“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
bringing type a toughness to yoga
waking up early to relax
discuss the paradox of choice against arranged marriage
tim discusses taking time away from startups
Tim discusses his goal of building a benevolent army of learners and teachers
Trance of Unworthiness
"I remember when I first went to a class on comparative religion and got a whole mess of them introduced and I decided that Buddhism was at the very bottom of my list. Because why would I want to give up desire? I was a total hedonist. I loved my desires, whether it was nature and athletics, or drugs or sex or parties. It was like, why give up desire? It was about another five years until I got it that that wasn’t the message. It wasn’t give up desire, it was not have desire be a tyrant over your life, not be possessed.
Part of when I teach about the Trance of Unworthiness we can start to see how if we’re really not trusting ourselves, if we’re filled with self-doubt, it’s very hard to feel intimate with other people.
The more we actually are in the moment and in the senses, like right here, right now,
the more we decondition grasping. Cause grasping comes like you have something and you have the idea that you need to have more to be happy. But if you actually let go of the idea and just experience, directly contact the sense of the pleasure in the moment and just notice that. And then if there’s this rising of the sense of wanting more, just notice that, and you come back right to your body again. it’s staying in the moment that actually interrupts the chain reaction that leads to grasping onto things.
Meditation is evolution’s strategy to bring out our full potential.
TIM: Oh I like that.
And just the way we know we need physical exercise to maximize our body’s health, we need to mentally train too.
Tea with Mara
https://www.tarabrach.com/inviting-mara-to-tea/
https://www.tarabrach.com/inviting-mara-to-tea-3/
We get into a kind of existential anxiety when we’re not plugged in, like the world is moving on without us. And how to deal with it? the first is what you’re doing, which is name it, name it and really get that this is a product of the times, that we’re at a very speedy time and its accelerating.
[..]
I can say for myself, Tim, that when I’m in the fear of not being prepared orthe fear of missing out, my hearts’ not so open. If my son calls and I’m in the middle of it, I’m really am not able to take in him, what’s really going on for him cause there is some part of me that’s tense and on my way somewhere else. First of all to have the aspiration to be free from that trance is the first step, to recognize what’s going on and know that you can be a more full, more productive, more real being when you’re not constantly be tugged around by that something more or something else.
And then the second piece is if I think of people that are really good teachers, people that are really good writers, people that really have done the music that goes to people’s soul, they retreat. They unplug. They take space. They step out of the busyness and open themselves to something bigger, something wider, something more mysterious and fluid in order for that to happen.
We all get habitual to some degree and the trick is can we keep on recognizing and opening out of any of the habits that stop us from being as sensitive and attuned as possible. And so you need a sabbatical to do that.
Ask of the audience:
The real ask would be to pause enough so that you can contact what’s really going inside of you and pause enough so you can look at another and see the goodness that’s there. And mirror it back some, let people know.