#56 - Relationship in Dzogchen, with Charlie Awbery

All right. So I am back after over four months of a break here, and I'm so excited to be back with you, Charlie Albury. Thanks for coming back. Hello, Christopher. It is so great to be back again. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It's so great to hear. I was just reflecting on it now when we were chatting before. I am so grateful that I have the coolest friends in the world. I can read what we're going to talk about an article that you co-authored with your partner, David Chapman. I can just read that article, really resonate with it, and then I can reach out to you and be like, "Hey, man, I want to chat about the details here." Sure, for sure. I love it when you hear that as well. It's great. We're building a set of conversations that are in themselves that are just going to be context for a lot of this stuff that we're talking about. It's great. The message, the practices. Yes. I feel like there's a lack of good content when it comes to these things. Varyana and Zogsian, and I really want to build a cool can in a content there to help people. I'm glad that you're doing that with Jake, with others as well. That's perfect. It's so awesome. The main theme today, what I want to dive into is relationship from Zogsian, Badrayana Lens, which is very unique and very distinct perspective from Western psychology type stuff. I thought that maybe you could do a shameless plug for your cool stuff before we get going. I want to give you some time to tell us what you're up to. Absolutely. It's relevant because I can bring that into talking about context of the article that we're going to talk about as well, because it arose from a conversation that David and I were having without walking. I was planning my relationships calls. It's called kaleidoscope of interactions. It's bringing relationships into Badrayana and Badrayana into every relationship. That's the subtitle. This article actually came out of my thinking about relationships and the conversations that we were having at that time. The course itself is about better ways of relating better ways of being in the world. Generally, what I'm doing in my writing and my courses is extrapolating from principles of Badrayana and describing the experience and then bringing the mechanisms into plain language and creating methods from the principles and the traditional mechanisms that actually help you get there and help you get there faster as well. Thinking about relationships from a zogchen perspective, it isn't quite the same as saying, zogchen says this thing or that thing about relationships. There's no conical source like how to have better relationships, tantra. If she says this, do this. But there is something that changes. There's something that happens as you become more familiar with spacers clarity and with some of the results of zogchen methods, ofchen meditation and view. Understanding what that is, what changes in experience and how that can make a difference. That means that you can become more accurate in response in interactions. I'm not talking about simply, oh, you practice, you keep practicing, you keep meditating and then naturally results are going to occur and then your relationships and your way of relating will begin to change. I mean, that might be true. It often is true. But this is more about understanding how that works. Understanding how it works makes the mechanism itself more effective and the process faster and it gives you much, much better access to responding accurately on the fly when you're in difficult situations, like challenging circumstances. I think it's important to carry on. Yeah. Would it be fair to say that that's honing in on the view part to direct your action, your experience? It is. It is. And it's also picking up on the fact that there are often assumptions when we bring that view. There are assumptions, not only in zogchen or vajrayana, but across spiritual circles in Buddhism, all across Buddhism, there are these assumptions. And we've spoken about this before, I think, that if you find state, that is, if you get results, if you have a certain kind of experience, particularly if you can sustain a non-ordinary experience for lengthy periods, then there are these assumptions that you're going to be able to behave appropriately. This is one of Ken Wilber's key points, isn't it? In his quadrants the wake-up grow-up. Yeah, I love that. You're going to have to help me out here, Christopher, wake-up grow-up, what is it? Oh, fuck. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Fart up all of it. The point that is being made there is that achieving state, understanding and being in state doesn't necessarily translate into accurate response, appropriate behavior, congruent fluidity. And now the interesting thing is that actually zogchen does point to this difference, this difference between state to achieving state, being in a non-ordinary state, and what it means to skillfully relate from that state. So the terminology in zogchen isn't all the same for a non-ordinary state. There are many nuances, many differences according to context. So even though there isn't this, do your relationships better, tantra, there's a differentiation between being in a non-ordinary state and responding beneficially from that state, responding from beneficence base. I think that's what we ended up, according to the article, relating as beneficence base. There's a lot of terminology. So for example, Rigpah, Lundrup. Rigpah is inseparability of space as clarity and being in the world. Lundrup is much more about the nature of that. It's literally it's spontaneous activity. Here, spontaneity here, it doesn't mean impulsiveness, it means freely moving, free from habitual constraint. So already in just those two words you're beginning to get a difference and a recognition that there's a state you can experience. And there's something different that we refer to that is moving in the world, being in the world, responding accurately, responding with congruence to circumstances. And there are many other terms. There are other terms and categorizations that make that whole territory of non-ordinary experience, not simply about state, but about changing conditions, changing contexts, adaptive experience and circumstances. So Rigpah, the term Rigpah that you'll probably hear quite a lot in Badriana circles, you could think of it as being like a catchal. It's the word for a state which isn't static, it's rich, it's a varied, nuanced. I think when we were recording before we talked about the field of Tsar, didn't we? We touched on that in our first recorded conversation, the embodied one. Now that's all for you. I can't say that I don't remember that term. Can you just outline what that was? Embodied responsiveness, we were talking about as Tsar is a Tibetan term and it's often translated as maybe energy or energetic effulgence or like. There's a whole wealth of terminology, even within the field of Tsar, embodied energetic responsiveness. There's a lot of terminology there that helps us understand how to move from initially experiencing the mind state of Rigpah into fully embodied, skillful being in the world. Rigpah doesn't only refer to an experience of mind, mind and body are inseparable in awareness. I guess circumstances, so that's all about relationships. Am I getting it right that the recognition of Rigpah and embodying that is not going to lead automatically to, as you said, accurate behavior in the world, because I was kind of under the impression and in my own experience, I've noticed that I'm kind of a rebel or maybe just a hard-headed asshole, because I hate following any instructions and using techniques and I've done, yeah, my spiritual journey is very unique, I think, and I've just felt that intuitively. My body, my body, my nose where it's going and what it has to do, and I've noticed that my self-infoldment has just led more and more to, I want to get into the details what we mean by accurate behavior. I mean, that's a cool thing to unpack, but it feels like natural compassion and just being in flow with whatever context you find yourself in, and right before this, for instance, you know, just helping old people on and off the bus, things like that. I've just started emerging naturally without any intention, any explicit intention to like be a better person or act more ethically. So my experience is kind of more that that unfolds naturally. That does unfold, yeah. And