It's so funny. I had all my notes for our conversation on my phone that we're actually using to record. So, I'm going in blind here. But Henry, it's good to see you.
Yeah. It's great to see you, Kevin. Glad we're doing this again. Yeah. And it's nice to do it out here in New Mexico in the desert. You know, getting ready to head into a week retreat, which starts tonight, which I'm really excited about.
I'm really excited actually myself that you're doing it. It's really beautiful to see you just stepping in like that. Yeah. I know you've done several before, of course, but you know, just slightly upping the dosage, you know, like a few, a couple more a year is such a powerful thing to do. What do you think is the big benefit in going to even call it just like a three-day or something that's beyond just a normal average, you know, 10, 20 minute sit per day.
Yeah. Oh my gosh, we just go so much deeper, you know. It's like the, I think it's really valuable to have, I mean the most valuable thing is the daily consistent practice that's like a thread running through your life, but when you drop into a longer retreat you just go much deeper and it infuses your daily practice. I think, you know, it's not enough just to do long retreats or, you know, semi-long retreats, multi-day retreats now and then. The value of it is how it boosts what you're doing every day. You see what I mean? It's not like just lurch from big retreat to big retreat with nothing in between. No, the value is in infusing what you're doing in your daily life.
There's no good everyday analogy that I can think of that kind of maps to this type of idea of intense thing and then lifts the boat kind of for everyday because if you think about, I've always thought, okay, to me at least the first two years of practicing Zen was, you know, monkey mind was off the charts and so the daily practice was like, I almost consider it my gym workout, is the mental workout for my mind. And that made sense to me because of course you go to the gym for the first time, you're going to suck, you're going to be in pain, it's not going to be comfortable. And then, you know, months, years go by and all of a sudden you're like, 'Ah, not only does it not hurt anymore, but I look forward to it.' Right? What is the depth of the multi-day? How does it infuse that everyday practice?
Well, I would say it's, if you use an analogy like this one that Suzuki Roshi, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, he used to use, he said, you know, rather than trying to sort of stop or kind of, I don't know, imprison, you know, or grab hold of your monkey mind, instead think of it as a young colt or something, you know, in a field with its mother, the mare, watching it. And basically, as our practice deepens, you could think of it like this, that the meadow gets larger. In other words, the sort of field of our awareness grows. So we can let monkey mind skip about and do what it's doing, but we're actually staying present. We're not caught by it. We're not so quickly getting captivated by it.
It's like that image of the mare is beautiful. It's not trying to stop, you know, the little beasty running around, you know, it's just lovingly becoming more aware of it. And I think that's just a perfect analogy for what happens in practice. So when we come to a longer deeper retreat, the paddock, the meadow is getting bigger, you know, and in other words really the space of our awareness is growing, so there's more sort of real estate, so what monkey mind is doing becomes a smaller part of our overall experience. I see. And the monkey mind is interesting because when I think of it these days around, you know, I'll be sitting. And of course, we all have these days more often than not where something will come up, a daily life activity, something that's top of mind for you that just wants your attention, wants to jump in there and grab you for a second, right?
If you can take a second and acknowledge it. I don't know if that is the correct term. It's more like just let it be. There's a disconnect in how much I care about the fact that it's happening and then all of a sudden it kind of dissipates not because I forgot about it but more because I'm fully allowing. Is that...
Yeah. Exactly. I totally agree. It's like our relationship with it changes, right? Instead of being, I mean essentially what you're describing, you could talk about it in terms of reactivity, that something's happened and we get very upset about it because it's triggered inbuilt reactivity that we have and that reactivity is very sticky. You know, once we get really kind of involved and engaged by something and finding it difficult, our reactivity, our emotional sort of imprints and conditioning make us really glom on to the thing and it's sticky. So practice in time actually loosens, it starts to soften and break up the foundations of reactivity. So then when something happens, yeah, we might get caught for a little bit, our reactivity comes on, but again we've got this larger space of awareness that can be aware of the reactivity. And you put it really well, Kevin, it learns to allow. Our awareness isn't bothered, so when we tap into that larger awareness, the reactivity can happen and we don't mind so much. In other words, we've got a little bit of a space, a little bit of a gap between our awareness and the reactivity, right? And when we allow the reactivity, it can gradually sort of, it can actually dissipate, sort of turn to dust and blow away, and then whatever the trigger was, it's just a thing. You know, it may still be an issue we need to address, but it's not a kind of all-consuming problem. It changes from being this real sort of, 'Man, this is difficult,' to, 'Oh, it's just a thing I got to work on.' You know, without the reactivity, it's not such a big deal.
