Is there anything you'd like to bring up that we've discussed so far? And is there any direction you'd like me to take? And is there a direction from which you would like us to invite you? Yes. It happens that, if something happens, the unchangeable will arrive. I'm interested to know who or what is perceiving the distinctions. And who's making thoughts?

[01:01]

You've asked the most difficult question. Especially with our Western habits, it's the most difficult question. So let me just say for now that what's helpful to notice on the path When there's less self-referential thinking present and when there's more self-referential thinking present. Also zu bemerken, ob weniger selbstbezogenes Denken stattfindet oder mehr selbstbezogenes Denken stattfindet.

[02:14]

And you kind of make an inventory and you notice sometimes there's quite a bit less self-referential thinking. Du kannst eine Art Inventur vornehmen und bemerken, manchmal gibt es weniger selbstbezogenes Denken. And then it's good to notice, do you feel better or worse when there's less or more self-referential thinking? I think it's pretty obvious to all of us when there's quite a bit of self-referential thinking is when we're anxious or fearful or something like that. And self-referential thinking makes us vulnerable to anxiety and things like that. Then on the basis of that noticing, you begin to feel the possibility of almost no self.

[03:28]

over when self is a way of functioning but not a mode of identity. And it's pretty difficult for there to be any clear-cut response to your question. Yes. until we have some experience over some period of time of less or more self-referential thinking, etc. What has to become clear is self is not always present and not equally present.

[04:48]

And that it's not a thing like a soul or something that's there forever. Anyway, that's sort of the way from a Buddhist point of view to explore the question. And it's one of those things that requires exploration. And you can play with it a little bit. Stir the, plow the ground a little bit. By asking yourself a simple question. Who am I?

[06:10]

And say, what kind of answer do you get? And then ask yourself, what am I? And we almost always get a rather different answer to what questions than who questions. Yeah. Because there's a whoness about it and a whatness about it and a kindness about it, in your case. Is that enough for now? Okay, say something else. Because about this, there must be, for these three, a letter about where there's no death. In order to reflect on such questions and make decisions about it, there has to be a meta-level above which there is no further level.

[07:28]

There has to be a difference. I'm not sure it's a meta level. And so, I mean, I hear you and I'll try to come back to it in various ways to the extent that I'm able. Even plants make decisions about what plants they're going to grow next to and how they treat the wall that's there, etc. Yeah. And they have a way of processing information which doesn't require an agency or mental level. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. Jack. A theme in my life is how to integrate.

[09:10]

The natural sciences and spirituality. They are an interesting development in the field of physics with its two main perspectives on reality, on what exists. And as you said yesterday, Odi Sackler, the You said the bodhisattva does not meditate on the physical body. But the relationship between the physical body and what you call the inner attentional body. I see some parallels there because there is the physics of the fact based on facts.

[10:43]

And the quantum physics of being a physics of possibility of the non-manifest. And all the relationships in the realm of the non-manifest. The physical body is what is manifest. And this inner intentional body has something to do with the The inner attentional body, the intentional body, is that related to the space of potentialities or possibilities? What is non-manifest or not yet manifest?

[12:06]

The physicists say that evolution takes place because there is a building relationship between the manifested and the non-manifested. So it comes from one state to another and back again and then suddenly there are new possibilities or new facts and then it goes back to the non-manifested areas and there are new facts again and finally there are us who think about it. A physicist would say it's a constant crossing over of the manifest into the non-manifest and back and forth. And this allows for new facts to evolve and to arise.

[13:27]

And in such a process of evolution, finally we emerge starting to think about it. I would be very cautious about taking a word from the way a physicist is trying to describe something. It's virtually indescribable. I would be cautious about taking a word from the way a physicist is trying to describe something. It's virtually indescribable. unbeschreibbar ist. You know, we have Schrödinger's cat, you know, and all that stuff, right? To take a word that, like non-manifest, and then apply it to us, it's a different context, and I would be very careful about whether we can use the same word. Well, we can use the same words, but the words, their meaning is contextualized, and so it comes rather different when you use it.

