Tara Brach - Relaxing the Over-Controller - Part 1 (2017-04-26)

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

Relaxing the Over-Controller  - Part 1 (2017-04-26) - We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based "over-controller," and explore a wise way of witnessing the suffering that comes with over-controlling, and awareness practices that naturally relax and awaken us to our whole and natural Being. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. Some years ago, a friend told me about an interfaith conference and it was quite a diverse group of people. And they began the conference with a gathering that wanted to decide on some languaging. And the particular question is, how do we collectively refer to really the divine or what it is that all human hearts most deeply cherish? What's the language for that going to be?

And the first person said, well, shall we call it God? And a female wickens said, uh-uh, no way. And then what about goddess? And then a Buddhist, no, a Baptist minister kind of thumbs down that one. and then how about spirit? Atheists kind of shook their head and went on and on for a while. And then finally, it was a Native American

who suggested, how about the great mystery? And everybody agreed. They all agreed. Each present sensed the mystery behind any spiritual or religious idea. And I'm wondering for you listening right now, how many find that resonant, just that word mystery, is kind of, yeah, well, yeah, I do, I do. I mean, really, when we start asking the real questions, you know, like what is love or how did this universe get created and these black holes that are everywhere,

or the new spring leaves that were beholding, or that vacancy, when a loved one has gone. It's like, how do we talk about that? So there's some wisdom in us that bows to what's beyond what our cognitive minds know is the mystery. And I think this is in all past, this realization that it's there, yet how often do we actually, in the midst of our day,

stand in awe? You know, Einstein wrote, he said, Once you can accept the universe as matter, expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. And yet we go around in our daily lives and we're usually rushing around on our way somewhere, doing something, being somebody, and acting with a certain kind of certainty like we know what we're doing. And our view is in some way we're the kind of protagonist of our drama.

and we have these ideas of rights and wrongs and it actually closes us off to apprehending this mystery that we're living in. I think Joseph Campbell described it really well when he said that the beginning of all religions is the cry, help because we mortals perceive the shakiness of our presuppes,

predicament. So it's that cry help. And then religions come in with all these views to kind of explain everything and as Campbell puts it, religions create a kind of inoculation against the mystery. You know these minds, these human minds have a very hard time just hanging out with groundlessness with this impermanent changing world of ours. We want to make meanings. and we're really have a hard time with the fact that these existences are temporary. And that's the resistance. We're all really eager to live and not so eager to go. I think it was George Carlin that I think this was his,

and he said, I went hitchhiking the other day and a hearse stopped. And I said, no, thanks, I'm not going that far. And then, of course, for Patrick Henry, you know, death was his second choice. you know, it's not where we want to go. So basically, rather than just living in that open acceptance to this changing, living, dying world, we kind of clamp down and we are rigged to try to control things with our mind, kind of creating set views and with our behaviors. So we try to hold on to what's pleasant and push away what's unpleasant.

And in moments of controlling, we can't really experience what's here. I think John O'Donohue said it the best. He said, we're so busy managing our life as to cover over this great mystery we're involved with. So, how do we do that? Because I'm going to be speaking about the ways we control. You know, we do it through tightening in our body. Chogium Trunkpa talked about how we're a bunch of tense muscles, tensing against our existence,

you know, trying to hold it all together. And we do it, we kind of create an illusion of control by our just thinking, thinking, like if we stay busy and we're doing a lot, we have some, it's an illusion that we're taking charge of things. And then we worry and we obsess and we grasp on to things. We try to hold on to our possessions. It gives us more of a sense of ground, even though you can't take it with you.

I heard a story of a man who wrote to the IRS, and he said, I've been unable to sleep knowing that I cheated on my income tax. I understated my taxable income, and I've enclosed a check for $150. If I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest. All right, so we've covered death and taxes tonight so far. So what I'd like to do is a two-part series because I tried to write this into one talk and I just couldn't fit it in. And I'm going to call it relaxing the over-controller. And you might start beginning to sense like, am I talking to you?

