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The Attitude We Bring - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 10, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Good evening. Can we turn up the volume just a little bit? Let's see, I have to talk now to hear how the volume goes. Yeah, is this okay? Can you hear okay in the back?

So, good evening. Tonight, I want to talk a little bit about something that we often don't think about, neither in our daily life nor in relationship to our meditation practice, and that is the attitude that we're bringing. In particular, I'm going to talk about the attitude that we bring to our meditation practice, but it's not only about that. Of course, the attitude that we bring has an impact, but often it's subtle, and often we're not even aware of the attitude that we're bringing and what impact it can have. We're not even aware if there is an alternative to the attitude that we're bringing.

So, I'm going to define attitude as the way in which we are relating to our experience. You know, like, "Do you have an attitude?" You have a chip on your shoulder, right? That's a kind of attitude with which people might show up and interact with others, where they are just ready to be offended and ready to defend themselves or something that's important to them. So, the attitude we might bring is the way in which we feel about, or think about, or respond to our experiences.

For example, another example might be—and I'm sure all of us have this example, it's funny that we have this expression—"to wake up on the wrong side of the bed." I sometimes use this example because, well, sometimes if you don't sleep well... I mean, it's obvious. All of us have this experience of not sleeping well for whatever reason. There's a countless number of reasons why we might do this. And then when we don't sleep well, there's a certain outlook that we have, a certain way in which we see things, literally and figuratively. If we're feeling cranky or grumpy... maybe I'll just say for me, I'm one of those people that when I first wake up, I'm usually in an okay mood, but I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't want to say words. I just don't want to interact with anybody at all. I just kind of want to do my own thing, and my own thing includes a cup of coffee. I just love coffee, I have for such a long time. And then later, after I've been awake and had my cup of coffee, been doing my thing, then I'm okay. Then I'm happy to interact with others. But first thing in the morning, waking up and then having to interact with others, I'm often a little cranky. That's just kind of the way it is. I don't have to be, but I can say, "No, no, I'm going to not be cranky and meet this moment with some kindness," but sometimes I'm just cranky first thing in the morning. I'm like, "That's okay, that's just how it is."

The Attitude We Bring

There's this way in which this crankiness or grumpiness affects our outlook, which I'm saying is the way that we see things. We see things both literally and figuratively. That is, if we have this cranky attitude, we literally will see, "Oh shoot, yeah, the floor needs mopping," and "Wow, look at the spiderwebs in that part of the bookcase." There are these things that we notice that are just a little bit... they're not the bright, cheerful things, right? There's this sense of, "Oh, here's a thing that's wrong," and "Oh yeah, here's this other thing that's wrong," or something like this. We're not noticing that the birds are chirping outside. We're not noticing that at least the sink isn't filled with dirty dishes or whatever it is. There's a selection bias that happens that's due to the attitude that we're bringing.

And maybe that's not so bad, you would say. Okay, that's just the way it is. But this has such a bigger impact than just the things that we see, because the things that we see, what we're choosing to really place our attention on—not intentionally choosing, but what we're noticing—influences our interpretations. For example, just building on this example of seeing how the floor needs to be mopped and there's not dirty dishes, but there's all this mess that needs to be put away or something like this, then there might be an interpretation like, "Gee, the people I live with, they don't take care. I have to do it all myself." Or maybe like, "Oh, I'm not a very good person to take care of my living space." There's this interpretation we can make. This selection bias in what we're viewing, then we make it mean something.

And what we're making it mean always has something to do with us. Even if this example that I gave about, "Well, the people that I live with, they don't take care of this place," then there's always the next beat: "and they expect me to do it because they don't respect me," or "they're not sensitive to the condition of our living space, and they're not sensitive to me either. And they don't know how important it is to me for it to be clean," or something like this. So then when we make it mean something, when we interpret it, it's always about something to do about us. Always. If you look at this, if you investigate, you'll see that's kind of by definition what happens.

But then, you know, that's bad enough, but then it doesn't stop there because then our behavior changes. If we find ourselves stuck in, "Well, you know, they don't respect me, they're not sensitive to what's important to me, they're not sensitive at all, look how they're insensitive in all these different areas, and they don't even notice that the floors need to be mopped," or whatever it might be, then that interpretation affects our behavior. Then maybe we're not going to be as generous as we could be or as warm when we are greeting them. Instead, we're cranky. We meet them with a crankiness or grumpiness. So our behavior gets influenced by the interpretation that we made, by what we saw, by what attitude we had.