certainly in many circumstances, I think that's going to be true because what begins to happen is you have a way of seeing from spacious clarity that is quite different to ordinary, immersed way of being in the world. However, however, we get into difficult situations, you know, we have, you know, maybe something quite challenging occurs or we have a relational stuckness somewhere and it's the challenging situations when there's old habits start to come back. So like being triggered and then you're just acting in autopilot, I should say, yeah, where they show. So very often there, there are these constrained responses constrained, tightly knit perception interpretation response that we're so so familiar with and so used to that we don't necessarily see them all the time and meditation helps with that. It brings into light, but then there's still often a question in in interaction when we're on the fly, when we're behaving in ways that we're so used to. We have these patterns of interaction that just kind of kick in. So yes, page that we were that we wrote together relating as beneficence space that begins to address that that understanding of how things work in the real world. I mean, maybe then, yeah, maybe let's start with the article as the base point here as our base camp. And I don't know. I wrote down quite a lot here some quotes from the article that I liked and that intrigued me, but I also wonder are so many ways in. I feel like so yeah, you mentioned some accurate response, responding accurately. Maybe we could start with that. I'd love if we could do kind of for the people who haven't read this beautiful article and I'll link it in the show notes. And I recommend anyone interested to check it out. But is there a way for you to summit the article, like give a summary of what it's about and what you're trying to do with it. And maybe we could take it from there. Sure. So I think the article itself is laying the ground for seeing things differently and beginning to understand what it means to take a Buddhist approach to relationship. So right. This is very different from how we ordinarily view relationships. We're seeing them as transparent empty appearances. That's a, you know, so there's not the way you go about your ordinary life really, isn't it? Like, see, do you explain Charlie? What do you mean by that? The terminology that this is David's phrase that he came up with. It's like a movie screen reflected in a mirror. It's very different to taking relationships as objects, which is automatically what we tend to do without realising that that's what we're doing. Where we think about relationships as being a thing. And then as soon as you have a thing, that can be worked on can be changed. But you're already at one step removed from interaction in the moment in what actually creates a relationship. Relationship is, when you think about it, it's a set of interactions over time. It's the cumulative experience of many, many interactions. And then each time you meet again with another person, there's another interaction. So the relationship itself is actually played out in these patterns of interaction that we have with each other. So the page is talking about interaction. It's talking about what it is to have patterns of interaction. This is how we operate in the world. So it's describing that. And in particular, it talks about stuck patterns. What do they look like? How do we get into these patterns? They're fixed. They're going along a track. They're maybe a little predictable. The same thing is playing itself out again and again and again. But like, could you say something like, we have these unconscious schemas or whatever. It's kind of like when you go to say hello to someone and you shake their hand. And when you know you're going to do that, you kind of turn on the shake a hand program. You kind of tune out. And then you were just autopilotting. And you completely forgot what the person said. What was your name again? And it feels like an extension of that. That's how I interpret you like that. We have this idea. We reify our ideas of both ourselves, but also the other person. And then we kind of project what we expect from them in a way that kind of obfuscates, yeah, what's going on right now in the moment. Yeah. So it's interesting to hear you talk about it because you're using psychological language, which is what we do. Yes. Yes. It's everywhere. So my brother is a psychologist. So I really want to hone in on this. Totally. And it pervades our language. It pervades our culture. It's the way that we think and talk about relationships is we use these phrases like you used unconscious schema. So instead of that, I would say something like unseen habit. It's like an unseen habit of relating, of communicating, of interacting. And that puts a slightly different view on what it is that we're dealing with and how we can go about it. So just switching out that language there can make quite a difference. So what we're talking about, bringing is a view, an experience from a view that is seeing clearly. And the page is setting the scene for that. It's setting the context. And we refer to that as beneficent space. I was going to call the page liberating perception, which is actually the name that I gave to the first method that we that we use in the course. But beneficent space is more all encompassing really. And it's very soft, as well. It's got a real soft, gentle flavor to it. So can you unpack that a little bit? What do we mean with beneficent space? Is that an allegous to Rikpa? Well, Rikpa is this catch all for so many different terms. One of the terms that comes into the experience of a Rikpa in that context is Tukje into better, in usual to better language. That means compassion in the ordinary sense that we think about it, feeling empathy towards others, compassionate, you know, it's got a very specific meaning. When it comes into Zogchen, everything, everything that arises in Zogchen view, how's that flavor? So it's generalised into the world of activity. Everything is imbued with that sense of compassionate being in the world, even formerising, like the nature of formerising is compassion. That's Zogchen perspective there. So it does take a somewhat different flavor and this beneficent space. That is the experience of how things are in that state. So that is really pretty different from that psychological way of understanding how things are. We often talk about mental contents, thoughts, memories, emotions. We think of things in terms of representation in our mental contents. We think about things in terms of mental objects that we are relating to and very often in relationships we do that as well. We examine the contents of our mind and we have introspection as a method to understand what's going on. So, you know, we might have a psychotherapy session and we're doing a lot of self-examination, a lot of looking inside and what I'm doing in my course is really quite different to that. I would call it extra-spection. I actually love that word. I wanted a word for what I was introducing and the word that I wanted was extra-spection. I thought, "Oh, it's not a word because it would be perfect if it is." And it is. So I'm very happy that it is a word. So there's this kind of retraining that we need to do and that sometimes you can lean into that in order to experience how different it is to introspection. It's not saying that introspection is wrong or bad or doesn't work. It's simply that doing something different takes a little bit of practice. So you train in looking differently and seeing things differently and you can do that with much more of a bringing your awareness into your sense fields, which is where perception is in Zobchenview. We're not talking about mental perception only. Perception. Right. That term is used in Zobchen context. That means everything that we experience through the senses. What do you see? What do you hear? What's the tactile experience in this interaction? We don't do that normally. We immediately go inside and. To the mental context, yeah. But you would include the whole field I assume. You would include the mental contents in perception, right? But you would just add all the talent. But okay, so I want to. I mean, I'm really sold on Zobchen. I think it's super cool and I'm exploring it. I'm loving it. But so to push back a little bit down, what is. You mentioned the introspection and we look at our mental contents, our emotions and our thoughts