It's interesting, in Japan, slurping your soup is considered like a show to the chef that, like, 'Oh, they must be enjoying the soup.' And so I'm sitting here at this little diner and everyone's just going whole hog on their soup. And as a westerner, I'm like, this is like fingernails on a chalkboard, you know. But isn't that funny that that is just, you know, being raised that way with that conditioning, there's no negative reactivity to the same thing that's causing me fingernails on a chalkboard. It's just a preference thing, right? It's a little preference that I created at a young age. And for one person it can be, 'Oh, thank you for enjoying my food,' and another being like, 'How rude. This is disgusting.' What are preferences?
Well, let's just, I mean we could just also stay with the lens of reactivity right there and the conditioning because, you know, you would have had the whole social field around you sort of really condemning or really being down on noisy eating, mouth open, slurping, you know, 'No, no, you don't do that at a table.' So that gets conditioned. So when the code is broken, you know, somebody's violating this, the reactivity is ready and waiting to say, 'Oh my gosh, don't do that,' you know, so it's again, it's just conditioning and therefore you get the strong reaction. And that's a great example because you can see there how kind of arbitrary it is, that actually our reactivity, it seems so kind of ingrained that we believe it. The thing is, it's just a story. But it's actually just a story, you know, and when we come to preferences, it's closely related, but I mean, there's a slight subtle, I put a little bit of a line between reactivity and preferences. I mean, they totally interact, but preferences are just a wish that something be different, you know? I want that, but I don't want that. I like that but I don't like that, you know, I move towards that and push that away. That's basically what preference is. Now when we can see preferences without reactivity, they're just preferences. We just get to see, oh, there's this thing in our solar plexus or heart area. They're not bad. They're not good or bad. It's just a preference. When you can see it for just being a preference, no problem. The problem is that again, it's about reactivity, that we'll have these foundations of reactivity that are really invested in preference. It's got to be that way. Yeah, I need that. It's threatening if I don't get that. And then we get the same thing, it gets activated and it feels like a much bigger deal than it is. So I would say actually one of the values of deeper practice like we get on retreats is that the laboratory that we're setting up, which practice is in part, is a laboratory for studying how our body, mind, heart systems work. You know, the laboratory gets more refined, gets more toolled up. Maybe it gets larger. We go deeper with it. The microscope gets more accurate and we get to the point where we can see preferences at work, you know, rather than just, 'Oh, I don't like this,' you know. No, we can actually see, 'Oh, wait a minute, the reactivity is subsiding. Therefore, I can see, oh look, there's a strong sort of resistance coming up to something, to X or Y.' And you can start to learn it's just a sort of impulse. It's actually just a sensation in my body. A sensation of, 'Ooh, we don't like that.' Fine. You know, and when you can really see it, it goes this way, it goes that way. It becomes much easier to just be with it.
Do you ever sit with a preference and say, 'Why do I have this preference?' I'm more interested in the phenomenon of the preference itself. What's the difference?
Well, if I can understand, if I can see what is actually happening when I have a preference, that there's some sensation in my, you know, usually for me it's sort of solar plexus or diaphragm area that's favoring something. I want that. When I get to see that, I actually become free of it. I'm observing it, not caught up in it. And once that's happened, then I'm free to investigate and I might well take a little look and say, 'Yeah, where does it...' it might immediately show up where that comes from. 'Oh my gosh, it was when I was 7 years old and that thing happened and I got very strongly imprinted that that's bad or that's good,' you know, and fine. I mean, it's sweet in a way, you know, and I can be very compassionate towards it. But I feel that as long as, I mean, I got to be, I wouldn't want to be trying to work out the origins while I was still in the grip of it, if that makes sense. I want to have loosened and softened around it.
How would you deal with this? Let's just say with your wife. If your wife comes up with something or comes at you or hits you with something in real time, you don't have a minute to be like, 'Well, how did she say that? Then what if I...' you know, it's like you want to just clap back or react and sometimes not from a good place. What's your coaching for people out there that tend to, you know, fly off the wire or get kind of like triggered quickly and respond quickly in a way that causes that conflict?
