Lenore: Okay. So my topic for this evening is called to see or not to see
Lenore: engaging without overwhelm.
Lenore: as has been mentioned a few times already, and certainly in personal conversations that I've had with people
Lenore: engaging can be overwhelming.
Lenore: You know. Compassion, fatigue is a thing
Lenore: I told you last night about my my adventure with volunteering for the Sophie Scomps
Lenore: political campaign, and how I ended up doing the thing I never thought I'd do the door knocking so.
Lenore: and
Lenore: it actually turned out to be quite good fun. I really quite enjoyed it. My vision of it. And why I was scared of it was people slamming doors in your face and being rude to you, and you know, telling you where to go, and none of that happened. It was mostly really enjoyable.
Lenore: though. There's one door knock that stands out in my memory.
Lenore: And
Lenore: so I knocked on the door, and there was, I heard, a bit of sort of shuffling and murmuring
Lenore: behind the door. and then an old man opened the door. He would have been
Lenore: I shouldn't shouldn't say that, should I given the average age of people in here, but he was probably
Lenore: What would he have been? At least mid 70 s.
Lenore: I've just gotten in trouble for all those people online for calling mid-seventies all anyway. There there was. So he he answered the door.
Lenore: and I could see down the passageway behind him, and there was a woman standing down the end of passageway, which I only assume is his wife.
Lenore: And so it's all you know. Hi! My name is Lenori. I'm volunteering for
Lenore: woman who's putting herself forward as a candidate at the elections. Sophie Scott and and these doorknobs. You don't actually have political conversations with people. All you're doing is you're finding out whether they're aware of her.
Lenore: And if so, what their attitude is, and if they're not, you just sort of give them a brief feel for the key thing she's standing for. You might lead them with a brochure, or tell them where to find more information if they're interested. And then, you know, you just give them a nice experience. Oh, and we ask them, what what matters to them? So what are the key issues that matter to you at at, for in the election that's pretty much all it is.
Lenore: There's an occasional sort of person who will want you to. Oh, come in, and we will talk about it. And what have you? Which really ruins the plan? Because you've got a whole street to get through but I didn't have any of those but anyway, so I said to this old man, Oh, yeah, Lenore, this is what I'm doing, you know, are you, you know? Have you heard of Sophie Scumps?
Lenore: Nope, not interested in any of that?
Lenore: I'm like, oh, okay. So you know, what are the issues that matter to you at the upcoming election.
Lenore: We don't care about anything.
Lenore: No one prepared me for that response. I'm like, Oh.
Lenore: you don't care about anything, and he's like, no, we've got our life here, and that's all we care about.
Lenore: Like, right? Okay.
Lenore: I'm just kind of thinking on my feet. And I'm thinking, come on, there has to be something that you care about. That is a you know Federal issue. I couldn't think of one except for it was more of a state issue, really, but I just sort of plucked it out of the air, went, oh, what about you know? Aged care issues, or you know, healthcare for.
Lenore: and he's like, No, don't care.
Lenore: Don't care about anything I'm like.
Lenore: alright. Okay. Hello! You have to vote for someone on the weekends. Think about Sophie, and you know, thanks for your time. And if I went on my way and
Lenore: That
Lenore: experience like that, that, that man that couple have sort of come to personify for me. Disengagement.
Lenore: you know. All we care about is our little 500 square metres. Don't care about anything outside of that
Lenore: now on one level as someone who at that time. So this is sort of first few months of last year I was putting aside a really important project.
Lenore: That I'd already had to put aside a bunch of times, and I was putting it aside again
Lenore: in order to devote my time to helping. you know. Try to make this change.
Lenore: and you know and it was uncomfortable, as I described to you last night. It's not exactly something II felt comfortable doing, and it was for the greater good. And
Lenore: to me this couple kind of personified part of the problem
Lenore: with our world, and that is that what's in it for me? Mentality
Lenore: and an absolute lack of any kind of civic responsibility, interest in an engagement.
Lenore: But on another level I understood it.
Lenore: The willingness to raise our head above the parapet and and look out there in and see what's going in. On in the world.
Lenore: sort of to look beyond the walls of our homely little 500 square metres. It can be overwhelming.
Lenore: I mean, we've talked a lot this week already about, you know, crises going on. We've got the climate crisis. We've got the wars in Ukraine. We've got Israel and Palestine. I actually looked up the other day. There's a agency in Geneva that tracks armed conflicts around the world.
Lenore: and there are more than a hundred 10 armed conflicts currently going on around the world.
Lenore: and most of us know of probably 2 of them.
Lenore: So you know. And then we've got the other things we've picked up on already, you know, housing crisis.
Cost of living crisis. We've got good old bigotry in all of its forms.
Lenore: you know, and then, of course, the climate emergency. So you know the willingness to engage the willingness to look out there over the walls of the castle.
Lenore: You know it can be hard. it can be painful.
Lenore: I've already had a couple of conversations, you know. Morning tea and lunchtime. And what have you with people? Where
Lenore: all about all this talk about the crises? You know it's it, can. It can feel heavy. It can feel hard.
Lenore: So I want to suggest that our our first choice in engaging with this world in crisis is
Lenore: whether to look at all at an issue.
Lenore: and if so, how to do that.
Lenore: I want to suggest that this looking or attending to, you know, taking notice of finding out about paying attention to
Lenore: it occurs on the spectrum, and so at one end we've got
Lenore: our old couple who don't care about anything. They don't. They don't. Wanna they don't just don't wanna look at anything.
Lenore: And then at the other end, we've got undiscerning.
Lenore: Whatever comes my way I look at it. and I'm going to suggest that this is a classic case of the middle way, being
Lenore: skillful.
Lenore: and so I hope to to help you with that this evening. So
Lenore: if we take
Lenore: yeah, I'll wake up.
Lenore: So
Lenore: I indicated on the very first day that one of the key issues that has captured my attention. To do with engaging with this world in crisis is the fact that our attentional bandwidth is constantly under attack.
Lenore: There's a plethora of actors out there vying for our attention in this attention economy. and that this is a recipe. If we don't exercise discernment
Lenore: for either numbing out or overwhelm nothing out checking out or overwhelm and checking like checking out like this old couple obviously had.
Lenore: Now I expect that this is not an issue Gotuma had to deal with
Lenore: in his time.
Lenore: It's very much a secular
Lenore: issue. It's of our secul, and it's of our time.
Lenore: So the very first ethical act we need to consciously engaging is making a choice about
Lenore: what we're going to allow to have contact with our sensorium. And by sensorium I just mean, you know our body, mind.
Lenore: and in this case I'm especially talking about our mind.
Lenore: But obviously the whole thing is connected.
Lenore: Now you may have come across the term, guard your senses. I came across quite early in my Dharma exploration, and at first I remember thinking that
Lenore: why would you do that? Isn't that a form of a version? You know this is unpleasant. So I'm going to block it out.
Lenore: And it can be if it's just a reactive, you know, blocking.
Lenore: But I actually believe now that mindful and skillful guarding of our senses is essential
Lenore: to avoid this numbing out, checking out or overwhelm. because if we don't do this and do it skillfully.
Lenore: will, will, it'll render us
Lenore: unable to engage.
Lenore: will become useless to the project of improving this world, of of engaging ethically with our world.
Lenore: Now, to make this conscious choice. to pay attention to what we're paying attention to.
Lenore: many of us may need to slow down.
Lenore: Dare I say it do less?
Lenore: I don't know if you've noticed this in your life, but it's really clear to me that speed
Lenore: and mindfulness are inimical to each other.
Lenore: they they fight against each other. This is really obvious to me in a really practical way, in my sport.
Lenore: So anytime you're doing something that has to be performed at speed. So a block start, sprint hurdles high, jump long jump, you know, throws
Lenore: it's all performed quickly.