And then we might say, "Well, as if that weren't bad enough," it just keeps on going. Then the behavior, like, "Well, then maybe we're not as generous"—generous in giving them the benefit of the doubt or generous in doing something like making a cup of tea for them or a cup of coffee for them in the morning, for example, or doing something nice for them to help them have a nice day and know that they're appreciated. Instead, our behavior, not being generous, kind of influences the experiences we have. Well, if we're not generous to them, then of course they react to that and meet us, maybe in a way that increases our crankiness. You know, maybe they're not warm and attentive to us or loving to us. They might be, but they might not be too. So this big whole cascade of events is just kind of based on this attitude that we had. But so often we don't even notice attitude when it's extreme, like crankiness first thing in the morning, and we know this is a pattern that we've had. But so often there are subtle attitudes that we have that are having a big impact on our life and a big impact on our meditation practice.

And I want to talk a little bit about that because I've been using this word outlook for attitude, but there's a way in which we might say we could summarize this part of this cascade of events I was talking about as the lens through which we see everything. Or maybe we might even say the prism through which we see things, the way in which things are maybe being a little bit distorted. Not maybe being a little bit distorted; I would say all of us have our own ways of distorting, quote unquote, what we see. We know this, right? If you ask eyewitnesses to what happened, you'll get, you know, five different people, you'll get five different little twists on what happened. There's a way in which all of us are not seeing things exactly the same.

So what are some of the ways, what are some attitudes that we could cultivate that can be a support for our meditation practice, which can be a support for having more ease and freedom in our lives? And first of all, it's helpful to just notice what are some ways in which, yeah, maybe I'll just re-say this: some attitudes we can bring to our practice that can be a support. Because often we notice that we don't have these attitudes, and then there's a way in which, of course, it impacts our meditation practice, which impacts this movement or this opening to greater and greater peace and freedom.

So here's one attitude. During mindfulness meditation—I'm going to particularly focus on mindfulness meditation, which is what gets taught here at IMC and what we teach primarily at the retreat center—an attitude that is supportive is to recognize that it's enough to clearly recognize what is happening. Just clearly recognize what is happening. In mindfulness meditation, that's all that is required, is just to recognize what is happening. That sounds pretty straightforward, but when we start to look, we start to notice how, well, actually, we kind of want to have particular experiences. So we're not just noticing what's happening; we're trying to be more relaxed, or we're trying to have some more ease, or we're trying to have some more happiness, which is all legitimate and valid, and I'll talk about this paradox in a moment.

But for mindfulness meditation, just this notion that the activity, what's been asked of us, maybe we might use this language, is just to receive the experience. Whatever the experience might be—it might be a sound, might be the pressure against the body where we're sitting, it might be mental events, it might be the experience of breathing—whatever the experience is, it's sufficient just to receive it and have clarity about it. This is the pressure against the body that the chair or the cushion is having. This is the stretch that gets felt in the torso when there's an inhale. Or this is a sound; we don't need to know what particular sound, we just need to know that it's a sound.

So what's implicit in this, during mindfulness meditation, is there's nothing that needs to be changed or fixed. Instead, there's just this moment. We don't have to resist anything. We don't have to prove something. There's nothing that has to be changed. There's nothing that we have to resist, that we have to push away or something like this. So with mindfulness meditating, we're not trying to create something. We're not trying to create a special experience that maybe we've heard about or read about or that we've had in the past. We're not trying to make those happen. Instead, by just receiving experiences and having clarity about them, there's a way in which we're creating the conditions in which more ease and relaxation can happen. But we're not making relaxation happen. We're not making anything happen. We're just aligning with experience. We're aligning with reality. We're looking clearly at what's happening. And of course, what's happening here is here in the present, not lost in some fantasy or something in the future or the past or something like this. So we're honoring what is already happening.