Well, I got to say, I mean, I think probably one of the hardest areas is close, you know, intimate relationships. That's because there, you know, that's where all our reactivity is sort of exposed, you know, and whatever I may have, my partner, you know, has their own as well. And people can get into relationships where these reactivities are just responding to, reacting to one another. And it can be, I mean, that's probably in a certain way you might consider that sort of the deepest integration opportunity of practice is when we can be in intimate relationship. And it takes willing partners, I think, on both sides, that we can really own our stuff because it's going to show up. And I mean, I think as somebody, you know, I think I can sort of claim to have done quite a lot of practice, is, you know, it's been four decades now.
How has this changed for you over time personally? Like, obviously, you know, everyone thinks of, they put Zen Masters on a pedestal and they think, 'Oh, they must just be the most chill people ever,' but of course, you know, you're human. You have reactions. How has this changed and what were your tools like?
Yeah, I mean, I could say from sort of, I mean, I've done a ton of therapy and a ton of couples therapy as well, you know, which has been, all of it in different ways, very, very helpful. But I can say also that there was, I think there was a key moment, a key point in my practice when that really made a big difference. I think, you know, for a lot of my practice I was definitely sort of growing and getting a bit more expansive, a bit more compassionate and a bit more aware of the vastness of all of this and, you know, and that was helpful. But it was only when something really, a particular moment in my practice was actually a bit of a game-changer, and that was the loss of some, I don't know, great lump of reactivity that just fell away. I mean, there's a whole long buildup to that happening for sure. But there was a key moment and after it there was just, I was just more open, you know, I mean, not way, way, way far from perfect, but some openness had arrived that made it somehow so much easier for me to just touch into compassion and compassion for this being me and for my partner and for anybody else. And that really cut down reactivity. I wish I could say all the way to zero, but no, it wasn't. But it was a massive shift. And that really stuck around for quite a long time. I actually had never believed I could see that something like that seemed to be possible. I could see it in my teachers and in senior practitioners I knew, but I didn't think it was possible for me. I mean, quite a troubled guy. I had a lot of trauma, really complex trauma as a child and a lot of reactivity and I could see I could get to these expansive places and then I was kind of come back, you know, and it was a seesaw, you know, and I just thought I'll always be coming back to this troublesome person, you know. And actually, you know, I was wrong. The practice, it really works. You don't have to be some particular person. It works on human beings and enough of it with good guidance, I think something can really shift. And so since then, it's again not perfect, but it's been on the whole, I've been better, quicker and easier access to a less reactive place, you know, where, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we still work on our relationship, my wife and I, you know, and I imagine we all always will.
Yeah. I mean, we're all changing, right? Esther Perel, like you're going to be married four or five times. You hope it's to the same person, right? Because everyone changes and becomes different people over the decades.
Exactly. And I think that's one of the good things in a long relationship, that's a healthy long relationship, is that you allow for that and the relationship allows you both to do that because then it's a new relationship.
Yeah. And man, I didn't know that she could be like this, man, with the extended depth of the previous. Right. Like that's beautiful. Yeah. There is a saying, help me fix this because I'm horrible at paraphrasing things. 'The great way is not difficult. It's picking and choosing.' It dislikes picking and choosing. Who said that?
Yeah, that was said by Sengcan, who is known as the third ancestor in Chinese Chan or Zen Buddhism. And he was a great man. He was a great figure. And he wrote this poem called the Xin Xin Ming or the Shinjinmei in Japanese, which is, I actually forget how many verses it is, but it's about kind of three pages long and it starts with this line: 'The great way is not difficult, it just dislikes choosing.' And people have poured over that line for millennia in Zen, like what exactly did he mean, you know, and what's your take on that?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really beautiful and it actually touches in on exactly what we've been talking about, preferences and reactivity. I mean, first of all, what does he mean by the great way?
Well, the great way is the great reality, is the reality that excludes nothing. That is one single whole vast reality. Maybe it's not even vast. It has no size. It doesn't do time. It isn't time. It's free of time, but it allows time to happen. It allows everything to unfold.
And so, you know, you're talking about this idea of non-dual reality.
Yeah. You can't really get to what the great way is without talking a little bit about the non-dual, that it's not something that, you know, I see out there. It's something that I actually am and all of us are. It's a thing that transcends, you know, self and other, self and world. It includes self and world. Absolutely. So you can be yourself totally, but at the same time in the great way, you know, you're part of everything and everything is part of everything.
So is it truly non-dual then because it includes dual?
You see, if it didn't include dual, it wouldn't be truly non-dual. You see what I mean? Because then there'd be like this is a place that I don't know, how do you want to go off the deep end?
Yeah, let's go the deep end. I love it.
