of all these other groups, and what have you
Teachers: but what is? First and foremost.
Teachers: we were Earth dwellers
Teachers: actually got that term from Jermaine Greer. I saw her interviewed, and I loved it. I've adopted it
Teachers: so rather than I'm a woman.
Teachers: What if I'm just a person? What if I'm just an Earth dweller?
What if, instead of this or that sexuality, this or that nationality, this or that religion, this or that.
Teachers: you know, sporting team culture, political persuasion, socioeconomic status, personality, type, species. What if we first and foremost
Teachers: were Earth dwellers?
Teachers: The idea of Assam becomes defunct.
Teachers: least until we meet an intelligent life form somewhere else.
Teachers: Of course, cellving's been around forever, no doubt, as long as humans have, I would guess.
Teachers: but in our saculum we have this thing called social media.
Teachers: and that turbocharges it.
Teachers: because now we don't just have the imagined me brochure. We have the timeline on Facebook.
Teachers: and we have nicely curated pictures and videos. And
Teachers: you know, in Spau music in the background.
Teachers: And if we ever do kind of get an inkling that well, maybe that's not me with a capital M. And maybe I am a bit more of a process.
Teachers: That's how I think of me. I'm a process.
Teachers: We have this weight of inertia because we've got this timeline of going out there and committing to being a certain person.
Teachers: So it's a lot harder to be fluid
Teachers: once we have a whole, you know 10 years of timeline history going out there and saying, This is who I am.
Teachers: and of course the world punishes us for it, or they reward for us. It reward us for it, and either way it'll probably reinforce selfing because selfing organizes around threat, or we get the little dopamine hit
Teachers: from the likes one way or the other reinforces it.
Teachers: Now, weaning people off of certainty, I think, is no mean feat. I can't see society en masse, ever giving it up anytime soon. But what if we, as as dumb all as as dumber practitioners, were to take seriously this idea of
Teachers: really genuinely getting to work on on letting go of this fixed idea
Teachers: of who I am, being, these set of descriptors in my me brochure. and started thinking. First and foremost, I'm a sensitive creature on planet Earth.
Teachers: living in this swirling world of causes and conditions that frequently hurt.
Teachers: I think it's really important because
Teachers: there aren't too many role models of this out there. And I think people like the people in this room are probably the best candidates
Teachers: for being those role models. And I think about there was a guy. I was lucky to have a university lecturer
Teachers: back in my twentys who he wasn't a Dummar practitioner, but he he kind of was, you know.
Teachers: and he wasn't attached to certainty. He spoke provisionally. and I remember it was a real curiosity to me because the household that I grew up in was the opposite.
Teachers: And yet he he didn't lack confidence.
Teachers: and he
Teachers: If he was ever challenged, it tended to result in communal exploration, whereas
Teachers: people who are more certain sounding and more authoritative and more black and white, if they're challenged, they tended to be aggressive, and you'd find that you were.
Teachers: You either had to pick aside or run away one of the 2, and I think I remember him all these years later, and he had a constant stream of ex students. Often, years after they'd left University, come through and tell him how much of a profound impact he'd had on their life.
Teachers: And
Teachers: so I think the importance of showing the world how to do this
Teachers: can't be overstated. There's just not too many role models out there.
Teachers: So
Teachers: I'm going to offer you an activity to help with this ethical project of undermining the selfing process.
What I'm going to suggest to you is you grab an a 4 sheet of paper and something to write with.
Teachers: and then spread out because I don't want you to feel in any way inhibited about what you're writing, and you're going to be writing about yourself.
Teachers: And sometimes people can feel a bit shy. It's self conscious when you're asked to write about yourself.
Teachers: People at home are obviously, you know.
Teachers: easy for them, but so if you can grab a 4 sheet of paper, a pen, and then move somewhere where you can still see me, because I'm going to show you how to do it. It's pretty simple, but
and just spread out so that you've got a little bit of privacy.
Teachers: So
Teachers: a margin across the top, you're going to have some titles across the top and 3 columns.
Teachers: Hopefully, the people at home can see.
Thanks.
Okay, title at the top of the first column is me.
Teachers: and I'd like you to put in there
Teachers: list as many doc points as come to you about to describe yourself. What do you believe about yourself?
Teachers: So there might be descriptors like
Teachers: funny. smart, caring.
Teachers: generous.
Teachers: please. I'm not implanting suggestions here, but they might be hopeless.
Teachers: They might be disorganized.
Teachers: they might be, whatever they can be. Nouns. I want them to describe your identity, though so, who am I? In terms of identity?
