Reconciling Ordinary Fulfillment and Awakening

Q: As I'm sitting here, I'm seeing how there's the transmission of, "I have a problem, I'm not safe, I'm wrong," like certain radio channels that will just play.
A: Yeah, like a groove in a record. You got whatever groove you were conditioned to have.
Q: And it feels like a separateness, a place of just listening to that and a feeling that my personality goes there. Right now there's not identifying with that; there's just noticing, and I find that when I'm in your "field," it's easier for that to happen. I just did a two-week meditation retreat and it took me until day ten to start to be able to feel that on my own but I was determined to feel that without having you around.
A: Good, good good.
Q: One of my goals.
A: Good, it's my goal too. Who wants to be stuck to me all the time? (laughter) I mean I wanted to wake up out of it; why wouldn't everybody else? (laughter)
Q: I was seeing that on the retreat there was fear, six days of tremendous fear, fantasies and stories hooking me for hours and I would see a truth and it would fade away and I would get hooked, and it was just days on end. What I'm noticing is that one of the biggest patterns my mind has besides fear is of just fantasies about the future, positive and negative, more often negative, sometimes positive, maybe if I have a baby then I'll be fulfilled, or if we could only own a home in Marin (laughter) ...
A: Yeah, that's the real answer to all suffering (laughter)!
Q: And you haven't talked about it yet, I've been waiting!
A: You'll have to go to the Tony Robbins seminar for that one (laughter). He's much better at it than I am.
Q: It's like when I'm on retreat or here, doing things that support this, I'm clear about what I most love, everything's very clear and that outside stuff doesn't hook me. But enough days go by and I'm out in the world and the hypnotic trance descends and I think, "shit, why have I been doing all this invisible inner work ... "
A: Yes, right, when this really matters.
Q: Yeah.
A: Well, both matter. Where we are, here, both matter, right? In this country, it's a pretty good idea to be able to take care of yourself if you can. Not that you need to live in Marin (laughter), might be nice but some basic standard of taking care of ourselves, taking care of our life is all you need. But it's not either / or. Because if it is, we're not really seeing the real truth.
Q: There is some either / or going on.
A: So you just take care of that, you just take care of your life. I often say to people, and you're not necessarily saying this to me, don't wait for enlightenment to solve all your problems because it's not concerned with your problems. Don't wait for it to get you a better job, a nice living situation, don't wait for it to do all that for you because even if it comes along, it might not have that interest for you at all. So go ahead and take care of that stuff; it's a good idea.

So let's start in one place that's the truth. There is no such thing that I've ever found that's a secret key that says here's how to never slip back into a state that causes suffering. Only if we can start there ... It's the truth that liberates and we like truths that feel good and we shun the truths that don't feel good. By and large the truths that don't feel good, those are the best ones, they have the most power. And they lead you deeper into your aloneness. So when we come to this point where the mind sees this dilemma that you're talking about and wants to know, "what can I do?" and it comes to me and all I can say is, "there's no secret key, there isn't going to be a secret key, there never has been and isn't now, because if anybody ever discovered it, it would just be freely distributed and we wouldn't have to be having this talk." (laughter)

Don't just take it because I say it, you have to see for yourself. Has there been a key, did I find it after all the times I had a little insight and thought it was going to solve this forever and it didn't? Do you see what I mean? You're just taking in what seems to be true for you. Only then can anything else happen, when you take it in. The mind keeps looking for something that's hidden, some secret key which keeps it looking in the future, always hoping the next moment ... When we have enough stability to see, it's not true, it's not going to happen in the next moment. There might be a little insight, everything might seem great but a week later, you're going to be right back where you were. At least then you're not in conflict with yourself.
Q: One of the places that hooks me the most, where I feel the most vulnerable is the conflict around not feeling a real yearning to have a child. It hooks me more than anything, seeing all my friends happily merged with their babies and it just seems so fulfilling.
A: For some people it is tremendously fulfilling, so I'm told.
Q: Yeah. I've had breaks from worrying that life could be fulfilling without that and what I really want isn't about that, but then I get so hooked and it's just such a painful place. I'm thirty-eight and a half and not able to rest with that.
A: So first start out with what's true for you. Only you will know what's true for you. Certainly having a child isn't going to be the instant deliverance into freedom (laughter). Thanks Moms and Dads. As my mom used to say, "you know I really liked having you but sometimes I really just wanted to wring your little neck." (laughter)

