This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Confidence; Ten Reflections (5 of 10) Identity. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Confidence; Dharmette: Ten Reflections (5 of 10) Identity - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Confidence

Good morning, or good day. Welcome.

For today's meditation, I'd like to call on or evoke in you your confidence. Confidence has a lot to do with showing up fully to engage with what we're doing, with a belief that we can do it. It is not just that we can do it with part of who we are, but that we can do what we're doing with all of who we are. We can bring all of ourselves together in an embodied, holistic way to show up for our activity. We are not divided by other interests or preoccupations. There's a confidence, a wholeheartedness; we can give ourselves fully to the activity at hand.

I think of confidence as an embodied state. It's not only a belief—belief may be just a small part of it, believing in yourself, believing you can do something, or believing in the value of it. But even without belief, some people can have a disposition towards confidence. That is what comes with Dharma practice: we're confident in the value of being here, present, inhabiting this moment's life here and now.

So for this meditation, hold the idea of confidently inhabiting your present-moment experience. Let that confidence be soft and quiet, not agitating or energizing in a way that makes you restless, but rather providing the full capacity to show up here. In that showing up, something of the fullness of ourselves has a chance to become still—dynamically still. Something about all of ourselves has a chance to come to rest in the pull of gravity, rather than being activated in such a way that we're spinning out.

Assuming a meditation posture, add to it some modicum of confidence, an expression of confidence. If someone were to see you meditating now, would they see a person sitting with confidence? Is there a full involvement of your body? Whether you're lying down, sitting on a couch, or sitting upright, can you adjust your body so that you are showing or demonstrating to yourself that you are bringing all of who you are to the meditation?

Adjust your back, perhaps, in such a way that the shoulder blades have a chance to roll down the back and the chest has a chance to open and spread out. Are the hands in a position that also supports the idea and feeling of confidence? So the hands are not casually on your lap or someplace else, but placed as if you're reinforcing that confidence of being here—embodied presence for being here and now.

The same applies to the feet. If you're sitting in a chair or on your couch and your legs are draped over the side, is there some way to have the soles of your feet confidently placed on the floor or some surface, so that they too have a feeling of confidence?

Gently, let the expansion of the inhale carry with it a gentle confidence that spreads through your body. Take a few slightly deeper breaths that feel just right for you, spreading confidence and embodied attention throughout the body.

Let the confidence remain as you exhale. Long exhale, relax the tensions of your body.

Let your breathing return to normal. With a normal breath, continue to let the inhale be an inhale of confidence. Even if there's discomfort, as you breathe in, let the expansion and spreading of the torso and belly be a spreading of inhabiting your body. Being here. Taking up residence in this body. And as you exhale, soften and relax the body.

Not so much watching your breathing from the control tower, as inhabiting the body's experience of breathing. As if you're entering your body, being your body breathing.

Is there a way you can more fully inhabit yourself? A physical embodiment that gently spreads a sense of confidence for being here, now, in this place, in this time, in this body? Where the living experience of now emanates?

Let the thinking mind become quieter so there's more room and attention for the embodied experience of confidence here and now.

And then, as we come to the end of this meditation, take a few moments to feel if your experience of being embodied in your body has changed in any way in the course of the meditation. If it has, might that come along with something that provides you with more confidence, assurance, or faith in the value of being embodied? The value of being aware here in your direct experience?

Perhaps there is even a sense of refuge in awareness of here and now. A refuge in how that awareness lives in your body, even if there's discomfort in the body.

Imagine that with a certain grounding in your body—grounding in a confident embodiment, confident presence through your body—that you are able to meet another person without losing yourself, without getting caught up in the social dynamic. Imagine you can stay connected and grounded fully in yourself, and in so doing, actually have a fuller ability to be aware of the other than if you leaned into the relationship or got pulled into your preoccupations, thoughts, and stories about what's happening.

Maybe imagine that with confident grounding in your body, you can now have room for more good will. A good will which is confident, unhesitant, gentle, undemanding, free of expectations and judgments. Just good will. Just a sense of general friendliness.

Bring that good will and friendliness and spread it out towards all the people in your life.

May all people be happy.

May all people be safe.

May all people be peaceful.

May all people be free.

And may my own peace and freedom that emanates from my confident embodiment support others to be peaceful and free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Reflections (5 of 10) Identity

Hello and welcome to the fifth talk on the Ten Reflections for a Spiritual Life.

These ten reflections, or ten themes, are also orientations or concerns that are activated or present as we offer spiritual care to others. Spiritual caregivers might be listening for these themes in people's lives and seeing which one of them is challenging for people at any given time. "Challenging" means it could be the major challenge of their life—something has ruptured, been taken away, or there is a loss.

In offering spiritual care, we try to recognize this and support people. Sometimes people don't even recognize it; they know they're suffering, but they don't know why. Somehow, in the conversation with a spiritual caregiver, it can come out: "Oh, this is where it is." What needs to be addressed are issues of meaning—the framing of our experience in terms of what is most important for us, or framing it in a way that brings forth our vitality and inspiration. Maybe what is lacking is a sense of direction or purpose. What's lacking might be a sense of agency, the ability to do and engage with what's important. Or perhaps what's lacking is a sense of autonomy, a sense that we're capable as an individual to stand up for ourselves, take care of ourselves, or engage as an independent person with what seems important for us.

Today's topic is identity.

That's one that people have a lot of struggles with. There are what some people have called "identity wars" going on in the United States, and maybe other places in the world as well, where people's identities are denied by others. Not strictly denied and ignored, but sometimes met with active hostility towards who people are. It is phenomenally painful for individuals and for society as a whole.