Lenore: So, as an example with my sprint hurdles. I was telling someone the other day,
Lenore: my goal. So I my my next goal with the sprint headers. I wanna
Lenore: hopefully break the Australian record before I leave this age group next year.
Lenore: and to do that, my goal is, I have to between touchdown on one hurdle and touchdown on the next hurdle.
Lenore: My goal is for that to be 1.0 6 s
Lenore: or better so, in 1.0 6 s I have to
Lenore: land and balance myself. I have to bring my trailing around, get it in front. power it down into the ground so that I'm accelerating off the hurdle. I have to take 3 strides as fast as I can to get across that gap
Lenore: and to get me in the right takeoff
Lenore: spot for the next hurdle, and then I have to get myself into a position to take off and be
Lenore: yeah as low as I can over that hurdle
Lenore: so that I can bring that next leg down and and land. So all of that has to happen
Lenore: in 1.0 6 s. So
Lenore: when you're trying to change something that you're doing about hurdling or improve it, or or teach it. It takes it takes quite a lot of time and repetition
Lenore: because
Lenore: you you can't attend in great detail
Lenore: to all of those things because you're doing them at speed.
Lenore: So
Lenore: think of our attentional capacity like the broadband cable that comes into your house.
Lenore: It has a limited
Lenore: ability to transmit data
Lenore: in and out
Lenore: when it comes to our minds.
Lenore: If we jam packed that bandwidth.
Lenore: The detail of our perception is traded off.
Lenore: It's like with a video, you have to reduce the frames per second.
Lenore: So we no longer have good perceptual acuity. We can't notice the detail in our experience if we're rushing through life at a million miles an hour.
Lenore: and that says nothing of what many people call multitasking.
Lenore: which, at least, if we're talking about tasks that require any kind of processing capacity, there is no such thing as multitasking.
Lenore: It's actually what psychologists call context switching.
Lenore: So when you so-called multitask. what you're actually doing is you're drawing yourself out of one task.
Lenore: You're shifting your mind to another task. You're reorienting your mind to what that new task is, and possibly where you were up to, you know in it last time you were there you were
Lenore: engaging your memory and your planning abilities for what you're going to do there and then you engage in that task and that switching process, dragging yourself out of one shifting and orienting yourself into another. All
Lenore: it's all costly.
Lenore: attention-wise. It takes attention. So context switching is actually really inefficient way to work.
Lenore: And there, as I say, there's no real such thing as multitasking when it comes to tasks that require processing capacity.
Lenore: So to even be able to do what it is, I'm going to play with with you tonight.
Lenore: we're which is paying attention to what we pay attention to.
Lenore: I'm going to suggest that or invite you all
Lenore: to join an imaginary organization called Par. which stands for people against rushing.
Lenore: And it's an organization I dreamt up many years ago, actually. and
Lenore: to join to join. All you have to do is
Lenore: genuinely intend to try to meet 3 commitments. The first one is 20% buffer time
Lenore: on any deadline, so that includes.
Lenore: you know, arriving somewhere. travel time, that kind of thing. So if it's gonna take, you know, if you think it's gonna take me an hour to get from here to there. Give yourself an hour and 12 min.
Lenore: So 20% buffer time.
Lenore: Second commitment is
Lenore: blank spaces in the diary.
Lenore: So
Lenore: prioritising and honoring nothing time.
Lenore: so that might be on any given day. It might be a 15 min period
Lenore: where you just sit
Lenore: and you know, take in the warm air and the birds in the trees.
Lenore: If that's all you can manage in a week, it might just be a Sunday afternoon. We've got nothing planned. Yes.
Lenore: hang it home, or it's it's not for chores.
Lenore: It's not for getting back to emails. It's for just doing nothing.
Lenore: And then, obviously, you might want to build a bigger chunk in
Lenore: monthly or 6 monthly, or what have you? But it's honoring and planning for? Because, as I spoke about a few days ago credible intentions of things that we've either mentally rehearsed or mentally planned.
Lenore: He's actually planning for that nothing time and really valuing it.
Lenore: So 20% buffer
Lenore: blank spaces in the diary, and the third one is, which won't be need any explanation to this crowd is, be where you are.
Lenore: And I actually have here some par cards. If any of you would like to take some
Lenore: that you can take and put in your wallet, or give to a friend? Or what have you? And for the our friends online, you can access them. You can download them from my website, which is just flourish personalgrowth.com. So there's a tools menu, and it's a free download on my website.
Lenore: So we need to join par so that we can slow down enough to pay attention to what we're paying attention to.
Lenore: So let's imagine we've done that. Let's imagine we freed up our attention or bandwidth enough that we can pay attention.
Lenore: I'm gonna offer you a little tool to help you
Lenore: discern whether to engage as this peaceful warrior.
Lenore: whether to engage with this world in crisis on any given
Lenore: issue. or whether to guard your senses, whether to raise the drawbridge and say, Nope.
Lenore: Self-protection's kicking in self sustenance, sustainability is kicking in.
Lenore: pat let you in
Lenore: to raise the drawbridge over the moat.
Lenore: So the majority of the rest of the session tonight from me is actually this activity, and I know there are some people who don't like doing
Lenore: guided reflections and things. So if you're one of those people
Lenore: feel free to not participate.
Lenore: or to leave and go for a walk, or whatever you want to do. because the rest of our session tonight will be doing this for the rest of you if you can grab. You need an a 4 sheet of paper.
Lenore: something to write with, and a highlighter, and I've got a whole stack of highlighters down there. If you don't have one.
Lenore: and people at home, if you are able to furnish yourself with the same thing. If you don't have a highlighter you can make do with a pen.
Hold on!
Lenore: It's awful!
Lenore: Oh, and here are the Parc cards, and I'll I'll just I'll leave them on the table here.
and so on.
Lenore: Okay, so first thing, if you can draw a little corridor down the left and bottom.
Lenore: Put your paper landscape orientation on its side
Lenore: and draw a corridor just enough room. You'll only need to write one word
Lenore: down the down, the left-hand margin and across the bottom margin.
Lenore: so like an L,
Lenore: and then
Lenore: top. Left-hand corner is high, bottom left-hand, but bottom, right-hand corner is high and bottom left-hand corner. Right. The word low.
Send a few points.
Lenore: Hi, bye, Lowe.
Lenore: Yeah, I've just put HI. But yes, that's the word.
Lenore: Only the bottom where as well
Lenore: low, is down here. Not love. Yeah.
Lenore: Okay. Next.
Lenore: where's my little shape?
Lenore: Put my shapes. I know what it is. Okay.
Lenore: Mindfulness in the left margin.
Lenore: seeing we're seeing SWEI, NG in the bottom.
Lenore: seeing SEIN, g.
Lenore: and then in your big box in the middle drawer, a cross in the middle of it.
Lenore: Okay, so what we've got here are 2 factors. How mindful we are about
Lenore: letting in or not letting in this information into our minds.
Lenore: absorbing it. and whether the extent to which we're looking at it. you know low is not. Don't even
Lenore: look at this at all, and high is yep. I let everything in.
Lenore: So if what I'm going to do is I've got a whole bunch of
Lenore: crises listed.
Lenore: and you're going to have the opportunity to add your own at the end. And what I want you to do is as I tell you what they are, place them in the relevant quadrant.
Lenore: based on the extent to which you currently allow information in about that issue.
Lenore: and the extent to which you are mindful about that letting in or keeping out.
Lenore: So, for example, if I
Lenore: show no discernment, and I just read everything and watch everything and listen to everything
Lenore: it it would be high on the seeing.
Lenore: But I'd be low on the mindfulness.
Lenore: because I'm not being discerning about it at all.
Lenore: If I am
Lenore: letting in information about an issue.
Lenore: and I'm consciously choosing to do that. It would be in the top right?
Lenore: There's a lot. There's high mindfulness about choosing to attend to it, and there's
Lenore: high seeing I'm I'm letting the information in.