Well, let me talk about this in phases of practice because, you know, typically we start practice and it's very clear, I am me in here, right, with all these reactivities and preferences trying to navigate this life.
Day one on the cushion. This is what everyone's going through. Right.
Exactly. My mind is all over the place and I'm starting to see in phase one that my mind, man, my mind is busy and it's constantly preferring this and preferring that and hating on that and loving that and craving this and resisting that. And it's doing it with memories. It's doing it with planning. It's doing it with fantasies and imaginings and it's doing it with body sensations. 'Oh, I don't like that feeling. I want more of that feeling,' you know. And we start to see that this maelstrom of inward life that's kind of torn apart by craving and resisting is going on. And gradually we start to, as we start to see it and be able to identify it, to name it, you know, to name it is to tame it, it all starts settling down a little bit and we start to get moments of clarity or just calm and clarity where we can just see it's possible to exist without that, you know, where there's actually not an inner turmoil and not an inner stream of thought and commentary going on. You can get moments where that just isn't happening. And then you notice how weirdly peaceful that can be. All that's happened is your mind's gone quiet for a little bit and you start to get these little hits, the sort of maybe that it's not so problematic somehow or there's some kind of space I can find that isn't filled with problems and problem-solving and fixing and that just settles and maybe just a moment here and there, practice fosters that, you know. So call that phase one. And then, you know, which is, if that's all we got in practice, it's tremendous, it's vast, hugely life-changing, but it's possible, usually when, you know, we're more settled, to get sudden shifts in the way we experience this very moment. And, you know, that it can come in various complexions, various shades of this can happen, various degrees of it can happen. But one way or another, all of these shifts into what we call non-dual experience, they're all about some sense, some discovery, even however fleeting, however slight, that there's a way in which I am not separate from what I experience. You know, it's such a fundamental assumption that I'm this little person in here, big person, whatever, experiencing everything else as an object that is not me. A non-dual experience is somehow that separation, the membrane between me and everything else is just briefly gone.
'I' is gone and world as not-me. It's not like that. It's one fact, one reality, and it's non-dual, which is a slightly abstract technical term that doesn't capture what this is like at all, but it's non-dual because it hasn't got the duality of me and it, of me and world. That's two. That's gone. And when we get a hit of that, you know, it may be very slight and it's just, 'Wow, that was weird,' or 'That was beautiful. What was that?' You know, and it can be a deep thing as well where we really plunge into this other way of being. And, you know, it usually doesn't last very long but it can still have a deep impact on us that we suddenly realize that our ordinary way of constructing reality, of understanding, of experiencing, is not the only way. We suddenly see, 'Oh my gosh, there's been another order of what's real here all the time and I've just been exposed to it. I've just dropped into it.' And who knows which is more real. But the important thing is that we've seen our ordinary way of knowing reality is not the only way. And that's a tremendous explosion in our life because we suddenly, the great assumptions we've lived by and the most fundamental of all is that I am this person in here, and suddenly we've seen that's not the whole story.
That's a huge thing. Yeah. How do you, you've said before this is an experience where the mind isn't invited to the party. So everything that you're giving me right now then would just be considered lightweight pointers, right? Like there's no way to thoroughly describe what this is. Why is that?
Yeah. I mean, one easy way to try to talk about it is to say that language is built on the dualistic view, that you can't, nobody's yet created language that expresses that reality. I mean, we all try, you know, like Zen is full of language that is trying to, but language will never be able to do it because it's thought and that's a division of things.
That's basically it. Exactly. Okay. So that's why the silence is so valuable.
You know, the silence, first of all there's the physical silence, like you go in a retreat and it's largely silent. No words are being spoken. Occasionally, yes, you have an interview, somebody gives a talk, maybe a bit of guidance, but largely it's silent and gradually over time that helps the mind to start to say, 'Oh, okay, this silence thing is okay, there's a way of being.'
I think it's deep listening.
Well, at first we just have to accept, I think, 'I' am, at first. But gradually the more we listen, the more we discover in a certain way there's just listening. And it's almost we could say listening is listening. Or we could say awareness is listening. Or we could say being is listening. In other words, the more we just listen, the smaller and smaller the sense of a me who's doing the listening can become.
Right. But there's no thought there.
Exactly. Because that's a division.
Exactly. So oneness can never be explained through the mind because it is indivisible.
Yes. I think that's right. It's not analyzable. You can't break it down into parts.
Well, if you break it, then you're already separating it.
