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Summing It Up Pt 1

Impermanence impermanence impermanence so we've gotten to that point where you recognize that this is almost over and uh I don't really always want to be the bearer of the kind of most intense news but this is how life goes and it will reach a point where we say this is almost over and it will be over so um this is kind of fact of life of what do we want to do while we're still alive? You know, that's what this comes down to what do we want to do are still young and healthy you know, I have all our opportunities and resources and I think this workshop is intended to activate our energetic court you know, that's what I had in mind anyhow and sometimes are energetic cores blocked you know, buy things like feelings of doubt about ourselves and self worth about you know, stored up resentments and things like that confusion of murkiness about who we are, what we're doing how we could go forward but I think if we apply some of the remedy you know, remedies that we've been talking about and p...

articularly you know, some kind of practice where you actually get a chance to be with yourself um insightful and spacious way so that you can pull out of game come back in with a sort of sense of being uh wakened up further and activated more and the idea of that meditation peace being and integrate herbal with the activity of life and the energy of life and also very particularly the last segment, I think I got kind of cooked up myself personally thinking about how much we're all really connected. It's, it's, there's a lot of isolation and alienation these days in the world and it's interesting when you goto areas of our sense of community is still alive. Maybe san francisco is one of those kind of place is a little bit more than some other places, but the fact that we could work together on these kind of things I've learned a lot from each one of you, I've been looking at you and listening to you very carefully and, you know, I've been very inspired by, you know, sort of your challenges in your solutions uh, so I think this is hopefully we're working with a lid, not the lid, but the flower theory of opening everybody to the possibilities of what they could accomplish. And, you know, I think talked about some of the sort of harder items, you know, I felt the energy change when we start talking about sales and marketing it's like, you know, ah, it almost got a little bit more punchy that some people were ready to deal with. And some people just lit up when we went there we talked about gentleness as a sort of component I think that's a very unusual component for a lot of people when they think about succeeding in business is that gentleness is is a tremendous force that you khun liberate so I thought we'd just spend the rest of our time together. Um, which is rapidly dwindling to uhm summit up seth chose that slide there perfect put the last piece in the puzzle and hopefully you can take this home with you and all the folks that are out in when tv land there. Um I'd like to think of you as as vividly present as the people in the audience here in terms of these kind of experiences can be very ephemeral, you know? You get very vivid while it's happening and then it's like four days later where they go. So what I'd like you to recommend that you do is grab a piece I call it packing a lunch box, grab a piece on the way out maybe not everything you know what? It was really seminal powerful for you, but like, for some people, the notion of joining heaven on earth, you know, struck a chord I think for me, the notion of interdependence and how much that is a factor in terms of old things we're talking about not just sort of cultivating our strength as individuals but cultivating our strength interdependent with each other and um you know for some people the idea of just allowing your creativity to express itself without judgment without you know without a sort of um take the nozzle off of it you know the kids the kids in new york city in the hot summer days sometimes they take the fire hydrants and they just open them up and there's just water spraying out that's their that's how they get there swim time in or their refreshment and creativity sometimes is kind of bottled up like that you can see it in people they could be very creative you know and there's something tapped there's something there's some lid on it and there's some kind of uh opening that could happen it's very exciting if you're somebody like me who's who takes great joy in the liberation of that kind of creativity it's been a huge part of my life to see people blossom and express themselves love to support you know, budding young artists and people who are just getting started I think that's why we all love these shows here in these kind of um voice and the voice and all the shows they were talking about where you see somebody just kind of like take a shot everybody loves that so they're rooting for you at that point and then you know that gives us the opportunity to define and present our offering and be fearless about receiving the feedback from the world that's when I think a lot of us chicken out frankly we get that first round we open up, we get around the feedback and then we'll chicken out from there on so the idea of really keeping that open and then refining your offering so these are all kind of things that we talked about we talked about spending time in the sandbox and have people having sort of some free time and then we really focus in on the practical aspect coming back down to earth case you don't know we've been going between heaven and earth the whole time some of the comments have been more sort of visionary and sort of idealistic and then some of them have been more way more practical um so the thing that we have in common is a grouping based on this workshop title is that we're all trying to integrate three things, otherwise we wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be here so the three things are creative force our life force and our sense of balance and harmony and our sense of prosperity and thriving and to do that there is some very practical notions um that I think we some of the time were very tan will be talking about our relationship to money teo sales and money doing the ask actually getting down our offering to the level where we're saying will you pay me for this, you know, and shamelessly and proudly saying I have something of value here and and closing the deal so one of the sort of big topics we talked about was overcoming the poverty mentality that we have um if we have it, you know we're not assuming anything about the people out there but I think we've