Lenore: Now you're going to write a word or 2 to represent some issues that I'm that I'm going to give you. So any questions about what what we're doing?
Lenore: Not okay. All right. So
Lenore: I think only the first one will be maybe not relevant for
Lenore: non Australians, but
Lenore: the aboriginal people's upset at the referendum failure.
Lenore: and there and the aboriginal, aboriginal people's challenges. So you might want to write Australian aborigines or indigenous people or something.
Me, too, and the gender and gender-based bigotry.
Lenore: information about the cruelty of the dairy industry?
What is that?
Lenore: The cruelty of the dairy industry.
Lenore: cruelty.
Yep.
Lenore: Information about the war in Ukraine.
Lenore: Information about the war in Palestine. Israel Palestine.
Lenore: Information about what the future will hold if the climate emergency arrives.
Lenore: Information about the plight of refugees in your country.
Lenore: information about the plight of refugees in other parts of the world.
Lenore: information about the housing crisis in your country.
Lenore: The cruelty of the pork industry.
Lenore: The issue of domestic violence.
Lenore: The cost of living Crisis
Lenore: Plight of the Uighurs in China.
Lenore: The plight of the Wiggers in China.
Lenore: Wiggaz.
Lenore: Okay, there's your answer.
Lenore: the daily stories of murder and violence that is often called the News.
Lenore: the daily stories of murder and violence. I actually call it the crime, Death and Destruction Report. which is more commonly called the News
Lenore: information and stories about natural disasters.
Lenore: the cruelty of the egg industry.
Lenore: stories about lack of integrity in politics, in your political system.
Lenore: details of the issue of racism.
Lenore: racism.
Lenore: race is a
please.
Lenore: Yes.
Lenore: we're nearly finished.
Lenore: What I call the unhappiness epidemic so increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide in the developed world.
Lenore: and last, but not least, a difficulty or crisis of your choice.
Lenore: so there might be something I haven't mentioned here that you pay attention to.
Lenore: mindfully or otherwise.
Lenore: feel free to add that
Lenore: now you'll notice this is mostly in those outer circles of of our world that I talked about. Yeah, it's community and global. You could equally do this. For you know
Lenore: direct personal crises in your world you could include, but for for the purposes of
Lenore: this exercise we'll just keep it to these. So what you've got there is is a map of your current willingness to see in regard to community and global crises.
Lenore: now, our minds take the shape of what we rest them on.
Lenore: So
Lenore: let's have a look at our current state of seeing
Lenore: so to orient you. So what I want you to do is pay attention to how many issues you've got on the right versus versus the left to solve, if
Lenore: of your piece of paper.
Lenore: so to the extent that the issues are loaded to the right rather than left. You're bearing witness.
Lenore: You're allowing the world into your attentional and emotional space.
Lenore: If there's too much on the right. you're possibly
Lenore: experiencing overwhelm, or soon to be experiencing overwhelm
Lenore: to the extent that they're on the left for better or for worse, and we'll explore this in a second. You're keeping the world out
Lenore: of your attentional bandwidth. So that's left versus right. Am I letting it in, or I'm am I keeping it out
Lenore: top? This is bottom to the extent that your issues are loaded to the top of the page. You're being mindful
Lenore: in managing, in managing your attentional bandwidth
Lenore: to the extent that they're loaded to the bottom.
Lenore: Your attentional sphere is not being treated with due care or seriousness.
Lenore: So now let's have a look at each quadrant.
Lenore: So if we call quadrant, one is top right? One so high mindfulness high seeing.
Lenore: So as I'll go through each quadrant and so have a look at what you've got in each quadrant as I go through it.
Lenore: So, quadrant one
Lenore: is the willingness to embrace difficult space to bear
Lenore: high and high top right?
Lenore: So we're bearing witness to to some unpleasant reality in our world.
Lenore: at least enough to be able to decide whether to engage, and if if so, to what extent.
Lenore: or because there's another. Even if we don't engage. Sometimes we decide there's a benefit to
Lenore: me or my my world as a good citizen.
Lenore: just to understand the issue. At least.
Lenore: so this is the peaceful warrior bearing witness. and possibly assessing whether to be involved.
Lenore: If you have a lot in this quadrant. and your mindfulness is operating effectively, it should be sustainable. You shouldn't be in overwhelm if you are feeling overwhelmed.
Lenore: Perhaps your mindful consideration needs to prioritize more highly the issue of self-care and sustainability.
Lenore: Quadrant 2. So quadrant 2 is
Lenore: tall
Lenore: left from your angle, so high mindfulness low, seeing so any in this
Lenore: quadrant here.
Lenore: So this can be a number of things, and when I finish going through them I'll be really interested to hear
Lenore: your thoughts about it because I
Lenore: invented this exercise for you guys, I've never done it before. So there might be more, even greater variety of things in this quadrant than what I what I could think of.
So it can be a number of things. So first of all, it could be really skillful regeneration.
Lenore: So, going back to my athletics
Lenore: each week I have 2 rest days each month. I have a week called Regen Week.
Lenore: which is, we d load me still trained, but we, we deload me give the body a chance to recover and recuperate. and every year, once I've had my major Comp. I have a good 3 or 4 weeks off.
Lenore: So we we build, we build regeneration and rest and recovery into the program.
Lenore: And this is just as important
Lenore: in our role as peaceful warriors in the world.
Lenore: We need to take seriously this issue of regeneration.
Lenore: So it may be that
Lenore: one or more of the issues in Quadrant true Quadrant 2 might be part of you ensuring and looking after yourself as a regenerative theme.
Lenore: So we are our primary tool in the world. and we need to keep ourselves sharp. and we can't do that
Lenore: if we don't give ourselves time for regeneration and recovery.
Lenore: so it could be recovery
Lenore: now, because it could be that you are so engaged in that upper right quadrant.
Lenore: High mindfulness, high seeing Quadrant.
Lenore: that allowing any more into your bandwidth. is going to push you into overwhelm.
Lenore: So it can be skillful to say to to realize that to be monitoring your state of
Lenore: energy, energy, or overwhelm. And if there's a sense that you're getting close to that border of overwhelm.
Lenore: to push a few things into Quadrant 2
Lenore: to draw raise the drawbridge for a few issues.
Lenore: Now, it can also be a determination from Quadrant One. Maybe there was an issue in Quadrant one where you did look at it, and you mindfully chose to investigate it.
Lenore: and you decided that there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can reasonably do.
Lenore: In that case it's often the case that, continuing to pay attention to it is just going to drain your energy.
Lenore: For me.
Lenore: some of the things that are in that kind of category for me are natural disasters.
Lenore: I still to this day have not seen the footage that everyone else seemed to not be able to tear their eyes away from.
Lenore: Of the tsunami in Indonesia a few years ago.
Lenore: I still to this day have not seen it. because I know it's just going to be distressing. and
Lenore: there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in me distressing myself like that.
Lenore: So I chose not to
Lenore: look at any of that footage when it was out and about the crime, death, and destruction. Report is on this for me.
Lenore: so II mindfully choose not to watch the news or listen to the news.
Lenore: I scan the guardian app
Lenore: headlines, and I decide
Lenore: what I'm going to read about.
Lenore: From that
Lenore: I can't completely escape crime, death, and destruction. But at least that news source is
Lenore: less oriented towards that kind of thing. So the daily murder and violence. But
Lenore: in Quadrant 2 for me, I just
Lenore: there is, in my view, absolutely no benefit
Lenore: in me hearing about who killed? Whom? Yeah.
Lenore: Now, it could also be avoiding traumatic triggering.
Lenore: So there are some issues that I mean clearly you will have gathered by now. That animal cruelty is clearly something that I care a lot about.
Lenore: But the few animal issues that I mentioned in that list. They're all in Quadrant, too, for me.
