[meditation bell and birdsong]
I'm sure you know, many of you, that
one of the most basic and actually most advanced practices,
is awareness of the breath. Actually, the most advanced practice in awareness of the breath is,
natural breathing, deep in the hara,
where there is no control over the breath at all.
Where you surrender to the breath breathing itself.
So if you are having a mind that is challenged,
probably the best instruction is, drop your mind into your breath, into your belly,
They've even shown, I believe, that breathing awareness in the belly actually produces alpha brainwaves.
And if you breathe up, and if you're doing rapid or high chest breathing, you're stimulating beta,
which activates thinking more. I don't know if that's still true, but that's what I knew, years ago.
So you can experiment. See if it works for you.
Participant: So a minute ago, Jon, you talked about deep breathing or belly breathing as a practice, really--
Jon: Natural breathing.
Participant: Natural breathing. So my question-- for me, with nondualist work, sometimes I find it a bit dry, or devoid
of structured practice or technique. And you know, I think that's generally good.
But sometimes, as you said, you can't get out of the head,
or you're in a state and you know you could sit there,
and try some inquiry, or try and drop into the presence, and it's just not coming.
And you feel, or I feel, that then it would be nice to have some tools
to, you know, maybe different gateways to the Presence. Jon: Sure.
Participant: If, in your experience, potentially from other traditions, too,
whether you find that there are other, more structured practices, techniques, approaches, that can be helpful.
And one, particularly, that I would like to hear about, that you talked about, is it pono-pono?
Jon: Oh, "Ho'oponopono."
Jon: Plus I'd like also say something about, just respond to what you were saying about
nondual, or sort of the fundamentalist--I don't want to say fundamentalist--
but let's just say, the pointed teaching of just being Presence...which, I understand that.
I mean, certainly my teachers, my main teachers were, had that perspective.
I mean I'm talking about Jean Klein and Papaji-- Punjaji-- and Robert Adams.
Robert, I mean-- that was their primary focus.
But, Robert would certainly say, "Hey, if you need to meditate or do anything else, fine, do whatever you need to do."
And so I think that what's important is, I just want to say, this as a
prelude to talking about Ho'opono-pono.
But I just want to say it, because there's a lot of propaganda out there,
I think, and misunderstanding, which is that
people say, "Well, you know, if you do practices, it strengthens the doer."
And my response to that is,
only if it does. It doesn't necessarily, at all.
If there isn't someone taking themselves to being a doer, then the practices could be profoundly helpful.
That's why they've been around for as long as they've been, quite frankly.
If they do strengthen the doer, then one should be sensitive enough to get clued into that.
That the way one is doing something is strengthening the whole sense of, "I'm doing this."
But I think that's got to go at the beginning.
That has to be...the cover on that has to be blown right away.
So you can begin to not be the one who's meditating.
When you don't take yourself to be the meditator, meditation's happening, you see?
So you drop the sense of the doer.
And then whether you follow the breath,
or do ho'oponopono or anything like that, then they work.
P: Hmm.
Jon: Otherwise they will strengthen the separation.
And you become a very good practitioner. And that frees you up to try whatever you want to do.
P: Hmm.
Because then it's not about, "Gee, I'm really worried that if I go to therapy, I'm just going to get more in my head.
Well, maybe, depending on the therapist and how you approach it, but not necessarily.
I mean, I had an awakening long before anybody used the word "nondual."
And, I didn't even know what it was for a long time.
And I went into practices already having had that happen.
So I was already tuning into presence before I knew what was even happening.
Nobody was there to feed it back until I met Anne [Armstrong], and then Jean [Klein], of course.
Jean was the most important, really,
for giving me the clarity. Because, I didn't have teachers who were embodied, prior to that.
So, umm, but you know what I love? You know Sri Aurobindo?
He founded Auroville,
in Pondicherry, India. And he wrote an amazing work called "The Life Divine" which I read bits of
when I was first getting started on this path, you know, decades ago.
Over 40 years ago, and, uh...
