LLI 43 Sitting with the Unknown: The Real Work of Becoming Human

00:00:00: Love lauda, iterations on becoming human, iteration number 43.

00:00:07: The biggest challenge in your life will probably be to let yourself fall into the unknown of

00:00:19: life.

00:00:21: To open yourself up to what is possible in your daily life right now.

00:00:29: And to not know what it is, to not have that certainty.

00:00:37: And I would love to say to you that this is the same challenge for me too.

00:00:46: How it looks in the concrete realm is it is a challenge to record the podcasts without

00:00:54: the agenda, without really pre-planning to the detail what is to be said, to be trusting

00:01:04: again and again that if I open myself up to it, if I relax into it, if I relax my muscles,

00:01:13: if I relax my body, then the words will flow through me and to trusting when I just speak

00:01:21: the words that the next one will follow.

00:01:25: And it is the same in life for us.

00:01:28: When you do the next step because the very next step is the one you can see, then you

00:01:35: will experience and know what the next step after that is.

00:01:41: That is trusting your natural intelligence.

00:01:48: That is trusting your natural openness.

00:01:51: It does mean that you have to be open for every possibility that there is with every step

00:02:00: in your life.

00:02:01: You don't have to be, but there's a chance to do that.

00:02:05: And what we usually do is we limit ourselves because of preconceived beliefs, because how

00:02:13: we cast our future into the moment already in expectations and in hopes and in fears

00:02:24: and this automatically moves us how we perceive the world.

00:02:33: It does mean ditching the performance.

00:02:45: It does mean ditching the agenda.

00:02:47: It does mean even to the profundest ditching your individuality while embracing your uniqueness.

00:02:58: Here's the thing.

00:03:01: It's like in meditation on the mat.

00:03:06: When you're a beginner, you start to meditate.

00:03:09: It's very often that you sit down in expectation to have no thoughts and sit in stillness.

00:03:17: This will never be the case, not in a constant way.

00:03:23: Every meditation will be different.

00:03:25: And what especially in the beginning happens is there will be all the thoughts rushing

00:03:32: through you, the questions, the doubts, if it works, if you have done your grocery list,

00:03:40: what there is to plan for dinner, who you want to meet today, who you've met this morning

00:03:46: and so on.

00:03:49: So what actually happens is you will be overwhelmed probably by the chaos of your mind, the thoughts

00:03:59: running around.

00:04:01: That is why it's also called the monkey mind.

00:04:06: And meditation is not for everyone.

00:04:12: And I truly believe that there is a way for everyone that suits our unique being best

00:04:21: for a moment.

00:04:22: And it can change.

00:04:23: We can let them go, the methods, the teachings, the techniques that we use for a while, the

00:04:29: concepts.

00:04:31: We can move to others.

00:04:34: The key here is to stay with a while with one method.

00:04:41: To not jump around too much, to stay focused.

00:04:48: And while that sounds so paradox, it is part of the art of doing nothing too.

00:04:56: The art of doing nothing also means to cut away what is not essential for you, to cut

00:05:08: away what overwhelms you, your senses, whatever you feed your mind.

00:05:18: And I like to see life as a meditation.

00:05:23: I like to see life that is chaos too, as that that we perceive as overcoming, overwhelming

00:05:34: us in the first place.

00:05:37: And we take the intention to sit on the mat and to consciously experience the chaos.

00:05:51: And to be with that chaos, to be with the thoughts, to be with the events that occur

00:05:56: in a manner that means for us that we can loosen our grip on whatever happens, loosen

00:06:11: our grip on our own emotions and thoughts, to free ourselves from that need of control,

00:06:19: to have the agenda, to have the plan.

00:06:24: That is what I see as very practicable, yet quite challenging in the same way as meditation

00:06:34: is in the first beginning.

00:06:35: And then you will soften up.

00:06:39: You will soften up just as in meditation on the mat, which only serves for the meditation

00:06:44: in life.

00:06:45: You soften up, you get more graceful with yourself.

