Q1-19990203-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_6-43038 Leandra Tejedor

Talk: 19990203-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_6-43038 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 01:01:01 Display_question: How do I practice with insecurity and rejection? Keyword_search: energy, balance, concentration, insecurity, relationships, body, Buddhist psychology, metta, healing, silence, rejection, aging, dying, fabrication, delusion, mind, ego, me and mine, satipanya Question_content: Questioner: Perhaps, for some reason practicing for a while, maybe like a few years, or something like that, and high energy, lots of maybe… Larry: The practice has given you more energy? Questioner: Well, no, let's just say, if I'm out of balance, it's high energy, low concentration, which can get in the way, of exactly what technique you're using, too, if you keep moving around. A lot of insecurity, perhaps, is the thing that comes up the most. Larry: Insecurity about what? Questioner: Actually, the best description I've read, I think I read it in your book. Someone who looks into the eyes of others, to see how they're doing. So, like, in real close relationships, insecurity, and that's like a predominant thing coming up. Maybe a lot of the panic, and things like that have subsided, but there's still that insecurity. Larry: Okay, how would you relate that to what we're talking about? How to practice with it? Questioner: Yeah. Is there a practice that's like, suited to that? Larry: Yes, but it's going to be a disappointment when I tell you. Okay, Questioner: I don't know. Larry: Let's say you have insecurity, of some kind, and probably all of us experience this, and then maybe some teacher, or coach, or parent, or relative, pushes you in, just try it, do it. And you do okay. And you feel better about yourself. You go to graduate school, or you try to learn how to play tennis, or you take up a musical instrument. And throughout life, there are these possibilities of trying to do things, and then we find out it isn't so bad, and we feel better about ourselves. Break_line: But in my own experience, what helps most of all with insecurity, by all means, do that. Jump in, and live, and learn from that is, we're in a hurry. Insecurity. What you're calling insecurity, I have to use the word, but it's pointing at its real for you. You feel it right in the body, and emotionally, and so forth. It's a problem. We think of it as a problem. What it is. When you look at it clearly, it's a fact, and we turn it into a problem. And then this is what, in the Buddhist language, is craving to become. So, we want to become someone, who's very secure. So, there's a conflict. I'm insecure, I don't like it, and I want to become secure. And so maybe we see somebody who's secure, and we see how they walk, with this nice posture, and they smile readily, and then we start doing an impersonation of that. And so, then we wonder, how come I don't have any friends? Everyone runs away from us. In short, we try to become secure. Break_line: The practice is saying, don't be insecure about the fact that you're insecure. It's okay. In other words, insecurity is part of the human condition. Finally, if you go deep enough, most of us have some level of insecurity, about something. I think it's a rare one who's finished, no more insecurity. So, what the challenge is, not so much to get a new technique. By all means, use metta, and so forth. It'll help you. But is when what you're calling insecurity comes up. Learn how to relate to it, how to approach it, in an entirely new way. Not with, in parentheses, I'm being mindful of you, in order that you go away, or become security. If you have any agenda, then it's not going to be...the power of mindfulness will be diluted. So, it has to be just, clear seeing. It has to be just, inner seeing, is what I'm talking about. So that the mindfulness has no goal, no motive, other than the seeing itself. Break_line: Well, to begin with, that's not so easy to do, because the insecurity comes up, and you don't like it. So, then you don't really look at the insecurity. You look at the resistance to it, or you see a tremendous urge to get away from it, to sink your head into a book, or to start eating, or to run to a movie, or whatever it is. So, it's not that you have to force yourself into the insecurity, start approaching it gently, and in a friendly way. After all, it's all you. The awareness is you. The breath is you. What you're calling insecurity, it's a one-man act. I don't know if that's hit you yet. It's all you. You're doing it to yourself. So now, granted, something set this in motion. You've had some wounds, and traumas, all of us have. Break_line: But finally, you can't keep going back to that all the time, because here you are. This is it. What you know. This is… people want to know about spiritual life. This is it. Right here. This is it. And when you're insecure, that's it. In this practice, we work with such humdrum, ordinary materials. We don't visualize ourselves glowing way up beyond the cloud, smiling like a Buddha, with tears of compassion dripping down. We look at our insecurity. Now, to do that's an art. So, at first, you'll fall down, and you will look at it with a calculating mind, and this, and that. But the day will come where you can open your heart to yourself, and admit it in, as an energy. It's not even cultivating acceptance, which is still a bit of a thing, a trip. It's more what you're calling insecurity, is energy. You're feeling it in the body. When it comes up, you have to use a word. Break_line: So, can you allow that energy to be exactly what