October 2, 2024

As I said last time, at some point this is probably going to converge to co authoring rough drafts or first drafts of text. But I don’t know, I guess we will decide in whatever way we decide when that starts.

For now I think it’s really good to keep experimenting and practicing with, giving voice to what comes up in other versions of ourselves. I feel like a broken record, but I always want to remind ourselves that we are here speaking with ourselves. So every little head on this screen is a different version of you, and to try to know that when we interact.

And when you feel that you’re triggered or you feel hesitant, Oh, should I say this? I don’t want to be vulnerable, or all those things. To respect that, of course, but also to realize that we are here as the same being, so it’s all good. The transcripts, they’re anonymous as well. They’re edited. But the essence of what we say is captured. And if you have things you’d like to share later, which is the case for many of us, please use the link to the anonymous chat room. And write your heart out. Anything is allowed. You can’t create too much content.

All right. Thank us for being here with us and we have a suggested topic for today. So if you have suggestions for topics that always makes it very nice because we can see whether we agree on this one. So we’ve been talking about the joy, various aspects of the joy of not needing to be a someone or not needing to be anyone or other versions of the same statement that all do not capture it, but come as close as we can.

And so the suggestion for today is to talk about, How can we, if we know this joy, how can we share it? How do we share or what is your personal experience or impersonal experience of sharing the joy of not needing to be a someone? Positive and negative experiences. In the sense of what seems to work and what doesn’t seem to work.

Just an example from my daily working life. As a label “head of partner integration excellence” in a big logistics company. Usually people expect me to act according to this role as part of the management team. Yeah, but I don’t. And so how do they notice?

I think I am a little bit different compared to other managers. Because I don’t care about titles, about if I’m talking to a CIO, to a whatever. So I am just in this situation and I face and take care of what happens there. And so I don’t care who I am now, how people should treat me based on this label or position.

So what people tell me is how can you deal with this in such an easy way? Why are you so calm in this situation? Why is this not triggering you? I guess that in this way I make people curious. How the hell is he doing this? Then they reach out to my LinkedIn profile and get an idea. It’s just by showing this behavior. Was that understandable?

Yes, you live it.

What would you say then if somebody said, How can you always be so calm?

What do I say to them? I first show understanding because most of the time people are triggered, there are emotions. And then the first thing I tell them is that everything, what is now is okay. So either you’re sad or you’re angry you’re freaking out. That’s okay. Just let’s take the situation as it is. And then let’s see how we can continue from here. And this is something I tell them. I don’t care about the past. We are here now. So if people, for example, start to ask, why did it happen like that? So I say now we have to find a solution, how we can go on.

I don’t really talk about this. I just continue.

I can recognize to some extent exactly what I’ve done in any corporate setting again, whether CTO, C suite, you name it. And I said I don’t care why, all of this is irrelevant. Like it could be bad. It could be wrong. It could be unfair. It’s fair. It’s irrelevant in retrospect. This is what it is. And I usually repeat that a lot is I’m just saying what I see, what is happening. I don’t care if it’s negative because I’m not trying to offend anyone or I’m not trying to be negative.

So I work in two different cultures, one, which is Scandinavian, if you’d like, and one, which is American and each one treats those very differently, just as a reactionary response. So if I’m, blaming something or saying this is wrong and this is not working, it could be construed as negative. And I’m like, negative or not, it is what it is. I’m not trying to associate an outcome to it. And to be honest, that doesn’t always help because I think still people are struggling with that. But you are saying, things are failing but no, we’re not necessarily failing and why is that failing when it’s positive. It’s actually easier in most regards when it’s positive, there is less of that push.

And maybe adding to that I think that triggers are often based on behaviors or expectations, which are being attached to a certain role. So in your role, you should behave like X, Y, Z, but I don’t really behave like that. And that’s the joy of not needing to be someone. So in whatever situation I am in this setting, I don’t think about what would now be right in my role. It’s about the situation we are all in and to get out of this. Or maybe to accept the situation, something like this.

My job is I work as a job coach, so I help people who are unemployed, I help them get jobs. And when they sit one on one with me, we talk about these and of course  they feel hopeless, but I never jump in on those stories. And so for me, when we ask how can we share this joy … They say, Oh, I feel much better now. And I can feel that my calm makes them calm, but how can I share that with them without saying that it’s because I have no ego. So I would love to be able to share it like that. Some little thing I can refer to thoughts or something like that. No, I don’t think so much or, all these thoughts are blah, but I would love to be able to give a one liner or something like that.That it really is all good.