It seems so simple. It turns out not to be so easy, because even if we are noticing what's actually happening in the present moment, so often there's like, "Yeah, but it's not what I want. I want more of this and less of that, and I want what I had before," or something like this. It's not so easy to just have this clean receiving of the experience and allowing it to be as it is. Because, well, there are all kinds of reasons why, but one of them is we don't like to be uncomfortable. Of course, we don't like to be uncomfortable. But if we really pay attention to our life, we'll notice how often do we shift our posture, just in daily life, let alone meditating? You'll just notice that all day long, we're shifting our posture. A little bit of discomfort. All day long, we're having to go pee, we're having to drink water, we're having to eat, right? There's this little bit of discomfort, turning down the volume, turning up the volume, or these types of things in which there's just a little bit of discomfort all the time. And so there are so many things in which we can adjust, and we do adjust. But what would it be like just to receive experiences?

And part of this attitude, that it's enough to clearly recognize what is happening, is recognizing that every moment in which we are aware of what's actually happening is an opportunity to learn something. We learn about ourselves. We learn like, "Yeah, this is uncomfortable, and I have this urge to change it. I have this urge to make it different or to distract myself and go off into a fantasy or something like that." Or maybe we start to learn like, "Oh yeah, I have this pattern of meeting things that I really like with a little bit of fear that they're going to go away," and this little contraction, even though it's pleasant, I'm thinking, "Oh, oh, I wish it would always stay." Or we might notice that we have this pattern of, if something is a little bit uncomfortable, we have this pattern of getting irritated internally.

This is one thing that I notice is that pattern of mine. When I'm driving—this happened yesterday—and I'm on a road in which there's just one lane going each way and you can't pass or anything like this, and the person in front of you is going way below the speed limit, and there's huge tons of cars behind, right? And this person... you know, there's nothing to be done. You're just there, and you're seeing the speed limit sign and you're looking at your speedometer and going, "Okay..." You know, I'm noticing like there's some irritation arising. But what's fascinating is if we look at this, there's something inside of us that thinks if I have this internal experience, somehow it will change the external experience. Right? There's some crazy thinking that we're not even aware of that says something like, "My irritation is going to make my external experience better." I got irritated, and the person in front of me still drove exactly the same. It doesn't work. Getting irritated doesn't change anything except make ourselves irritated. And I mean, often we don't even notice how we have this kind of crazy—I'm using this word "crazy"—ideas because when we really think about it like that, we start to say like, "Wait, is that right? Well, why do we get irritated? What's the function? What's the purpose?" It's just a pattern. It's not helpful.

So mindfulness is acknowledging and observing whatever happens, but that doesn't mean that we have to be passive in life. I would say mindfulness meditation is about receiving experience, and there can be times in which we want to do something during meditation, and especially if we're doing more like concentration practice, which we often do intentionally to increase the stability and the stillness. But there's this way in which, maybe this is a paradox or maybe it's pointing to the art of practice or some subtlety or nuance to practice. Is there a way that we can be with our experience and then maybe this flows into the next attitude or something that we can bring and trust that wisdom flows out of any sense of stillness that's getting created?

If we can trust the experiences, if we can receive the experience, even if it's exactly what we don't want in that moment, there's a certain amount of stillness that gets created. If we are putting down the pushing and pulling, the irritation, "I want more, I want less," if we're able to put that down, then there's a certain amount of non-agitation. There's a certain amount of stillness, and out of that stillness grows wisdom. And we can trust that wisdom. We can trust that wisdom that flows out of this stillness, this non-agitation.

And then the nature of this wisdom that arises out of that, it has this quality of clarity and certainty. If it's not clear, then it's not wisdom. It's a certain type of confusion that, you know, maybe clarity, maybe wisdom will arise, maybe clarity will arise, but if it's not clarity, it's not wisdom. It's a certain amount of confusion. But when I'm saying clarity, it doesn't mean necessarily that we have a clear intellectual, cognitive, conceptual understanding. Sometimes wisdom just shows up as more of a felt experience. Maybe wisdom has a bodily experience of "nothing needs to happen right now," and it's just a sense of contentment, non-agitation, non-resistance. Like, "Yeah, nothing needs to happen." Maybe that's it, and it's just that feeling of steadiness, of stability, not being pushed around.

