Being with Being
Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own.
Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try.
As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already.
Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.
Being with Being
Laying Down to Reality: Nature’s Togetherness - Simply Settle Series
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Once we get the feel of laying down to the ground, “the ground” can become many things. It doesn’t have to just stay as the most obvious thing, the ground. Our torso acts like the ground upon which our shoulders rest. Whatever layer of our spine we pick, one vertebra lays down upon the one beneath. We could put that sense of ground throughout our body.
And as we begin to feel the sense of ground as more all-pervasive — this resting upon this, this interacting and inter-being with this — we might begin to feel it as a deep metaphor. There’s the ground of the Tao. There’s the ground of the way of nature. In a way, we practice less interfering, less blocking out that way of nature. We’re laying down to that reality, letting that reality more fully support us. Not because we’re making it or cultivating it, but because it’s there, and when we appreciate it and feel it, it becomes more of our experience.
Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing
Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me.
What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality.
So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience.
Thank you for Being with Being.
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Welcome.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to this fandom. You know, it's it's a very profound teaching.
SPEAKER_03And I'm really wanting to make clear, as you can probably tell from the description, that I'm not claiming to know Dzogchen. I'm not claiming to know what Pacho Rinpoche, this great Tibetan master, was feeling or teaching. I can only hear share how much those words resonate with me when he says simply settle or with whatever is going on with whatever arises, settle directly into the very one, into the very nature of the one who's experiencing whatever the experience is, and so it's from that from that perspective of fandom and where I do feel like the Taoist approach that I have learned from Master Wancho Park, and even how we tend to ground that in um very observable physics, things like action reaction, like we were exploring last time, that however much I give my weight to the earth, it's not up to me. The earth is gonna match it equally and opposite with a hundred percent as much support, and where that can generalize to a sense of the Tao, a sense of the way of nature. So perhaps because uh Pacho Wimpuche was speaking of the nature of mind, which is uh harder just to point to as well that how these you know, very, very deep, profound pointing practices, and even much of it is you know cloaked in secrecy and initiation and and all of that, a whole world of which I know nothing. And yet I I feel and I I connect with maybe maybe there's some other ways that we can experientially come to know what it is like to simply settle into something directly without trying to create it, without trying to alter it, without trying to cultivate it, without trying to change it in any way. And we began to explore that last time again with that just lying flat on the ground and giving all of our weight to the earth.
SPEAKER_02We even phrase it as if it's an active thing, giving our weight to the earth when that's already what's going on.
SPEAKER_00And today we will be continuing to explore that and seeing what it's like to do it while standing?
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. I mean it's partly language, but partly like I'm saying, like to do it, right? When the whole thing is that it's a not doing anyway. But to do it when we're doing the doing of standing, when we're a little bit more active, what does it mean to simply settle into the support that's always there when we're not just on the you know, flat out on the ground, but when we're standing?
SPEAKER_00And maybe we can also begin to feel that sense of something laying down to ground.
SPEAKER_03So we're gonna spend a lot of time feeling our body weight laying down through our feet to the ground.
SPEAKER_00But once we get that feel, then the ground can become many things.
SPEAKER_03It doesn't have to just stay as the most obvious thing, the ground. For example, we might begin to feel how our torso acts like the ground upon which our shoulders rest.
SPEAKER_00And then we might be able to feel how, you know, whatever layer of our spine we pick, our whole body, that we could pick.
SPEAKER_03If we could pick ground here at our shoulders, we could actually pick ground at our waist, at our knees, we could pick that sense of ground anywhere through our body, and then this will lead a little bit more into the next exploration for next time. But as we begin to feel the sense of ground as more all pervasive, even in that just mutual flow sense, this resting upon this, this interacting, interbeing with this, we might begin to feel that even more as an kind of like an extended analogy, a deep metaphor for using Taoist terminology, the there's the there's the ground of the Tao. There's the ground of the way of nature, and in a way we practice less interfering, less blocking out that way of nature. We're in a way laying down to that reality, letting that reality more fully support us because not because we're making it or cultivating it or changing it, but because it's there, and when we appreciate it and feel it, it becomes more of our experience.
SPEAKER_00And if we could do that for any aspect of this way of nature, the Tao.
SPEAKER_03Something we often say here in these practices that we do together is that we're part of the flow of nature, we're not separate from it, we're part of it. So you know, maybe even the the nature of mind is part of this all-together flow, so that we could settle, settle into the very one who thinks, the very one who meditates, the very one who seeks.