Lenore: I don't look at them
Lenore: because I have looked. I've done the the responsible citizenry I have looked.
Lenore: and I'm doing everything I can do.
Lenore: So I donate money to animals. Australia and I support Bali Street dogs and I, you know
Lenore: very little animal flesh. And you know all those sorts of things. I've really looked at it. I've integrated it into my life, and any more looking is just distressing.
Lenore: So that goes into quadrant 2
Lenore: drawbridge up on that one.
Lenore: other things that fall into that category. I think I mentioned natural disasters. Yeah. Fires, earthquakes, those sorts of things.
Lenore: Just to me.
Lenore: pointless distress
Lenore: there is, and there isn't a possibility as well in this quadrant that you may be neglecting your peaceful warrior opportunities. so there might be some in there where you could be
Lenore: inadvertently rendering yourself part of the crisis by leaving space in your world
Lenore: for reactivity to dominate and suffering to continue or worsen because you're not looking at it
Lenore: so it can be unkindness in action.
Lenore: One example of that and I've heard this many times.
Lenore: because I generally don't. Well, you guys might find this hard to believe. I generally don't
Lenore: talk much about vegetarianism.
Lenore: And what have you when it. When is out in my normal life.
Lenore: when people find out that I'm a vegetarian, they often curious and ask me why I'm a vegetarian, and I sound ethical reasons. I hate cruelty. And the number of times I've had someone say to me.
Lenore: I couldn't look at all that information, all of that sort of stuff, or I'd have to stop eating meat.
Lenore: that is.
Lenore: you know, quadrant, to neglectful stuff.
Lenore: It's like I don't want to look, because then I'd have to be engaged.
Lenore: So
Lenore: so, Quadrant 2 contains a whole bunch of things would be really interesting. As you look at what issues you've got in there, which those are so it depends on the intention. It depends on how much you know, is it? I'm my issues are in Quadrant 2, because it's skillful self care for, to recuperate and regenerate, sharpen my saw.
Lenore: preserve my energy to keep engaging.
Lenore: or is it
Lenore: avoiding skillful avoidance of triggering? But I'm doing all I can, is it? There's nothing I can do but I've looked at it. Or is it? Actually, I'm avoiding?
Lenore: So with wholesome intentions. Q. 2 can be both compassionate to self and to others.
Lenore: If I feel like I'm sliding into overwhelm which has happened a couple of times.
Lenore: I don't look. I raise the drawbridge. It's skillful, it's self-compassionate. And I think it's an important part of
Lenore: engaging with our overwhelming.
Lenore: So this one, yeah. Remember the yin and the yang of exertion and recovery. That's it's so important to keep ourselves energized.
Lenore: however, without wholesome intentions. It can be selfish and destructive as well, and this is where our personal work had the courage to be honest with ourselves
Lenore: about our choices
Lenore: about. You know why we're doing things about our intentions
Lenore: is really important.
Lenore: So quadrant 2 contains a whole bunch of things.
Lenore: Quadrant 3. So quadrant 3, I would. Is this one here so high, seeing I'm letting lots of information in but low mindfulness.
Lenore: So this is where we have no guards at the entrance to the castle.
Lenore: anything and everything is allowed in no discernment.
Lenore: and this is really important in our seculum.
Lenore: because, as I said, you know, unlike Gotima.
Lenore: we have this constant barrage of information trying to capture our attention.
Lenore: So if we're not being deliberate, if we're not being discerning, if we're not being skillful, we could very easily end up in here
Lenore: with lots of issues in there
Lenore: many years ago I realized I had a lot of things in that. I didn't have a quadrant, but you know I realized I had. There! There was a lot of letting in, of of
Lenore: information that was distressing and didn't seem to go anywhere. Didn't seem to have a point. you know. Sometimes, looking at distressing information's important
Lenore: that leads to productive engagement. But sometimes it's not. And I remember a phase where II had a lot in there.
Lenore: And when I think about it, I think it came from a sense of Catholic guilt.
Lenore: It was this kind of thing of you know. I've got it good.
Lenore: and other people don't. so I need to punish myself by suffering with them
Lenore: was almost a guilt about, you know, having having a good life.
Lenore: Now that's not only cruel to ourselves.
Lenore: but it can lead again to overwhelm and therefore inaction.
Lenore: So this is the this is the quadrant of the stimulation junkie. The news junkie
Lenore: can be a quadrant of being afraid of my inner world. So I'll just. I just have constant stimulation, constant input constantly let you know, data and entertainment in. Then I won't have to
Lenore: sit and be with and notice what happens when none of that's present. What's going on?
Lenore: and the discernment about it comes from
Lenore: the awareness of the impact.
Lenore: So bringing mindfulness to the impact of you know, what what is it like if I just let
Lenore: let it all in.
Lenore: read it all, listen to it at all. Think about it all worry about it all.
Lenore: What's the impact?
Lenore: So bringing our mindfulness to that. Again, remembering that
Lenore: our minds take the shape of what we rest them on
Lenore: and given that there are so many players vying for our attention in this attention. Economy.
Lenore: if we don't practice discernment. If we had no guards at these doors to our senses, if we let everything in. our minds are going to take a very messy, random, anxious, and reactive shape.
Lenore: So if beware, be be be really careful with any issues that you've got in there.
Lenore: a couple of things I thought. Just very specific sort of practical things on this one.
Lenore: Some. So an example of
Lenore: of how much
Lenore: comes our way if we let it. I heard the other day
Lenore: that the Israeli army in the conflict in Israel and Palestine is posting every 2 min
Lenore: about what's going on there
Lenore: in detail about what the what the army is doing. So you know. Imagine if you have no discernment about what you're letting in
Lenore: through those through that castle drawbridge.
Lenore: The other thing is, where do you get your news from?
Lenore: Have a think about that? Because and I'm not just about. You know what attitude you know, or what perspective the editorial
Lenore: teen has but
Lenore: a lot of people, and maybe not.
Lenore: I don't know if this would be so true for the you know, older half in our retreat here, but a lot of
E.
Lenore: I'm going to say younger, but I mean going to include people in their 30 S and 40 s. Here.
Lenore: get their news from social media.
Lenore: So they'll get their news from Facebook, for example.
Lenore: or Google news.
Lenore: Google feed
Lenore: and
Lenore: I heard A, really, I was listening to. I listen to it specifically, a, podcast the other day on why we should not turn off the news. So of course I had to listen to that, because I had this thing about not watching the crime, death, and destruction report. She made a good point on there
Lenore: that if you get your news from social media or Google feeds, or what have you? There is no editorial team
Lenore: making conscious decisions about what is in the interests of the public to to feed you or not, which is what happens with
Lenore: actual. You know, media publications.
Lenore: Obviously those editorial teams have different, you know, attitudes and different values. But there are editorial teams, and there are editorial guidelines
Lenore: and professional standards. So, for example, she said.
Lenore: in
Lenore: in deciding whether to include a graphic photograph of something that would be quite distressing in an article
Lenore: they have to. They and they, you know, have their editorial meetings about this kind of thing. It has to be essential to the core point of the story
Lenore: in order for them to
Lenore: put a graphic, disturbing photo in an article, whereas if you are getting your news from social media feeds.
Lenore: the only thing they care about is clicks.
Lenore: So the more disturbing the better.
Lenore: So that's just it's something I had never thought about in terms of this
Lenore: discernment and this important
Lenore: task of self care to keep ourselves energized and regenerated to be able to engage.
Lenore: I've already mentioned the crime, death and destruction report, but also our phones.
Lenore: You know they've been called a tool of weapon of mass destruction. And I absolutely agree.
Lenore: So if we are, you know, constantly letting your notification settings on your phone are a really important thing. If you haven't noticed already.
Lenore: turn them off, unless there's a really good reason to have them on
Lenore: distracts. Your attention, grabs your attention all the time. That's what it's designed to do.
