October 16, 2024

There were a couple of posts about David Bohm on Dialogue, his essay which goes very much in the direction of what we’re trying to do here, which is speaking without goals, without being a someone, without converging on an opinion, without trying to agree or disagree.

So Bohm was very close to nonduality and much of his writing many of us would recognize his perspective as being informed by that. But it’s something that you might be interested in reading. At some point we can discuss it if others feel like reading it. So if you feel the urge, you can have a look.

So we’re having a dialogue on the joy of not needing to be a someone. And we approach this from various angles. And in between we have the transcripts that are on a platform, we have the summaries of the transcripts, and we have a chat room between meetings that is anonymous. Not many people are using it yet, but we’re now going to add a third dimension to this, which is based on sharing our stories. And actually the past few sessions were really powerful because there was much more sharing from direct experience, what it means, the joy of not being a someone from various angles.

We want to capture more of that. So depending on the topic we’re discussing, today could be the joy of not needing to have an opinion, not needing to be an expert, not needing to know. And then between sessions, we ask you to share a story around this, a direct experience that you had. We’ve created a template that we’re going to test. So this is just the first version.

So everything is going to live on The Stage of Reality Check Institute under Unbelievable Joy and then from there, you can see all the dialogues and you can get to any room. So the rooms are weekly. The stories, since we’re experimenting with it for now, we would share a link with you. And in a couple of days tie it to this week’s transcript as well.

You can browse through the story before you get started. Just read through it. And the idea is to help you structure your thought process through five steps. The first thing is you’re going to give it a title. You need to be logged in. If you are not logged in we cannot store the story. It auto saves so for the most part if you write it will be saving as you go.

So after that one week you can no longer edit and what we have captured, that’s the story. So even if there are missing parts, we’re going to try to get AI to capture the essence and give us a version of it. So again, this is experimental. Try to write as much as you can in all the different pieces. You can preview what you wrote in each section if you want a quick rundown. And that’s it!

So this is not about beautiful literature. This is plugging in your thoughts. It doesn’t have to be grammatically correct. It doesn’t have to make much sense. You don’t have to fill out all the fields so you can write just a little bit. You can write a lot, but hopefully the questions will guide you. They’re set up so that on the back end, we end up with a Zen teaching story or nondual teaching story.

So these also become anonymous but modern tales of our daily lives that can be used to illustrate the things we’re speaking about. And I think that will be really powerful at some point in this shared public augmented book, that it’s very much also first person direct experience sharing.

Once we start moving the stories to the book, we will fill in the blanks with AI. That will not be tied to you. All of the story input will stop after a week. So you can no longer edit them. And then that becomes a story that has no connection to you anymore. Once we put it into the book. Again, we’re experimenting. We haven’t implemented it yet. So at this point, let’s see if we’re going to get stories. We’re going to see what AI does with them as well. If it ends up being something meaningful, it becomes a story in the book and loses who wrote it.

And so here, the idea is really to speak in the first person and to speak from your direct experience, to share that. And we’d ask also for this testing phase to please try to share one story during the week so that we can test, but also to get used to writing together. So this is writing apart together. We’re going to get to writing more at some point. So it’s important to practice the writing. So I think we’ve accomplished something with the dialogue in the sessions. And now we’re trying to get that going as well and writing because eventually the output is in written form for the most part.

Okay, so that’s some technical background stuff but all with the purpose of sharing more joy in the form of these stories. So we have the three components. We have the dialogues, which you can always go back and read through if you’re unbelievably bored. We have the chat room, which will still be open, even though we have the stories as well. This is completely anonymous. So there you can just write all any of your thoughts or comments about the subject of the week. And now we have the stories as a third component.

Okay, here comes my typical introduction. What we’re always trying to do here is to speak with each other about the joy of not needing to be a someone, whatever that means to us in the moment, and to speak with each other as though we are, which we indeed are, different forms of ourselves.

So we are always speaking with self in different form. And even if that doesn’t mean anything to you right now, just take it on as an option, that what is speaking here is the same as what is listening, and that we are sharing without purpose, without goal but just to see what emerges. And we’re speaking from direct experience, not trying to teach or theorize, although that can happen, and that’s okay too. But to speak from what we know in direct experience.