and stuff like that. I'm saying even though the mental contents are. You know, they're going to be there. We de-emphasize them. And you know, we're so, so used to thinking that they're important, to thinking that they're the be all around you. The most important. Yeah. Yeah. So to begin with, you get into understanding perception and letting those not influence your perception. That's just basic opening awareness as well. You're simply sitting there, getting used to not. Not giving them so much emphasis and important, yeah, weight, yeah. But so would that be. Would it be fair to say that that's a. You're doing kind of an over-correction towards away from mental contents because we're so fixated on that, so that you can open up, you can include perception of everything that's going on. And then I assume you can integrate back the mental contents but everything has equal weight as it were. Well, that's assuming that the mental contents are still going to be there. But that wouldn't be the end goal, right, to get rid of mental contents. Not get rid of them. No, no. Let them do their own thing. And it's a common experience that they dissipate and become less and less. So we have this way of understanding what a pattern is, what a pattern of interaction is. It's perception, interpretation and response. And we spend so much time in the interpretation side of things. We don't see how these are separate, separate facets of the way that we interact and that we can tease them apart and that we can find space and see very clearly how that works, how there's this such tight relationship and not between perception, interpretation and response. And we don't see the perception. We don't stay in the perception side of that. We're automatically going into the interpretation and looking at the interpretation in psychotherapy and in psychology. That's the emphasis is in that whole area and seemingly changing the response. So many therapies, reframing and yeah. But okay, because what I want to do and what I'm trying to do is to hone in on like the make the problem of doing this very clear before we dig into the specifics of how to do it in the the the the junction way. But so it sounds like what comes up for me is the idea of projection. That's something I notice a lot in my marriage. I've been married now for 10 years next year, which is fucking crazy. And I just want to debunk straight away. I have a bone to pick with the idea that relationships are great in the beginning, romantic relationships. And then they fizzle out and then you just have to you know the old ball and chain and it has get more that's such bullshit. I'm my relationship, my marriage and I don't mean to brag, but I'm so excited about it. It just gets better and deeper and more open. But it is wonderful. And I wish more people knew that that was possible. But I think I think it has a lot to do with to your willingness to to investigate your contraction and learn to have more space and not put the onus on your partner to make me happy. But but something I've noticed over time that's become better and better but it can be very clear sometimes is especially in heated complex situations is the I had it happen the other day the idea of you know something happens something gets triggered. That's the language I use in the other person. And now they just see everything that's going on through this historical lens of this triggered pattern that's going on right now. And the projection can be so strong and feel so true. Like oh you just you know you don't love me or I appreciate what I do and blah blah blah blah. And it happens not to be the case at all. And I do this myself where I'm like oh shit that's not what you were thinking I was so sure that was what's going on. And that that sounds like part of the problem you're trying to get out here of getting stuck in these triggered patterns so that you can't be open to other possibilities in the moment right now. Well the underlying interpretation is often hidden and like you say it feels so right doesn't it? It feels so true. Yeah I know what you're thinking. Yeah yeah it could be we do this in inconsequential circumstances and we do it in really high-stakes relational circumstances as well. So a lot of what I'm doing in the in the creation of these different methods is getting to how that happens. There's a communication, there's a message that we receive from circumstances, from other people, from a particular context and environment that we're in. And it is so quick and it's so so familiar that we don't see that message. We we have all kinds of layers on top of that. So one of the ways that we're working in the course is let's get to that message and you know very often that message is something like a communication from circumstances I am unworthy. Yeah. It's a common one isn't it or I am invisible or I am superior whatever it is whatever it is and we respond so fast that we don't hear and we can't see that communication. It's like we're all in for the response already. So the response is flavoured by a communication that's already skewed by fixed patterns of seeing and interpreting. That's what I mean when I use the word inaccurate. Right. Inaccurate response. So accurate response starts with clear perception. It's about clear perception and then in that clear perception shaping directing relevant active activity relevant action. So you you in that clear perception you can see interactions you can see how they work and how often you want to manipulate and control them. I mean we do that right. Yeah. You can see that and you start loosening up the tightness in reactivity. You start loosening up the way that perception, interpretation and response are so tightly knit. Usually those distinct experiences occur as a single response. You know we take this communication. We take it, we choose it without realizing that's what we're doing. We choose that message that we're giving to ourselves. We don't see clearly. We make the circumstances speak to us in a quite peculiar and individual way. It's really quite creative how we deserve. Okay. Let me let me let that land a little bit. Let's see here. Let me respond from beneficient space Charlie. Hold on. I mean this reminds me of I did the I think I've told you before but I did the Michael Taft's vast sky-mind course. I wanted to try to actually formally meditate for a few months in a row and just explore that a little more. It's very interesting. I learned a lot and mostly it helped me hone in on view to contextualize what I'm already doing. But the thing that he said the first day that really resonated with me was and you remind me of this here was that yeah that we we live and we see the world through our interpretations through our concepts to the extent that you walk by a tree and instead of seeing and perceiving the tree what we call a tree as it is right now in this particular context. We just plaster the label that we have. Oh that's a tree. Boom. And then it's a deadness to that because the concept is always static and frozen whereas the world is always moving and flowing and so these fixed patterns that you're talking about sounds like a way of doing that of putting a label on the person you're interacting with especially if there's someone you have history with and just like this is yeah my wife and then you have all these things baked into that that might not be true at all in this moment and you fail to see the nuances of how he or she is appearing with you right now. I think that's an aspect of what's going on there for sure. It's related to that objectification that we were talking about earlier. It's very easy to get into the mood where you've got all of those layers on top. Yeah. Their interpretations, abstractions, yeah. So I have a quote here. A little chunk from the article where you say okay here's the essence of the practice. It's to liberate interaction from fixed patterns. Remain uninvolved with mental contents. Find awareness in perception and respond as beneficent space. So yeah, I'd love if you could unpack that a little bit more for us. We talk about interactions as transparent empty appearances and that experience of how interactions can be as a way to move out of that mode that you were talking about of laboring, of layering, of relating to abstract ideas of how things are. So it's a move that becomes available as an intentional perspective that you can adopt in order to see what's underneath those layers, underneath those interpretations