Lenore: Okay? So that's quadrant 3 quadrant 4
Lenore: is low, low. So low mindfulness and low, seeing I'm not taking notice of anything, and I don't even know that I'm not taking. I don't even know that I don't know
Lenore: Just before the referendum
Lenore: there was a some I couldn't even tell you what the name of them are, because I'm not hip enough. But there were
Lenore: some bands that were putting on a concert in Shepparton in Victoria. It was the idea was to raise awareness and and enthusiasm from young people to vote. Yes, at the referendum.
Lenore: and one of the journals from the Guardian went along, and she was interviewing people who were at this music festival. And so she's interviewing this young woman. She's 26 years old, and she says she, the interviewer says to her, so you know, shelly. What do you think of the voice?
Lenore: And Shelley says. oh, what the TV show.
Lenore: She thought she was talking. She didn't know there was a referendum on.
Lenore: She didn't even know what the voice was. So that's what we're talking about here. I don't even know that I'm not aware
Lenore: what's that?
Lenore: So it's blindness. It's and and blindness can be unkindness.
Lenore: It's more pleasant than the mindless, seeing where I'm just understandingly seeing everything.
Lenore: But it's also potentially more harmful
Lenore: because not just to ourselves, but to others. Because we're
Lenore: unknowingly contributing to the harm. Or we might be.
Lenore: We're allowing that clear field of play verb.
Lenore: the reactivity, reactivity and suffering to continue because we're just not even involved at all, not even taking any notice.
Lenore: So this is the land of the the old couple
Lenore: who don't care about anything. although they probably would have to go. There's a little bit of mindfulness about the fact that they're not seeing, so they'd probably be in the top of that for me and Bottom quadrant there.
Lenore: So you know, here, we're surely neglecting our opportunities to be peaceful warriors in the world.
Lenore: So
Lenore: what I would. Well, actually, there's there's another step to this which is then, once we've identified, that is to say, well, how do we decide what to engage with
Lenore: and we can have a bit of a discussion about that if we have time. But
Lenore: first of all, let's have
Lenore: thoughts, questions, insights about what you've got there.
Lenore: And was there anything that I missed in terms of the kinds of issues that arose in any of the quadrants.
Lenore: and did it reveal anything to you?
Lenore: Thanks for letting us be guinea pigs?
Lenore: just a couple of quick points. Think there's there's a dimension about finite time available.
Lenore: you know. If you read Oliver Berkeley, his book was about this 4,000 weeks.
Lenore: You think we've got on average lifespan 4,000 weeks to fill it, and if you start filling it up with everything. And so I mean, he, you know, does a lot of time management stuff, and says.
Lenore: Really, if you're passionate, about dozen things, try and just pick 2
Lenore: and and go well with those which I think relates to
Lenore: Winston's point about in in intensity.
Lenore: And the other dimension to the time is is energy.
Lenore: So it's
Lenore: when you talk about. Well, where do you spend your time, and what grabs your attention? I think it is mixed up in time and energy. And your your emotions, can chew up a whole lot of energy
Lenore: and then deflate the remaining time for you to go deeper. And and you're right in terms of devices and modern media it. The the algorithms are so well designed. Now
Lenore: they want to grab your attention once once you're there, they want to keep on grabbing your attention.
Lenore: So whilst the younger cohort in our population may be getting their news from
Lenore: Facebook, Tik tok whatever.
Lenore: if all age groups are starting to, or have been for some time
Lenore: accessing the general news media, using devices
Lenore: where the settings may not be, have the privacy settings in there that that even the ABC. Can know what you're looking at and start pushing
Lenore: other stories into you before you even get off reading the news headlines
Lenore: and the other trick, I think around the news headlines is
Lenore: once upon a time, you know, you would read it in the afternoon newspaper or the morning newspaper and watch the 5, 6, or 70'clock news service, which goes a little bit more depth.
Lenore: Now you can get a headline like any time of the day, and it keeps on getting added to add it to added to, and it builds up the whole day. That's what. Chews up your time and can choose. Chew up your energy.
Lenore: If you're not disciplined enough to turn those devices off
Lenore: and be mindful of your energy, ability as well as your time ability.
Lenore: Agree, John, and I think that's part of
Lenore: guess what I'm trying to highlight here is
Lenore: if we're being mindful about this, and we might say, Hey, I've got to shift a bunch of issues out of this box into this box because it's draining me. And I'm not getting. I'm not being able to harness my skills and energy and attention and care and
Lenore: and time to help with anything, because I'm so busy
Lenore: taking it all in and being exhausted by it. Yeah.
Lenore: as as I look at this one way of describing what it is, is it describes my world.
Lenore: And so I was reflecting that really for this
Lenore: to be fully helpful. You also need the other 2 layers that you were talking about, where you're interests and preoccupations in your own life.
Lenore: Are also there on the page and the clash or the the
Lenore: the the tug. For time between those and these big public things is, I think, much more important than the tug between different begin big public things.
Lenore: It's much more important is, are you rooted in your family, your community, yourself, and your own interests? And yes, you've got 20%, and
Lenore: it's spread in different ways. But
Lenore: if you have the same spread, but it's 80%, not 20%, then you're in deep trouble.
Lenore: Yeah. And your recovery process is going to be a lot
Lenore: longer. Yeah, yeah, no. Agree. Just remember, this is, we're just looking here. And I understand? Yeah, I understand. But I was looking at that and thinking, does this define my world? And then I thought of people I know
Lenore: who've got
Lenore: good consciences and are involved in things, but they don't take their time in on any of these things. Yeah.
Lenore: Their interest is in their art, their family, their community
Lenore: their particular interests. And yes, they're out there marching for refugees or whatever. But it doesn't come up as a major issue until the moment comes.
Lenore: And so they are rooted differently.
Lenore: Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting to speak to those people and see whether they're or the extent to which they are engaging in the world in crisis, because we all that's right. That's right. They might not be enough, you know. Really they might not be. But I can think of people who are and who I actually esteem because they're truly rooted in their own lives. And yes, they do spend time out here.
Lenore: but it's their root in their own lives. That is the most important.
Lenore: gets the most time, and also gives the most energy to what they do in the public sphere. Yeah, we'll actually have a look a bit at a bit at that tomorrow. But that's very good.
Lenore: Hi! Judy! Here, A bit tongue in cheek, but you. You can gain some efficiencies, I think, with the Australian media, etc. If you put sport in the top left hand, quadrant number 2, and anything to do with betting as well. So
Lenore: I also think sometime, and I mean in practice, how it works. There might be a new headline or a new incident that you might look at that to think, oh, who's being impacted by that? And then
Lenore: you you don't look at it again, so you you might look at the tsunami in Indonesia to get a sense of what's happened to them, you know, and or you might look at what's going on in a regional area. You know I live in the city, but what's happening in that region, and
Lenore: and you may not want to hear them describe their devastation. But
Lenore: just an initial. What's what's happened to them and get a sense of it. So then you switch off. So I guess I mean, I know this is sort of a
Lenore: a tool as a starting point, but I guess in practical ways we we're probably trying to manage that
Lenore: all the time in terms of what we're paying attention to, and not but we do get sucked in, you know, or you keep following that story. Probably you know the fifth time that you shouldn't have, you know.
Lenore: Yeah, I think you raise a good point, Judy, about. So there's the issue of Do I pay attention, or do I not?
Lenore: Then, once we've decided, okay, yes, I will pay attention to this is the next one is in how much detail. So a really interesting thing I'd be interested in people's views on is, you know, I don't know if you picked it up, but I said sometimes in Quadrant one it might be. I'm looking at something
Lenore: because I feel I should at least know the basics about it, just to be a good citizen.
Lenore: And II haven't really
Lenore: haven't really investigated that, you know. What does it mean to be a good citizen? And do I, for example?