00:06:49: You will see yourself reacting even.

00:06:53: You will see yourself being non-compassionate with yourself and being compassionate with

00:07:01: that non-compassion.

00:07:03: Here's the thing, it does not mean to suppress the thoughts that you have, the emotions that

00:07:12: you have, to sit in the stillness and to be there in all holy om.

00:07:19: It is to be able to take life fully, to be taken fully by life and not clinging to it,

00:07:30: not clinging to what there is.

00:07:32: [no audio]

00:07:34: It's not the thoughts that make the drama, that are the problem.

00:07:41: It's not what we think, it's not that we judge, it's not how we behave.

00:07:47: It is how we think about these thoughts.

00:07:53: It's about how we think about that behavior.

00:07:57: In the moment we open up ourselves to that self-deprecating judgmental notion of ourselves

00:08:10: with which is just installed in the human being, which is just part of it and instead

00:08:16: of seeing it as part of it, we use it against ourselves.

00:08:23: And it is here when you add suffering to your life.

00:08:38: There's this uncomfortable place to sit with what is, to sit with the not knowing, the

00:08:52: not knowing in the void without avoiding it.

00:08:57: And if you can find a practice, just a little area in your life where you can enter again

00:09:06: again this place of not yet and not anymore, this void, this limbo, this in-between, you

00:09:18: can practice for yourself too, to sit with it, to sit within certainty.

00:09:24: And it can really just very simply mean that you are waiting for a call of someone and

00:09:33: you don't get it.

00:09:37: What emotions occur, what thoughts occur.

00:09:43: And it's just simply about noticing it, it's not doing something about it, it's just sitting

00:09:48: with it and you will see that it will dissolve on its own.

00:09:53: If you are brave enough to give yourself into that without acting up on it.

00:10:04: And that's why the biggest challenge of your life will be that ditching of the agendas of

00:10:13: the plants of the boxes even you've put yourself in.

00:10:21: It will be ditching that what you call yourself as the individual person, that through that,

00:10:38: through freeing yourself and not clinging on to what you are and who you are to be and

00:10:47: what others said that you are, not clinging on to that, it is paradoxically through that

00:10:54: that you are your unique humanity, your unique way of being human, of becoming human will

00:11:04: shine through, will radiate out into the world and will become so magnetic and irresistible

00:11:14: that people will turn their head that you will get noticed in a different way.

00:11:21: It's then when you get fully seen, fully seen not as that what you pretend to be, what you

00:11:30: thought you are, what you think that you must be, but it's below these layers and it's

00:11:48: below the you too and that is where pure consciousness shines through you.

00:12:06: And that is what's so challenging to grasp.

00:12:12: Dropping the agenda, the urge of doing nothing does not mean not taking action.

00:12:18: It's exactly that because of that, that we are able to die fully into our humanity, to

00:12:33: take measures to enjoy this experience of life, to take the next challenge, to take

00:12:41: the next obstacle just because we know that, "Oh, that is just how my human, my human

00:12:49: feels right now."

00:12:54: But there is this idea that I've been given and it does not let me go and I cannot let

00:13:00: it go and to follow that path because deep down we know that this is a path of surrender,

00:13:18: of joy, of bliss, of devotion.

00:13:29: And sometimes it just seems like giving up on the superficial level while it actually

00:13:41: is surrender.

00:13:46: A surrender is your strength.

00:13:55: It is where you're equal.

00:13:57: It's where you're equal, not in circumstances, but in consciousness, to everything there

00:14:05: is because you are everything there is, because consciousness, pure consciousness is you.

00:14:11: It's where you get equal to the task that you are given.

00:14:16: Yes, and it's so easily, we are so easily tempted to cave in, to duck away from our

00:14:27: challenges, to run away to leave.

00:14:33: So my invitation for you today is, rest, rest with that uncomfortable place in you, that

00:14:48: there is.

00:14:51: Stay with it.

00:15:03: [birds chirping]