Exactly. Exactly. Which is the mind's disease. It also says in that same poem that you were just quoting from a little further down.
It says, 'To like and dislike is nothing but the mind's disease.' And like and dislike is separating. 'I want that. I don't want this.' You know, it's separating. So it's very hard for us because we're so habituated to, you know, using the mind to improve our lives and our world. And it's very hard to disengage from that conditioning, the idea that actually you can improve things vastly if you just set the mind down. And just be. I sometimes think it's like we're so habituated to sort of working on stuff and we work on it physically, we work on it mentally, we work on it in our thoughts and it's all kind of in front of us and, you know, in a certain sense, you know, we're sort of pouring all our attention and energy into sort of the life in front of us. And when somebody says, 'How about we just disengage from all that,' first of all we disengage physically, you know, manually almost, we just let our hands do nothing. Then let's see if we can just be aware of where our hearts are at because there's going to be some turmoil in here from all the activity we've been in. And suddenly we're loosening and foregoing all that outward activity and then see, well, what's going on here. Ooh, there's stuff here. So let me just be with that. And then gradually the mind gets to disengage and we're kind of coming backwards. There's a line in Zen saying, 'Take the backwards step.' And that backward step is sort of disengaging. It's how we release ourselves from activity and we come back into a kind of space that actually is very active. It's the space of being.
Is this why it's often they always say like a childlike mind? Is that in the same vein of this, like returning to that type of state?
Yeah, because it's a sort of innocence we come back to. I mean, really the being that we come back to is actually timeless. So it's therefore always new, always fresh. You know, Zen talks about beginner's mind because this empty being is always new, fresh, innocent.
How is it new if it's timeless?
Because it hasn't got a great big history it's dragging around. It's not dragging around a sack because there's no history attached to it.
Huh. So, it's truly at the edge of unfolding.
Exactly. Exactly. And actually that's where you live, is at the edge of unfolding.
Well, I aspire to. Sometimes can claim it. It's amazing. So you try to live there, but you do have more often.
Honestly, I don't try to.
Right. Because trying would be a preference.
Exactly. Push it away. Forget about these things. I find it happens more, I mean over the years it's happened more and more and, you know, since that sort of decisive event thing that was now 18 years ago, it's happened spontaneously a lot more. Yeah. You know, but I'm a human being and I don't want to not be a human being. I actually cherish my emotions and feelings. And I don't want to be a heartless sort of Zen robot, you know. I feel and, you know, I aspire to be a creative guy and that must include, I'm a poet, you know.
I had so many questions about poetry actually for you. What's your favorite poem?
Oh my gosh. You know, I mean I have a different one every day. You know, I'll tell you, I've memorized quite a few poems by great poets that I admire and, you know, so I've got a bunch of favorites. I've got my own private anthology of favorite poems and I feel really, I really cherish them and I'm so glad that I do take the time to memorize poems because...
What's the one that's hit you the hardest, where when you heard it you were like, 'Wow,' this one just really took me back a little bit and just kind of gave me a moment to pause?
I'd have to say all of them. Yeah. But all the ones I've memorized have done that. But well, how about this short one by Rumi translated by Coleman Barks. You know, it's very well known, but it really still speaks to me. 'Come back, come back, whoever you are. Come back, come back, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Even if you've broken your vows a thousand times, return yet again. Return. Come back. Come back.'
I love that. Can you break that down for me?
Well, yeah. Coming back to now. Wherever you've gone off in this mind, there's many, many mind paths, you know, reactivity, whatever's taking you away from now, it's okay, don't worry about it. We don't live in a caravan of despair. Like a caravan actually is a sort of dual meaning, you know, one meaning is like the train of camels crossing the desert, you know, but a caravan I think really is the sort of logic is where those camel trains would come and rest at night, you know, or every few days, you know, crossing the great desert, coming to a resting place, a caravanserai, they were called, caravan for short. And, you know, 'ours is not a caravan of despair.' Like, come here. Doesn't matter what you've been going through, you're welcome here. There's always hope here. No matter how desperate you feel, it's okay to come back. You must come back. We want you back. You know, and this is what practice is about, that, you know, again and again as we practice more, we'll see how far away we go from just being here now, you know, and instead of despairing about it, it's okay. It's the way we are. Come back. That there's something so good, so nourishing, so compassionate in the heart of every moment just waiting for us to come back to it.
I mean, I love that. Yeah. Has that been a personal growth edge for you over time? Did you find that when you were younger, you fell off and then needed to come back?