Lenore: Okay, so the Israel Palestine thing is one of those for me, you know. It has nothing like. I'm not involved in it in any way.
Lenore: but I have this sense that to be a good citizen, I should at least know what's going on.
Lenore: and I don't know if that's right, and it might be who like also who's written the story. I mean, you know, in terms of your judgment about who's written the story. And is this someone you should be paying attention to because they have some level of authority or experience.
Lenore: You know, what are your trusted media sources? You mentioned the Guardian, for example? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Lenore: yeah, there's the issue of how much so that tsunami thing in Indonesia, you know. Yes, I think you know, know that it's going on. Know if there's people collecting money around what the hell that's for.
Lenore: But my thing was okay. The level of detail, of watching, actually
Lenore: people screaming and running for their lives with a tidal wave coming.
Lenore: Is that skillful for me to watch that?
Lenore: And I decided it wasn't. I don't think there's any good at all that could come from that for me.
Lenore: Yeah, I think we all have to decide when we turn off. Yeah.
Lenore: Hmm, well, but I think it's good that I knew that was happening.
Lenore: Give some money or whatever.
Lenore: Ii agree with you on that. That there's some things I feel I need to know about just to be informed what's going on in the world. But I don't want to know any details.
Lenore: And
Lenore: 11 years ago my husband and I decided we weren't gonna have a television in the house anymore. And the longer we don't have TV, the more grateful we are that we don't have TV, that we get our news through. Looking online at
Lenore: reputable news sources and follow the
Lenore: headlines that we want. But the other advantage of not having TV overwhelming advantage is is sorry the the bloody adverts. You know, we're free from so much advertising and the advertising industry. You you're just tracked by it. And so by not having TV. We minimize.
Lenore: I'll exposure to adverts. And I think that's as important
Lenore: as minimizing your exposure to all this horrible stuff that's going on, that you can't do anything about that just kind of brings you down. I think you have to be very deserting. These are the issues that are important to me. This is what I'm gonna get involved in, and the rest I'm happy to know a little bit about, but not too much detail, because it just distracts.
Lenore: Yep agree with that, Carol.
Lenore: One of the things that I find interesting about what what was in my quadrants was very much reflected, I think, by how, what we
Lenore: potentially some. Well, you know, I should only speak for myself. But you know what you prioritize is is what the news cycle prioritizes, as in, you know. So the war in Ukraine was very much front of mind, but was displaced by the war in Palestine. So that went from my my top right to my top left. You know, I was just thinking about that also in relation to the plight of the Uighurs. I mean
Lenore: that that's very
Lenore: present in the News Cycle, when there was a 4 corners story about it, which was an extremely well made program which documented the the plight of one particular family as a as a sort of microcosm of the appalling situation happening there. But you know it's it's virtually vanished from the news cycle, as far as I'm aware. So so I'm just. I'm aware that in my my sort of placing of things in the Quadrant.
Lenore: it's it's sort of a response, in a way to
Lenore: how? How? What I
Lenore: prioritizes manipulated by the news cycle. Yeah. Yeah.
Lenore: Yep.
Lenore: Back to your point, Carol. About the advertising.
Lenore: Was it Stephen this morning who said,
Lenore: you know a lot of or not might have been Winton, anyway?
Lenore: the the whole, you know. Consumption thing is is premised on the idea that we want more, and we want more, and we want more. And we're not happy unless we have this stuff.
Lenore: this whole, you know, Fomo, almost so general, generating this desire for stuff that we don't need. And I've found the same. I watch very little
Lenore: actual, you know, TV that has ads in it. So I use streaming services usually, if I'm going to watch anything that you know, if you pay for them, then you don't have to watch ads.
Lenore: because I think it's only in the last 100 years or so that we've
Lenore: mankind has managed to produce more stuff than it actually needs. And so you got to get the production machinery happening. So how do you get rid of all the excess stuff you you market it, and you advertise it, and you create new wants.
Lenore: And then you say to people, you deserve it.
Lenore: And it's kind of like, you know, it's just this machinery for this.
Lenore: The story of stuff making stuff, using it and getting it done to landfill as quickly as you can to generate profit and you know, just. And it just works against contentment, which is what we're and it works against the environment. It works. So I just have one more thought. I'm sorry I speak too much, I know, but the other thing that that I think is really pertinent is this addiction to games.
Lenore: and is such a time waster.
Lenore: and so I actually destroyed my ipad because I had games.
Lenore: But everybody I know has addiction to some sort of game hours and hours on games anyway. Sorry
Lenore: do we have someone on
Lenore: Tessa? I just wanted to carry on that combo that the you know, not having a TV and not being subject to the ads. I think. I don't know if it's
Lenore: if everyone in this space is is engaged in it. But
Lenore: the
Lenore: the the adverts adverts on television are very benign compared to what's happening on social media
Lenore: and
Lenore: people. You know, my age and younger are consuming
Lenore: a very large amount of their news on social media, as you said. And the way you know, Tiktok or Youtube, or you know, I'm Instagram is my drug of choice. The way they work is that algorithms target you more of what you're interested in. Right? And not only that, but of course, phones are listening to. You know, whatever you're talking about. So if you discuss a need for a certain thing or an interest in a topic, those ads will then be personalized.
Lenore: And this is, you know, if you haven't seen like the social network. Or maybe this is something because I'm more on that sort of
Lenore: world of social media. But that that targeting or personal personalization of not just ads, but interests. serves to really polarize people into little. There's there's a deeper danger than just buying stuff. It's buying your ideas and your opinions now. So that's
Lenore: and your vote exactly. And I think that's a you know, even I don't know if it's exactly related to this. But
Lenore: I just think that's such an important conversation as well, or to be aware of is, that's what's actually going on now for anyone who's on those medias.
Lenore: But I also was thinking in response to is it? Go, goia, Gowen. Thank you.
Lenore: I'm really interested in what you said as well, because I find that there's a almost a danger of
Lenore: my brain, you know the the polarization of the the global issues. And then the local rootedness, or the was the word that really struck me with what you used. And I I've heard this slogan now where we want to care global and act local. And I think there's an interesting balance between
Lenore: that acting local and
Lenore: what I fear or what I you know, perceive is when people become too invested in self-interests, or too invested in only the inner circle and not the outer circle, and that being, you know, one end of this spectrum, and then the other end of the spectrum is being, you know, trying to spend all your time fighting for you know Palestinian freedom where the reality is, you'd probably be better off planting your nature strip, or
Lenore: you know, there's it's a one of those middle way things that I'm I'm in. Yeah, it's interesting.
Lenore: My, my thought was that doing what Lenore asked us to do? And it was the public level. So that was what we were looking at, but I looked at it, and I thought, Yes, I know lots of people who spend all their time at this level.
Lenore: and I know some other people who spend quite a lot of time at the other level, and they are so refreshing.
Lenore: and they're refreshing because it feels more authentic, more individual, more related to their personal circumstances, not in any selfish way or self-centered way, but that's the ground it grows from, and when I see
Lenore: it growing from their ground. Then it's a different kind of flower than the one that grows out of the Guardian, or
Lenore: whatever you know, we'll read the Guardian.
Lenore: I said. You. Have you read this thing in the Guardian, and you say yes, and then we both know what it says on the same response to it.
Lenore: and in the end. It's tedious, even though it's virtuous, whereas someone who's thought about something and come at it from a different angle from their locality. Perhaps.
Lenore: It's fresh
Lenore: that that was all. I but and I entirely agree, though, about the balance, and if you never go outside your front gate, then you're in trouble.
Lenore: maybe, or maybe you're happy. I don't know. Or maybe you have a big garden.
Thank you.