We’ve discussed many aspects of the joy of not needing to be a someone, and the wording is deliberate, right? It’s the joy of not needing to be someone because it’s both the joy of not needing to be anyone at all, and not needing to be a specific someone.

Today, unless my other selves veto this, or suggest alternatives we could speak about the joy of not needing to be an expert, not needing to know, not needing to have an opinion, to have knowledge about something, including about this. So basically the joy of no mind or no wisdom to impart, no knowledge or expertise to share, and different variations of that, whatever it means to you right now.

I’m not an expert. This means quite a lot in the sense of a shift from definitely having been the expert. So definitely, knowledge was power in, and also I was very much believing the role that I had as a consultant to impart knowledge to others who were listening and learning from me, the one who had to know. But also that felt uncomfortable and not I didn’t feel at ease in that delivery. And contrast that to a very recent experience just of last week, of standing in the joy of not knowing and being with an audience. It felt so different, I had some slides as a guide, but there was just huge contrast between the heaviness and yeah, the joy of not needing to be an expert was immense freedom.

And the knowledge was still there, right? You weren’t suddenly out of all knowledge.

Yeah, I wasn’t standing there, with that knowledge, whatever that was, erased. The interesting bit is that, that knowledge, which I suppose comprises of experience and, many different conversations, years of reading, diddle a do, courses, all of that compiled. And resting, almost, just whatever that was, and in that moment, stuff came out words were said, questions were asked. Was I drawing off that knowledge? No, not really, not literally. It’s almost like all that knowledge was chucked into the intelligence of the system and, there was joy in the space.

What was it that you were in? What was it like? Was it the same as before where you were like the expert, but you weren’t the expert?

Yeah. I was asked to come. Was it the same? No, different in that before was with different clients, say in a workshop in their office. Last week was a workshop. I was brought in as the expert, but I didn’t feel the expert. Didn’t have to be an expert. But you were the expert. But I suppose I was the, well from there, from booking me to standing in the room. Yes. I was deemed the expert.

I have a talk tomorrow and I’m I just find it very interesting. What you were just talking about that before you were the expert. Cause I recognize that. And then tomorrow I am the speaker and I’m not the expert, but I am. So I find that I’m not the expert. Of course, I don’t know, but still I’m there as someone who knows. And so what should I be thinking? Because I love the idea of just going on and not knowing, but I’ve been practicing my PowerPoint. So I find it interesting. I just find it fascinating because of course there is freedom there if I don’t have to worry about that.

Is it joyful now? the idea of tomorrow?

Yeah, it is joyful now. It is. But it’s based on the fact that I’ve been practicing, But the joy disappears when I think, what if I don’t remember the words?

I think that the need to be an expert or the need to have the answers is probably one of the hardest things and that leads to massive anxiety. In a lot of people, and especially people who are seen as expert have this expectation that if someone comes to them and asking them for advice, if they don’t have an answer, it means they’re a fake or a failure or I don’t know what, but that anxiety gets in the way of everything. And just with someone this week talking through that and it was a massive release and tears to just let that go. And in that some freedom, but yeah, I think that need is linked to a lot of anxiety and a lot of additional hurdles.

In the consulting agencies they said as long as you’re one step ahead of the client, right? So it doesn’t matter if you know nothing, as long as you’re one step ahead of the client, as long as you’re one step ahead, know a little bit more than the audience, you’re fine. That’s a a strategy to deal with the stress, right? And the tension of needing to be the expert and not being sure that you are. How is that different, that strategy versus this knowing that there is no expertise, really, that it’s just about sharing what comes up in the moment and that is all the expertise we ever need?

It’s really interesting because I had a moment when I was engaging and talking and asking questions where there were a few women potentially doing what I was doing. And there was just one, I can still remember it, there was like a flick of, I’d gone into believing that I had to know and be better than them, but it passed, but I held onto it for a second and it felt in that second tension because I’d gone into it. It’s almost, how can they be doing what I’m doing? In that moment, I was small and I was believing I was the owner of this and in control, but it was very brief. And there was no strategy to get out of it, just from, dropping back into the moment which luckily happened, to, and there was joy. But there was definitely that shift from tension, anxiety, that moment, and then not. Then it was freedom of just, doesn’t matter.