Oh my gosh, so badly. I mean, I've done it in big ways and small ways, you know. I had, you know, I mean just getting a little bit biographical, you know, I mean just in a major way, I had an awakening experience when I was at youth, you know, I don't need to go into details, but it was a most beautiful, amazing thing and I felt I'd discovered who I really was so fully that I could die that night, like my life had been fulfilled by that awakening. And lo and behold, six weeks later, you know, it happened far from home, I went home and six weeks later I just collapsed in despair. I had a breakdown and I felt I'd lost it, you know, and for several years I lived with this sense of deep shame and despair and having lost this priceless treasure and truth that I'd somehow accidentally found.
And you hadn't been meditating at this point, right? This was just an accidental thing that kind of just out of nowhere.
Yeah, it came out of nowhere. And, you know, that's a mystery that I mean I can point to some factors maybe.
What are the factors? What do you think?
Well, I think one, you know, I had really difficult eczema from a very young age and I think it was, I don't know how to look at it, but for one thing it was just an incredibly difficult thing to live with. It was all over my body for periods of time. It was never gone. As soon as it receded, and there was always this hope, 'Oh, maybe it's getting better,' and then it would get bad again. I was hospitalized a number of times for it and, you know, it was very traumatic, you know, and I think in some way maybe that was some kind of training, you know. I mean, I wouldn't wish it on anyone and it was very traumatic but somehow...
Maybe to learn to live with that and to have to live with that was some kind of training. I don't know if you see what I mean. I don't really...
No, I do know that at times I would pop into a certain sort of state of mind that was beautiful. Usually at night when I couldn't get to sleep, I'd go into this really different place that was incredibly peaceful and alive and sort of glowing. And years later when I did jhana practice training — this is absorption training, we could talk about that a little bit if we want — but when I started doing that, you know, I mean, as an adult decades later, the first time I popped into a jhana state, it was like, oh my gosh, this is what I did as a kid. And so I was actually somehow spontaneously doing this deep meditation thing spontaneously as a kid. I mean, it wasn't that often, I couldn't control it, but I knew it very well. So I don't know. Gosh, was that some kind of weird accidental practice? I don't know. It's just a, you know, it's a headscratcher in terms of the mental stew that has to come together to create these kind of awakening moments because...
You know, it'd be really fascinating if someone did this research. I mean, you've seen this happen, I'm sure, dozens of times now with your students. And it'd be really interesting to do a deep dive on their backgrounds and understand, you know, psychologically what was their upbringing like, what were their challenges like. You know, I've heard musicians have this — a pianist and, you know, of course, Valerie — like these who study and this like this perfection and this focus and energy on that focus that can sometimes, it looks like, be a factor in having these awakenings. Very difficult emotional upbringing seemed to be... Eckhart almost committed suicide and is very famous for laying there just asking himself, well, who's the one that wants to die? Who is the... and then boom, pop, right? Do you see any themes here?
Yeah, I would see, and in what you just said, I think two very important ones highlighted. One is actually flow states might be some kind of preparatory training. And so a musician, for example, they're practicing. They know how to practice. They know how to do the same thing again and again and slowly, gradually make it second nature, you know, and I think that's really important. And you're starting to because they then get to know this thing, flow, where you're doing exactly the same thing you've done every day for 10 years and suddenly it's easy. Suddenly it's become second nature and you're on a kind of autopilot doing it better than ever with a clarity of mind and a richness in your own experience. And you know, baseball players, basketball players, you know, football players, all these great athletes and things know it. And you don't have to be doing something special like music or athletics. It could be in any kind of habitual task. As you get better at it and you're accomplishing, you know, your practice skills, you'll hit these moments of when you're on cruise, you know, and you're in the zone. That's special because suddenly your sense of self is sort of — you're not self-conscious. Time goes quiet. You know, it's effortless. All those things, I think, are glimpses or foreshadowings, let's say, of what awakening is. So that might be one key element, and the same applies, of course, to meditators. Gradually you sort of get freer and looser and easier at it, you know, it comes easier for you and you're getting into flow more often. I mean, it's not an absolute thing, of course, it's not a straight line graph, but it just pops up a little bit more. So that's one possibility. The other is the possibility that that helps a loosening of the need for control and the defendedness, that we realize something almost larger than me can sort of take over, because awakening is letting something much larger completely take over, you know, and so it's, you know what I mean, it's a sort of you're getting a bit more used to that feeling of like, oh, I can release my control.