Lenore: Can we have Leanne online if you're ready first, Leanne?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes, thank you. Thanks, Lenori. That was the great process.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes, very insightful. And it's generate, sir. More questions, because. interestingly.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): everything was in the top.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): the quadrant, one and quadrant 2.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I noticed that there was this liquidity between Quadrant One and Quadrant 2,
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): for probably some of the reasons that you've already described.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But then I sort of wanted. I asked myself the question, so why is it the case
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that I
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that quadrant 3 notes, that one without no guards at the entrance to the Stentorium. So in actual fact, I do have good guards
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): at the entrance to the sensorium. and I
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): yes, that I was thinking about this when you were talking about your experience with them.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): The coach who was making the noise and disruption
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): for 8 years, as I mentioned. I've been living in a van in public space.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I'm a very different person as a result of that.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And one of the things that's happened is. I've I've developed incredible tolerance.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I just got go on. Yep, we can hear you. Sorry. This. I just got a message which is confused me.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): II
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): yeah, I've been developed incredible tolerance. And I've actually had to learn to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): not get irritated by what other people are doing in public space, for one thing.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I've developed, I guess, strategies to to deal with that, including you know, discriminating. If I'm going to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): interact with other people or not, for instance.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): or just packing, or just yes, right, or just packing up and driving somewhere else.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and but getting back to the point of asking the question. Well, why was it?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Why were the top 2 boxes where everything sort of fell?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I don't do social media. I don't do
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I don't have a television. I don't even have a washing machine.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I don't, of course, have any of those things, because I live in a van.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I guess the way that I lived out of as a response to causes and conditions
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): has
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): generated a very interesting path and way of life with regards to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): the fact that I have a lot of mindfulness. I have a lot of awareness. According to this exercise.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I'm seeing what's going on in the world around me. During covid I in in order to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): to stay connected because I'm a single woman living in a van. I went on line, and I did dharma and inquiry and insight, dialogue things.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I was connected internationally all over the world, and that was such a blessing. So my whole world opened up during Covid, as a result of the
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): the technology in the Zoom to be able to connect internationally, and so to hear first hand from deep inquiry
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): in you know, obviously. places that were
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that were considered to be safe places where people could really share from a very, very deep place, and we're sharing from a very, very deep place through, of course, particular processes like insight, dialogue and and and and other things
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that are all dharma that, you know, have a Dharma foundation.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): though I guess in summary
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): it was a great process.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and its generating more and more
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): inquiry.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): As to why, things did land where they did, and it was the it was like it was the surprise actually. And it's given a lot of confidence.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I think, with regards to how I'm living life and and and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and how one is coping in this world crisis. But thank you. Yeah, good. Thank you.
Well.
Lenore: okay,
Lenore: just thinking about mindfulness and compassion, particularly if you've got a lot of things that you're
Lenore: not wanting to turn off in the quadrant one
Lenore: Also feeling at times the impotence, impotence of not being able to do anything.
Lenore: One of one of the strategies
Lenore: that I just shared with it. that that I use, which to try and mitigate, that when it looks like it's getting full or overfull.
Lenore: is to
Lenore: still have the practice of not only mindfulness, base
Lenore: meditation, but also daily prayer.
Lenore: so I can gather up the concerns
Lenore: and the empathy towards people in difficult circumstances, whether they be in the neighborhood.
Lenore: in the state, in the nation, or overseas.
Lenore: and and and pray for them, or do a loving-kindness meditation.
Lenore: not as a way of trying to trick myself, that then I think I care. But you can still hold people
Lenore: in your mindfulness and in your prayers, even though there's not anything you can do necessarily today, or even the next day.
Lenore: I thought that about the issue of hope that came up earlier as well, I thought, when I have no control, and it's completely out of my hands.
Lenore: But I can still hope that you know the outcome is good for those people for that. That's probably the only time at Hope matters to me.
Lenore: Did anyone
Lenore: look at it and go? Hmm! I need to shift some things, or I have too much here or too much. There.
Lenore: Were there any surprises?
Lenore: we we just heard about one surprise. But did anyone else have any anything that surprised them.
Lenore: Yeah, I'll jump in here like maybe not surprises per se, but things that perhaps I'd want to actively reorientate on, and I was kind of going. If this is a work in pro process.
Lenore: what would it look like to add? Like a third dimension or a third access to this I'm really interested in. And Daniel Schmattinberger's Awareness Agency mismatch that's going on. And part of that becomes
Lenore: high awareness of issues that are occurring and then low ability to act in that. And so there's a mismatch that occurs. And evolutionarily we're designed to be to take in information locally and act locally. You know, we we know of conditions within our environment, we act in that space. And so there's been a bias towards that. And now we're being exposed to masses of information that we can't actually
Lenore: on. And so that is a large part of the oval. So I was just trying to overlay kind of a three-dimensional. What would it look like if we lifted that up? And it was like agency sitting over the top of this and looking for like, where are the peaks
Lenore: that I want to actually attend to and go? Well, that's a good place for me to stay highly engaged and highly aware and be acting in that space and the other stuff, perhaps, that I need to drop away because it's a mismatch. And so, therefore it's just out of pure entertainment or interest. Yeah, that's a really good point. And, in fact, that is exactly one of the reasons that some of my
Lenore: issues get slid from
Lenore: quadrant one to Quadrant, because I don't have any agency. I don't. There's nothing I can do reasonably
Lenore: so. And, in fact. that's the time.
Lenore: What time do we finish 990'clock? We got 2 min. So the next little
Lenore: do you want to jump in? Do the next bit? Because that's actually we're going to look at that, and we've got another question.
Ask you a question.
Lenore: I know I didn't. Nothing surprising. It was more that I just need to use more discernment right in in Quadrant 3. I feel, okay. Good. That was all.
Lenore: That's a good insight. I mean, that's an important insight, I think.
Lenore: So that the other thing that I was going to do, which is what you highlighter is needed for is just to go. Well, okay, if this is where my current attention is, how do I decide what to engage with one thing is to pay attention.
Lenore: another is well out of those. Where should I spend my energy, my ethical, most peaceful warrior energy.
Lenore: Because again, if we try to spread that too thin and across too many things.
Lenore: we can probably be aware of more things than we can engage in.
Lenore: So we need to be even more discerning when we decide to
Lenore: get involved.
Lenore: So grab your highlighter in your pen.
Lenore: So in terms of deciding. Well, what am I? There was some. We had a new person come to our Sanger a few weeks ago, and we got talking about this, and she said.
Lenore: Yep, I've got my 2 things that I do, and she I can't remember what they were to you know, causes that she devotes her attention to.
Lenore: and she said, I do those, and that's it.
Lenore: And and I thought, Well, that's exactly kind of what we need to do if we want to stay.
Lenore: if we want it to be sustainable
Lenore: other than burning out. So first of all.
Lenore: here's how well, here's how I go about it and feel free to sort of experiment and see how that works out for you.
Lenore: So my willingness to engage past the level of just seeing, just paying attention to depends on the following things. First of all, I can do something at all.
Lenore: So if there's if that something is within my control. and it doesn't take a lot of time and resources. Then I do it.
Lenore: Even if the impact isn't huge.
Lenore: do it for the drops, you know many drops in a bucket effect. I do it for that ripple effect issue that we talked about with courage, that the more people in your world, you know. See people doing these things, helping these things, whatever the more they're likely to do it.
Lenore: and for the sake of my own ethical credibility.
Lenore: So you know, I that the espouse values versus values and action thing. You know, I for me the ethical credibility is where there's a very small gap between that
Lenore: so highlight any that that fit that category so you could do something about it doesn't have to be big
Lenore: and that it's in your control. You can do something that is in your control
Lenore: and may not take a lot of time and resources. So just highlight that one. Now, those.
Lenore: Okay? Then
Lenore: I think about what can I do? That's likely to make
Lenore: a difference and is a wise investment of my resources.
Lenore: So resources, I mean skills, time, energy, money.
Lenore: attention.