And behind, behind this are interesting again the assumptions we have of what sharing means.

How do we share something? Is there even a how?

So what is our experience of sharing this, or where do we get the feedback from others that we are sharing joy, which is not happiness, right? It doesn’t mean it’s ecstatic and knowing this is bliss and we should all dance around everywhere because we’re so joyful, which is not what I personally mean by joy. We’ve had this discussion before.

But do you have any experiences of noticing through what others say or do that you have been sharing the joy of not needing to be a someone?

Before this, I was an organizational development consultant, and I would often do leadership workshops. This was a lot of my life facilitating leadership workshops and this was always the feedback from my colleagues. How can you be so calm? In this super tense, it’s mostly all men at executive level trying to get something done in this workshop. So all the egos, all the goals, all the expectations by the end of these six hours, we need to have major shifts, whole strategies have to be developed. And I’m just like, whatever happens, whoever’s here is here, whatever occurs, it’s all good. The ability to just notice what is going on due to this lack of something needing to happen and then just being able to say it.

So it’s “Oh, X, I noticed you’re not here. You’re in this workshop, but you’re not. You seem to be somewhere else. Is that true? Nobody else would say these this these type of things.

So you show that you notice without judging Because judgment could be attached to expectations of roles and so on, maybe.

Yes, or when people then say, look, you’re the facilitator, what are we going to do now? And I’m like, I don’t know, let’s figure it out, and that would really get some people upset.

And the question was also, how do you see if you have successfully shared the joy of not needing to be someone? Maybe when the situation gets less aggressive, less offensive. So that could be a signal that sharing this joy could have been successful.

There seem to be two sides to it from my perspective. I take majority of my clients, coaching clients who are in businesses, usually manufacturing, building businesses, through a journey of my own learning and development over the second half of my life and as it approaches the end of that program we talk about the last three sessions, called flow, observe, and explore which sort of gives away what the content is. But I’m taking people who have never heard of anything like non duality, 99 percent of my clients are just not from that space. So you’re taking them on that journey. I do get a lot of feedback about being peaceful and calm during sessions. So you can see both sides of it, really.

I’d like to share an experience but it’s not really work related like you are talking about, more in the family. The feedback from my children. Two, three years ago, there’d be massive explosions and me and my husband could also really get into it, but I can now relax back and know that they’re okay. And I’m okay. No matter what’s happening. Yeah, that feedback, like, how can you stay so calm when your kid is exploding? Even today, she wanted to watch telly and she went crazy. But it just happens, and it’s okay. And I’m just there to hold space. And she can sit it out or whatever it is. And I think that’s my experience, especially in the family side, not taking things so seriously anymore.

Just as you say there’s another side of this, which is actually the opposite, which is the ability to be really completely emotional. Without attaching to it. Because there’s no need to be seen as calm and collected, for example you could also have the explosion towards your child and not be attached to that either.

I have a client who’s identified one of her values as joy, but it’s something that she is struggling with because she feels she’s the founder of a business and she feels that employees only take her seriously if she doesn’t show joy. And if she comes across as very serious and strong and angry at the world. But it’s in complete contradiction with who she really is. And also to balance and to step between those different types of conversations and going from a serious conversation to a fun conversation and not being attached to that seriousness or the different types of conversations that you have with people.

And so we actually had a very interesting conversation and what sort of unblocked something for her that made her more curious was, I just said to her that in this instance I am you and you are me, and anything is possible in this specific instance, there’s no limitation and we can do anything we want to do. And that unlocked a string of questions answered by more questions.

All her questions were answered by more questions.

Regarding this sharing of the joy, I have experienced that it is very difficult to explain this in words, or it’s more with the behavior, if the others notice and then they tell you that. Like with me two things often people tell me, my colleagues or my family member, they say, Why are you so quiet and always smiling? And you never get angry, even my kids also tell me. So I tell them that I do nothing to remain smiling. It just happens. Maybe because I don’t expect anything from the other one who is doing something wrong. It just happens. They say no, you must be doing some meditation. You must be doing something. But I honestly tell them that I do nothing. I am just as I am. If you find me smiling, it is just there. I don’t make any effort to smile. Maybe it is a consequence of that I don’t need anything from others, my colleagues or my family members. Maybe that is the reason, but I don’t know.