Teachers: So not yet, I mean, it could be like woman. I might think of myself as a woman, which is a noun. But it's also potentially part of my identity.
Teachers: So just list them in dot points.
So
yeah.
so
Teachers: okay, I'm sure you've all got at least enough to keep working with, for now you can add to it later. If you find the activity useful
Teachers: in your second column, can you put the heading Exceptions
you.
Teachers: The heading for the second column is Exceptions. and what I want you to do is for each of the descriptors that you've put there, or at least for some of them, whichever one's sort of a flow easiest
Teachers: is, write an example of a time when you behaved in a way that was not consistent
Teachers: with the descriptor you've got there.
Teachers: so it might be. You know the time I you might have
Teachers: kind and friendly as descriptors, and except for that time when I yelled at my neighbor for chopping down my tree.
Teachers: so just can just be a few words so that you can identify what's the situation? That was an exception
Teachers: in terms of the way that you behaved. It was not consistent with that descriptor.
Teachers: So when you finish that thought your column heading for the last column is reasons for exceptions.
Teachers: and I want you to just jot down brief
Teachers: indication
Teachers: of why you behaved differently in that instance.
Teachers: So we're talking about selfing. We're talking about the lee brochure. and we're talking about the important
Teachers: ethical act of loosening our grip on this
Teachers: certainty about who I am.
Teachers: So if we think about that first column as our Mi brochure.
or at least part of it.
Teachers: what do columns 2 and 3
reveal to you.
Teachers: Stidelity, consistency.
Teachers: Oh, sorry! Well, in my mind just was not a constant or consistent
Teachers: or stable pattern. And why not? What meant? It wasn't
Teachers: because what's going on in me and what's going on out there keep moving around so causes and conditions maybe interesting.
Teachers: So I am
me.
Teachers: except when I'm not. except when causes and conditions are such that I'm not.
Teachers: What's in the knee brochure
Teachers: other thoughts, insights, reflections. Yeah.
Teachers: My name's Jessica. What really interests me about the reasons for the exceptions are things like desperation, jealousy, rage.
Teachers: are pissed.
Teachers: Yeah, that there's sort of discomfort in a social situation that they are. They are. They are really kind of extreme extreme evidence of
Teachers: being pushed to a limit that is right outside my comfort zone, that is to do with probably not being
Teachers: comfortable about expressing a reality. Yeah, anyways, yes, just very interesting. Just the strength of the words. You know, the exceptions are very.
Teachers: very powerful.
Teachers: often very negative feelings. Yeah, sounds like a lot of reactivity in there. Yeah.
thanks.
Teachers: I'm James. By the way, I forgot to introduce myself yesterday. But
Teachers: I guess with the one thing I was just thinking about there. The traits, let's say I don't know. Thoughtful, or something like I wasn't thoughtful when I was thoughtless.
The
Teachers: th their tendencies right? You can always find an exception. But could we say, like you took a probability distribution? These are the things you know, that are really quite probable about ourselves, but there are will be exceptions, so there is some. There is some
Teachers: probabilistic certainty in those things, but there will be exceptions. It's not certainty, though, is it? No? So yeah, we have patterns.
Teachers: We have personality characteristics. I'm born an extrovert. I'm going to die an extrovert. It's a neurophysiological setup in this body, mind.
Teachers: So I'm probably more likely to
Teachers: seek social stimulation on a more frequent basis, possibly with more people
Teachers: as a
Teachers: as a pattern, but it's certainly not a certainty.
Teachers: So if I think of myself as outgoing.
Teachers: and then somebody calls me boring.
Teachers: Oh, I can be boring. The conditions are right
Teachers: rather than getting hot under the collar about the fact that someone's
Teachers: seeing me as something that's not in this brochure. because I can be the things that are not in this brochure, as I've just revealed to myself.
Teachers: If the conditions are right. then I guess I would say like, Yes, you can have.
Teachers: you know. Is it valuable to have this knowledge about ourselves of being a certain way? But it's the attachment to that, or the grasping, or the
Teachers: the fixed view, or whatever you want to call it, that causes us suffering, the inability to be excepting of the exceptions, I suppose.
Teachers: seeing it as a set concrete thing this is who I am versus seeing myself as a process.
Teachers: And yeah, some of the internal conditions that that affect my experience are personality variables what I call character structure.
Teachers: You know my own set of sensitivities and reactivities that I've gathered over the course of my life through my life experience. They're part of the internal conditions, too. So it's not that they're not there, and it's not that they don't exert an influence, maybe even frequently.