resonated with our online audience and you know me I'm not worthy the line that we are worthy and you know, we basically have something to offer and we have the obligation to focus though we can't just say you were basically good and that's enough we have to focus our offering and refined it and that's kind of our job we can't really put that on to somebody else and, you know, finally the notion of defining success on our own terms which was so beautiful I'm pretty moved by the fact that each one of you is already doing that um at least the people in the audience hear that or live with us you're formatting your life in relation to taking a serious shot at defining success and a lot of people are not doing that, you know, and we can invite we can encourage but mostly we can stimulate ourselves to do it as example where you looking at what success means to you usually if you get a group of intelligent people together successes does not just mean making x thousands of dollars a year this is not one of those workshops um if that's all you're interested in um and if you don't no have the notion of success including spiritual success, temple success and the idea of having a creative life uh filled with joy and appreciation um probably this wasn't the best workshop for you and I apologize if you got stuck with us however I think you know, we found a lot of like minded people here I feel like every time we do something like this is tremendously informative, it may not settle in for a while, but maybe one thing comes up in residue four days later four months later and I found every time I've studied it could be period time later one thing just pop sound goes that was the thing that was the thing poverty, mentality, sales and marketing you know, relating with others money my relationship with money sandbox time to get back into the sandbox joined heaven on earth. So what I've tried to do is present a siri's of let's say you could say frames that you can put yourself in a right and then take a look and see how you look in that frame and we're all here to work we uh we came into this world to work that's the way I feel about it to do the work um and it's different for each person you know sometimes we can get feedback from people and we could get some stimulating ideas from people that what direction we could take but it never never ceases to amaze me the extent to which the each individual sort of has the key already it's like the puzzle is already done but then we scramble it up it's almost like when you're born you're the puzzle came in intact and then you scramble the puzzle up and now your life's work is to put it back together again so in that spirit I just wanted to take the last segment with you you know we have about an hour and really let you all and the people online really really jump in hopefully framing it with this sort of key points that we that we raised but just pick any of them out say hey, I never understood that in the first place so I've got something I want to add to that or a question if you like me to take a shot at with you um or a point of discussion so let's just uh you know this would be the equivalent alive workshop of a group discussion let's just see if we can't just open it up um and you'll jump in what where are you how are we doing about motivation and laziness? Um so especially if you do you have another job like how a lot of people I think they're in the position where they two do you see things outside of that that a more creatively fulfilling how g well and I know that's a really you know, important area and you know one thing I often over the years I've counseled a lot of people in terms of these areas and one of things I always say to people is confucius say if you're going to change horses in midstream, you better have two horses, so that means that we are contemplating a shift across fade from one line ofwork into another you want to be very savvy about couple of things one is you don't want to broadcast that because if people get wind of the fact that you're moving into another dimension, they're going to take us seriously in the first one you one of the second horse already to go loaded up with supplies good saddle on it and then say how do you go? There was I'm us thank you very much to the first horse and give it two weeks notice because there's no we feel like we're abandoning ship or some like that the fact is in work people move on and uh if you want to be really nice, give it four weeks notice so that's just how it is in the big world you know we moved people move on so but for you as the person who's trying to make the cross fade you know the cross fade is musically you know for those of you who don't know like here's one piece of music right and here's the next one so you could just end that one and then start this one but that's not usually a skillful way to operate so you want this one fading out well this one's fading it that means you goingto be during the time of the cross raid you're basically I've got a lot of work going on what can you expect to not have during that time? A lot of free time you know certain like if you want to watch ten episodes of mad men maybe wait till you made the cross fade so there is you know, most people will just take the one job and see it through but because we're all freaks of nature in a way and we have sort of double identities which is a sort of artist and as a sort of working person if you're moving into entrepreneurial space you have to do the crossfit and during that time you'll be very aware of the fact that you're really there is going to a moment in time when you gonna make that switch and you wanted to be a slow as as er you know always sudden wantto go I want to rent for six months so I think there's going to be a lot of energy at that point and you know, a lot of people will not make that crossbow I think I used the example of people in the singers in the jingle business becoming sort of pop stars they just go out for three or four gigs and they go okay? This is not making the kind of money I'm used to and it'll make the cross wade and a lot of those people um I'll give you another example background singers there's a movie that was nominated for a grammy I think called twenty feet from stardom I was have you seen that anybody it's all about the background famous famous background singers in the pop music business and there's there twenty feet away and they had people like staying in mono and all these big stars? These are the people who sang on the records and on their tours and so it's just so intriguing to see how their life had taken shape because they never did the cross fade. Some of them tried maybe they put a record out