[14:34]

And what happens through our human experience is we create experienceable facticity, if you want, experienceable realities Whether they have correspondences to molecular realities or the way molecular biology would describe something is kind of irrelevant. I mean, we want to have our We want our experiences to be rooted in the way things actually exist.

[15:54]

But dragonflies are going to have one experience of this reality and we're going to have another experience of this reality. So anyway, let me try to say something about what I mean by attentional space and so forth. And before I go into that, does anybody else want to say something? Before I start, I'm funny. She thinks it's going to be a long... Yes. Yes. So my experience is that the observing, the observer, the observing and the observed are merging simultaneously.

[17:16]

As much effort I make, I cannot really detect what is there first. Okay. From the point of view of logical thinking, that's illogical. Not to me. I try to let my body make most of my decisions. I try to not think about anything until I get myself in a mess and I have to think my way out of it. I let my body decide how to get through a city I've never been in before and finally I have to stop and figure it out.

[18:17]

Two hours outside the city. How the hell did I get here? I carry trusting too far. Okay. The body is responsible, not us. It wouldn't stand up in a court of war. My wife doesn't like it. She should have had a map. All right. Okay. So, inner attentional... I'll have to see what happens here.

[19:38]

So, outer attentional space is shaped by your senses. Yeah. Yeah. And when you get used to daydreaming, sunbathing, sitting zazen for a long time, you become more and more aware of an inner attentional space that's not shaped by your Then you will be protected from the lust of an inner tree of attention that is not formed by the senses. And your outer sensorial space isn't 100% only limited to the five physical senses.

[20:46]

You may have likes and dislikes and so forth. But it lets you negotiate between people and in and out of doors and so forth. And it's mostly a voluntary space. Now, inner attentional space is, yeah, there's some feeling of the senses. But there's also involuntary content. Like dreams are involuntary, are filled with involuntary content.

[21:54]

Okay, and inner attentional space, Again, notice I'm not saying inner space and outer space. I'm saying attentional space. And the attention articulates, notices the inner space. Only to the extent that attention can notice it. And what you find if you spend a fair amount of time in meditation. that your inner attentional space becomes more and more articulated or experienceable.

[23:14]

And it almost has, as I said the other day, a granular quality or a certain kind of viscosity. And you can get a bodily feel for the viscosity of inner attentional space. And you could say that attention itself gets educated through articulating and extending inner attentional space. Now, when you shift to say that you're meditating, you open your eyes and there's the zendo.

[24:25]

Sometimes it's quite surprising. I mean, I've been sitting in the Zendo in Crestone for 20 years or more. And often I can hardly believe it when I open my eyes. If I do, where the hell am I? It's not that I didn't know I was in the Vendo and that he was just a little bit away. He protects me. But that my experience of the texture and space of the space and the viability and vitality of the space.

[25:53]

The viability means, I mean by that, what it can reach into with, yeah, something like that. It's so extraordinary and so... Subtle and nuanced and complex. I can hardly believe it that I'm just sitting in a zendo when I open my eyes. It's like this whole world suddenly like a balloon flaps up. What's Clifford Geertz's thick description?

[26:56]

Whether the depth and, I don't know what words to use, to the actual experience of mind, as inner attentional space. So what you're getting is a what you're doing by regular sitting. You're developing a an attentional power and quality. Now, I mean, I don't like using words like spiritual and so forth, which have very vague and exciting meanings.

[28:35]

What was the first exciting and vague and... But in... It's almost like there's two different gymnasiums. In the American sense of where you do exercise, not high school. Okay, whatever you said. And one of them is kind of like attention is getting exercised within the gym of the five senses. An intention in the inner attentional space is getting aerobic, anaerobic, anyway, emptiness, I don't know, it's getting exercised in the spiritual gym.