or the meaning making that we rely on that gets a little bit fixed, a little bit unworkable. So it's an experience that comes out of that result of seeing things clearly and it's transparent because you're seeing through the opacity of those tired and really quite repetitive patterned interactions that get a little stuck, that get a little predictable. They're on track. So you're seeing what's happening in that space rather than that movie that's on repeat and at the same time you see the movie that's on retreat and on repeat, not on retreat. And it's all that creative, you know, it's the movie and all of it's creative magnificence. This is a very positive way of understanding what we do. Vajrayana is positive. It's it's not negative about the world. It's really quite positive. Embrace. Embrace. Yeah, you see how wonderfully creative we are in our copes. It's amazing. It's wonderful. You can just admire the display of all of those patterns without getting caught up in them. That's the appearances side of things. I mean, it's basically what happens. That's that's very different from being yeah, I get back to this term, but being triggered where you're completely stuck in that. You have no space at all to view it metacognitively and have this appreciation that you're talking about. And so I had a quote from a guy that I like to listen to. Joe Hudson, who I've told you about before, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He has some great stuff. And he tweeted the other day, something like, yeah, being being triggered is a gift. If you can be with that spaciously, you have a really nice clue that you can investigate and actually emerge in this conversation or this interaction with more freedom. So to see that instead of, oh, fuck, I hate this and just go with the pattern. As you said, you can step back. You can see it. You can hold space for it. You can embrace it. And all of a sudden it transforms or at least it can transform and it's very, it's counterintuitive and are like Western way of viewing agency and you know, hustle, culture, you have to do, do, do to just let yourself spontaneously unfold. And notice how much like a normal thought I think people have when we talk about like, oh, don't, don't get, ignore us the wrong word, but don't get so involved with mental contents. Don't respond from that. I think a lot of people think, how, what do you mean? How the fuck will I live? What's, what's directing me in each moment? It's my thinking. I am constructing this through my thoughts because I identify as my thoughts. And so when you first get these experiences of acting from beneficence base without that thought driving it or presumably driving it and you, you're more capable to act accurately when you're not doing that or you're not stumbling over yourself through your mental contents all the time. That's just a mind blowing type experience, but I think a lot of people might not have the reference frame and think, if I stop acting through my thinking, I will literally die. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it can sound a little bit when you're talking about spontaneous choice that you're talking about impulsivity or empty headedness. And that's not right. That's not what we're doing. Yeah. It's, it's clear and effective. It's, it's giving rise to activity that's really well fitting to circumstances. And some of the methods that we use later in the course are conducive to that as well. It's getting more into the realm of what you actually do in interactions. What other methods can you bring to help facilitate that that effective congruent spontaneity that isn't impulsive. It's not running on track. So you mentioned the relationships as transparent empty appearances. I'd like to unpack that a little bit too. What does that mean? You can see, you can see your interactions as patterns in the hearing now. It's quite simple, but getting that, getting that experience might change your view of what's possible in any relationship. It's a very positive way of thinking about it. You're saying that we're free to create and play with interaction in any interaction as it occurs to not do the same as might tend to have previously played out, but to bring a new, a new care, a new fresh way of being a willingness to simply be with integrity in the interaction. I think that's what continuity and trust are made of in lasting relationships. They're continuity of interaction from integrity that build trust. They build foot familiarity, spark and momentum is there over weeks, then months, over years. That's what's going on. It's not like there's a relationship technique that you adopt and then you perfect it and it doesn't work like that, does it? It's much more like there's appreciation leading to familiarity and then there's intimacy that comes from that over time. This seems like it's very tied to and maybe dependent on one understanding, the Buddhist framing, the view of emptiness more generally, like not seeing yourself as this fixed essence entity that just moves from moment to moment, because something that I'm noticing a lot in my interactions is it's become clear to me, very clear to me, experientially that I co-emerge in relationship to my environment, other people, and the idea that I'm this agent in my head that's completely self-contained, which I think is probably the standard I'm generalizing, but I assume that's how most people feel. That's very imprisoning and there's an immense freedom, I think, in seeing how I get an interaction, shapes how I'm going to respond. Clearly, I mean, that's obviously the case once you've thought about a little bit, but I think that really helps to have that understanding. Yeah, I think there's a paragraph we can pick up on here in the page that points to the differences there. Let's see, there it is. In Western Psychology Awareness is considered one thing the mind does. In Zogchen the mind is considered one thing that awareness does. Awareness is not a mom, the mental content. It's the container. So this isn't a metaphysical claim, although it is helpful to understand the view. It's much more a pointing, you know, we were talking about pointing out instructions last time. It's like an indication to an experience that is available. One of the ways that I've come to describe what that experience is like, what it feels like, is basic okayness. I did have fundamental okayness. I've changed it a little bit to basic okayness. That's actually a translation of of Kadag, Tibetan word, often that's translated as primal purity, primordial purity, or it's the base, the ground, the experience from which we manifest as people in the world. This basic okayness, it's the experience of knowing that there's nothing wrong with us, with me, fundamentally okay. Speak for yourself. Well, isn't that interesting, though, that it's just so ingrained in religion, in culture, in East and West. Original sin. Yeah, exactly. I was talking with a client in one-on-one, not that long ago, we came up with this this phrase at phrase original okayness. Yeah. Of course, that's in contrast to original sin. All right, right. It's that in our experience from awareness, we can actually see that, we can see clearly that everything's fine in us. There's a confidence, it's a self-trust of being in the world. It's like you find your fit with how things are and it's good and it's fine. There's nothing inherently or intrinsically wrong there, the sense. It's a sense of okayness. I don't think that's available for many people. I don't think it's just automatically there, because in our experience, we're brought up to believe and to see that ourselves are fundamentally problematic in some way. There's a problem there. There's something that isn't okay. There's something that gets in the way of whatever it is, enlightenment, salvation or some other bogus promise. And religiously, the spiritual groups continue to use the self-doubt, this sense of your relationship with yourself, being somehow problematic, you know, Buddhism does this and it pervades our culture that we're somehow a problem that we're in our own way. And the discourse deters you from noticing your basic okayness. Yeah. Even even these little phrases that are dropped in everywhere here and there, so much of our language makes us doubt our reasonable understanding of how things are, you know, like the ego project. It's a very Buddhist phrase, isn't it? The main project. Right. That sh*t ego. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Gotta get rid of it. Yeah, I mean, that sounds. I know we have debated this. I think the first conversation we had, the idea of. When I hear you talk about basic okayness, that's to me equivalent to what I would call self-love. And I know you thought maybe that was too much of a mushy concept, but the way I've noticed that evolve in my own case is. Yeah, I see it as just a full embrace of whatever comes up and shows up in the moment. And. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt it. No, push back. It's great. It's not the same. So, the self, the self, or the not self, or the the self doing this or that or whatever is, it's not relevant in the sense that there's reliance and confidence and fluidity in context that doesn't need to focus on the self or focus on the self and other or on duality or non-duality or of overcoming this and that. There's. So, I would say that basic okayness is more about resting in clarity. It's not that any of that is wrong or stupid or anything at all. It's simply that it's not a big deal. Yeah. Working on the self or. No, yeah. It becomes not a big deal because you're already okay in experience. Yeah. No, I think the word self there might be denoting something different in my terminology because what I'm thinking about there is not this type of western psychology. Self love, I see how that could be problematic, but the way it appears to me is more like what I think you're describing, which is this. Self is just denoting my complete fundamental logical experience rather than this fixed essence to be worked on. So, yeah, it sounds very similar to what you're describing, but. Yeah, this death as well and you're completely okay in the physical death, death of self. So, there's a sense in which if you. If you can shift your locus of interest and insight into interaction away from self because as soon as you even have self, then you've got other and then you've got this thing that is relationship between self and other and you've already moved away from what happens in awareness, the space of awareness, which is patterns of interaction. So, it's just a slight shift of focus, a shift of the lens, of the perspective, of the way that you're experiencing how things are or talking about how things are maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I want to emphasize that I think self love is wonderful as well and not you know, I think about that as being a different domain, a different domain of experience that we're talking about. Right. I might adopt your basic okeness, I might steal it and pretend I made it up. No, but I got this is a sidebar, but I'm really curious about this because you mentioned something like this way of talking about yeah, beneficence base, beneficence base and transparent empty appearances and stuff like that, that it's more an inexplicit instruction meant to point to an experience than a metaphysical claim, but I'm actually right now in my life the last week or so, I found this guy called Bernardo Castro, you heard of him? No, I haven't. Ok, so he is this analytic philosopher who is a strong spokesman for what he calls, I think he calls his analytical idealism and he's trying to shift us out of the materialist paradigm where we just assume that there's a there's a matter outside of experience and it's been so fucking interesting and I've been just diving down this rabbit hole and I have to say I find him very persuasive and I'm starting to shift the pillars that I'm leaning on a little bit when it comes to that. So I'm just curious, what is what is Zogchen's view? Do they make any claims about the world is all mental or like and what is your provider you think this is interesting? What is your view on that whole thing? Do you have anything there or are you agnostic? It's a very interesting question because Zogchen changed I think with regard to that over centuries, like the early Zogchen is all about mind, it's not about mental contents of mind, it uses the same words as Sam, Sam refers to the term mental contents as a psychological conception but Sam means the stuff that goes on in mind, the small mind and the same knee is that all encompassing space of awareness, big mind if you like, but the early Zogchen is much more emphasising of mind and then as historically it develops there's a a sense in which it's almost like it's trying to correct for that and bring in much more of the embodied understanding of how things are bringing in more form-based activity and it gets much more ritualistic as you know develops historically. But so personally my own view on that is that the mental contents that impulsive actions respond to that can be kind of cut off from what we call self as well I think this was David's point in the article you know we do things that end with us saying oh that was so unlike me. So we think we think in terms of like these parts or mental contents or representations and that takes us away from seeing our interactions as being what there is that the interactions are what there are in our way of relating in the world or way of being in the world so separating parts off is not me it creates this kind of adversarial hostility right even the potential of that amongst mental contents it's like in impulsive action there's some antagonistic not me bit escaping that could do some kind of harm and then it makes us want that. I don't know what came over me yeah exactly that kind of thing yeah so you don't need to do that I think if you if you conceive self-parts in the first place then you're setting out the scene in terms of conflict and harmony balance compromise like this whole network of internal relationships and we've already got this thing that we do outside as well so it's like we're repeating that whole way of understanding things and then we're doing that internally too so I want to say this isn't necessarily a bad exercise there can be there can be productive outcomes from that it's just that what I'm talking about here is something different that involves leaving the impulse to objectify alone internal internal relationships as well as real world ones you don't have to do that you could step into a mode of simply understanding all of relationship as patterns of interaction as they occur so okay so something that came up with shadow work when you said this I don't know if that's something you're familiar with or interested in at all yeah very much so very much so so one of the modules in the course is one of the things that I do in the course is look at different psychological frameworks and then compare and contrast so that we can see well what what is there that is valuable and different in each of these different systems what is similar as well shadow work is very similar in some ways there's a slightly different language I look at that alongside a method called tantric mirroring so there are different ways of bringing psychological understanding into relationship and into relief was say different Buddhist frameworks and systems and that's useful because it means that we're not kind of swimming in that sea of this being the only view the only way of understanding that is so subject but we don't see that that's what we're doing maybe I think it might be useful to have an example like I think of examples here that point to some of these differences that we're talking about it's like um like you know you don't walk into a kitchen and greet your spouse and say oh what's cooking sweetheart and I'll ring with you all of the past ten years of your interactions with them they're not right there with you and yet you know you think you do one thing one does but you're not actually doing that you're just there with them enjoying the smell of the dish yeah that they're cooking up you have familiarity you have intimacy you have that there with each other because of those interactions yes but they're not literally there with you in a big bag like just let me bring my bag of interactions through the door with me but but isn't that what's actually happening because because that's how I view that that's how I view like the problem that we're discussing here of fixed interaction patterns like you you do have I mean my model is on like a somatic trauma-based level how every time in your life when you have an overwhelming experience where your system is like okay this is too much I can't handle this right now buffer it for later when I have the resources to actually process it and go back to homeostasis but then