it is, the energy of insecurity? This energy is called insecurity. But throw the word out, because insecurity has a bad press. It'll just make it worse. Oh, I'm insecure right now. It can, and just be with that energy. Allow it to flower, allow it to tell its story, and allow it to go away. And little by little, the insecurity starts to weaken, and have less power over you. And you'll find that because the insecurity is not there, something else replaces it. It's not just a vacuum. And you'll find that things are easier for you to do. It's easier to be with people. It's easier to take on challenges that maybe you don't have, you're not sure of, and so forth. Break_line: So, it's not that there's any one magical thing, but whatever else you do, if you don't do this, personally, I think it will come back to haunt you, one way or another. I don't think we can escape from our stuff. Once you start tasting silence, big time, really taste it, the silent mind that has a tremendously healing power. But in order to get there, you can't aim for a silent mind, because that's an idea. The silence is the most healing thing that we have. In other words, to enter into it, to dwell in it, to allow it to work on us. You get to the silence, by learning to make peace with yourself, as you are. All the other things that you know from practice. Let them help you do this. Do the words make sense? Questioner: Yeah. It's at a point where I think one thing you put your finger on, was aiming for the silence. Perhaps when I'm sitting. And that may be being definitely being problematic. And it has come to a point where it's like, now I have risked opening myself up to certain people. And what starts happening is, it’s generally rejection. Insecurity is a difficult thing because… Larry: I think so. Questioner: If you're angry, people will console you over anger. If you're insecure, it's really the toughest thing because you really are left to yourself to deal with it. Because people are like... Larry: I understand. Questioner: Taking insecurity somewhere else. It's in close relationship, and the mind just starts going. And that's where that kind of obsession... it's difficult to get the mind out of gear. Larry: Does any of it have to do with aging? What's that sigh? Questioner: I’ve made some progress with that. It's certainly at one point, that was very strong, like the certain aches, and pains I had, for a long time. I've started to get to a place of peace with those. So, I guess it's just if you're ending up alone, and dying, perhaps alone, or something. Larry: Okay, now, so that's a scenario. That's an imagining. Questioner: Right. Larry: Yeah. And if you identify with that, if you make dying alone, then you may as well, because you're there already. You don't have to wait till you get old. You're just already doing it, to yourself. So that's delusion. Insight is seeing into it, seeing what it is. It's just the mind fabricating. It's fashioning something. The mind is a great theater. You don't have to go to the movies. It's just fantastic. And it's just making up. Now you can learn from it. Like, there's sometimes intelligence in it, which is sort of like, I don't want to die alone, lonely, and so forth. And if there's ways in which you're living, that might be contributing to that, then start examining it, and find out why. Because the seeds are here in the present. Why you're living is not fulfilling enough. Break_line: I would say our practice, one way of looking at it, in regard to what we're dealing with in this series of talks is, it's learning how to live, and to die. We don't know how to do that. We don't know how to age. It's not anyone's particular problem. That isn't part of our education. Maybe it's not part of anyone's education, anywhere on the planet. There have always been selected groups that have understood this. Whether you call it spiritual, or not. They have. But all too often they've been special, and had nothing to do with the rest of us. Whereas what I'm saying tonight, can be seen as a form of, reeducation. You're learning how to relate in a new way, how to approach, let's say, the aging process, which is inevitable, using the tools of meditation, and the understandings. But essentially, it's helping you learn how to live, how to age gracefully, and so forth. So that's a good, substantial kind of practice to do. Is it easy? No, but it can be done. Do you feel discouraged? Questioner: Actually, when I was listening to you, yeah. It's a point of frustration, perhaps, in that, you know, at times my mind does settle down beautifully, you know, and there is that, you know, some level of the satipanya, that goes on, where I can actually observe, what's going on. It's that rejection from people closest to me just kicks it in. There's this frustration like, oh, there it goes again, and I start struggling with it. Larry: Yeah, of course. Finally, the core of our practice, is seeing how we keep creating, me, and mine, about everything. So that who is rejected here? Me. Right. So, you'll see, if you trace it out, and stay with it, our image is hurt. What we call the ego, sometimes it's different use of that term, in Buddhist psychology. So, once you begin to see that there may be some social skills that will grow out of this, that will help you. But the main thing is, to start with your insecurity, because as that starts to thin out, and fall away, a little bit, then of course, it's going to be easier to do anything, including being with people. All of us get rejected from time to time, and maybe you haven't learned that one yet. Questioner: Thank you very much. Larry: Yeah. Okay. End_time: 01:12:58