Let's pretend for a moment. Say you really do want a child. Maybe you would like it and it would be very fulfilling. And if that's the case, okay, you feel that way. Whether you're able to do it or not, maybe that's what you'd really like. Again, we can't be deceiving ourselves on any level. That may be a relative reality, not an ultimate truth, but only when you're not deceiving yourself on any level of your experience can you go to something deeper. Obviously it has some appeal. Only when you can say, "maybe that would be nice, maybe I actually do want that." There's nothing wrong with wanting that. "Maybe I'll get that, maybe I won't." At least you're not battling yourself ...
Q: It's more that it's some days, maybe I want that, and other days, why the hell would I want that?
A: Probably what mothers go through who actually have kids (laughter).
Q: It's something that just doesn't let up; it feels like it's cracking my head open. I'm such a good head banger and I keep banging it in this one spot. And I think what happens is that it gets really hooked with fulfillment.
A: That's the hook. Now we can look at the fulfillment. "Maybe the next thing is going to be totally fulfilling; this is going to solve whatever suffering I have." That's where the illusion starts.
Q: Yeah.
A: There's nothing wrong with wanting or liking something. "Oh, I would really like to have a nice bouquet of flowers in my room." It's no problem wanting them. It only becomes a problem if you actually believe that if you don't have them, you'll be miserable or if you do get them, you'll be happy forever. None of it's true.
Q: That's where the hook is. Where it gets lined up that my psyche is awakening or might as well just settle and have normal degrees of being mommy, happy, fulfilled.
A: It's already too late dear; it's too late. Do you see what I mean? Even if you go to the relative fulfillment thing, forget it. You've got the spiritual disease (laughter) ...
Q: Gratefully
A: Which when it's authentic it's not like it's a choice. It's like catching the flu. When you catch the flu, you want to be cured of the flu.
Q: Desperately.
A: So even if you get what you want, have beautiful children, a loving husband and everything was really nice, you'd still be stuck with this disease.
Q: Yeah, my life's pretty great most of the time when I'm not caught in fear and yet there's nothing more I really want other than to know this awakening.
A: So love it. That's the only way. That's not a secret technique. It's just, if there's a great love for this that's awake, a great love is something we give great attention to. It's not a matter of discipline. It's like when you fall in love, you're not discipling yourself to hang out with your lover, are you? It's not like, "okay sweetheart we're going to be here for two hours everyday (laughter)." You want to. When the truth in us, that which is awake, when we fall in love with it, then it's with you all the time. Whatever we love is with us all the time. It's a matter of touching that place that's really in love with it because then you'll hang out with what you're in love with.
Q: On the retreat after ten or eleven days of my mind having quiet sits and then wandering, it was like, "oh, my mind's not interested in this." Then I started to ask it, "what are you curious about right now?" And it was, I want to be with the sounds or I want to be with the belly, it would find something it was curious about and then that would be the meditation. So I felt like bringing this relative, maybe non-existent but feels very real self along for the ride. What do you love right now?
A: Just let it be curious. And also remember that it's the truth that's going to free you. The truth is what you really are. So whatever is happening, curiousity, following whatever, is perfectly fine. You are what that is happening in. Of course you're everything else too but I don't really want to go there until you really get that you're all that that is happening in. Including busy mind and quiet mind. Both of those states are happening within this that's awake.
Q: Uh huh.
A: Just like our conversation right now. It's happening within this that's awake.
Q: It's sort of weird that way.
A: Quite weird that way (laughter). You'll see that this whole mind/body thing is always trying to find its way back home but it's already there.
Q: There's that transmission, that radio station thing going again.
A: Fine. You have to go to a thought that says you have to do something about that. You check out from your experience. Does this that's awake feel like it has to do anything about that?
Q: It's just awake, listening, non-fussed about anything.
A: So as you be what you are, first by noticing ... That's the beautiful thing about being the truth. You can always ask yourself; does this that's true have a problem with whatever it is that's going on? Even as your little me is going, "yes, I'm having a great problem." Yeah, but does this that's awake having a problem with the me having a problem? The access to it is always right there within you. And then all that humanness can be held in that. Not dismissed, but held within that awakeness. Not just watched necessarily but watched and held.
Q: And there's really nothing wrong if I realize that for that last hour or two I've been lost in fantasy; it's just I've been lost in fantasy.
A: Now you get it.
Q: It only becomes a problem to that fantasy.
A: Right, if you tell yourself, right. That's what I mean by the virtual reality. Because that last hour it seems so real, doesn't it? What I call, virtual reality, I know for people it's not just like, virtual reality mind. I know it's mind, body, hooked, overpowering, caught. That's virtual reality, that's the power of it. At that moment it's all you seem to know. That's the power of it. That's your whole world seemingly, that illusion. Only when you come out of it can you go, "my god, that was totally baked up." But by seeing it was baked up and not judging the baking up, and not even trying to figure out some clever way so that you don't bake another one up again, do you see what I mean? Because as soon as you start to think about that, you're already baking it up again (laughter). It's the power of your perception that causes the unreality to drop. If there's any secret, that's it. It's the power of your perception, not the power of what you do.
Q: Thank you.
A: You're very welcome.