SPEAKER_00As Pacho Rampushet says, sometimes you simply settle into the very one who doubts. And so that there's no exception, no trying to squeeze your experience one way or another, but this process where you can more just simply settle into nature's arising.
SPEAKER_03And that's some of what we'll we'll play with and and in further explorations, further fandom of uh this phrase and and what it can mean, what it means to me personally, and perhaps this intersection of Taoism, and having heard it from uh this such a beautiful reading by Samanary JSR. And again, I will confine her information, and she has that very um meditation recorded and offered freely here on Insight Timer and in many other places as well. So please be sure to go to the source if this is resonating for you and listen to it because it's it's a transformative experience just to be able to hear the words in the embodied way she speaks it, the unhurried and fullness of these words that can be shared. And for us here, we're going to begin to humbly feel our feet.
SPEAKER_00So if it works for you for this first part of today's exploration, we will be actually standing and coming into a stance where the feet are far enough apart, about hip width, shoulder width apart. You feel like you have a strong and open base. And where the knees are not locked out, not too bent, but just soft.
SPEAKER_03And you can see whether you would like to close your eyes or like we were playing with a little last time, maybe keeping them open just as that reminder that we're not having to seek inside of ourselves or seek outside of ourselves for this thing called meditation.
SPEAKER_00And to help us settle into our body.
SPEAKER_03Where the hands come out to the side, a little bit out to the front.
SPEAKER_00And then just down the midline. More downward. That's helping us. We recognize that we have a body that's full of feeling in this moment. And this next time bringing the hands around and letting them come to rest on our Dantian. The center of our physical body. A little bit below the belly button.
SPEAKER_03And in the middle of us.
SPEAKER_00Not just on the surface where the hands are touching, but actually inside. You could drop more into being there at your Dantien.
SPEAKER_03This might feel like a dropping through of a sense of the maybe the observer or the doer hanging out behind your eyes.
SPEAKER_00It's actually the the upper Dantian. And then just let it sink downward. Or imagine it's sinking downward. Gradually past the heart center or middle Dantian. And sinking down, down to the middle of you. Until you feel a little bit more like oriented there. Centered. Centered in your physical center. And then that physical center gets to move through space.
SPEAKER_03So let's let's bring it more over to the right side. And where the right leg is going to become weighted. Upper body stays quiet.
SPEAKER_00All of our weight goes down through that leg, through that foot, and into the earth. And then moving centered at your lowered ancient, it moves over to the left. And the left leg now becomes the weighted leg. Back the other way again.
SPEAKER_03And then gradually bringing the lower Dantien where it's centered between the two legs and the weight goes down through both legs.
SPEAKER_00And so something that is practiced in Tai Chi, which is a Taoist martial art, is that for a variety of martial art applications, it's important to have a full sense of connection with the ground. You know, if someone's trying to unbalance you. Like gonna happen in Tai Chi Tui Show, push hands. And also for many applications of power and speed, including punching. This connection with the earth is important. Actually be the source of our force. Primary source.
SPEAKER_03And so the sense of rootedness is something that can be traditionally cultivated in Tai Chi practice. So might even so we're gonna contrast this slightly with what we can now practice and see the uh benefits of. Let's see if we have no means of understanding that Earth has uh gravity and there's action reaction, and all of that's going on as a way of nature, then especially if we uh need a little bit more of an advantage, we might practice a sense of actively rooting. So for this, and drop your hands and even come into a slightly wider stance called horse stance and doing the arms around to feel like they're holding a large sphere, and you want to be connected with the earth, you want to feel a sense of that pressure there with the ground, that connection, you want to root again. It can so easily you know come into the sense of an active, even though Tai Chi, the central principle is relaxation, and seem like it's something we need to cultivate. So go ahead and feel like you. I need to root, I need to connect with the earth and approach it like something you you need to make happen, you need to create that root, cultivate it, and then coming back into standing, and for those who were part of the exploration last time, that's like when we were just feeling the weight of our hands laying down onto our lap, to feel like we have to actively press our hands down into the ground to have that connection, and so traditionally they even recognized that when they practiced rooting, especially in the the Zhaozhia Chen style Tai Chi from the Chen family, they would practice both this sense of rooting, and then they noticed, oh my goodness, with this active sense of rooting, then I can lose my nimbleness, and so then they would actually uh kind of counteract the sense of rootedness with a whole form called nimble step, where they would practice regaining that sense of lightness, setting that all aside, it just is there as again this extended kind of analogy of even for something like standing, we can fall into a sense of doing and trying instead of simply settling, and then we need to adjust that yet again. We need to balance it with another practice, another technique, and it can become quite complicated.