And it's to all of us, truly. In fact, I wrote this talk during a very stressed period and the day that I was, the Wednesday I was going to come. come in and give it two weeks ago Wednesday by the mid-afternoon, just as I had kind of the final touches on the talk, I got a back spasm and couldn't come in and talk about the over-controller. So that's a bit of confession. But the theme to me is a critical one because it's such a fundamental part of our ego identity. You know if we really shine a light on who we're taking ourselves to be, there are so many moments that in some way

we're the one trying to manage things. We're the one trying to make it through the day, trying to take care of the problem, trying to navigate. So you might be thinking, yeah, but don't we have to control some? Don't we have to make a living and have shelter

and have our children go to school and take care of ourselves? when we get sick and protect ourselves from threatening people and so on. And of course we do. This isn't about not trying to manage things where we can. This is about over-control. And the way I think about it and I've shared often in my talks, it's just a metaphor that works for me,

is that we get born and we create this kind of space suit to navigate a difficult atmosphere. And our space suit is our egoic efforts at presenting a self that will be well received by others and protecting ourselves when we detect danger and trying to improve our life by having more pleasure, more gratification and so on, by promoting ourselves. And it's part of evolution. We are designed to develop this egoic space suit self. It comes out of loving life and wanting to protect life.

The suffering comes when our controlling strategies or our spacesuit activities are on full-time or a whole lot of the time and we forget who's looking through the mask. You know, we forget the tender heart-speople. space that's here, a consciousness. In other words, when we're identified as the human doing and not the being to say a phrase that you've heard before, or identify with the space suit, the controller, then we're always preparing for what's next. You know, we're always having an agenda and we're not living it. We need pauses or we're not operating the space suit all the time.

There's an author, Elmore Leonard, and in one of his novels, he has a character that's speaking who's been shot and realizes he might be dying. And I want to read you what the character, what he says. He had finally made it. He's talking about the guy who's dying. It had taken him 50 years to learn that being was the was the important thing, not being something, just being.

Looking around you knowing you were just being, not preparing for anything. That was a long time to earn something. He should have known about it when he was seven, but nobody had told him. The only thing they had told him was that he had to be something. See if he had been told then he'd have had all that time to enjoy being. Except it doesn't have to do with time, he thought. but being is an hour or a minute or a moment. So take a moment now to pause

because maybe the space suit self was thinking it was listening to a talk to teach it something about meditation so it could get through tomorrow better. And what happens if we close our eyes for a moment and just relax out of that space suit self, that even with a good intention we're still doing something and just be. When our intentions to just be to inhabit being we start noticing how quickly we pull into an idea or a thought.

And yet in the space between the thoughts, we're not active age of the doings and that resting and that pause, the light of the universe begins to shine through. being, it's really the source of all vitality and creativity, love, wisdom. Our suffering is that we miss out on being. When we're caught in the over-controller, we don't get that nourishment, that soul nourishment. So I'm going to speak a bit about how that expresses, how we know we're caught in the suffering of the over-controller. And one of the ways is that we find we're exhausted

because if we're hooked up in the spacesuit self and we're always on, and there's none of that breathing room, the light of the universe shines through, no resting. It's exhausting, it's tiring to be always managing. I think one of the best descriptions of it was Kelly McGonigal in her book, The Wellpower Effect, a very, very good book.

She describes willpower, self-control, this controlling ego, as kind of a muscle and that when you use the muscle it gets tired. Every moment that you're in some way using that muscle you're tiring it. It needs to rest and you can run into exhaustion and of course the doer when we're overdoing when we're over-controlling it's not just exhaustion. There's a whole spiral of somatic illnesses that are serious and can be life-threatening that they come including stroke and heart failure. So the over-controller doesn't get nourished by being. It's addicted to doing and I think so often of the myth of Sisyphus, right? We're pushing that boulder up the hill, just watching it

roll down, just doomed to doing it over and over and over again. And even though our doing controlling self would say, oh yeah, but I have to do this and I have to do that and this needs to get done. The over-controller is way overdoing it. It's pushing boulders. It does not need to push. Okay, so one of the sufferings of the over-control is exhaustion, just always on. Another is being cut off from creativity. Have you noticed that if you're in controlling mode, it's just not a creative time. And the way I think about it, this again Greek mythology, the Titans, and they're the ones that created the world, came out of chaos. Okay? The Titans came out of chaos. It wasn't a controlled state. They emerged from chaos. Creativity comes from chaos.