And I tell them, you can also be like that, who stops you? But then I find that when I try to explain non duality or, oneness and all these things, then they get lost. Then they then they tell me their problems, their stories, and I listen to them. And I tell them that all this will all go on. No matter what efforts you make you can’t micromanage your subordinates, your employees, or your family members. They will do what they do.

I see many, they spend a lot of time on others. My son is not doing this. He should do this. He should. I said how can you plan yourself for the next day? You can’t. How can you plan for your kids? Forget that. They are there. If they have come to this earth, they have brought something with them. They have just come through you. That is okay. But that is not what they are expecting from you. The more I explain, I find them lost. So the only thing I have found is that you can share this uncaused joy is that maybe if they notice how you respond, then they think about it. But otherwise, I have seen that if you start explaining, then they start their own stories, their own problems. My experience is that it’s very difficult to explain what causes this uncaused joy.

Do you think we even share this with people or that we discover it in ourselves?

But there is always an urge to share because when I see people suffering and I know the reason, then I feel that I should do something. I should tell them there is no need to suffer. Then I try to explain to them, but then I find them that they are so lost in their own thoughts and other things. They don’t get the gap in between the thoughts or the worries.

But yes, they do ask me when I don’t react as expected. Then even in the family or in the office, then they come back and say, Why did not you shout at him? He was speaking so loudly at you. Then they try to perhaps think, yes, you’re right. It’s difficult to share.

Maybe we should rephrase our question. Not how do we share this, but do we even share this? Do we ever share? Or are we just rediscovering the same thing in a different form? So maybe the concept of wanting to share something underlines the sense of separation.

I’m struggling with this idea of sharing because it immediately sends me back into separation. And thinking about it even. That’s the weird thing, I have to share something, isn’t it? Is there something to share? I can’t get my head around it. It’s like an action I have to take in some way. Or there’s a purpose to this realisation, and there’s no purpose to it. It’s completely purposeless. And so I can’t, I’m struggling to relate, I can relate to it as a separate self. Oh, as a separate self, it must mean that I’m a better person, therefore I can share my happiness with other people.

But that’s not what this is about here anyway. And so yeah, the premise of the question, I just want to say I’m struggling with a little bit. The best metaphor I can say is that you stop sharing misery. You stop sharing misery around the world. And if you stop doing that, automatically, you’re going to have a positive effect on your environment and things. I don’t know what to share, I don’t know what would be shared. Because sharing would imply I’m sharing it with somebody. And I’m sharing with myself. All the time.

So I’m just sharing love with myself. I’m sharing wisdom with myself. I’m hearing wisdom from myself and sharing wisdom to myself. I’m sharing with myself. I suppose that could be the answer to the question, how do you share? When you’re sharing with yourself, you’re sharing. When you’re sharing with a person, you’re taking, you’re not sharing. You’re trying to get something, somehow. Or at least exchange something in a way.

I guess we could talk about sharing in that sense. But we could also interpret sharing as demonstrating or being.

What about shining? Yes. I love shining. Because we’re like the sunshine, we just shine. And the sun doesn’t have to do anything, it just shines. It shares its light, but it doesn’t set out to do that, it just does it.

Does anyone have something to share about that sense of shining, of demonstrating, not sharing in a transactional way, where there’s someone, over there who I need to share something with, but more in the sense of being, living?

When this mind body was 19 years old, she joined a Buddhist organization based on Japanese Buddhism, which was all based on non duality. This organization thought it could save the world by creating world peace, and by converting millions of people into oneness and Buddhism. And it’s still going to this day, and there are now 20 million people. And it talks like this a lot. I left it because I couldn’t bear it anymore. But it talks like this a lot, almost in evangelical ways, about sharing something. It makes you think in ways which personalise your existence, actually. It takes you back. That’s why I left it in the end. It sounds very noble, but it becomes a kind of religion.

So you have some negative associations with the verb sharing.

When I heard this, it sounded like, oh, we have to share the truth. We have to go out and evangelize in some way, prove to the world that oneness is the philosophy they should be following and all the rest of it. And I always say consciousness is the world. So consciousness is choosing to be separate. That’s its free choice. We should never try and stop the freedom from happening.

It’s another beautiful example of how our past experiences influence how we hear the words. When it’s in writing or when we’re talking about it, we use words and phrases, and people have whole movies arise. From the words we use and past three years of writing about this, I’ve encountered again and again that a word I used was extremely triggering or somebody hears something completely different than was meant.