Or maybe wisdom has some real conceptual, cognitive idea. Maybe there's something that just bubbles up like, "Oh, I should ask for forgiveness. Yeah, I did some harm there," or something like this. Or, "I should tell the truth about this. I should tell the whole truth about something." You know, maybe wisdom just bubbles up that way. And you know, even though it's exactly what you don't want to do—you don't want to admit that you made a mistake or that you were withholding the truth or something like that—maybe sometimes it just bubbles up and you're like, "Oh yeah, I don't want to, but yeah, I can." It just becomes clear, and then there's a certain amount of certainty too. There's a certain amount of certainty because the wisdom is not concerned about outcomes. It's not like this, "Yeah, I should tell the whole truth about this so that..." It doesn't have the "so that..." It has, "I should tell the whole truth about this because it's the right thing to do, because it's the next thing to do." If we have this "so that... so that they will like me more, so that I'll feel more comfortable around them, so that I can get a promotion, this person won't be irritated with me," so that, you know, all this, then that may be a smart thing to do, but it's a little bit different than the wisdom that I'm talking about or pointing to—the wisdom that comes out of this stillness, that comes out of this non-agitation.

But I'm saying it has this clarity and certainty. But maybe there isn't clarity. You can have clarity about there not being clarity. There's confusion right now, and you can be clear that there's confusion. And in that way, right, that's clarity. And I'm a person that doesn't like to be confused. I'm much better now, but in the beginning, I had to understand everything and know everything, and I spent so much of my energy trying to understand everything. And this was like a game changer for me: if you know that you're confused, you're not confused. You know that you're confused. And so I would just say, "Oh, confusion is here," and then somehow that would just feel better, and I didn't feel this certain, "Oh okay, I got to figure it out" feeling. Just, "Oh no, no, this is just what confusion feels like. This feels like fogginess or uncertainty or hesitation. It feels like restlessness, agitation," however it feels.

So if there's some stillness, you can trust the wisdom that comes out of it. The wisdom has clarity and certainty. If there isn't clarity, you can have clarity about not having clarity, and that can be a certain part of wisdom. There's this way that we might say, you know, "Wisdom knows what needs to be done," instead of saying, "When I have wisdom, I know what needs to be done." That's conventional language, and we can use that. But if we were to just tweak the language, "Wisdom knows what's to be done," kind of takes out the part of "I, when I'm wise, knows what to do," or "my wisdom knows." Just, "Wisdom knows what's to be done." There's a way there can be a certain kind of relaxation of trying to prove something to ourselves or to somebody else, and kind of just taking the "me," taking the "I" out of it.

So also, there's this way in which this stillness that can happen when there's this non-agitation, that can happen when we are bringing this attitude that the only thing that needs to be brought to meditation practice is just to receive experiences with clarity, know them, understand them as best we can. There's also this sense of equanimity¹. That's essentially kind of what it means, right? To receive experiences instead of just immediately running away from them or trying to grab on to them. So equanimity has this sense of stability, this sense of unshakability, a sense of balance, or we might even say ballast. You know, like this way on a sailboat, you might go over to the side, but with some ballast, it rights itself.

I like this that Payutto Bhikkhu² writes, that a mind that does not have equanimity, we might say one that is not just receiving experiences, is like being a drunk driver. He says it's like trying to drive down the middle of the lane, but no matter how hard the driver tries to go straight, inevitably they swerve right and left. Sometimes they get too close to the car in the next lane, or sometimes they get too close to the edge of the lane, the edge of the road. So there's this way in which we can notice how when we don't have this stability, the mind is kind of doing this, trying to find just the perfect experience.

So this idea of bringing this attitude that mindfulness meditation is about receiving experiences with clarity, as opposed to trying to have a particular experience, in some ways, as I was pointing to earlier, is really different than what we might have thought about mindfulness meditation. To be sure, a lot of people come to meditation either indirectly or directly through MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction³. We just want to feel more relaxed, we want to have more ease. And it turns out that a way to have more relaxation and more ease is, as best we can, to soften the amount of pushing and pulling we're having on our experience, soften the reactivity that we're having. But, you know, we live in a society, of course, that's really promoting pleasure, and you have to feel good all the time. And this idea that if you aren't feeling good all the time, then something is terribly wrong.

But there's this way in which, maybe here's a third attitude that we can bring to our meditation practice, is that our well-being is important. And then you might ask, "But wait, Diana, you're talking about we shouldn't be chasing pleasure." It's so important to make this distinction between well-being and pleasure. Often they get conflated. And I know that sometimes when I've had practice discussions with individuals, I'm thinking of one time in particular, I had given the invitation or instruction to pay attention to your well-being and be sensitive to when there's a really high sense of well-being, a good sense of well-being. And then sometime later that person came back to me and said, "Well, when you told me to do whatever makes me happy and to go after pleasure, I should do this." No, that's not actually what I said. But of course, we hear this, of course, we hear it that way.