So I’m interested in this release, and I think that’s what we’re always in some form speaking about here, the joy and freedom of not needing, not being restricted to this idea that I need to be a certain way. So if I’m seen as the expert, the joy comes from knowing I don’t need to be that or anything else. I don’t need to know anything about nonduality or be able to articulate it or talk about it or make sense around it. And if I don’t for whole months or years, that’s perfectly fine.

Often, I might forget something, or it won’t come to me in that moment, whatever is supposed to show up does not show up for me in that moment. So I will come across as not being the expert. And I think that’s what I’m more afraid of, that the words will get stuck or something like that. And not afraid of it but the feeling that, I can say this so much better, and my insecurities will take over, because I have a tendency to show them.

How do you know that you won’t come across as an expert? How do you know? What is an expert and what an expert to them is the same as it means to you?

Yes. I don’t know that, but I know what I should have said and it didn’t get said, so you’re right. Yeah. That’s good. But I think compared to where I am, yeah, that’s very good.

For me, the joy of not knowing is intrinsically related to the joy of not needing to be someone. As a knowledge worker, consultant, person that’s drawn in, like an SME on a million things that I’m not in any way what I would consider an expert, never mind what other people would consider, as you get into the non duality, wisdom of impermanence, and all this, I realize more and more that I don’t know anything.

And until you reach a tipping point, it actually gets worse and worse before it gets better. Because when I was in high school I thought I knew everything, and I was just going off of that. And I was the smart one, yada, yada, yada. So that was my entire identity. And as I’ve expanded life and expanded my mind, I realized that I don’t know these things and it’s like the whole identity just crumbles in front of me.

So getting beyond that was necessary.

Yes, and then the fascinating thing is when an identity starts to form around the one who doesn’t know. I’m not saying that’s the case for you. I’m just, I’m speaking from experience. So we’ve seen this in all the topics we’ve covered, it’s holding both and holding them lightly.

I’ve also from my own experience found that normally when there’s a need to show up as an expert, it’s the comparing mind that comes in and that comes from feeling separate from others. And when you start comparing yourself to others and needing to know more and being an expert. Realize that you’re not separate, then maybe there won’t be a need to be an expert.

Isn’t it changing your definition of what an expert is really? That is all that has happened for me. I thought I needed to know everything, but that’s not the reality. That’s just something that was created in my mind. There isn’t a need to know everything on call with the client. You can stop and say, I’m not sure I need to check that out, or I need to go in further. Like all of it was this buildup being projected from inside me, not really the outside world.

It’s an interesting point about the separation. Because if expertise is just a shared being, it doesn’t end in what’s supposedly my brain or starts in yours or whatever. It’s just parts of what is occurring.

So I think that’s interesting also, to examine where we’re in these situations, like group situations, and we’re trying to transcend that here all the time, but especially, when you’re on a podium speaking to people, this sense of I am separate from those listening is even more acute, which can then strengthen the idea of the the thoughts are coming from here, and they need to come from here, and are known here, and need to be projected out to them, who will then receive them.

I’ve never really been on a stage. So maybe, I don’t know, those who’ve been on a stage, if you’re separate to the rest, does the comparing mind come up that you start comparing your own expertise or what you can offer to them? And I’ve never been in that situation.

And do you even own your expertise? Is it yours? Is it there? Do we have expertise?

I like to share two personal experiences on the stage. In my corporate life and in personal life also, I normally since my college day used to speak on the stage. I had often found even now also, whatever you prepare before you speak on the stage or even in a meeting, there is a lot of difference what actually happens at that moment.

In our in my previous company, I was the head of the vendor development center. So we used to have an annual function of the vendors. And where we will invite the previous ones, the current one, the prospected one also. And usually our chairman would speak to them. So once chairman said that this time you will address the vendors. So I said what do we say? He said no, you will speak, but I was anxious. So I prepared before the day. But I put the paper in my pocket and went on the stage and I did not touch the paper and I spoke for about half an hour. And at the end of the meeting, the vendors came, the chairman came, he said, you spoke very well.