And Keats, many of you might know about this. He describes true achievement, but the real creative achievement as a what he calls a negative capacity which means that we can tolerate uncertainty. Rather than living in a controlled, boundary-d way we can tolerate that groundlessness and uncertainty. So think of your creative moments, moments when in some way you felt spontaneous or art or writing, music, including receiving those, those creativity. dancing. It's not when we're busy being somebody. So exhaustion, non-creativity. When we're in the over-controller we're cut off from other people because when we're in the over-controller we have an agenda. The over-controller in some way feels like we need

to be doing something when we're with others in order for them to like us or respect us. Does that resonate for you? This feeling that when you're with somebody else, when you're in over-control mode that unless you're performing or you're interesting or entertaining or somebody, they're not going to be liking you. So it disconnects because can you really feel intimate with somebody else if you're in control mode? Similarly, when the over-controller's on, we can't be intimate with our own

life. I mean, when the over-controllers on, we're basically judging. Okay? We're trying to manipulate ourselves into being some way different so we can't feel our own loneliness, our own yearnings. We're pushing boulders. And then the over-controller's not connected to the present moment. I mean, think about it. When you're filled with worries and plans and you're trying to manage things, how much are you feeling, you know, the life that's right here? I got an email from one person who said, if I can't experience the new green of spring in my veins, the song of birds in my heart, what is the purpose? So really, the beginning of this reflection is that the over-controller cuts us off. This is the way Choggi-Sah. This is the way Choggi

Gengh Chungvapu, he says, as long as we're trying to figure out how we can escape from our present situation, we can't notice much about it. Only when we feel that this is it. This is how it is right now without any clutching towards something different. Well, our intelligence really come alive. Others, we have to put down the controlling and just be with what's here to see reality. I want to name that. that on a societal level, this over-controlling ego when it expresses through the collective psyche wreaks havoc. It's a very, very, it's a shadow side. When the over-controller is big in our public domain, what does it do? Well, it destroys

the earth because the over-controller dominates the earth versus being in intimate relationship with the earth. Violence to the earth, to those that are most vulnerable. See, the over-controller is driven by fear. The over-control is afraid that something's going to go wrong, needs to protect, driven by the greed, the grasping on because of the fear of losing, and therefore is cut off from empathy. So the over-controller in a societal level generates wars, generates walls, you understand. So how do we wake up? Let's kind of say, okay, we get it. The first thing is to know that in order to wake up from the over-controller we have to intentionally recognize, oh, that's the over-controller in action.

In other words, we can't wake up from a part of our persona, our ego, that we're not aware of. And I often talk about, you know, that circle of awareness. Again, this is Joseph Campbell. It describes the line that goes through. Anything below the line is what's out of consciousness. Well, if we're moving through the day and we're always trying to manage things, we're trying to control other people to get them to cooperate, or we're trying to judge and manage ourselves,

if the controller is in action and we don't recognize, oh, that's the over-controllers in action, then we're identified with it. We're identified with anything we're not aware of that's below the line. But once we can begin to see it, it comes above the line and then we have choice. So the trick is, when you run into the over-controller,

how are you relating to it? And if you judge the over-controller, you're just bringing more controlling to your life. It's another kind of the over-controller coming around again. So the trick is to relate to the over-controller, not from the over-controller. Now, there's relate to it from a larger space of compassion and presence. Now, I'm going to come back to that again because even as you were listening all right, ready thus far. I suspect for many of you you are thinking, oh God, this is a bad part of me and I've got to work on it. It's kind of that sinking feeling of, oh, I'm a controlling person,

I know that, more than most people here probably, you know. If we're going around feeling like I'm a control freak and it's really ugly and bad or, you know, this is a pathology or whatever, and even the words I'm using over-control or makes it sound like it's bad, I want to see if we can step out of that because that's another controlling reaction and get this that it's universal. We are designed through evolution to have an ego that's going to try to control itself and its environment for its furtherance. Okay? That's universal, every one of us.