But there are times when in our practice, when we're meditating for example, when there will be a sense of discomfort, either whether it's having the body be still or things are coming up that are uncomfortable. And I remember hearing Gil say this a long time ago, he said something about, "Any spiritual practice worth its salt will have some time when you feel uncomfortable." It's not just about having pleasure all the time. That's about bliss; that's probably involves intoxicants if you want to be feeling pleasure all the time, right? But to notice if when you're meditating, if there's a certain amount of feeling tired or like, "Oh my gosh, when is this going to end?" type of feeling, or when the bell rings and there's a, "Oh, thank goodness," that kind of a feeling, then that can be an indicator that you're trying to have particular experiences. That you're subtly trying to push something away or subtly trying to have something more, and that undermines your sense of well-being. In the sense that well-being is this sense of maybe a certain sense of stability, a sense of okayness despite things being uncomfortable, despite things being really comfortable or something like this. And this is a subtle thing that I'm pointing to.

It turns out the greatest sense of well-being is not chasing after experiences and not pushing them away, but instead to just be with what is. I've said this a number of times, and I like to say it, so I'm going to say it again. Often we have this sense of like, "Oh yeah, but I want to be really relaxed and happy, and I want to not be experiencing this thing that's agitating me," or "My life is a mess and falling apart, and I want to have clarity about that." You know, we want something that's not being experienced. We want something out there, point B. We're at point A, and whatever's happening here isn't adequate. We want this out there. How do we get to this point B? How do we get to this place where what we want is going to be there, when we're going to have this sense of well-being and ease and peace and freedom? And how do we get to point B? You get to point B by being completely, fully at point A. Just being at point A, receiving the experience with clarity. That's how you get to point B. And this is something that you can hear somebody say, but it's not until you have experienced this that you realize, "Oh yeah, there's something about putting down the struggle. There's something about putting down the agitation." And instead, this incredible—I'm using the word incredible, it is incredible, but it's subtle—this sense of well-being that arises even though we might be uncomfortable, but we're no longer wrestling with reality. It can be like, "Yeah, this sucks, but it is what it is." And when we are in those moments of non-agitation is when this wisdom can arise.

So these are some attitudes that we can bring to practice. The attitude that mindfulness meditation is about experiencing what is happening, as opposed to having a particular experience. That's one attitude: it's enough to just experience what's happening. A second attitude is you can trust the wisdom that flows out of that stillness. And the third is your well-being is important. Pay attention to the subtle sense of contentment, ease, peace, and freedom. These are different than pleasure. They're related to happiness, they're in the neighborhood of happiness. But I want to highlight that it's different than pleasure. So these three attitudes can make a real big difference in your meditation experience as well as in your life, especially when we notice how often we don't have these attitudes. That can be really helpful too.

A short little poem. This poem is by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer. Of course, I love her poetry, I'm often using her poems, saying her poems. So it's a really short one, it's called "What Took Me So Long." I love her titles. What took me so long. And here's this poem, again, it's by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer.

Playing referee between the sun and clouds, eventually I take off my stripes to be a spectator instead. How pleasant, without all that whistling.

Playing referee between the sun and clouds, eventually I take off my stripes to be a spectator instead. How pleasant, without all that whistling.

Right? The referees on the side are always whistling, "Nope, do this. Nope, do that," you know. And something that I love about this little poem, she's playing referee between the sun and clouds. Sun and clouds, this is nature. The clouds are moving, we don't control them. Just in the same way that there are so many things that we don't control, but we're trying to control. But how helpful is it to see that, oh yeah, it's just the nature of some experiences to be uncomfortable. It's the nature that we don't get to control as many things as we think we can, or something like this. There's this way that when we stop being the referee, stop whistling and trying to make things go a certain way, there's just kind of a... the reactivity just settles down, just through attrition or entropy. There's this way in which the reactivity just starts to lose its energy. And it's so much more pleasant, so much more well-being. I think I'll end with that, and I'll open it up to see if there are some questions or comments. We already have a question back here.