SPEAKER_00Let's just bring our hands round to our Lord Antienne once again let yourself think a little bit more into your inside, down into you, and now instead of trying to do anything, we're just going to more fully let ourselves feel what is going on. For this, you may like to further feel like you can drop down through your legs, and you're feeling right there where your feet meet the ground. Let yourself be right at the bottom, the soles of your feet if you're choosing to practice with eyes open and it's really optional, whatever is for you. Just letting the gaze be a little bit downward, you don't have to look at the screen, let the edges of your periphery vision be there yet softened and be there at the soles of your feet, and then bringing the weight all the way over to one side and feel that from within the sole of that foot. Just feel what's going on, the downflow through of your weight, the upflow through of support, the foot spreading between those two, and then shifting all the way over to the other side, being at the soul to witness the downflow through to feel the upflow through the way the foot spreads with that interaction and interbeing, shifting all the way to the other side, and we'll say lay down the burden, really let yourself feel the downflow through, and how the upflow through is there, one hundred percent matching it, and how the foot feels in that interconnection body and earth seamlessly interacting at the level of forces shifting all the way over to the other side, and let the other foot taste that the way it is the mutual flow of nature, and as we continue to shift back and forth, simply feeling what is as it is. See if there's a pocket of tension or extra holding in between the bones of your foot, like the long toes that spread out like a fan within your foot, was there some extra holding, even an extra sense of I gotta hold myself up that can release and relax that center of the foot called Yuan Chuan can feel a little more open sometimes as the foot spreads as the holding between the toes inside the foot releases, and with the heart of the foot more open seeing if it's in a way more open to that support from the earth coming up into the foot. Perhaps at some level feeling ah, this is something I can more lay down into.
SPEAKER_03And then you can notice if some extra trying holding tension lets go, and as that lets go, it's more evident how this support from the ground is right there, just the way it is, was actually always there, and with that fuller feeling of support, it's it's something to let go into, to lay down into and gradually bringing your Dantian back just to center the weight going down through both legs, and notice how standing feels in what can be interesting for sure, it's a practice is that the experience of standing can shift where we might feel very much more connected with the earth, rooted with the earth, centered and grounded as we stand, yet we were never aiming for any of that, we weren't trying for any of that, we were simply feeling the way things were already going on, which in this case was that our weight was already being fully met at our feet by our support.
SPEAKER_00Where you lay down into support with each and every step and where this lay down the burden, lay down into support could also be called simply subtle the weight directly into the support of the ground.
SPEAKER_03Or cultivate, it's a feeling, a recognition of the way it was already going on, even when we were oblivious to it, or maybe not.
SPEAKER_02Largely oblivious, I won't say you were oblivious, maybe not as fully cognizant or mindful or feeling full of it.
SPEAKER_00It can really seem like a paradox. Well, if it's just the way nature is always, what's the practice? What could be the benefit? How could it change my experience if it's just always the way it is?
SPEAKER_03And maybe if we get an experiential taste of what it's like when it's just feet and ground, then that can be the foundation for what that can be like.
SPEAKER_00If we simply settle into any way of nature, any way things already always are.
SPEAKER_03If ever, but another place where we can practice this as a stepping stone to see, okay, can I take that experiential sense of what's simply subtle?
SPEAKER_00Laying down into the ground of what is the support of the way things are already going on.
SPEAKER_03Can I take that and apply it to something like feeling a little bit more at ease, a little less tension in my shoulders?
SPEAKER_00And so can go ahead and as we did before, come into horse dance and complete this horse dance by holding a large sphere in front of you and breathing in being here for just a little bit.
SPEAKER_03Actually, we're hanging out here just long enough to begin to feel perhaps a little tiredness and tension in the shoulders, holding up our arm weight. Shoulders down. So instead of the shoulders creeping up, shoulders down, just see what it would be like to actually press your shoulders down.
SPEAKER_00That's a little interesting.
SPEAKER_03And then actually just go ahead and bring your shoulders up into your ears for a little tense. Just hold, gently hold and tense. And then in a moment on the out breath, we're gonna just drop our shoulders and let them find their own resting place. Up in our ears and breathe in. See where your shoulders actually want to land here now.