And the more fear, the more wounding we've experienced in a lifetime or genetic, regularly or whatever, the more activated that controller is going to be. It's not our fault. If you have a well-developed over-controller, it's just the result of past conditioning. And if you can behold it, witness it with kindness, then you can loosen the identity. So let's take a pause here again. invite you to close your eyes for a moment and sense even thus far how you're detecting oh okay there's some conditioning here towards controlling that plays in my life that actually can

cause suffering there's that conditioning to try to manage and that this is a universal part of my humanity, that the people sitting on either side and may also have this conditioning to control. And right here from the start of this exploration, sense your aspiration to relate to the over-controller with kindness, with patience, with humor, with appreciation. It's trying to help you. It's just not doing it in the most strategically wise way. To relate to the over-controller, not from, makes it possible eventually if you imagine that

over-controller like Sisyphus rolling the boulder, just really pushing, trying hard. Imagine Sisyphus just deciding to let the boulder go. And just imagine the space that opens up. the possibilities of enjoying the view, going home and dipping in a stream and showering off and all that sweat and just relaxing and enjoying the life that's here. We don't have to keep pushing so much. That's what's possible when we begin to witness the over-controller without judgment, just kindness. So we're going to continue to explore, but I'm inviting you to explore from this

kind of witnessing perspective, how now you can begin to look more closely at your life and if you want to find the expressions of the over-controller that are actually causing the most suffering, you look to the places in your life where you're stressed because that's where the over-controller jumps out in the most vivid form. So you might as you're listening right now consider first, okay, what's a stressful situation where I know I go into intense control mode? As you get one in mind, here are some of the signs that'll help you as you're moving through the day to go, yep, here it is. This is doing the Sisyphus thing or I'm being the over-controller. The main tool of the over-control the over-controller basically has, there's a lot of obsessive thinking.

When you notice that, that's like a flag. The underlying assumption of the over-controller is there's a problem here. We got a problem, okay? You know, that's the problem mentality. The assumption is things should be different and should is the word that the over-controller loves, lives on. It just surrounds everything, should be different, I should be different, you should be different, life should be different.

You see, whenever there's a should, it's an argument with reality. Because reality is reality and it's just our addition that it should be different no matter how right we think we are. It's still an argument and that's what the controller does. The controller generally has some certainty about their opinions about reality. and the more fear, the more there's that fundamentalist kind of certainty. Okay? So these are just, I'm just giving you some signs to watch out for it,

that if you know you're stressed, you're going to find that you kind of lock in and there's, we've got a problem, and there's a lot of shoulds, and so on. Very little tolerance for uncertainty. Carl Popper writes, I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know, it might do us good to remember from time to time that while differing widely in the various little bits we know,

in our infinite ignorance, we are all equals. So that is a sign of the over-control of the certainty and beliefs. I'm right. Things should be a certain way. And generally a need for others to agree. Okay, behaviors. When you're stressed, what are the behaviors that are signs? Well, the over-controller is generally trying to control inner affect, inner experience, because it's, you know, to make it as tolerable as possible.

So often there's the abuse of substance, either overeating food or depriving a food. They're both part of the over-controller, medication, recreational drugs, alcohol, etc. but also tight routines and not liking change, wanting things to stay a certain way. Now again, you might be starting to get a sinking feeling. So I want to invite you to come back to that aspiration. This is universal. The more fear we have in our system, the more we are trying to manage things so we can cope.

to respond by relating to, not from the over-controller. If there's more judgment, that's more controlling. How does the over-controller behave with other people? Well, there's the flight way of controlling by pulling away, creating distance, having a lot of boundaries. Then there's the aggressive control way that we think of more often. Well, we're pretty regularly trying to fix people, judging them, threatening them, having an agenda. With our partners, a lot of rules and expectations.

Parents that are over-controlling use a lot of threats and guilt. I like the story of one young girl who she noticed that her mother had some white hair coming through on her brunette head. she looked at her mother and just curious, she said, why are some of your hair is white, mom? And her mother said, well, every time you do something wrong or make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white. Little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then she said, mama, how come all grandma's hairs are white?

Sometimes control strategies don't work. A lot of our over-controlling is a way to manipulate. what other people think of us. That's a big one. You can just sense somebody you're with recently where there was some anxiety. You had some worry about how they were going to perceive you. And just notice how much of the time

your behavior was an effort to get a certain response from them. Again, remember, that's when we cut off from our spontaneity and our creativity and how exhausting it is, to be with people when you're trying to elicit a certain reaction. Does that resonate?