Teachers: but it's not fixed.
Teachers: Hmm.
Teachers: yeah, Leslie.
try and look at you, Leslie, as if because I know
Lesley Synge: Hi, I think, Lori, you assumed we're all just going to write a list of all our good qualities, and that alone, so that you could then, you know, play with that. But I actually wrote some of my bad quality, so
I'm not quite sure
Lesley Synge: what that all means. For example, I wrote that I could be bitchy and smart arsey.
Lesley Synge: and then the exceptions to that, of course. Then I had to expand on that.
Lesley Synge: And I just wrote things like, you know, my dharma practice helps me to pull back from those things. So it's kind of not what you expected. I guess
Teachers: we can be just as attached to unflattering characteristics as we can fluttering.
Teachers: I can make an identity out of being bitchy. No problem.
Lesley Synge: but I wasn't making an identity out of it. I was saying that these are sometimes my passing qualities.
Teachers: so I guess you wanted me to think more that I was always stuck in those things, but I don't feel as if I am. Well, maybe you're not holding on tightly to an identity. Maybe you're not doing a whole lot of selfing. Maybe you're letting
Teachers: yourself be a process rather than getting hung up on a solid, fixed identity. Maybe you're making some progress on that task.
Teachers: Let's hope so. That's all I wanted to say. I just felt that you were making assumptions about I am yeah in the activity I am. But the first one is not an assumption. I was made. I wasn't assuming that that would all be positive. We can definitely.
Teachers: You know, I can be a tough bitch that could easily be someone's identity.
Teachers: I'm not saying it's yours. but we can make an identity out of unpleasant things.
Teachers: I can. I can tell you stories, many of them just popping out of my head. Now, yeah, thanks.
Teachers: Other thoughts and reflections.
Teachers: questions, confusions.
Teachers: I just wanted to say I oops
Teachers: felt that really resonated me with what you were saying, James.
Teachers: about a sort of tendency to lean one way or another.
and also with what sorry I missed her name Lesley Leslie was saying about
Teachers: not really feeling strongly attached, or that I do really
Teachers: care about these parts, but I don't think it's through any particularly fantastic dharma work I've been doing. I just
Teachers: yeah. I don't relate so strongly to that idea of having a fixed
Teachers: being very certain about these things about myself.
Teachers: yeah, I think that's all I wanted to say.
Teachers: Sure. yeah.
Teachers: But I mean, people will vary right in terms of
how strongly invested, we are
Teachers: in this identity, we've cooked up for ourselves. I don't think you're so invested as adequate. I'm gonna
Teachers: we missed it got to eat quick
Teachers: the thing I noticed that was that it's reversible. So what I had for example, I had confident as a general characteristic. But then I thought of an exception, and something that
Teachers: led me to be not confident, and then I thought, well, I could easily have said that I'm not confident, except that there are conditions under which I am. So. What those have too got in common is that confidence is an issue.
Teachers: But whether it's I'm confident, except not always, or I'm not confident, except sometimes, and on different days the story will go different ways.
Teachers: On some days, of course, the issue of confidence won't be there at all, but but where it does come up it's very fluid as to whether it reads left to right or right to left.
Teachers: I mean, that can be helpful in some ways.
Teachers: If if it's not.
Teachers: if you're aware that on any given day causes and conditions. I can feel like this, or I can feel like that
Teachers: as teenagers. We desperately want to fix down an identity because we
Teachers: it feels socially unsafe not to have one.
Teachers: But I do.
Teachers: I do.
Teachers: I see it as an important ethical task before us as we grow. as people just slowly. Let that go, for the reasons
Teachers: that I've outlined. So let me just finish then with
Teachers: So this is the Oh! I threw my glasses on the ground hang on.
Teachers: So just back to the purpose of this is, we're talking about perspective. We're talking about building and integrating uncertainty into our perspective, and how helpful that is, and a particular instance of that being
Teachers: uncertainty about the idea I have of me
Teachers: as a really helpful ethical task to help undermine some of those
Teachers: us and them in group out group conditions for conflict
Teachers: processes. So you probably have heard the the quote with little doubt, little awakening with great doubt, great awakening, I mean, that's in itself got the uncertainty in there.
Teachers: So to doubt, we need to willingly inhabit uncertainty
Teachers: and to engage ethically, we need to willingly inhabit uncertainty.
So that's it for my session. We now have 35 min
Teachers: for any. We had a couple of burning questions.
Teachers: so perhaps if Stephen and Wynton want to come out.
Teachers: we can address those than any other.