He said one thing that really was, I think, important, which was,
"The greater the sinner, the greater the saint."
And what he described is, is he says, if you start the path with a base this big,
right?, like a triangle,
and you go up to the top, this is what you have to offer when you get up there.
Just this. But if you start here, with the base this wide,
it may take a little longer to get up here.
But when you get up here, this is what you're going to have to offer.
So he was all about living in the world
as awakened person. That inspired me then,
for where I'm at now with this.
And how to share this. Because I think that's what's needed.
Not just more arhats and sadhus.
We need people who can be human beings,
living in the world, interacting, working, having families, and so forth.
You know? So that's why the ho'oponopono work, I think, is amazing work.
Because it totally-- if you ever listen to Hew Len,
You could go on YouTube and watch him.
He's native Hawaiian and beautiful. He's a psychologist actually.
If you hear him talk about this, you realize he totally gets what we're doing here, 100%.
But it's so humanistic.
It is so completely devoid of superiority...
I mean, he says, " I judge all the time." He says...
And this guy is one of the most radiant people around, if you're with him--
one of the most, you know, his presence is phenomenal.
And he says, "Yeah, you know, I've given myself the"-- what did he say--
"If I could go through one day without judging, I'll buy myself a big giant ice cream sundae."
"And I still haven't had that day." [Laughter]
And I thought now, "I love this guy!"
So the ho'oponopono is really, I think it comes from a tradition, you know,
of tremendous love of life,
and nature, you know, and the tropics.
and the connection with nature. And just this heart--coming from the heart.
It's so heart-centered, you know.
So it's really about healing the heart.
And we live in a culture mostly that's so head top-heavy, right?
P: Uh-huh.
Jon: We're just so mostly up here, that it's just, we're imbalanced.
I think the ho'oponopono can drop you down, really into the heart.
You could just say these phrases-- it's pretty simple-- and not know, it could just seem like rote.
You know, like just try it. And see what happens:
"I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you."
And not know what it means. But try it. You know. Let's say-- what I have found,
in the process, is that what you're really communicating to, when you're saying that,
is your true self, your divinity.
Your infinite wisdom and infinite creative force that we are one with.
Do you understand? Not some belief or thought about it.
Just... these these words are so, like, what? Incapable of
communicating what I'm really trying to say here.
But it's a hint at what it means, to do that.
P: So you say the four phrases right together, like you just did? Jon: Yeah.
P: To yourself silently, or.... Jon: Yeah.
P: And is it good for certain situations or mind states?
Jon: Well, I would just-- really, I would say, get on YouTube. Look up Dr. Hew Len.
And he has a really good series of, I think,
of eight minute interviews that he did down in Monterey. It's about an hour interview or something,
but they broke it up into segments.
Watch the whole thing. And he has a beautiful teaching.
Yeah, so it's, "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you."
One of the things he says is, we need to be forgiven.
Because people feel like they did something wrong.
There's so much of that, that people are burdened with.
P: Yeah.
Jon: And there's something about asking that is powerful.
So, and you know, of course that this is a higher level.
This is not about-- this is tricky. This is where it gets tricky to talk about it, because
the point of it is to return back to connection.
It's to communicate to that which has you out of connection.
And so, he uses judgments.
Judgments--when we're really caught in judgment, we are disconnected.
And I like his approach because it's heart-centered.
I was, uh...one of my dear mentors and dear friend for a good part my life,
Dr. Fritz Smith, who founded Zero Balancing work, and was a great osteopath,
he studied with Hew [Len]. And I was talking to him, and he turned me onto it.
He always turns me onto good stuff.
And he said, "Try it out. Just try it."
And I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is really amazing.
P: So do you, would you bring it into this kind of a setting or practice,
or more into the day-to-day world where you-- when something, where something hits you,
and you need to get present with it?
Jon: Hey, you could certainly use it here. People do.
I don't know if you heard me share this before,
but I met the Dalai Lama when he first came here.