So we do things, we act in ways that aren't ourselves because we want to look a certain way. I read about one guy who was, he found that someone had scraped his car in a parking lot, a crowded parking lot. And there was a note on the windshield, and here's what the note said. yo, I hit your car. I'm leaving this note because someone's watching.

They're still looking. Okay, I'm good. My bad. Peace. Out. I loved it. They're still looking. Okay, I'm good. So then we look at in the domain of our spiritual practice. And how does the... Because the over-controller kind of wiggles away into everything.

It's not just how we are in some situations. And when the over-controllers dominating in our spiritual practice, we have in our own mind a lot of rules, expectations, and judgments swirling around what's going on. So we're really pushing the boulder there. It's like don't just sit, do something. You know, we're striving for a certain state and we have an idea about how meditation should be and mostly we're evaluating it and it doesn't meet the idea and we feel like we're falling short because we're trying to get somewhere.

That's when the overdoing is coming in and we try to use when we're over-controlling our ideas about spirituality. They kind of interfere with our direct experience. One of the classic stories in the Zen tradition is of a young monk who goes to the abbot or the master, you know, and he says, so what happens after we die? And the abbot said, I don't know. And the young novice is very, very upset and he goes, what do you mean you don't know? You know, you're a Zen priest. And the abbot not as said, I said, I am, but not a dead one. But what I'm getting at is when we're in over-control mode, we substitute our ideas about what's going to happen for our direct experience. It's very

hard to just let go and be in contact with reality. We cover it over, we inoculate ourselves. It's such a great expression. So, to wrap this piece up, because we're really looking at like, how do we find that character of the over-control or how does it appear in our in our own lives, just to remember that this is really the survival brain trying to make it. Okay? When we're in over-control mode, it's a survival brain trying to make it. And whether we're trying to out-trick the IRS, you know, IRS, you know, or whether it's, we're trying to outwit other people and give a certain impression,

what we're really trying to outwit is our mortality. The survival brain just as uncomfortable with the fact that we're not going to be around so long. So we're trying to outwit death in some way. I remember Victor Yallam has a wonderful cartoon with the Grim Reaper lying on the couch and he's with a psychiatrist. and the Grim Reaper is saying, no doc, I'm afraid it's your time that's up. There's a really limited domain we can control. This is now down to reality. There's a limited domain and it's totally appropriate for our ego, space suit self to try to control in that

way. But we can't control aging and sickness and death and we can't control aging and sickness and death and we can control the inner-rather systems, you know, all the emotions, you know, they just happen. And we definitely, definitely can't control each other. We just can't. It just goes on. So, how do we get that if we go beyond the areas we can control and are in constant management mode that we're going to cover over the mystery, cover over that spontaneity and love and capacity to see truth. Mary Oliver has a very beautiful poem that addresses some of the questions that come up about controlling and really some of the misunderstandings because when I talk about not over-controlling, I don't mean being inactive or passive.

It's our nature to engage and to engage passionately, to take care of ourselves as well as we can and take care of each other. And to be happy and free, we need to know how to let go. Here's Mary Oliver. She says, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. the fires and the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal. To hold it against your bones, knowing your whole life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. To love what is mortal. To hold it to our bones dear, totally engaged, connected with this life. serving this life. And when it's time to let go, to let go.

And when I listen to this, this is talking about in the broad sweeps, it's, you know, when we really get it, oh, oh, I'm dying, okay, got to let go of this life with some, there's a possibility of grace. But it's not just in our incarnation like that, it's in our moments, that we engage fully. We manage what we can manage, we hold it to our bones, and in the moments we learn how to let go and be, to stop being so busy, stop holding so much. Our inquiry, and we're going to be extending this into the second class, is how do we

relax the over-controller when the on button is jammed? Okay? Because that's the deal for so many of us, especially when we're most activated and stressed, how do we move and shift from being inside that identity of the stress, controlling, wanting, fearing self into that compassionate witness that can see it's going on and that knows how to rest some and just be. How do we make that shift? A metaphor that may be helpful for some is to imagine you're in a rowboat and there's currents and winds and you're rowing desperately and exhausted against the intensity of what's going on

and you're feeling both like the victim of all the winds and you're also the controller trying to make it through and to compare that to putting aside the oars allowing that sale of presence to unfurl and letting the winds carry you some because ultimately we can't control the winds but they carry us When we awaken to what really matters, and this is coming back to the beginning of when