maybe was fantastic maybe the thing didn't take off fast enough and now they've got this other gig which you have julia right, which is to rent medical insurance you know we all know that those things are important so unless you're very intense about the second livelihood you have to generate intensity about it and kind of ah sort of like almost um ferocity about wanting to do it and if you don't have that you just going to join towards back towards the other the other gig you know so it doesn't make any sense what else is there a relationship between daydreaming in meditation uh you know what the title of my book is that I'm running awakening from the daydream so of course we're dating all the time that's the time when you meditate and again I'm going to urge everybody to try this sort of mindfulness awareness practice that we learned um and not confuse it with other practices of meditation you're sitting there being attentive here they're with the breath on your mind goes into a day drink it's a really accurate determination of your somewhere else if somebody went like that oh yeah what you know so they don't have to shake you as hard as we do to wake you up from a physical sleep but mental you're asleep at that point and so that the daydream some of our our benevolent and some of them are you know like really like angry daydreams and they have all the flavors that you could imagine some might be this kind of fantasy or that kind of wishing for this or that to happen so might be a simple is food you know, you might want a piece of chocolate cake, but that mine is projecting out a dreamlike apparition which is called a daydream when we notice that right and label it thinking and we come back to the president awareness with the breath we are waking up from a date so there's a relationship. But meditation is not dating it's waking up from the data. Do you understand the difference? And it's kind of a sharp a little bit of a sharp edge because our daydream is something we're very attached to that's how we define ourselves a lot. So the quality of being awake sometimes is kind of shocking. It's kind of very quality of actually being present is almost like, you know, experience is a form of shock, you know, like when they put the smelling salts under you nose in the boxing whoa, where was I? You know, I'm back, but we very quickly go back into that daydream world. That's are habituated way of using our mind. So you could say the awakened state of mind is a shock on the point of the day dream. Just like waking up in the morning is a shock from the point of view of the night tree. How do you wake up and when you go you could have been like having a dream where you're running away from one hundred people and then you want to go so waking from the daydream has a similar kind of quality of a sudden burst of present awareness and, uh, we're really sort of beginning to make a relationship to that it's very it's very potent uh and slightly different than what we're used to. We're not accustomed to it anybody online actually just er just er just er says, david, could you point us in a direction to exp further explore overcoming that poverty mentality? Yeah, I think it's funny, you know, just when I first heard that question, something about it made me sad and there's a sort of poignancy to it the fact that I don't remember where this is from its toe, the line from a song maybe what once that line is, what makes us feel so wrong inside when we might just as well be right? Does anybody recognize that from a lyric? You do not recognize the lyric, not from where it is? Yeah, I don't know, but I'm pregnant what makes us feel so wrong inside when we might just as well be right and the poverty mentality is for one thing, I think important to recognize that it's a a condition state so we talk about in meditation, something's being sort of natural, present quality and other things are sort of took time and energy for us to cultivate. So the poverty mentality is not considered to be unconditional it's something that it came about as a result of causing conditions. What are those? Hey, a lot of times, it could be your parents. Frankly, let's. Give sigmund, I'll get my sigmund freud puppet out of my briefcase. Andi, uh, I actually have a little finger puppet with sigmund freud on it. Sometimes we just got to go to that reference point. Yes, it was your parents. Wait. Put on the little accent. We go, ok? You know, this is from your parents, you know, sometimes that's the case you just were told you no good in various ways. Maybe they were anxious. Maybe they were uptight. Uh, maybe they were unfulfilled in certain ways. Um but it could come from your school or your it could come from how you shaped your reality as you're growing up. So we have to see that it's tze it's not a sort of natural state, actually, that poverty mentality it's not natural. Unnatural but it's highly habituated. So who's the president again, jaster ok, yeah, so look at the source on your meditation practice, chester if you could look into where is this really coming from what's the origin of this can you track it? Can you see where in your body it is? Can you see what kind of thoughts a company of can you see when it arises? Can you see when you're free of it when you experience some kind of natural richness and start to do your own process with exploring and operating it and purifying it on uh there's a lot of different ways to go about that and, you know, depending on your your inclinations and so forth it could be by, you know, therapeutic model could be through the meditative traditions, it could be some kind of healing tradition, but it's not the final frontier um if we thought that then we'd be in league with the people who say don't look because what you're going to find out is that you're not you really aren't worthy there really is about a bottomless pit underneath you life is really not good it's a trick that somebody's playing on you, you know? So you have to look and that's kind of us. I think that's the essence of the spirit quest is to look and see what we're really made out of, so I just would encourage gesture to you, dig in and go for it thank you kelly has questions to add to that something that you said in the last seminar that has stuck with me since then was you mentioned our memories are a memory of a memory and that we have layered them over the number of times we remember them so they're not necessarily what they were in the beginning we've added story to them so with that conditioning was just saying to myself I think last night what if I just remembered it a different way that I did have a sandbox and it was a lovely place to be that's such an interesting