His first trip. I don't remember, it was a long time ago.
I was a Zen student. And we-- some of us went over. He was giving a talk at the Nyingma Center in Berkeley.
And I went over there. And I thought he was great.
He said something I'll never forget, which is, he said,
"You know, you in the West here have so much that can help you."
He said, "Take advantage of as much as you can,
of as much help as you can, because you need all the help you can get." [Laughter]
I thought, "Right on!"
Because I was living with people--it was like Zazen Über Alles.
[Laughter]
You know, when I left Zen Center, I was going to have a tee-shirt printed, "I was a Zen Nazi." You know, it was like--
no, seriously, people looked down upon me, because I was doing yoga.
And back then, no one did anything but zazen. You were actually looked down upon
if you did yoga. Like, what?
Just zazen, you know. What are you doing that for? It was really, it was heavy duty.
Now they're all yoga teachers. [Laughter]
Just wait a few decades. They'll start wearing pink.
[Laughter]
I think any true test of, my litmus test of if it's working,
is if the space is opening, or if it's getting tighter.
If the field of awareness is expanding , or it's getting, or you're getting, more in separation.
If it's expanding and opening up,
and maybe even stuff is moving, its working.
P: Yeah. But is there, in terms of pointed questions or inquiry,
that you find, or have found, particularly helpful?
Jon: My practice, I mean, my own personal practice, was much more kinesthetic,
was very body-oriented and emotionally based.
I mean, the mind was truly a torture torture chamber for me.
So I would just go to the breath.
Because, I mean, in those days I didn't have any other practices,
so I didn't do anything else. So it was bodywork and meditation.
For a long time-- and then sitting with Jean and so forth, like that.
But since then, I think, that I have certainly found that there are things to help the mind's obsessiveness.
You know, one of the ones that I think is very helpful--
in fact, those of us who were, we were on retreat with Jean Klein down in Yucca Valley a long time ago,
and a woman named G. P., who I think it was a psychologist, had just
trained with Francine Shapiro,
at the beginning the EMDR movement-- eye movement desensitization reprocessing work.
I've since gotten to know Francine. I really like her alot.
EMDR. Eye movements.
And, I mean, eye movements have been around for a long time. Even yogic practices have eye movements.
But eye movements can be a way to actually free the mind.
You can just try it on your own.
She, actually, for her last book, which she sent me the galley for,
was, I think, kind of a do-it-yourself book.
I think it was called, "Getting Past your Past." I love that title.
So I would definitely check that out.
Powerful stuff-- I mean, it treats post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And you can go to people who do it.
There are therapists who are trained in it. So that's another,
I think, helpful thing. Umm... Some people have found EFT
P: The tapping?
Jon: Yeah, the tapping stuff. And there's a whole--there's all kinds of--
ok, you know, people tell me about these things, and I just say, "Let's see!" You know.
I remember Brother David [Steindl-Rast]-- I had learned about the EFT--
he and I were hanging out. I think I was giving him a Zero Balancing session,
when he was up at his little retreat place in Sonoma for awhile.
And I was showing him how to do EFT, and he, and he had some pain or something,
And he just started the first thing, and immediately,
all the pain disappeared. He was that clear. It was amazing.
It was really funny, actually.
I used to love working on him. It was like working on a saint. His energy was so, like, alive.
But, you know, Jean Klein used to talk about, I mean,
his yogic training was really what he called bodywork.
He didn't call it yoga. He called it bodywork.
And so it's the deepest healing work you can do--is to direct attention into the body,
while you're sitting.
So wherever you're getting pain or discomfort or emotional stuff,
Just bring your attention there. That's Qigong work-- I mean really, you're opening up the meridians basically,
with attention, with awareness, and breath.
You got me going on this one, didn't you?
P: No, that's good! That's good, I've just got to remember what you said.
You need to put down on paper-- all these acronyms and, yeah.
Thank you, Jon, for everything.
Jon: You're so welcome. I appreciate the questions, and being with you.
[Meditation bell]