[music]
So what I'd like to do is explore
how we typically react when we get triggered
you know, how we kind of intensify the body of fear, the fear body, with our reactivity
and how, if we can learn to pause, if we can slow down even a little,
we can shift from fight/flight to attend and befriend.
and I really see this shift of fight/flight,
this kind of automatic reactivity, to attend and befriend
as a sign of the evolution of consciousness
that we even have this capacity to recognize 'Oh, I'm in flight/flight,
'Oh, I'm identified with the fear body, okay, pause, deepen attention.'
Let's look a bit at 'attend and befriend'; and one way I find really helpful to think of it is
imagine as you breathe in - that's attend -
that you're bringing your attention to contact what's right here in the body
and as you breathe out you're offering space and kindness and gentleness
to whatever you touch.
So attend and befriend; it's just a way to think about it,
and there's actually meditations that link with the breath just in that way, okay?
Alright so, attend:
it's attending to where you feel it in your body,
it's a mindfulness of the body.
So one of the ways we think about it is you're learning to stay with
the uncomfortableness of fear as a physical sensation in the body,
which is exactly the opposite of our conditioning;
all of our conditioning is to get away from that unpleasantness.
So this is countering the conditioning.
Unfortunately, when we try to get away, we actually deepen the trance;
we become more identified with the fear body.
The more you run, the more you're identified.
It starts dissolving, that identification, when you stay.
So the first step is sometimes called just leaning in.
One person described 'If a dog runs at you, whistle for it', you know? It's like 'stay'.
Or one Zen master was asked: 'How do you relate to fear?'
His response: 'I agree, I agree.'
So this is a kind of courageous willingness
to contact the physical sensations.
Again, if they're really strong, first breathe or first go like this;
do whatever it takes to cozy up to them okay?
This isn't something where you're supposed to be in some way masochistic;
this is a courage that comes because you have that wisdom
that knows you don't want to keep on doing fight/flight.
That it's this presence that heals.
So this is the first step, is this contact and
I find it helps for people to name what's going on,
just to name; you might say squeezing or pounding or
clutching or heat or cold or, you know,
just name what's going on, name where you feel it, sometimes that really helps...
And investigate it from the inside/out,
feel it from the inside/out.
Now, one of the keys in this 'attend' part of the equation,
is to notice when you've gone off into fear thoughts and come back.
That's intrinsic to the training; as soon as you start feeling fear,
your mind is going to generate more thoughts about what's going to go wrong
so it takes a certain commitment to go 'Okay, those are fear thoughts.
Okay, come back, I don't have to believe this. Come back, back to the body', okay?
So that's what I'm calling the 'breathing in' or 'contacting':
feel it, name it, keep coming back, okay?
Second part: what we sometimes call 'breathing out' or discovering the space
or the tenderness that holds things, is like the word 'yes'; it's like,
it's the sense of the space or the kindness that can be with.
And the Buddha taught the metta or loving-kindness practice
initially explicitly for fear.
It's always been interesting to me that when
the monk sits, at one point during the rainy season had been
in some sort of a jungle and had been encountering all sorts of really
nasty spirit entities, you know, that were
making life miserable for them, and they ran to the Buddha and said 'Can't we just
leave that encampment, it's just too much, it's too scary' and he said
'You need to go back but here: go back and practice this.'
And he had them practicing loving-kindness, that
sensing the space of love, the field of love.
As the story goes, the field was so powerful that it
transformed the energy of the tree spirits and creatures and they became allies and
you know, it's a happily-ever-after Buddhist story,
but it talks about the power of befriending.
So attend - breathe in, feel it - befriend; offer space, say yes, some kindness.
This is intrinsic to the spiritual path; that
everyone on the spiritual path needs to face this fear body,
needs to open to where it lives in our physical body
and in that presence, discover a larger sense of who we are.
In that presence, we discover a larger sense of who we are.
[music]