thing you say just to reiterate it and might never ending quest to understand how the mind works I've been reading some neuroscience kind of takes on this and one of the if you remember you remember clearly I didn't remember saying it but apparently they have seen that the way you know like the way a computer drive remember something that you like if you just hit you working on a word file you update the word file it just writes right over the previous world file it never goes back to the original one and apparently the mind works that way the memory works that way when you have a memory you're remembering the last time you remember and then then it updates on that so you never really remember the actual original incident you remembering the most recent generation of it just like a file so that's the first half of your question that's kind of interesting it makes you wonder what really did happen and what we really what our past really is because our passes storyline that we've preserved into the future otherwise you cannot find where the past is in the present mind it doesn't exist it's a narrative in the present that's a real restoration of something we thought happened in the past, so the fact that it doesn't even exist is kind of pretty mind blowing in the first place but then you said something really interesting why couldn't we just remember uh or create the image of the sandbox that would go into the category of you could call it creative visualization where maybe it's not a sandbox but you create some kind of strong present imagery through through the imaginary part of the mind which is always working anyhow? Usually we're imagining kind of negative stuff that's the most common use of the imaginations were thinking about what went wrong, what we missed uh what we're not getting why when you don't have what we want you know and or we're imagining something we wish would happen in the future there's a sort of poverty meant mentality in mixing with our imagination if only I had this then we'll be happy in the future but to imagine a very rich field of present field of experience in which everything is sort of like synchronized there's some in the buddhist tradition there's some very advanced techniques for using that kind of visual imagery on dh they're considered a little more esoteric, but they do exist and you know, but the use of creative imagination and holding the point is if we can't hold our mind to something with steadiness and the mindfulness training, we can't do any of these other practices like if you had tried to do that loving kindness practice we did, but all you're thinking about is you know what you want for your tea break or what? You know what you have to do tomorrow where's your loving kindness cultivation going to come in if you won't be able to do it so in the same way, if you could hold your mind to an image of ah um a way of being however you could conceptualize that and let your emotional body your physical body kind of like experience that you're in a way you're reprogramming that's going to be I'll go on record is predicting there's going to be a new version it's a hybrid of the buddhist practice and from science of reprogramming our kind of mind states the only difference is that in the buddhists don't really see the mind as being synonymous with the brain that's gonna be a big a big point the mind is everywhere you know mind is consciousness you know if you if you uh if you think only of the operations brain you don't understand the mind completely what minus what consciousness is so that's great yeah I mean we are re patting ourselves here by understanding certain principles but when we start to really think of the limitations that we've accepted you know in terms of how we can express ourselves that's re patterning and is it is from that point of view it is you're changing your neural pathways if you want to look at it that way and uh it's you know you read a lot about that right the plasticity of the neural pathways it we can change is the important point here we can change even if we had it's obviously gets more tricky if there was trauma heavy trauma is involved and kind of intense experiences that lodge into the body and the emotional body then you know you see somebody like they look like they're ready to get hit you know at work sometimes he's a little like you know that's coming from somewhere you know but it can be it can awareness is the main tool that we use to to liberate those kind of things anybody online chirping away they're always chirping chirping to us yeah yeah and I know that you had a few points to cover we don't want you repeat but just bring it bring it all right great coming from jan jammer saying I really appreciated david challenge to truly own your creative offering and commit to doing it for a while I don't know think that I'm quite there I'm maurine cross fade mode right now but I'm ready to step up on maura and only offering well of course janice chan that's a process so that's sometimes patience is the key element in a process that you that you realize that is going to have to happen in real time so sometimes are inpatients comes from the idea that we think you know we want to change to happen really fast um but if you're willing to look at that cross fade and you consort of conceptualize the cross fade you might be able to pull it off actually and if that's going to make you happy if you try to do it you know and I think every time we I feel that there's something that could make this happen we pull back from it you know we're going to just die a little bit basically so um you know, if you think you want to go for it, go for it at a certain point, you know, look, all of us have had practical issues that have changed our relationship to to our dreams you know, let's face it having kids huge having kids this huge changes like for me when I had my child, I had to shift my professional life around. I really did. I needed more steady money, you know? So you take I took a job, it's, not the worst thing in the world, you know, sometimes we can't quite pull it off, but we kenbrell that creativity to what we are doing and, uh, never should feel like a failure. Never. I never did feel that way. Just feel like you're shifting gears, and you're gonna move your energy in the direction of being resourceful with current reality and that's, two of health situations, that's, two of living situations, relationships, situations. We should be continuously trying to tap into our car, uh, creativity, as faras resourcefulness goes. And if we have too much of a fixed idea of what's gonna work for us and the perfection dimension. A lot of times, that could be a sand trap.