That’s why they say silence is much better. But then that is also part of the happening. Yes, sunshine is a good example. But then we will all be keeping quiet because sun keeps quiet.

What I like about shining compared to the concept of sharing, sharing for me means there is a sender and someone who receives it, but shining means you just shine. No matter if somebody sees that or not. So more passive, maybe.

Unless I feel I am being shined upon by your shining. Okay, yeah. And then we’re in a Stephen King novel.

She said it so well, just stop sharing misery. And I think we just stop sharing the drama. We stop jumping into the drama. We just leave the drama where it is and don’t engage.

But sometimes jumping into the drama is the shining?

Oh, yes. Could be.

Jumping into the drama without needing to change it or save the people involved in the drama is what makes the difference. You jump in because you are an equal participant and a co-actor not because I need to get something done. I just need to play my part and then get out.

I was in the theater earlier today and lot of what was being discussed now, I was able to connect it back. A lot of the times the silences were way more impactful and it felt like the scene went forward when people just shut up instead of adding more things to it.

But that’s also super interesting this idea that jumping into the role can be also the shining, sharing, or whateverPlaying the role with full abandon or falling into these emotions.

And having the explosion. Being able to do that. Initially I thought I needed to edit myself and just be this one particular way. But then non duality just was like, what are you doing? I realized instead of censoring myself … I call it not carrying any residue. So this is something that I’ve seen is happening more and more. I can have an outburst and then the next moment I’m fine because the person who you were a couple of minutes ago and the person who I was a couple of minutes ago, they had a relational issue, but you and me we don’t because we’re part of the whole and we don’t have an issue anymore. There was something getting in the way of this flow that needed to move out of the way. And this explosion happened to be the best way to do it in that moment. And it’s done. So why are you still upholding these rules and continuing to stick to that?

No agenda and no intention. So before, after, during, it’s just the spontaneous happening without the personalization.

So the sharing, does the sharing stop if it’s not direct, so is there passive and direct or active? I do believe sometimes it triggers after a conversation or it’s not necessarily direct in it. You have moments sometimes where people come back to you and say, like this déjà vu. But a lot of the times someone would reach out and say somehow the presence continued irrespective of whether really we were in an active conversation. There’s always this relationship. And sometimes I feel it can be even not in the same time, it’s not necessarily located or directly in a conversation or something along those lines. And it still happens.

Why wouldn’t it because there’s no end and beginning. Like right now there’s sharing between those who are saying things and not saying things and not only this strange little zoom screen with the heads on it, but the whole environment, probably someone three kilometers down the road is sharing something into the world, into the stream of consciousness. The whole universe is constantly sharing and shining itself with itself. If we don’t think from our limited little body points of view, it seems much more likely that there is continual interchange and exchange and I don’t even have the words for it.

I can say that this Saturday I had to put down my dog and when we’re talking about sharing and we’re talking about the presence, what I feel the most, like when I go to sleep is how she shared of herself without saying anything, how much she filled each just walking her, how much she shared of her being without even doing anything. So when you were talking about sharing with not saying, and those not saying, we’re still sharing, yeah, that’s really sharing a being sharing a presence. I think the presence is really what we share as well. Presence to what is, yeah.

So we could also say that the question, how do we share the joy of not needing to be someone, is how do we not share the joy? Yes. How can we possibly not be sharing it all the time?

Because we believe to be separate.

Yes, exactly. That’s the only reason we stopped sharing it.

Or we think we stopped sharing it, but maybe even then we’re still sharing it.

We’re sharing something, that’s for sure. We’re sharing fear, I don’t know, it seems to me the two choices are fear or love.

I feel to build this degree of really good friendship with all of you , and I’ve not actually met you, but I’ve got to know you, so really what’s been striking me, I’m not saying you have to feel the same way towards this mind, but I genuinely feel friends with you all, and I feel this connection, and I don’t know where that came from, particularly because normally it’s nice to meet people in person, but suddenly I genuinely felt that. I just want to share that with you. I felt like we were kind of friends, in a nice way. There’s a saying in Buddhism in the Lotus Sutra, which says the real meaning of the Buddha’s reason for joining this world was his behavior as a human being. And what he did is what he really showed how this understanding shines through his behavior. And innocence comes to me. We’re more innocent. We’re more pure hearted, almost childlike sometimes at this time.