we don't learn how to do that so we're just accumulating literally well this bag of shit in our body and in our brainstem and that does get triggered and we do bring all of that shit that's not actually it's not actually happening but we act as if that stuff is still alive that's how exactly yeah okay so so those all of that begins to prescribe interactions but it doesn't have to interactions in form understanding they can inform understanding they don't need to prescribe it there's a big difference there that's actually the difference between spontaneity and impulsivity with impulsivity you've got that you've got that prescription already running right right and that's like the anytime I talk to someone about there's one distinction that that talks about like head awakening hard awakening and got awakening or something like that as a useful framework and people who are tending to be more head oriented and is very you know emotions are just these annoying things I kind of post them to the side they're stupid and I'm going to think through this thing and for those people for instance my dad is kind of like that and whenever I talk about how emotion is in my view it's a type of information it's very useful information and if you don't integrate your cognitive faculty and your emotional faculty and are able to use all of it you're not going to make good decisions and but but the misunderstanding that people like that seem to have is that either you're just heady and you push emotions away or if you listen to your emotions it's what we're talking about here you're just impulsively if you're mad you just scream at people and you throw things at them or you hit them or you just start bawling whenever you're sad like that's not skillfully listening to and using emotion that's just the other extreme so for me it's like and I think you're hinting towards this with the beneficence base it's not the impulsive just acting out whatever comes up like a child it's more being abrasive because of the deep okeness that you have you can let everything that's actual right now inform your spontaneous activity in the moment something like that I want to say it's basic okeness deep kind of implies that there's a lot of it's to do with depth within your personal psychology and that's not what I'm talking about it's okeness in any interaction it's okeness in the way that I am and show up in the world so there's this extra extra expression occurring there again it's like a different way of interacting and being in interaction so yes there's the stuff that's going on personally and there's simply being there in the interaction with others and so the okeness there is relating to interaction so I just just wanted to make that distinction there but getting back to what you were saying there like yeah exactly exactly spontaneity is not it's not about randomness it's not impulsive in that way that you described really beautifully there it's intelligent it's intelligent response to perception right yeah like acting at random would be senseless probably go badly yeah whereas that there's no sense of I have to respond in this way I must do that it's imperative it's like an impulse is a response to perception it's a combination of perception and response all there already together in the language that I'm using there's this there could be a hidden interpretation there underneath already like I've got to do this thing it's imperative all right and the impulse itself involves a response that is already set and on a fixed track and perception in perception through the senses there's no inevitable coupling with any response right so there's there's a freshness there's in a life in response because what's occurring isn't necessarily a rewrite of whatever has happened and you can feel this right you can feel that when you're communicating or in in communication with others it feels really different right doesn't have to be smooth doesn't that there's not a kind of predictability there necessarily but it doesn't need to resolve anything there's there's potentially this this felt sense of there's an unknown there's a bit of an edge there whereas I think impulsiveness it's doing something familiar right yeah spontaneity is is is unfamiliar you can get familiar with what that's like but it's a familiarity with the taste of non-impulsive integrity it's a it's an honesty in alignment yeah authenticity having to run folding yeah right right some it's unencompassed by need I think there's always some need in impulsive response could yeah okay so you kind of have an agenda there for what you need to happen I think so like any impulsive response it's it's like you're wanting something on you yeah you're you're you're sort of needing something from the interaction that's that's embedded in that you're trying to make it happen in that impulse so fast yeah but and and that is because this is something I struggle with for a long time the the difference between yeah okay I need you to respond in a certain way and then I come across as having a strong agenda trying to constrict the interaction in a way that feels really icky it doesn't feel good for anyone and the difference between that and having a want having a true unencumbered want with no no need for a fixed outcome just a want because because I think people are quick to especially in the more thoroughvada or sutric type of framing where you know desire is the root of all suffering maybe I'm strawmending a bit here but you got to get rid of desire and clinging and what I've found is that there's nothing wrong with desire with want when it's unencumbered when it's not coming from a place of I needed this and it's stuck in habitual again it's just want is what animates our behavior maybe it's something different between what's what's hidden and what's known and seen like making a request that's interesting it makes a request well that's that's seen it's known it's in awareness it's bringing something into awareness right if we're if we're impulsive those this hidden unseen need that is going on there and it's manipulative flavoring isn't it yeah coloring how things are without us necessarily understanding what's going on there but all of this seems to really really entail a deep trust maybe that's what when we come back to the basic okayness there but just a fundamental trust in in being in your own being like in how in how being is yeah yeah I'm I'm thinking of like my reflexes have become absolutely superhuman over this these last years when I was born yeah but it's nothing Charlie nothing makes you feel more like a superhero than when you fumble something and you catch it really cool and extra bonus if some people saw it you know but but I feel like maybe this what we're talking about now is kind of an extension of the the naturalness and and spontaneity of a reflex but less constrained because a reflex is habitual to to some extent but it's a good it's a good caricature example of where if you were to think about it and try to come in and with with the mental representations and try to think your way through it you would drop it that's not the way to act there's something there's something more to you than the cognitive capacity to think in words that is often more capable yeah how does that land for you yeah there's an often what we're doing is not thinking about so we have these automatic patterns we're not thinking about it and one of the one the really beneficial approaches that psychology has brought is that we can bring that into awareness and relive and replay experiences and think about them and look at them and understand how does that work how does it work so bringing what is out of awareness what is hidden there into awareness at the the point of interpretation I think that can be really great so what we're what we're doing to begin with is clearing up that space in perception separating out loosening out perception from interpretation and then getting to well what all is the those those tightly packed layers of interpretation that we have got on top of it would understanding that yeah would you say that would enlightenment on a view like this I don't even know if zokshin adopts that terminology at all but would enlightenment be complete freedom from habitual response and just always acting from this beneficent space yeah I would say freedom to choose so if you can see habitual response then you're you're much more along the road of being able to choose differently first of all seeing