I shared that essay of the man who realized he was dying, and that why hadn't he realized earlier that the gem is being, the gem is resting in being in this awake, tender, open presence. When we awaken and remember that preciousness of being, when we sense how these lives are fleeting, we rest more in that. I've seen it over and over again. I saw it with my mom as she was dying, how, you know, when she was younger, she was as neurotic as anybody else and very, you know, had her control stuff and her anxiety and this and that. But it was so distinctive.

this is not just when she was dying as she got older but then when she was dying how so much dropped away and the amount of pleasure she got from the moments and the amount that she was able to kind of create a space that other people enjoyed themselves

in because there was no demand expectation or judgment she was being for another woman, younger woman she had a young son and she was executive actually very busy and stressed and she was also often pushing him to hurry up to you know eat your dinner we got to get you a child care we got to shop really quickly now we get

home now we prepare during well she got diagnosed with very serious malignancy and she had a year to live and she described the shift was that her mantra became i have no time to rush I have no time to rush. It gets very, very clear when we're honest and face the changing seasons of life and the true mortality of this temporary existence here. That being is where all the light of the universe shines through. So it becomes a deep longing to be able to relax the controller. And it's completely, completely possible as long as we're relating to the controller, not from

the controller, as long as we don't judge ourselves for it. And I'm bringing this up, I hope, enough time so that as you continue this reflection, and we can do it together over these few weeks, that you'll bring it in a little time, that you'll bring an interest and a curiosity and a humor to say, oh, there it is. There's that grasping and that there's that agenda and not add the judgment because then you'll have some choice. So it's in that spirit I'd like to do a closing meditation with you, get a little bit of a taste of witnessing. It says you allow yourself to come into stillness and I've asked you're ready to maybe consider where there's stress. Or you're aware of going into over-control mode,

where you're aware of the suffering around it maybe. You might hone in a little sense of a situation perhaps when you're involved with other people, notice, kind of tag that situation so that you can come back to it, both in this meditation and also during your daily life. But before you spend too much time focusing on it, take a moment to establish what we'll call the witness. And you might sense this witness, the vantage point of this witness. as your future self, the who you are when you're really most awake and open-hearted, really calling on your high self, the self you're evolving into to be witness.

You're going to look through the eyes of your future self, the one who's more relaxed and open and clear and awake. And sensing yourself looking through the eyes of that more awake being and with the heart, at yourself during a stressed time. And just pick a time recently when you were stressed and you're aware you went into that over-controller mode. See if you can witness it through the eyes of your future self and just see that doing self-character, that over-controlling self

is if you're watching a movie of yourself, kind of pushing the bolder in some way, whether it's obsessive thinking, having shoulds going on in your mind about how you should be or others should be, the agenda that maybe you have with other people, the ways of trying to either impress or get others to do things your way, and behind the lines, sensing how that over- over-controlling self has a sense of there's a problem here. There's a problem.

You're looking at the over-controlling self through the eyes of this witness, this compassionate future self, and sensing how that controlling self is operating off the idea, there's a problem here, and there's fear that's kind of driving this part of your ego self and sense the suffering of it, sense how that part of you is suffering, how squeezed it is, anxious, living in a small world, disconnected, probably tired, frustrated, closed off. You might just sense what your heart wishes from that future self, from that witness, what your

heart wishes for the part of you that's caught. If there was a message you could send to that part of you, what it might be. What might happen if that over-controlling part put down the oars a bit? Just allow the sale of presence to unfurl to guide, let the winds guide in some way, be open to the intelligence that's larger than the ego's intelligence. to rest a little, to listen, and just even just bringing it right into the present moment, inviting that over-controlling self right into the stillness that's right here. It's as if your future self could say, just be right now, just be. Just sense the stillness that's aware of aliveness, just sense the silence,

silence that's listening to sound, to sense if there's no problem, what is here? If there's no problem, what is here? Just being full with tenderness at home. You can sense as we close right now your aspiration to notice in the days and weeks to come when you do that over-controller, through the eyes of compassion, just witnessing, maybe sending a reminder to that place in you, inviting your being into beingness, into the stillness, the silence and aliveness, the open-heartedness that's always here. Namaste and thank you for your presence. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my

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