Q&A

Question: It's been my experience that false beliefs can be really tricky, and I have a lot of them about my spiritual practice. It could be any number of things, but how active do you have to be in kind of like trying to see them and maybe say, "Oh, is that really true?"

Answer: Yeah, this is a great question. So I was talking about mindfulness meditation in just terms of just receiving experiences, but there might be a time in which you do a different type... you know, I'm maybe being technical here. During meditation, it might be helpful to stop doing, being mindful, and instead drop in a question and to say, "What is being believed here?" And then, you know, I've said this sometimes, just asking the question, and then something bubbles up. So there's a way in which we could be mindful, but we notice that we can't be mindful because there's this pressure to think or a lot of uncomfortableness, and we're just feeling stuck and we're just grinding our wheels or spinning our wheels or something like that. Then maybe it's appropriate to put mindfulness aside and then to just drop in a question or something like that. Thank you for that question.

Question: Great talk, thank you. You're welcome. So the challenge I encounter with respect to attitude or being the referee during my practice is the apparent paradox between accepting and allowing and honoring and validating what is, and wanting to cultivate compassion, find peace, relax. And I think the paradox is very salient in the example of anger. So when anger arises and I practice with it, of course, there's an instinct to find compassion, you know, don't let the mind get lost in thought, come back to the breath. There's an effort to not let the anger consume me. But on the other hand, honoring and validating the anger, that it's okay to be angry, it's reasonable to be angry given the situation, it's not wrong or shameful to be angry, is a tricky balance I find. Because if anger is allowed to have free reign and it is perfectly fine the way it is, I suspect that's not going to lead to more peace and compassion. So I wonder how you balance this amount of effort, especially in the example of difficult emotions.

Answer: Yeah. So I would say in mindfulness meditation, well, like in a formal meditation period, I'll say the anger can just... allow it to build up, up, up, up, rage, "Oh my gosh, murderous rage," and you're still sitting here and it's like, "Oh my gosh, this is big," and just experience it. Like, "Yep, heat in the face, the arms, and want to punch or something," or "the legs want to run." Or in the body, maybe there's a lump in the throat. You're like, there's just agitation in the body, and you're still sitting. And maybe there's even sweat coming, you're like, and still sitting. Then it's the nature for it to come up and then pass away. But can we do that? Can we allow it to get really big?

And what often happens, I'd say most often happens, and this is a part of the difficulty, is it arises and then we get lost in thought. "Oh, I shouldn't be angry," or, "Yeah, I can't believe they did that, and that reminds me this other time they did that, and the next time this happens, I'm going to do this," and then we're completely lost in thought and we're no longer just being with the experience. So one way to just be with the experience and allow it to rise and pass away—and it will pass away, of course, it will—is to translate anger into a bodily, somatic experience. I described it, you know, heat in the face or wanting to move or whatever it might be. So to use adjectives or descriptions about bodily experiences, because anger, all of our emotions have different elements. They have both thoughts and sensations in the body. The sensations in the body are what's happening in the present moment; the thoughts aren't. So let the thoughts... you don't have to get rid of them, just let them be in the background and take care of themselves. Just like, "Oh yeah, there's going to be all that story-making, there's going to be a lot of pressure, and then they're going to protest, 'No, no, no, this is really important, you have to think about this because...'" But as best you can, just be with the bodily experience, and then allow whatever is going to arise next to arise.

Question: Yeah, yeah, very interesting. So as I understand, the effort then is bringing the attention down. And what I wonder then is what then arises with that effort is the resistance to thought, the resistance itself as an experience. Recognizing that I am lost in thought, bringing the attention down, being with what is here and recognizing a strong resistance to new thoughts. It's very interesting, it's very subtle, resistance to those thoughts. And the more that resistance builds and the more I'm able to stay with the emotion of anger, eventually that bottle is going to pop and the thoughts will come flooding back even after long periods of silence, long periods of stillness, long periods of being with the breath and the emotion. The thoughts are not happy that I'm not giving them my attention.

Answer: So can you be and shift, for example, go away from anger and go towards resistance? "Oh yeah, the experience of resistance is like this. It's this feeling of whatever it is," because that's the next thing that's happening, is the resistance. Maybe there's some residue of anger, maybe some energy left or something, but then to notice the resistance, that's cool. That's perfect.

Closing: Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay, so thank you all for your kind attention, and I'm wishing you a wonderful rest of the evening. Thank you.