I said, I was not prepared, but then they asked me but how did you speak so well? I said the only thing I was keeping in mind when I was addressing the vendors, that they were all my known people. I treated them, I spoke to them as my daily friends to whom we were already dealing with. So that separation was not there. Even when I was on the stage, I was speaking to them as if I would be speaking to them otherwise. So that gave me the lesson that if you speak to the audience as your own people, you don’t need to prepare for what you want to say.

You just have to be there and the things will come out. So that happened and that permanently relieved me from preparing for any speech thereafter. And last year, my daughter’s marriage was there. And because in India, the marriage is a one of the big events in your life. So my daughter said that Papa, you make some speech. I said, okay, I will do. So she was anxious. She said you have not prepared for the speech. I said, I will say whatever I want to say, not worry, but still she being daughter, she noted some points. So again, I kept the paper in my pocket. So I was just standing on the stage and I just took the mic and started speaking and trust me, I spoke for one hour and then it was all spontaneous. Later I, later people, the other side the people from the boys side, they also came and they said uncle, you spoke well. I said, but I did not prepare it, which I will tell you. They said that when you were speaking, it never looked to us that somebody is speaking. It was like you were speaking one to one to us, but that again, the separation was not there. I was treating all the guests as my own. The learning was if you don’t treat your audience as something distant from you or different from you, or you have to teach them something, if that is not the thought in your mind, then they will feel connected with you.

And you will also feel connected. You will speak effortlessly and the message will be delivered because there is no teacher student kind of relationship. You are not trying to convince them for whatever, whether it is a family function or it is a business meeting.

And, do we notice this now? So if it goes through the filter that I, as a separate person, I’m speaking to these individuals on a zoom call, is it different than with the knowing that this is speaking happening, not speaking to others, but let’s call it sharing or shining. Does that happen here as well?

Wouldn’t that be lovely if it didn’t happen? I noticed that it does happen. I notice that I’m talking and I’m aware of how much time I take and how often I talk. But wouldn’t it be lovely if I didn’t have that? That would be super if I was just, yeah, I don’t know. Is it possible? Is it possible not to be aware that you’re on a Zoom call and you’re the one who’s speaking? even though speaking is just happening.

I’m not sure we don’t need to be aware of it. Because it’s what is showing itself to our senses, but do we have to interpret it as persons speaking to different persons? Or is it just pixels and sound and sound waves and whatever the physicists say it is? Is it just sensations?

For me, when I speak, I don’t prepare what I will say next, somebody speaks something, some word comes up that calls up some story. And I just said without thinking that what the other persons might think of it, I don’t see separation as such. That I have to show up as someone. You often cut me off, but I don’t mind that I’m happy with that also because I don’t see it’s a separation is there that you are my teacher or the others are observing me as if they are examining me. So if you cut me, I am okay.

There’s an aspect to it that seems like the spontaneousness of it. So the knowing that things just come out of this mouth and things come out of the other mouths and it makes it seem less like there’s separation. This element of it just occurring. And when it’s very clear how totally spontaneous or uncontrollable that is, the speaking here and the listening here, and whether I shut up or don’t, makes it more the sense of, yes, that’s what’s happening everywhere, which is the same here. It’s impossible to put into words, but this aspect of it just occurring makes it seem less like creation.

But that’s the reason we’re practicing, I wanted to do this in a group, specifically, because the group situation and the dynamics of speaking, dialoguing tend to bring up this sense of separation and individualness, and I am a someone strongly. So we’re putting ourselves in the middle of the storm. Trying to see whether we can know the joy in that very social situations.

I’ve had two experiences. One is speaking to very large audiences of people in the magnitude of hundreds or even thousands of people and I found that experience reasonably easy to handle. It’s almost as though when there’s so many faces looking at you, you just talk to yourself anyway, because it just all merges into one.

And then on the other hand, at the other complete extreme, I totally love talking to one person. My favorite hobby is talking to one person. I find that really easy and the self to, now as I’m speaking, I’m not feeling any noticeable self consciousness, but when you were speaking before, I think what I have struggled with more than anything is tracking conversations. The tracking of conversations in small groups, I find quite challenging.