Lenore: So by wise, I mean, of all the good that you could do is this the wisest place to devote your limited resources
Lenore: if it doesn't take too much of my resources, or it's going to deliver a great bang for my helping Buck.
Lenore: I'll attend to it
Lenore: where I don't think I can make a difference. So that issue of agency.
Lenore: or it's not a wise choice. After sufficient seeing for good citizenry as we were talking about earlier. I guard my senses.
Lenore: I shifted out of the seeing books
Lenore: so highlight any of these, if you haven't already, if you, if they're not already highlighted and put a star next to
Lenore: any that also meet this criterion. So it's likely to make a difference. And it's a wise investment of your resources, your skills, your time, your energy, your money, your attention.
Lenore: and put a star next to any in the category that we just talked about.
Lenore: And thirdly. it's something I have energy for.
Lenore: Put another star next to it. If it's something you've got energy for.
Lenore: or put Asar or another star next to it.
Lenore: Now, if there, if there are any that are highlighted
Lenore: and they involve significant suffering.
Lenore: circle it.
Lenore: So these highlighted issues are the issues that are possibly the top candidates for your attentional bandwidth.
Lenore: They're potentially the issues to which you could retreat if and when you and you notice you're getting within proximity of the overwhelm threshold.
Lenore: and this and the circled issues
Lenore: are also
Lenore: these are offering themselves to you as the possible place around which to set up the guards for your sensorium
Lenore: at least a starting point.
Lenore: and those with a circle and a star are top candidates for your action.
Lenore: Now, the only thing that I haven't included in that little
Lenore: assessment process.
Lenore: Sometimes
Lenore: some of these might, if if we were to act on them, they might involve foregoing some kind of pleasure.
Lenore: and so sometimes engaging ethically means foregoing a pleasure or a convenience, or something that you value.
Lenore: So for me, for example, the thing I struggle with the most is air travel.
Lenore: I love going to my world championship competitions.
Lenore: and
Lenore: for all sorts of reasons. They they bring all sorts. They tick all sorts of boxes in terms of
Lenore: enjoyment of my life.
Lenore: and I feel really torn about it.
Lenore: because more often than not they're in Europe.
Lenore: So if it's a pleasure that you would have trouble giving up. Put a P next to it.
Lenore: so
Lenore: maybe just to finish off. It might be worth just pairing up again, and having a little debrief on
Lenore: on what you've got there.
Lenore: Whether there are any issues you would like. You think maybe it would be helpful to move quadrants? Any that have a P next to them? What are the issues involved? There?
Lenore: Are there any other ways you could fill those needs
Lenore: for whatever kind of pleasure it is for me I keep thinking about. Well, you know. Are there other kind of
Lenore: equally enjoyable things I could do that don't involve me. you know, going all the way to Europe
Lenore: every year every second year.
Lenore: And you know, with those ones, if they're important ones, if they're highlighted and and got their stars and and circles on them.
Lenore: maybe discuss. You know, other other ways. You could even partially engage with those issues. So maybe find someone you haven't spoken with much yet on the retreat.
Lenore: Oh, what time do we supposed to sit? 90'clock? That's all right. We got 8 min.
Hall (Guy - Host): Hey, everyone! It's Guy, I'm just thinking, feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Anything you say at the moment isn't gonna come into the room here. So spend a few minutes chatting amongst yourselves, as Manor just suggested pretty much what's happening here. I won't break you out into rooms. I don't see much points feel free to have a chat. I'll sit here and listen but no one else in here
Hall (Guy - Host): as well.
Hall (Guy - Host): hi ryan, it's guy I think I just tried to communicate with you guys, but I might not have had the right button press. Did you hear me talking a moment ago?
Hall (Guy - Host): Yes, we I did. Yeah, okay, no problem. It's fine guys. We've only got a few minutes before we get to the top of the hour. I thought I might just call out the end, let me change the video so you can see me.
Hall (Guy - Host): yeah, Hi, I don't know if you remember, Leah, but I think we're on the same.
Hall (Guy - Host): insight dialogue.
Hall (Guy - Host): Yes, so much has happened since then. But yes, Hello, Guy, lovely to see you again, anyway, I'll I'll I'll let you guys talk amongst yourselves. I'm gonna be trying to man the desk for the next day or so. Alan is gonna pop out so it'll be me on the end of the firing line on the end of whatever
Hall (Guy - Host): messages you want to send through. But I'll be doing everything all myself, so it might just be that I'm a little bit slow to respond at times. You know. I should probably let everyone know that when they're here
Hall (Guy - Host): I'll let you be. Please talk amongst yourselves if you like, like, I said before, nothing you're saying at the moment is coming into the room. So yeah.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): enjoy. I'll be back. I'll be back at the end or back shortly.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yeah. Bye.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): does anyone want to say anything?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): How's everyone go to the big?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): It's it lies.
then zoom
alright and
online.
Lenore: Alright. So then.
Lenore: here on the outside.
be there at this time. But.
Hall (Guy - Host): sorry, guys, I realized you had all the background noise coming from the room over, you guys. So fix that.
Qingqing Beijing: though, dear friends, I'm a bit.
Qingqing Beijing: I should say a bit puzzled, because if we all chat together to our friends in Brisbane, though there are 6 of them. So that's of it. So I don't know where to start and what we are.
Qingqing Beijing: So, anyway, for from my side this exercise has been quite revealing, because most of issues Ranore listed are quite
Qingqing Beijing: most of them for me. Most of them are in the Quadrant, too. So I have very few things on Quadrant one. and almost yeah.
Qingqing Beijing: When there are 2
Qingqing Beijing: in Quadrant. For, for for instance, the Australian referendum definitely, I didn't know anything. And before you talked about it I even didn't know. So that was happening.
Qingqing Beijing: So that's reading it.
Qingqing Beijing: Interesting, too.
Qingqing Beijing: for me to to be aware how.
Qingqing Beijing: Oh, the world, I perceive, is shaped
Qingqing Beijing: by what's coming, ain't
DiPelletier: I think that's a very wise thinking.
DiPelletier: because we are overwhelmed here with with news.
DiPelletier: and our understanding of the news in China is much more limited. So you, coming into these spaces. really reveals that to you
DiPelletier: and I don't know what you do with that knowledge, but
DiPelletier: what what we're given
DiPelletier: in your country and our country are so completely different in these media on slots.
DiPelletier: people talking here about television and
DiPelletier: your television probably isn't as full of gambling ads as ours is at the minute. It's one of our big issues. And there's there's things that go on here that are quite
DiPelletier: and think, I think, quite different than what goes on in Beijing. So you're getting a real world view doing this stuff online congratulations.
DiPelletier: And the referendum was an extremely sad time for us here.
DiPelletier: Mostly the group. I'm sure, that are sitting in that room and online. Most of us were very pro referendum.
DiPelletier: and you know, I think it was one of the teachers mentioned the grief that we still feel. And but of course it's not an issue that's particularly important to to Chinese people in in China
DiPelletier: here. They're more aware of it. Of course we have a large Chinese population.
DiPelletier: and how engaged they are relates to how long they've been here, and what their understanding is. But am I still turned on. Oh, yes.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): thank you, Dai, so I wish we had time to.
Lenore: I wish we had time to share our insights in the larger group, because I'd love to hear them. But
Lenore: tell me over coffee tomorrow, or whatever, if you, if you found that helpful
Lenore: we need to move into the meditation. Now, can I just ask our friends online for my session tomorrow night you're going to need? A document, one page document which I will email to you when I go back to my room
Lenore: after our meditation tonight. But if you can just check it and print it out before tomorrow night's session.
Lenore: That would be great.
Lenore: And you'll need highlighters for tomorrow as well.
Lenore: Pardon. you don't need to just the people online. Yeah.
Lenore: you can trust. Yeah. Hang on to trustee Highlighter for tomorrow. Yep.