is and has to be there you can't really choose without having that having that site yeah of course not awareness of a bit your response so yeah freedom freedom in the sense of well maybe maybe it's appropriate in some ways to continue in the same kind of response maybe there isn't room in whatever the context is but freedom from that having to happen as choice without choice so having the choice for it to be different but choice is one of those kind of paradoxical concepts especially when you think about it and you're not also pairing it with the experience of what we're talking about how how do you think about choice in a view where uh yeah it's kind of spontaneous arising where where everything is in one way happening by itself but I completely understand what you mean when you talk about choice because I've never felt more agency in my life I think but but I'm becoming more and more I the the less I I'm sorry I've talking over I get excited but but the less I uh reify myself and the story of who I am the more transparent I feel and the more more of the basic okayness I have access to the more agency I feel but at the same time I feel like I'm in a flow experience that's happening rather than me choosing these things as well yeah it's a tricky word I think I would equate choice and spontaneity choice in the sense of um liberation there's liberation from uh fix itness and what's the point of that choice I mean that there's this there's a sense in that if you have that space of experience you're bringing that space you're you're with that space in interaction then I think you mentioned this earlier Chris like you're not uh the the triggers don't work there's if there's space there then there's nothing to yeah prod to poke to grasp on to to move to manipulate if there's simply spaciousness and clarity then choice becomes available because because there isn't that uh inevitable like reactivity right what would you say what would you say the end goal is of all this stuff is there an end goal and what is it better interactions right right right right that the uh the I think you used the term unfolding earlier yes I like that yeah the unfolding of different possibilities in context as you go about things like actually finding something different that becomes available a different way of being in the world yeah yeah that's also something that uh I feel a little self conscious because I talk about my own experience so much but I'm just so excited about let's be going on lightly um yeah I'm excited hopefully but uh uh a fear I dropped the ball let's see if I can re-emerge uh no that's gone if it comes back up I'm gonna I'm gonna spring it on you but um what were you saying right before we're being oh yeah oh yeah yeah no all right yeah so I've been if you if I got to meet and I would love to do this I hope technology makes this possible somehow but if I could meet myself I don't know 10 years ago five years ago like the feeling and I think this is a um a big part of mental suffering in general but just feeling completely fixed and trapped being almost like you have no space whatsoever so your whole life is just acting out these impulsive or fixed patterns and it feels horrible and you're sure that oh I this is just who I am this is part of being me and I can never change this I was so confident of that in the midst of my my my worst years uh and if I got to see now just the freedom and the spaciousness and how much of that stuff that I thought was imperative and just inherent to who I was fall away and behind it was space and love and energy and creative like it's just uh it's so inspiring I think this stuff is so fucking cool uh that's you're inspiring me talk about it it's amazing no that's so great you know a lot of a lot of what we've been doing here is conversation about and I wonder whether it could be helpful to have a little like let's have an exercise let's actually have a demo here of oh shit that we can actually bring how do you feel about that I mean do it let's do it okay so this is this is a kind of combination of what you might call psychological method like the form but we're bringing something different into the inquiry that is helping like it will facilitate when you're in interactions changing what becomes available I think this actually doing this might help our listeners if you've gotten this far listeners well done so it might help actually bring all of this together into something kind of a little more concrete and yes like relatable to in terms of what we're talking about so okay let's see think think about an interaction that you have had maybe fairly recent or something like not not like going deeply back into childhood this but something an interaction that you've had that maybe you regret a little bit or that if that were to happen again you might think oh I'd like that to be different in some way I'd like to respond in a different way yeah just think about something that you can bring here as an example yep I got got it you got something so what's going on what's what's happening in this memory that you have see if you can relive the experience here yeah so you want a descriptive of what I'm thinking about yeah describe the interaction that you would like to have been different yeah okay this is a good exercise because this is kind of embarrassing so I love it this this particular conversation so I'm very courageous no regrets I have that tattoo on my oblique like an idiot so yeah so it was at work when I started this new job a while back and I was feeling I do a lot of my trauma work and there's been a lot at the surface so I was very very triggerable and I got to work and a person that I don't resonate very well with there asked me to take over a presentation for her because she needed to do something else and I really didn't want to do that at that point and instead of communicating it in yeah just an open way or like hey I don't I see your situation there I get it I just feel very uncomfortable doing that so I'd rather not do that I just I fucking froze up like a like a mouse in a panic reaction basically and just yeah just completely froze and I acted very very uncompassionately and felt very selfish and very embarrassing the way I acted yeah so thank you for to to bring that to share that this is kind of beautiful example to to work with like what what happened in that in that moment yeah I felt very incapable what did you see what did I see yeah what was going on in front of your face and you know in the room around you interesting I was sitting next to her at a table and I mean I don't know if I was projecting on her but it felt like she was like what so she on your right side okay okay specifics let's see here I've repressed it no she was to my left she was to my left okay right and we weren't sitting in front of each other so I kind of wasn't looking at her I think when I did my freezing thing a table what so what did you see what were you looking at straight ahead out into the office landscape I guess chairs green green mats on the floor computers everywhere you see it now yeah yeah what else I mean see a lamp I see her I occasionally glanced over at her and I saw her oh yeah her gaze she has very distinct all right you see her face yeah no I can see her yeah yeah what's going on on her face yeah I want to say confusion maybe a little bit or uh incomprehension like what's what's happening on her face then is there kind of frown happening or sort of she screwing up her face like well what's going on oh this is hard man um no not really uh she's just patiently waiting for me to respond how do you know what do you see I mean I see yeah I think I'm stuck in my mental contents a bit of what I feel rather than yeah there we go so this this is just interesting yeah yeah yeah it's a simple exercise that gets you to the point where you don't know and having that experience of oh I don't know I don't know what I was seeing there or what I'm seeing is I relive right I don't know I know what I was hearing I I can't remember what they said right just having that experience is valuable because it helps get into the understanding that there's so much information there's so much data going on that we are used to not seeing hearing feeling and our skin like tactile yeah we're not we're not used to noticing because we're inside doing everything all the time all the time that's really interesting yeah so it's great to get to a point of oh I don't know what what was I seeing you know