That makes my mind wonder whether I, saying it now, but when I think about it, it’s probably small groups are the most challenging situations of the two. I’ve given, I’ve spoken quite openly about my individual life in front of lots of people and in front of one person. Tracking conversations is a unique situation, I find. It brings you into more close intimacy with other people, with other minds. And it makes you, the tendency can be a little bit, at least here, has been. And I can’t say I’ve completely sorted that one out but I think I’m a lot better than I was, but it still feels like you’re more on show in small groups. And there’s more of an imperative to contribute to the flow of the conversation. So you’ve got to track it somehow.

I don’t know. Seems more of an effort. Those are my thoughts anyway, but that’s just my experience. But that depends, on the functioning of your mind as well? I don’t know, there’s lots of factors involved in that as well, not just separation but lots of factors.

What do you mean by tracking, like keeping a hold of what’s being spoken about or how the conversation is flowing

I just mean, if there’s different voices coming at you with different thoughts jumping in, do you know what I mean?

The moment where you can go into that and then sometimes you just miss it. And then you think, oh, I wanted to say something there, all those kind of very sort of straight, very minor details, but they’re quite important.

I think this is the first time, probably the first time in this group, that there is no sense of needing to take on an identity, even the sense of needing to facilitate this or introduce it, it just happens. So there’s no sense of, ih, now I’m going to introduce this, or now I’m going to decide what we’ll talk about, or I’m going to look at the time, and then there’s the thought, okay, soon we’ll wrap up and then wrapping up happens. And that is so expansive.

But I also recognize for me as well, very much the this size of the group and especially in different cultural contexts that you feel most separate almost, or most on the spot most like an individual, even more so than in either really large audiences or one on one. So I do recognize that. But here I’m just talking to myself.

I would say I had the opposite experience, especially in this type of setting or any type of setting when it involves other people. Is it Nietzsche, hell is other people, like that. It’s all a bit of urge surfing for me, like this whole experience, my body is over and over again trying to conceptualize, trying to be more than what is. And it’s just almost riding a bull throughout the entire thing because the urges are just crazy to do more or say the right thing, do this, that, or the other thing. And it’s it’s strange, but it is incredibly valuable when going back to, this one in particular, because there’s no setup, there’s no framework to work within, like it, it’s free and anxiety inducing in the best possible way, because that’s the only way I think to get over these traumas that have caused that kind of reaction.

Maybe that’s also something that might lead to a story to share.

Yeah, maybe that’s a good wrap up point. Because the idea is the flow of the conversation, it flows the way it flows and people participate or not. But let’s see if during the next few days, you can use the link to the story, which is in the chat. And look at this in particular, so where have you perhaps experienced the contraction, so where do you feel the stress? So it asks you to look at a specific situation and then actually the shift to realizing you don’t need to be a someone and the joy and freedom that brings. So it leads you through that in five steps. And of course, you’re free to fill it out in the opposite order whatever works.

But so when you answer it this time, the questions are generic, but for this week, the idea would be to contribute a story where you felt that around needing to be an expert, or needing to know.

Are you interested in writing stories? Does that sound like a huge task or does it sound easy and fun? Now everybody says, no, it sounds easy and fun.

I’m used to writing in my journal. I’m not used to typing it out.

Yeah maybe we can work on that, that at some point it can be voice but at least please try it out. Even if you type just one sentence, it doesn’t matter. Okay, so it doesn’t matter if it’s incomplete. If you feel that it’s totally incomplete hit enter anyway. Because we will make something out of it.

We’re going to give it a shot. We’re gonna see what it produces because it might be completely useless or it might be something actually interesting. We have to test it out. So whatever input is there, we will try to do something with it. If it becomes of value, then we will build up on that as well.

Over the next six days, please contribute a story. You can even imagine one, but I’d like you to stick to things that you actually experienced. And Just stepping back a bit, we’re talking about how to share the joy of, let’s call it nonduality for short. Imagine if we could do this in lots of stories, first person direct experience, real life, not some old Zen dude in a monastery 700 years ago. Those are also valuable, but us sharing this in simple direct experience, I think that has huge potential.

That was my motivational speech. I look forward to seeing what we produce. Thank you for being here. I hope to see many of you next week or some week after.