let me share an experience with you that I had recently which is very close to what you're
saying I had come back from the West Coast a month or so ago and had a space of about
10 days where there were no demands on my time and I had been very tired with jetlag and so I
was just living very quietly with Alan in our apartment in Oxford I only obligations were
to spend time with my son who lives over the road from us and so he would come over each
day or I would go over and see him for a few hours when I would come back to our apartment
and it was very quiet I was finishing writing my book so it was a very quiet contemplative
restful time and then I got a call from an old client that we're doing a project for in
the pottery and he's an extremely demanding and very nice man but very demanding and not
the easiest character to interact with I had to go to London to meet with him
I knew it wasn't really necessary to go to London to have the meeting it could easily
have been done over the phone but I felt that it was the right thing to do in this relationship
we're doing a big project for himself I went on on the train to his offices in Kensington
and I was drunk it shocked me because I had it was so long actually it was only ten days
or so that I had really been out into the world to engage with it and I had I was just I felt so
open and so borderless and so total lack of resistance and then I went into the heart of
London on public transport and I felt exactly what you described that the the bombardment
on all sides be like me and in this meeting it was even more so it was this slight indignation
I could feel from the other that I thought I wasn't fully involved and it even caused some
irritation and the other side that I wouldn't that I couldn't complete come complete and I felt the
pull from the world exactly as you described to be like me to get real to be something to
be somebody to be an object and I have to confess also I felt some resistance to that I felt myself
for a moment don't don't don't do this don't try and get hold of me don't and then I felt
this resistance and how that resistance was more of the same it was a reflection
it was a mirror of of the behaviour that was was happening and and and then so I saw this
this resistance come up and and and then let it go and realized that I didn't need to protect myself
from this demand from the world to be somebody to be an object but to protect myself from it this
was one way that the world of letting the world win it was playing the world's game by refusing
to play the world's game I was playing the world's game but actually it was completely the opposite
to be to be totally open because that is where we are safe that is the only security is to be
this totally open presence and I could feel that this character I could feel hit the activity of
trying to get hold of me trying to as long as I resisted he was winning she was he was making me
into someone resisting someone but as long as I wasn't that someone as long as there was no
resistance she was just barking in the wind when it was just there was nothing there and he didn't
feel any resistance so he didn't feel that he was being frustrated because there was no resistance
there and the meeting softened he started smiling we started laughing we start and it was so sweet
in the end everything that we needed to get done he got a he actually ended up apologizing he had
thought that I had done a few things I've got things wrong and naturally I knew that
in this case I had been very careful and had done everything that he had and he couldn't called one
of his guys in New York I think this from Rupert says they say which of us is right and his guy
in New York I heard him I had him on loudspeaker well actually Rupert's right he did and this guy
this this defensive aggressive put the fun that he said I'm so sorry you arrived you were all along
but what you had done was was what we originally agreed and it was so soft and it was so sweet at
the end so and then I went home I just got the train home again and when I got home I recalled
this whole incident of going out into the world that seems as you say to demand let me play its
game then we become someone or something and the slight resistance to that and how that actually
subtly perpetuates and how the letting go of that resistance that's what I meant earlier at the end
of our meditation where I say we find us as at the heart of experience I didn't need to
go back to the flat to find that peace again to find that independence right there in the heart
of this slightly awkward intense situation right there without the resistance that was where the
peace and the freedom was right in the midst of it important thing is not to have an agenda right
with the person not if you may see a display of ego that a display of a sense of separation
trying to grand eyes itself or trying to protect itself or one of the numerous ways that the
separate self perpetuates yourself you may see that that's not a judgment it's an observation
it's fine to see that way but it's another thing to have an agenda with it and to have an agenda
with it is exactly the same as the ego you are observing in other words it see only the ego in
our self that would have an agenda with another ego so make the distinction very clearly between
observing the sense of separation in yourself but here we're talking about relationship with
others make the distinction between observing the sense of separation however it displays itself in
another and judging it right didn't awareness does the observing the separate self does the
judging and that's the difference so you take your stand as awareness and do the observing
that's the first thing not to have an agenda with this not to feel that it's wrong but it
needs to be corrected it's okay just as it is this display is okay just as it is
you awareness don't have an agenda with it and then the second thing is to realize that
what this other really is is this presence of awareness and there's there's only one
presence of awareness something that is without limits they can't be more than one of it we know
in our own experience this aware presidency it doesn't have an edge it doesn't stop anywhere
there are lots of the wences so this one that you are speaking to is your very own intimate
self in between like a kind of screen there is a display of thoughts and feelings and behaviours
and gestures but betray a belief that we are in the other the betrayer belief that we are
something other than this presence of awareness so but this display that you are dealing with
it's just a set of conditioned thoughts and feelings and activities and gestures
so you relate when you speak them in you in your heart relate to who they truly are don't
buy their story that they are a separate self that they but don't reject it don't judge it
and reject it but don't buy it let it do its thing and I can respond to it appropriately it
doesn't mean that you just ignore what they're saying know you you'll respond appropriately
but really the one you are speaking to this is the presence behind this and just that
is enough because this will that attitude ensure that whatever words you use the time
that are responding to their words are somehow impregnated with this understanding so though
the actual content of the conversation may be what you did and what I did and what it
may be relative psychological stuff nevertheless your responses will be will be saturated in this
deeper understanding and something of that of your response will percolate through the conditioning
to who they really are and we're in a kind of resonance
they really are it's as if they wake up this this gentleman that I was meeting in in London
the other day right when his his guy in New York told him that actually he had made a mistake so
right there he had been over for 10 minutes he'd been telling me that I had got it wrong and then
right there on the loudspeaker on the phone his guy told him no no you made a mistake but we
put saying with what we agreed and when I heard that there was just no response in me at all it
wasn't manufactured it just was no feeling of oh there you are I was right all along he just
didn't arise in the chest those are the facts and so must have felt that he must have felt
that there wasn't the least judgment of him there was no okay there you are I told you you're wrong
so in other words if I had felt that I would have squashed him into a person you know are
wrong and I was and he would have felt even if I have felt it so would have felt diminished sort
of would have been made into a person but because I didn't feel that not through any effort it just
didn't arise she felt that so at that moment the sense of separation in him it just couldn't stand
because there was nothing to fight against and at that moment the conversation changed its tone
because he was just for a moment liberated she could although he
would never formulated like this I wasn't referring to an ignorant person I wasn't in
relationship with this person who approved not wrong in this case and so his lip and
I could see it on his face that the whole tone the body language everything changed