Transcription
Yeah, come on up. Hi, AA. Hi. Good evening.
Just sat with Mukt last year. So, it's nice to be here with you too, me and my girlfriend. Um, I'd love some guidance on managing my urgency.
What are you urgent for?
That's what I mean. So, I'm very clear that there's like no end game. You know, my father died in January, and that was another good, like, real, "Oh, yeah, there's nowhere to go." So, there's like an intellectual kind of understanding that there's nowhere to go, but it's not in my body. So, I find myself still, um, feeling an urgency with everything: my businesses, my relationships. Just, there's like an urgency, right, to get something, even though my mind is going, "There's nowhere to get." So, it's confusing because one level feels true, and one level feels not true, and yet they're not coming right to truth.
Right. Right. Right.
'Cuz, because one is, one is theoretical, do you know? One is theoretical. There's nowhere really to go. There's nothing really to get. It's theoretical, right? You don't actually know that. You, I mean, you know it intellectually. It may make sense. It may even have a certain logical coherence to it if you really examine it. But that kind of knowing, as we all know, at the critical moments, doesn't suffice, does it? Otherwise, every single person that believed in heaven when they got a terminal diagnosis would be going, "Whoopee, let's throw a party! I'm finally going there! I'm going to the pearly gates, baby!" But how many people that believe in heaven when they get a terminal diagnosis throw a party like, "Here we go! Yippee! This is graduation day!" You see what I mean?
Totally.
So, that kind of like knowledge or belief, it's, it's, it's, it breaks down at the critical moments often. Yeah.
Okay. So, so there's this urgency, right? It sounds like it's in many areas of your life. Now, when... So, what do you begin to experience when you don't move with that urgency? So, you're not pushing it away. You're just not moving with it. When you just don't, what do you begin to experience?
I think that, um, as I sit with it, it kind of doesn't transition or it doesn't necessarily amplify. It just, there's like an anxiety.
That's what I'm getting at. That's it. Just stays. That's it, though. You... you just hit it on the head. That's it. Perfect. Oh, good. Because that's what all that is, right? That's what the doing is. That's what the doing, doing. What it is is a way everyone has their own hookup of how they deal with anxiety and fear, right? In their own, in their own makeup. And doing is one of the, one of the most popular ones. And so, as soon as you even almost begin to not do, you feel what's underneath all that becoming, right? All that anxiousness to get something done is there's a lot of anxiety there, right? There's a lot of fear there. Mhm.
And so, that's an really important thing to know because until you begin to open to what's fueling all that doing, then no matter what you believe or what you think, it'll... you won't really be able to stop it because you're not dealing with the underlying fuel. What's fueling it, which is anxiety, which is fear, right? So, when you know that, then you can begin to allow the anxiety, the fear, to be, right?
Can I, can I, a question? So, you're not imposing it. Okay. The question: Can I be with this anxiety? Can I be with? Can I just allow it to be here? Can I? I don't know if I can moment to moment. Maybe yes, maybe no. Can I allow it to be here? And what happens when I begin to allow it to be here? When I really stop pushing, pushing it away? When I allow myself to feel anxiety, anxious, without trying to find a remedy for it, and you just begin to explore it? So, you're actually exploring it rather than moving away from it. You see? So, because, so the idea isn't go to go in from doing, doing, and instantly transition into, "Oh, I'll just be in peace," because then you'll always be pulled back into doing again. Right? Whatever our modus operandi for avoiding ourself is, everybody has their own particular hookup. The fuel, the underlying dynamic, is always fear. That's what fuels it all.
Do you know, I remember talking to a group of really high-powered executives. They all owned their own companies, and most all the companies were quite large, very dynamic, uh, big, big, big personalities, doers, accomplishers, very successful. And we, you know, we didn't, we, I didn't have to talk for five minutes before what started to come out in that group. Of course, these were a group of, because they were listening to me, they must be somewhat open. You know, I'm a kind of a strange guy to allow into a corporate environment. You know, I wouldn't do it. Um, but almost immediately what it came out was these underlying insecurities and fears that these real powerful people had.