already you've got the interpretation though she's she's patient that's an interpretation right that's an interpretation of what is going on it's beyond oh she's scrunching her nose up or oh she's not saying anything you know those which is which is actual yeah but but okay when you use the term interpretation I think I get hung up a bit on that sometimes because at some level yeah like yeah so you're just talking about the the more explicit work layered on top of basic interpretive things that we do because I mean we're really good at picking up subconscious signals body language stuff like that vibes that isn't necessarily a mental content interpretation yeah so in psychology perception has a has what has different meanings in different parts of psychology but there's perception and then interpretation also has particular meanings in context so I am using those words differently using perception interpretation response not in a super super precise way either like what is important is the having the experience of what it is like to just be in a different way of noticing right so that the whole field of interpretation is you know somewhat nebulous you could get down to it right down to the nitty-gritty of the sense fields and say well and I interpreting that there's the color yeah the color red or whatever so you know we're not we're not um it's not all supposed to be a big group or a theoretical framework right to we're actually like employing a method in order to get further towards the the the initial instantaneous perception and to to uh find the space between the immediate interpretation that that occurs and often that interpretation is fixed it's so hidden it's so so hidden that you know it takes quite a while to work towards that very raw initial very familiar underlying interpretation that is going to it's usually going to begin with an eye phrase something like I'm scared you know all of the information that we're receiving from the context from the circumstance is feeding into the replay of that uh that familiar pickup from circumstance is that familiar communication oh uh I've got to be scared here because so we go in in uh looking at these and using these methods we go into much much much more detail about each of those phases of in of a pattern of an interactive pattern you spend a lot of time in the first couple of weeks going into perception and liberating perception that's literally what liberating perception is it's having the experience of being in the space of perception without getting into the interpretation and then a little bit later on it it makes it possible to go much more into the interpretation to have some awareness of what all is going on there and how that relates to this immediate reflex of response but then it seems to me that the the issue is never it's not interpretation per se it's fixed interpretation uh instead of a full allowance of both perception different interpretations that are held loosely and can be like like the openness to yeah it seems like the fixation is the problem like I have one interpretation I'm certain I'm right and now I'm going to have it's the fixation that's a problem and that and another problem is that we think that we understand what the interpretation is and so we kind of go fall on out in there already like I'm going to reinterpret I'm going to re uh recreate this interpretation and we haven't actually gotten to what is happening the perception of what is underlying the interpretation so you could say this is um peeling off the layers of slowing things down a great deal or you know we we don't initially spend a lot of time in the field of interpretation because we can't it's not available to do that until you're coming from very clear spacious way of relating and on the fly as well in those interactions it's only after you find that that then you can start really loosening up connectivity between the interpretation and the response and there are different different ways to do that and it's so powerful when you're able to do that and so liberate is I mean the um it's such a shitty bind to be in where you if I generalize I think fixation or contraction uh is always about you know not feeling safe habitual patterns are you know maladaptive type of patterns to try to protect yourself try to feel safe and the safety comes I think Alan Watts said something like insecurity is the chase for security or something like that and when you can see that and just oh basic okayness it's already fine uh and I'm I'm it's so freeing not to be bound by one one interpretation or if we take it further you know I am a socialist I am a vegan I am this I am that and then you box yourself in and you cling to these ideas and when people criticize some you feel attacked like your your safety is actually being uh infringable right but but so it's counterintuitive but then when you're like okay I can have strong opinions but I have them loosely held and I'm always willing to swift shift my framework because all of these things can never describe fully the world you know the meta rational type perspective that's why I resonate so much with that in conjunction with the spiritual openness, phenomenological openness um right so yeah for sure for sure lights are fired I'm talking about insecurity yeah me too me too I mean literally yeah talking about insecurity I was writing um so my opening awareness book is uh it's going to print in the next week and it's very different to how it started out being a couple of years ago so it's been a whole process in itself I've actually got a section in there this is David's suggestion on basic openness and within that talking about security and the impossibility of security in interaction and uh this phrase the security of insecurity hmm the security of insecurity yeah far yeah I think that's connected yeah yeah absolutely absolutely that's cool relaxing into yeah groundlessness uh yeah I love I love all these conceptually sounding paradoxes that are just so clear uh inexperience and it's exceptionally clear for me having been trying to uh recreate the experience through conceptual understanding just engaging more and more with thought to find the right framework to lean on and then the freedom comes in relaxing all that and being free and not having any framework applied and then being able to use different points depending on the situation yeah um wow we've covered yeah yeah yeah quite a lot I was just gonna say this is a great conversation but uh no this was awesome Charlie thank you so much and I I'll give you another chance here to to plug anything more where can people find you what is what's going on thank you thank you some shameless plugs yes yes no regrets so I'm I mentioned uh I mentioned my book I'm really excited about it it has been through so many iterations it's it's opening awareness and it's going to be out in print fairly soon it's much expanded from the web version uh that you'll find it evolving ground for dot org for slash opening awareness that um we've we've spoken about that before yeah but a lot of what we're what we're talking about today uh it's picked up on now in the book I was very relevant also to my relationships course I'm going to run that again in 2024 in Sweden in Gothenburg perhaps not this time all right not this time I will be in person I do have some in-person events coming up uh both coasts in America there's an event with the Olympic natural zoggen weekend that is in a few weeks time in October so that is the 21st and 22nd of October at Berkeley Olympic that's Michael Tafts and Eric Davises and Katie Katie Devane is venue in the East Bay so yeah that that is coming up I will be in the Bay Area for a few weeks after that we have our evolving ground retreat at the San Francisco Commons SF Commons that's the 4th and 5th of November and in between that we have the evolving ground community annual community gathering which is going to be a lot of fun that's in Petaluma in Sonoma this year I want to hang out with you guys that is uh how it's going to be lovely it's really nice having it in the fall all right Charlie this was so much fun I'm really glad we reconnected and that I got to pick your brain for for almost two hours so thank you so much so appreciate your your questions and you're being right there it's been a fantastic conversation loved it thank you it won't be the last let's feel again have a great day my friend so you're welcome to join us and we'll see you guys next time. Bye!