Some people never had people who believed in them—parents or teachers who believed in them so that who they were could really flower and develop. Children especially take in the confidence others have in them—the others who show us or open up doors for us, saying, "Yes, you can come here. You're capable of stepping forward here as you are, who you are." Maybe we haven't had people who mirrored who we are and helped us to recognize for ourselves the beauty of who we are as a human being. Everyone has beauty. Everyone is a marvel. To be seen with that kind of respect, that kind of care, is one of the great gifts, especially for children as they grow up. To have hostility, judgment, and criticism be what is mirrored for children can really distort how they develop as a person. One way that distortion happens is that they don't really grow into the fullness of who they are.

In Buddhism, there is often a tendency to somehow dismiss the importance of identity. I think it was more common in the United States a decade or two ago, when there was an overemphasis on the teaching of not-self¹, or how it was often understood, the teaching of no-self—that we were supposed to let go of identity and have no identity. This is impossible, at least in the way that I want to talk about identity today.

Identity is who we are. I like to think of it as the sum total of all the different facets of who we are and how we show up in the world. We show up with our abilities, our capacities, our background, our conditioning, our way of thinking, our belief systems, our bias, our hurts, and our joys. All those come together to create the integral whole of identity.

This is why identity is very closely connected to the topic of integrity. Integrity is when we can come forward with all of who we are in a way that is harmonious, that is not ruptured by any kind of tendency to cause harm to oneself or to others. Harming is a rupture in the wholeness of our identity. Some people create an identity around being aggressive, a fighter, or even a destroyer. But then there is not the integrity of the whole person there. From a Buddhist point of view, that identity has become fixated. It is the fixed identity that Buddhist practice shows us diminishes who we are.

When we get attached to a particular aspect of who we are, we limit ourselves. In Buddhism, the idea is to have no fixed identity, but let the identity of who we are evolve and change over time, and perhaps in some ways be co-created by the events we're in. Different events call on different aspects of ourselves.

It was wonderful to be in the monastery for many years where I was assigned to very different jobs that I never would have had if I had been out in the world working. Each job that I took required very different parts of who I am. In a sense, my identity shifted and changed with the different jobs I had. Then when I became a parent, my identity as a parent shifted and changed. As my children grew up, the fullness—what was called on me and called forth for who I could be—shifted and changed as my children got older.

To have the fluidity to discover who we are in the fullness of the moment, and to realize that is shifting and changing, allows us to appreciate who we are. In Buddhism, who we are is phenomenally important. Not who we are in terms of a fixed identity, but who we are as a sum total of what animates us, what drives us, what inspires us to speak and to act and to live in the world.

If we act from a place of good will, it's radically different than if we act from a place of ill will. Who we are as a manifestation of good will, who we are as a manifestation of being ethical and non-harming, who we are as a manifestation of wisdom and patience, who we are as a manifestation of joy and playfulness—all kinds of things come into play.

The guideline I'd like to suggest from a Buddhist point of view is to be holistic, so that we bring all of who we are into the picture so there can be a sense of integrity. What that includes is things that are difficult in us. If there's fear, that's part of our identity in the moment we're afraid, or the day we're afraid, or the year that we have anxiety. To be honest about that, to make room to recognize that and let it be. If we have anger and resentment, there's an art to not pushing that away, not denying it, ignoring it, or diminishing ourselves because of it. There's a way of opening up so that too is part of our wholeness. That too is nothing we need to be embarrassed about. In letting that become part of the wholeness of identity, then we can be honest about it with other people. We can take it in stride. We can work with it wisely and carefully.

This idea of opening up to all of who we are is what it can mean to have a healthy sense of identity. All of who we are is shifting and changing every day. This movement towards recognition, opening—this movement of mindfulness to recognize how we fixated on something, or closed around something, or are shutting out something—just keep opening and opening. "This too is who I am."

Identity is a source of a lot of suffering for people. Some people have an identity that they have relied on, and if they lose it—they get ill and can't live that way anymore, or there is loss in life—they suffer. If identity was tied to a particular person, and those people are not there anymore, then that identity is no longer present. To keep opening to the fullness of it all is not to get stuck in that fixed identity, but to open and allow: "This too. This too has to be included."

If that involves grief, grief itself is a kind of very special, almost sacred state. To say it differently: all of who we are, that integrity and everything that's included, is entering into a kind of sacred way of being in this world.

So this opening and recognizing the areas in our life where we are challenged, the areas in life that maybe ordinarily we would be embarrassed to show people or feel like something is wrong with us—a full, integral sense of identity just opens to that too. Without judgment, without a sense that this is wrong or shouldn't be this way. It discovers a rightness, a wisdom, a balance, and a healthy way of being when all of it is taken into account. We can shift and change with the ever-shifting, changing nature of identity. Who we are is always changing, but we can trust who we are if we are honest and open to all of it—"warts and all," as they say.

I hope that this gives you something to think about over the weekend and the next few days.

What are the identities that you have had? What are the different ways in which you have been caught in identity? What are the different ways that you've learned to open up to more and more of who you are, been more and more inclusive to affirm your identities, to make room for who you are? How did you become more whole in that process? How have you learned not to fixate on an identity while at the same time not denying any of it? What are the challenges of identity you've had? What are the joys of it that you've had?

That's the reflection that I'd like to offer you for the next few days. We'll take this particular theme of identity, and on Monday, relate it to the topic of dignity. Identity and dignity go together.

Thank you very much.