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Guided Meditation: Being Connected; Dharmette: Our Stories (5 of 5): We All Have Them - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 20, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Being Connected

Taking our meditation posture, a posture that reflects our intention to bring attention to our experience. So some uprightness, and it also has ease. This can be a practice in itself: how to have some uprightness without stiffness, some uprightness with also some flexibility or malleability.

This week I've been starting us off with bringing attention to our sitting surface, the pressures against the body. I think I'll continue with that this morning. What does it feel like to feel connected, grounded to the foundation upon which you're sitting? It doesn't matter whether it's a couch, chair, bed, or cushion. Can we feel connected, touching the surface, having the surface touch us?

Feeling the pressure against the body. We don't need to use words; we're just feeling the sensations, coming back to them when the mind wanders.

I'm sitting cross-legged, and for me, feelings in the buttocks as it's sitting on the zafu is predominant. If you're in a chair, maybe it's the back of the legs. If you're on a couch, maybe it's the back as it leans back. If you're lying down, maybe it's the back near the shoulders. Wherever it is, just for a moment more, resting attention on the contact with the sitting or lying surface.

And then bringing some attention to the front of the body, the face. Lips touching, maybe some sensations around the eyes.

The chest. Can there be a softness in the chest area? Sometimes we guard ourselves by closing the chest in some kind of way. Can there be an opening, a softening?

And the belly. Can we let the belly relax? However the belly is, can it be okay for this meditation period? Just let it relax.

As we pay attention to the front of the body, we might naturally be noticing the experiences as the body breathes. Let's rest our attention there, noticing the sensations associated with an in-breath. Noticing the sensations associated with out-breaths, and those sensations with the transitions between in-breaths and out-breaths. It's often a place where the mind likes to wander.

When the mind wanders, as it's apt to do, can it not be a problem? Can it just be an indicator, an opportunity to begin mindfulness practice again?

When we wake up after being lost in thought, this can be a good place to notice what kind of stories we have. Either the content of the thoughts, but more importantly, the stories we say about ourselves as meditators when we discover that we've been lost in thought. Sometimes there can be a, "Oh shoot, I'm lost in thought again. I'm never going to get this." They're just thoughts. We don't have to believe them.

Dharmette: Our Stories (5 of 5): We All Have Them

Good morning, welcome. Welcome. Today is our fifth day, Friday, in this series about stories. I'd like to start this morning, the conversation, the offering, with a poem. This poem is by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer¹, this beautiful, wonderful poet who lives in Colorado. This poem is entitled "Sometimes, Like Today, We Remember."

Sometimes, like today, we remember that everyone— even the driver in the white Jeep who cut in front of you, yes, even the elegant woman in the dairy aisle and the man who seems lost on the library steps and the child sitting alone on the bench, yes, everyone—has a story, fears and hopes and something to learn and someone they love and someone who's hurt them and someone they long to hold, and though their stories are mostly invisible, they're always more complex than whatever we project and they're every bit as real as our own. The woman in the dairy aisle smiles at you, and though she is wearing diamonds in her ears, she looks lonely, or is it you who is lonely? Is it all of us, all of us longing for someone to truly see us? And that driver you're cursing—don't we all sometimes feel as if we need to move forward any way we can? And that boy on the bench—notice the empty seat beside him. Perhaps you could sit there too, in the sun. Who knows what might happen next?

I love this poem, partly because it brings up some of these mundane experiences we have: getting cut off while driving, grocery shopping, going to the library, and just seeing somebody on a bench as we're driving or walking along. Just these ordinary experiences that we see every day, and without our even recognizing it, we're projecting something onto these individuals. We might not notice that we're projecting a story onto them.

In this poem, the person is projecting loneliness onto this person. Who knows why the poet thinks that they look lonely? They just look lonely. I love what's being done here; it's like turning this around. "I'm projecting that outwards, but is it really about me?" This is such an interesting thing for us to consider. All the stuff that we're attributing to other people out there, is it really about us? Is the way that we're noticing it because there's something about us that we're trying to disown, and instead we're projecting it on others? Or is there something about us that we're a little bit ashamed of, and we don't want to see it, so we're projecting it out there?

Who knows why we project things onto other people? But what would it be like to notice the stories we're attributing to others, and then just to have some curiosity? Is this about me? Clearly it's about that person, but wait, is there something here about me too? This can be such a learning point. I've been practicing with this for some time. When I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, that person is X, Y, or Z," I ask, "Why am I thinking this, and what does it say about me?" It's been really helpful for me to consider: do I have X, Y, and Z inside myself and I wish I didn't? Or do I think that I have X, Y, and Z, and that's why it irks me that this other person has it?