SPEAKER_00One more time, bringing the shoulders up into the ears a little tense. Let them calm down. Let them fall with gravity. Let them see where they want to land upon the support of your torso. And then lowering the arms, coming back up into standing. And gently bending over slightly and letting the arms simply hang. And now we'll more subtly feel the way the way our arms already have this weight. They're being drawn to the earth. And just shake out your arms for any extra tension. And then let them hang loose and limp. And maybe notice that as you release extra habitual tension and holding, the arms even feel a bit heavier.
SPEAKER_03And as the arms feel heavier, you might actually feel how they're gently opening our shoulder joints, even across our upper back, and just continuing to feel this lay down of our arms to the shoulders, to our torso, gradually rolling up as our arms continue just to hang in the line of gravity.
SPEAKER_00And where the weight of our arms is helping our shoulders feel a little less propped up. Actually, to lay down to the support beneath. Let the arm simply settle directly onto the ground of the torso. Lay down the burden into support. Support that's there.
SPEAKER_03Let's bring this into the opening move of the Chenwan Qing Yang style.
SPEAKER_00So for this, the arms float up right in front of you as if there's strings attached to your wrist.
SPEAKER_03And as we hang out here, I'm just gonna give the side view so that you can see how long out the arms go. Notice if there's just a sense of well, my arms need to go up, they have weight, and I've got to do more, and that the shoulders also begin to rise up. And let the well, are we actually fighting our own arm weight here?
SPEAKER_00Or can we just feel our arm weight and how that actually helps the shoulder to lay down to support beneath? And then sending the fingers out long, hovering along this pool of water, and then turning, and the hands stream through and letting them release completely at the bottom, letting them feel heavy.
SPEAKER_03They have that hanging weight, it's already laid down to the shoulder, to the torso, and slowly repeating the move with that awareness of the shoulder laying down.
SPEAKER_00The shoulder can stay laid down, the arm weight can actually help us more feel that lay down at the shoulder.
SPEAKER_03That togetherness that helps us to release the extra tension and holding and sense of only up, up, up by myself.
SPEAKER_00And then we feel more the way that our arm weight is actually helping that lay down the burden sense. It's helping us recognize the support that's there. Shoulder laying down to the ground of the torso. And as we feel that support more, it gives us more of that sense of what we can lay down into. Which may be one of the uh harder things to begin to realize and feel about the way of nature, and what simply settling into the way of nature might mean.
SPEAKER_03So perhaps this can, in addition to giving us a model for how tricky this can be to kind of grok in a way, it might also give us some tremendous respect for what Pacho Rinpoche is pointing at when he says whatever arises in the mind.
SPEAKER_00Whatever arises, that you simply settle into that.
SPEAKER_03And when I'm thinking, I need to shift over more into non-thinking. The way Pachel Wimpoche describes it is when the mind is thinking, you simply settle directly into the thinking mind.
SPEAKER_00When there's non-thinking, you simply settle directly into the non-thinking mind.
SPEAKER_03Thinking or non-thinking, whatever is happening in the mind, you simply settle directly into it without trying to alter it in any way.
SPEAKER_00So let's explore this at the level of shoulders.
SPEAKER_03Where we do have the support of I should say the support, well, in the way, that's true, the support of uh uh so far as we know, and I'm not saying action reaction is the Dow, unless you know, Master Wanchal Park is not saying that either, but so far as we know, there's not an exception for action reaction, and that gives us um a sense of how we can perceive a little more correctly the way things are going on, and as we've seen in various you know practices so far, we can tend to block out the mutuality of both directions, even at the level of our ground in the feet. So, for example, you don't have to do this for very long, or you can you can skip it overall, but say say you were doing a movement and you were you were hiking up your shoulder, so this would be even like you were doing that opening movement of the youngsta, and instead of the shoulders laying down, you're just hiking them up like this, and there would be reasons why that would make you more weak and these kinds of things, but at the level of what is going on, even if my shoulders are up like this, they are still fully LDB, laying down the burden to the support beneath.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_03I thought you said that this is when they're LDBing. I'm using the initial.
SPEAKER_02This is this is when they're laying down the burden.
SPEAKER_03This is not when they're laying down the burden, and this is again how we tend to uh look at our experience as conditional and as up to us. I've got to get it right. This this is right, this is this is wrong, and I need to alter it from wrong to right. So, how could I possibly say that this is also fully laying down the burden? Well, laying down the burden into support, this mutuality of action and reaction is just the way that every interaction happens at a level of forces.
SPEAKER_00So even if I'm like this, how is it that my arm is here?
SPEAKER_03It wouldn't be here if it wasn't being matched by support.