And yeah, it... it got a hell of a lot done, I suppose. But powerful anxieties, powerful fears, powerful feelings of sort of hidden inadequacy, all of that, all that kind of stuff that fuels so much of the... it's not, again, it's not the doing that's, that's, there's nothing wrong with the doing, right? It's the... it's the doing that's an expression of fear that's problematic, right? Because you never get to rest. There's never enough, is there? No matter what you do, there's it's never enough. No matter how successful you are, it's never, never enough. You notice that? Mhm.
It's like someone who's a sort of, what would you say? Serial purchaser. Do you know they just got to purchase something? Do you know our society depends on it? Do you know, so we feel something, and I have to go out and buy something, you know? And the thing is, you buy the darn thing, and for a moment, you feel pretty good, right? I just got... I just bought it $200 pair of shoes. Wow. Feels so great. So lovely to have that clean box. You know, go sort of that... I don't know what that paper is called inside, you know? But it's just folded just so over the top, you know? And then it comes down in this one, and it's just, it's perfect, and it's beautiful, and you bought it, and it feels good. It's... it's relieved you of your sort of anxiety. It's relieved you of your own uncomfortability for a moment, and in that sense, it works. But it works for not for the reason we think. It doesn't work because we've purchased something. It works because there's a short gap when we've purchased something. Let's say if you're a serial purchaser, when you've purchased something for a moment of satisfaction, you're free of the desire to purchase, right? And when you're free of that desire temporarily, it feels great, right?
So, you wanted that, uh, whatever it is. I'm a guy. So, you wanted that TV. You wanted that... that, I don't know what it is now. It seems like, you know, a 200 in TV is like standard. It's amazing. So, you wanted this TV, right? And then finally, you get the TV. You get the TV. You've got it in your hot little hands. You're un... You're opening it. You're... do you know you're in that paradoxical state of happiness? Do you know that you got your TV to the point of euphoria, right? But in the back of your mind, you've already got a little anxiety because you know you're going to have to read the manual to understand how the damn thing works. But that's not that big a deal. So, you feel great. And as long as you are in that state, you feel good. You think it... you feel good because it's you got the TV or the parachutes or whatever it is you... but that's not why you feel good. You feel good because you don't want anything else. You're... you're temporarily experiencing the freedom from wanting. You're experiencing no desire, and no desire is happiness. And so, whether it's purchasing something or accomplishing something or doing something, it's all the same dynamic, you see. And the dynamic goes on. It can't stop until you stop, and you, and you go, "Okay, what's underneath this?" And as you said beautifully, didn't take you 10 seconds to get the words out when you mentioned anxiety, fear. There it is.
So, would you say then, especially while I'm here this week, a good practice is just to really see how deep I can go into that sense of anxiety and kind of be with it when it's there?
You know, you don't have to try to juice it up, you know?
Oh, good. Okay. Yeah.
I'm not... No, you... you don't have to sit here going, "Okay, now my task is to feel really anxious and to feel it, you know." No, everything has to be authentic, right? It's either there or it's not there. So, I'm going to do something that, who knows, you may not have to do it if you, if it happens now, but you may do it later. I'm going to just talk about something, but you explore it for... hopefully you explore it why I'm talking about it.
So, when we start to reverse this process, the backward step, right? So, the... the momentum is going always out that way, right? I'm going to do something. I'm going to accomplish something. I'm going to be somebody. I'm going to purchase something. I'm going whatever it is. And it's just this movement of energy going out there, and we... we then we express it. I'm going to find my soulmate. I'm going to find the person that's going to make me happy. You... there's so many ways this can be expressed. And then we take the backward step. It's as if you're kind of going against the grain, going against that current a little bit. And as soon as you step back a bit, you go against the current a little bit. Then you'll experience sort of that anxiety. If I'm not doing that, if I'm not accomplishing that, if I'm not... if I'm not obsessed with finding the perfect lover, I feel anxious. I feel right. I feel afraid. I feel whatever it is. Maybe I feel inadequate. Maybe I bump into that sense of that hidden sense that human beings so often have of simply of not being enough. It's like the... the feeling of a deficiency of being in the center of you.