So it seems to me lately that it’s turning around in the way I think about it, that wee are always sharing this joy, but we’re just sometimes pretending that we’re not, or believing that we’re not. So it’s it’s always there, but we’re adding that sometimes some people, maybe for whole lifetimes, are not seeing it, or turning away from it. But it’s not that it’s not there, and that we have to input it. It’s more that if we do anything it’s stop making it worse basically. And then it’s there, then the joy is there.

I think it’s a joy of expression. It’s just the flower simply expresses, and somebody who passes by getx attracted to the flower and may pick it up. Or simply passes by, it doesn’t matter to flower. It’s an expression. Similarly here also, as we are hearing from each other, whatever comes to each of us, we’re simply expressing and there’s a joy of expression, which is there all this. So I think that’s another way of looking at it. And then if it makes sense to somebody, they will pick it up and it influences them in some way. Just like the flower, somebody comes and picks it up and uses it for a bouquet, maybe. So it’s just a spontaneous happening in the flow. Because we are not taking the doership. I am doing it. It’s simply happening.

I think we are shining anyways.

In Buddhism, where there are multiple Dharma talks that I’ve heard where they say the actions and the words you do are merely amplifications of the volition that you’re entering the space with. And a lot of times if the volition is non dual in nature, which is I don’t need to change anything, there’s nothing that needs to be done, nobody who needs fixing, and you’re just sitting with whoever it is in that, with that presence that is more than enough. There’s nothing else that needs to be done.

And I’ve seen this happen multiple times and geographical distance doesn’t matter in that place either. Sometimes someone will cross the mind. Oh, I haven’t spoken to them. I haven’t thought of them. I wonder how they’re doing? And I do a little thing where I just close my eyes and I reach out through space time to just give them like a tap. Just a reassuring tap. And it’s happened multiple times where months or weeks later, they’ll call me like, you know what? I was feeling like this and I thought about you and it was just so strange, but I didn’t reach out because we hadn’t reached out in a while and I didn’t know what to say. And I was like, next time just reach out. It’s okay.

It’s only now that I’ve been saying, yeah, I’m glad you heard me. Oh, good. I was loud enough or something cheeky like that. But yeah, there is something to it, to the woo aspect of just geographical distance, space and time, not being a real thing. And just, if you feel like you need to give them something to do right in the mind in this certain way and direct it and shoot this little compassionate arrow to whoever is, coming up for you. I found that it’s a good practice for me and it’s worked. And yeah, I like doing it. That was my shining.

And I would like to suggest as you’re speaking that we hold the world in our being right now and just surround it with love. That’s what I’m feeling, just to share that with you, it’s already there, just hold the whole world and all these people, especially in difficult areas of the world tonight. And we don’t know that by doing this we are really making a significant difference to these lives.

Isn’t that what they do in the monasteries? They hold the space for the whole world there and just share.

Nature has many expressions. We humans are also one such expressions out of the many others. As such humans have got a little more capacity to share, express, shine, whatever. So since we humans have got more abilities than other beings, we will try to express it, share it, shine, whichever word is again relevant. And when somebody gets something overwhelming, something which he was looking for and not getting and seeing the others also searching, not getting and then someone gets it.

And then out of his overflowing, he would like to share it. Even there were people who did not say any word. And there are some who wrote too much. There were people who wrote so many good books, so many good speeches. So these are all different expressions.

But yes, you’re right. If somebody is thinking it as a doing, then of course he may be missing it, but otherwise every expression is his expression. And if somebody has got something which he was also struggling and then he sees others still struggling and he’s pushed out of nothing to tell somebody that, okay, is it is like that if somebody is going the wrong way, you are tempted to tell him no, don’t go this way.

So similarly, we are all searching happiness or peace or whatever. So we say if you are really looking for happiness, don’t go this way. Then do this because I have gone that way, it might not work for him, but still he will, because that is the way he has.

Thank you everyone for being us. I just want to invite everyone again to please bookmark the chat for the week and it may not seem like it’s doing anything whether you post something in there or not, but I feel very strongly that this is part of our process. Because if this works the way it might work, we’re getting used to sharing thoughts and sharing writing as a group. So this chat is like working up towards that. And the thoughts, the writing starts melding.

Thank you very much that you keep showing up and trying this out. I think we’ve already come a long way in terms of how we’re doing this. That’s just a feeling and I don’t want to measure it or judge it, but I feel there’s a friendship and our shining is more collective.