SPEAKER_00My weight of my arm is still being matched by support.
SPEAKER_03It's just I'm not really feeling the ease of the support that is available to me, and I'm doing a lot of extra tension as a result, so it's going to be a lot harder for me here to feel how there is this mutual flow and lay down into support going on, but it is still going on.
SPEAKER_00And if again using this as an externalized analogy.
SPEAKER_03So if you know, if if I were just teaching, you know, say Tai Chi typically, then it's like, oh, just you know, release this and see how it's always more easy to feel, shake out the extra tension, lay down.
SPEAKER_00But what if this was just stuck?
SPEAKER_03What if I was almost in a brace of some kind and it felt really stuck? And I actually needed to keep my arm exactly as it is here, with my shoulder hiked up and everything feeling kind of uh uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00What would it be like to feel how even here in this position I can still feel that LDB is going on, lay down the burden is still going on. But at a subtle level see for yourself if you if you want to try with this. Can can experiment with it. Can I simply settle directly into even experiences where I don't feel the physicality of support as easily? Just ending with a personal contemplation. Because at the end of the day, for me and perhaps for you as well, this is not so much about the physicality of the body. So there can be tremendous benefits, health benefits. And so difficult on the inside. So might just contemplate on emotion or inner experience that you tend to want to avoid. That when you experience it you try and shift out of it. You can even use the example of being in meditation and thinking. Or it might be any number of experiences.
SPEAKER_03And Pachul Rampochet kindly lists many out for us. We'll go into those as well.
SPEAKER_00Pick your own here. And then just seeing what it would be like. You won't be able to perhaps approach this experientially, but you're welcome to see what it could be like in your own time. We're just connecting the dots here. What if instead of trying to alter this experience that this experience itself has the ground of reality, the way of nature, true nature already there? In the mind. How some of this may be seemingly quite paradoxical.
SPEAKER_03It's the way it always is, yet we can practice it. Even when we are, you know, very seemingly feeling stuck or not in the optimal way. We don't have to try and change that.
SPEAKER_00We can feel what is what is always so, even within it. And that in this process, that's not a process, is simply settling into the ground of reality, the way things are already and always, aspects of our experience do shift. Seems like a whole nest of paradoxes.
SPEAKER_03And so that's why today we you know, I I did talk a little bit more during the session, a little bit less fully as uh as just a guided practice and and more like coming to know what these uh examples uh can be like that then do serve as these simpler models that you know any of us can have access to in terms of feeling more fully. Uh I've I've I've taught four-year-olds how to more feel their feet, and they become more unpushoverable than in Tai Chi push hands to each show. And so, you know, this is all something that is immediately tangibly accessible, testable, and even understandable at the level of physics. And we're not talking, you know, some esoteric interpretation or mysterious aspect of um modern physics that's yet to have a consensus of how to interpret it. But this is action-reaction as this example of a way of nature that's always going on, and yet we can practice it and we can benefit from it, and even if we don't feel like it's you know optimal for feeling it, it's still there and going on, and the more we simply settle directly into the Tao of that going on, there's just a shift that happens that's not a shift, that's not a should, that's not trying for something that's not saying this way and not that way, but just any arising, any experience also has this way of nature that we can simply settle into, and that is it. So I'd be very curious whether uh you're here together live with us or experiencing this in recorded time to hear your your comments about your experience and your questions, because even even here at the level of you know physicality, it can be quite confusing in a way. And again, highly recommend that you go to the source, salmonary jsrs, beautiful recording of uh Pachal Rinpoches, self-liberating meditation, and I'll put the links there.
SPEAKER_00Let me go ahead and come a little bit closer.
SPEAKER_03See if I can get those. And I asked Insight Timer. I asked Insight Timer, I was like, is there some way I could share this link more directly? Because it is. I'm promoting something that is on Insight Timer, and this is apparently the best I can do for now. David, hello, Emily, hello. I feel like there should be like a special reunion. You guys are just amazing. Karen, hello from Cleveland, Ohio. Hello, Karen. Welcome, thanks for saying hi. You can see I like getting to getting to know y'all. I think Charlotte's here, Marta's here, welcome. Carol's here. Welcome to some new people who dared to join us. Matt LDB. Love it. Thank you. Great session. Great to see you, Matt. And you caught me about midway through. I I uh uh teach this so much in Tai Chi. I started to fall right into the acronym.
SPEAKER_02I was like, whoa, wait a second. You might not know what I'm talking about if I just do an LDB. Welcome all.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, it's hard for me to get on the uh see y'all and be on camera at the same time.