Rosemerry Trommer, the poet, she writes, "The woman in the dairy aisle smiles at you, and though she is wearing diamonds in her ears, she looks lonely. Or is it you who is lonely?" I love this. She's wearing diamonds in her ears, so we're assuming she must have everything she needs. She has wealth, or at least an indicator that suggests wealth, so she must be happy, right? She must have everything she wants. But then, wait, maybe she's lonely. Just because some people have some things that may be on the surface, we're projecting a story. "Oh, she has wealth, so she must be fine." But no, wait, she has wealth, but she looks lonely. This says a lot about us, right? These stories that we're projecting onto other people.

And then I love that Rosemerry Trommer has this one sentence: "And though their stories are mostly invisible, they're always more complex than whatever we project, and they're every bit as real as our own."

With this example of the woman in the dairy aisle, we're just kind of making her flat, with no depth. A person who seems to have wealth and looks like she's lonely. Full stop. Not appreciating the complexity and the depth. Maybe, and of course I'm just making this up, but maybe the earrings were given to her at the death of somebody near to her that was meaningful, and she's looking lonely because now the family is torn apart after this death. Then there's something completely different than what we were projecting onto her. Or maybe she's wearing these earrings as a major achievement. Maybe she just became cancer-free after battling cancer for some time, and the earrings, maybe they're not even really diamonds, maybe they're just something that's sparkly and from a distance look like diamonds, but something that she wanted to buy herself because she made it through this really difficult time.

There are so many stories we can give to this. But what I appreciate is that this poet is saying, "They're always more complex than whatever we project." So instead of saying the person in the white Jeep who cut us off is a jerk, no, maybe they are in a hurry, or maybe they're just not paying attention because they're so confused. Their boss wanted to call them in at the last moment to say, "I have a very important thing to talk to you," and maybe they're afraid that they're going to get fired, so they don't want to be late to this meeting. We could just go on and on, building these stories.

But there's a way in which when we make them just two-dimensional, kind of flat and simple, we're dehumanizing them. Oh, just a jerk, full stop. Just somebody who has money, full stop. Or the person who seems lost on the library steps, maybe a visitor from out of town, or maybe somebody whose memory is declining and is trying to navigate the confusion of, "Wait, where am I?" Wow, how could we not be impacted by that?

And here's what I think is such a key part of this poem: "And though those stories are mostly invisible, they're always more complex than whatever we project, and they're every bit as real as our own." Every bit as real as our own.

There are so many ways to understand this. One is we tend to think our stories are real and legitimate. Everybody else's stories? Not so much. Those are just their problems and those are just stories. But mine is true, mine is real, mine is the most important and authentic, and how things really are. For everybody else, they're just stories. Notice how we do this. Notice how we tend to think that ours are the most real.

News flash: ours are just fabrications too. Of course they are. They're the way that we're trying to make meaning of our experiences, and they might be really meaningful and supportive for our lives. But some of our stories are not so helpful. The stories of "the world is out to get me," "the world is unsafe," "I deserve better"—some of these kinds of stories, they're based on events that have happened, but the way that we construct these stories and then project them onto everything else out there is not so helpful for us. It doesn't let us live our best lives.

So other people's stories are every bit as real as our own, which, I'm sorry to say, they're not so real. Our stories are just in our head. The rest of the universe doesn't even know about them. They're just things that are inside our minds. They're thoughts. They're just thoughts. I don't want to say this to be dismissive of people's life events and difficulties, but I'd like to encourage us to look at what stories we have that aren't so helpful. And is there a way that we can hold them loosely? Hold them loosely.

I'll read this poem one more time.

Sometimes, like today, we remember that everyone— even the driver in the white Jeep who cut in front of you, yes, even the elegant woman in the dairy aisle and the man who seems lost on the library steps and the child sitting alone on the bench, yes, everyone—has a story, fears and hopes and something to learn and someone they love and someone who's hurt them and someone they long to hold, and though their stories are mostly invisible, they're always more complex than whatever we project and they're every bit as real as our own. The woman in the dairy aisle smiles at you, and though she's wearing diamonds in her ears, she looks lonely, or is it you who was lonely? Is it all of us, all of us longing for someone to truly see us? And a driver you're cursing—don't we all sometimes feel as if we need to move forward any way we can? And that boy on the bench—notice the empty seat beside him. Perhaps you could sit there too, in the sun. Who knows what might happen next?

Who knows what might happen next when we put aside the stories and actually engage with life, engage with individuals, engage with what's actually happening.

Thank you all for practicing with me this week as we talk about stories. I'll be here next week as well, and I look forward to practicing with you some more. So thank you.

Reflections

Thank you, thank you. It's nice to read your comments. And even if people are not able to see all the comments because they're interacting with YouTube in a manner in which they don't see them, I want to say thank you to all of you as well who are not on the comments. It makes a difference to practice together.

Today is Friday. Wishing you all a wonderful Friday. For some of you, it's the end of the work week. I saw a little meme recently that I thought was so funny. It said, "It's only the first five days after the weekend that are the hardest." I thought that was kind of cute.

I look forward to being here next week with you all as well, starting on Monday. It's lovely to practice together. Thank you all for joining me this week on this topic of stories, and I'll see you in a few days.