SPEAKER_03You I know it takes some time to to tap out something either on your phone or on your computer, but I am really curious about what, if anything, connects for you here.
SPEAKER_00So LDB. Such a simple thing, and yet can in a way reveal the many ways that we try, the many ways that we think we have to try.
SPEAKER_03I'm having some physical pain, and so often my thinking mind becomes a way of trying to control or run away from that. With this guidance, I've had some moments of just allowing that to be the ground. Oh my goodness, Emily, you're already applying it to that. Wow, to be the ground of what I'm experiencing right now, just settling together with it, and that's enough right now. Yeah, hearts for Emily is she's uh you know, I was hinting at some of that, but that's that's advanced practice right there, you know, to to go into it where yeah, even our pain is part of a flow of nature, we can simply settle into whatever's arising, and that is enough, and that's not easy. I think if I have a hope here, it's that you know, with examples like standing or shoulders, can get an experiential sense of what that can feel like so that it does become easier even when the circumstances inner or outer are harder.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for sharing that, Emily.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for all the the love that people are giving in the in the channel. Hearts are for you, Emily. Matt slow is really nice.
SPEAKER_02Uh you know, when I teach tai chi, I wish I could just sometimes spend a whole hour, just like we did spend a whole hour just you know shifting away side to side.
SPEAKER_03My tai chi classes would be uh even smaller than they already are if I did that. So Matt, you're you're uh you're trooper to to like slow. David, this has been fascinating. Thank you. I'm gonna have to watch the recording several times over. I think I'm not having the best of days today, the best of days today. So I'm a little hard of thought and exhausted of body.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, some hearts for David. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh, you know, I'll say like this was this was. A slow practice. David says uh David sends his hearts to Emily, and David says, slow is always good with me. Nice.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03With a slow crowd, happy to be so.
SPEAKER_00And some practices are a little bit more experiential and just have noticed today we didn't do the foundations that I always do.
SPEAKER_03So it was kind of, you know, as slow as it was, it was almost like a slow exploratory case study.
SPEAKER_02I'll just say, right? A very slow exploratory, experiential case study.
SPEAKER_03So we were kind of looking at various cases. So it was a little could have could have felt a little more brainy. Um and where this is something that we come back to again and again.
SPEAKER_00I come back to all the time. And there is that further uncovering of what does it experientially mean. Simply reality. I think there's no end. No end.
SPEAKER_03My thanks to you all for practicing together here today. Looks like there was one more comment. Emily says, The idea of settling can feel anything but simple for me at times. But this finding the ground today clicked for me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Mackenzie, and everyone practicing here.
SPEAKER_03I would just continue to notice in one's own experience when is settling kind of being approached as I'm gonna shift my experience. I am unsettled. Oh my goodness, earlier today I was so antsy. I'm unsettled. Oh god, I settle. Gotta calm down. And for all the beautiful benefits of mindfulness and more mainstream meditation, it can also begin to color our experience of oh, I should be calm, I should settle, I should change my inner experience because that's what I should be able to do.
SPEAKER_02That's what this technique and that technique and this other thing is all geared towards, right?
SPEAKER_03So if I just follow what they say, I should be able to settle, and then I'll feel better. And when I don't, it's somehow my fault, and I'm not enough, and now I'm not enough, and now I need to have more self-compassion, so I'm gonna go and learn how to do that, and that's difficult, and so I'm now not enough for self-compassion, and then you know it becomes I'm not speaking hypothetically, that was that was my experience of Buddhism for about 10 years, and uh and it gets very yeah, exactly as you say, it gets it gets complicated really fast. So just notice when simply settle is oh I should, I should be more settled, and then what is it like to simply settle directly into the unsettledness?
SPEAKER_00You can simply settle into a feeling, an arising of unsettledness. That's the kind of meaning here of simply settle.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, David says just being here has been good for me today, but calm thought can work wonders when I'm feeling rough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Simply settle heart.
SPEAKER_03Wonderful playtime with presents, thank you. Exactly. Dave says I've had years of that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03My sense is that people who are drawn to something like this, they've tried a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00I wish I could have done this a long time ago. Me too. Me too.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's gonna inspire me to go forth and trying to be a little bit braver in my life and share this a little bit more. So feeling a bit of self doubt earlier today, and you all have lifted my spirits and helped me feel like I just need to keep keep on going and sharing this as I can. Thanks all. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00And take care of yourselves.