[29:51]

And the inner attention is practiced in the spiritual hall with aerobic, anaerobic, monotonic... You got it, I think. Anyway, so you actually develop attention and you develop the medium of attention. And when you're, and we could also now switch to the word mind. So in one you're developing the attentional possibilities of mind in inner attentional space. You're developing attentional possibilities of mind that are different from the attentional possibilities of mind in

[31:02]

in the gym of the five senses. And often people say, you know, if I do try to talk about this, well, it's all the same space, but it's very useful to see there's a difference. Okay. Now, once you have developed the medium of the medium of inner attention. Now, and that all, again, all a truism of yogic experience. His all mental experience has a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component.

[32:45]

To the extent that that isn't entirely true, it's true enough that it's very useful to think in those contexts. So this inner attentional medium of mind Which can do lucid dreaming and all kinds of things. Which outer attentional mind cannot do. But now that you know and have developed the medium of inner attentional mind, And you know the physical component of that, the physical feel of that.

[33:59]

You can bring that inner medium of mind into the field of outer attentional space and begin to know the outer attentional sensorial field with a new kind of Nuance. Now, we could spend a fair amount of time because, you know, there's a phrase, this is the ordinary food and drink of the pastoral monk. because if you do this you meditate as much as you as regularly as you sleep and are awake something happens

[35:19]

If it's something that works for you, something happens during that time. I mean, obviously, all knowing is not confined to conscious knowing. And there's ways of knowing that begin to develop. Knowing becomes a flow of what, for example, what we normally call intuition, which has to push through consciousness. When there's a non-arising of consciousness, There can be the knowing of an intuition which doesn't have to push through consciousness to be noticed.

[36:45]

Now, Ulrike and Hanna, I spoke about something like this just a few days ago, right? What did I leave out or what did I add? What I hear you added was this movement from inner to outer. The question that I had around the phrase mentioning the bodhisattva.

[37:57]

Yeah. When I'm entering into this inner attentional space, there's already a relational field. Or a relational field is opened up between the... Relational field of the movements and experiences noticed in the inner attentional body. Yes. This is already a relational field, and so the question for me, how does the body contemplate the relationship between the physical body and the attentional state?

[39:11]

Okay. Okay. So now that you're saying, speaking about the inner and moving into an outer space, then that's adding to this kind of relationship. It's not bad, though, that I added it. Oh, you're not so sure you like the idea? I like it. I wouldn't have added it otherwise. It's true, too. Ana, do you have anything to add? What's allowing me to take another little step in imagining and understanding?

[40:17]

Last time, the question was, what can that be, what you are bringing from the inside to the outside? Now what's important here is the... Yeah, I added the word medium. Medium of mind. It makes it more graspable what you mean. Yeah, I guess with the group the other day, more of them are meditators than regular meditators than you are. So I drew me into a somewhat different direction when I tried to speak about it.

[41:30]

Hi. Welcome. I mean, I think we as a group have meditated quite a bit, and that makes it easier for me to speak about these things. And also, in this context, I don't want to speak because in some way, in my mind, this ought to be useful for those of you whose work with others is primarily therapeutic. So the question I had is, can in any somewhat developed meditation practice,

[42:30]

field of experience? Can you get enough of a feel for an experience of this medium of mind that arises, medium of mind that arises through inner attentional experience? This medium of mind developed through inner attentional space. Can you discover that enough to bring it into, if it's useful, the constellating or therapeutic process?

[44:02]

Because certainly a constellation occurs within a medium of mind of various degrees of mutuality. Yeah, and I think, Christian, you weren't there that day when I spoke about that so much. And you were there. Is there something you want to add or should we just... What really has helped me when you first presented this was the example of the hotel room. When you described how you're entering a new hotel room and you're just using it the way you do during the day and then in the dark, that room is present for you and how that presence is an inner attentional space.

[45:48]

Okay. Or an inner space. An inner space. Let me just run through that quickly and then let's take a break. And I really meant not how you use the hotel room during the day. You're only there for a few moments before you turn off the light. And you can do it with a kind of know you're going to have to use the room in the dark. Or it can just happen anyway. Enter a new hotel room. And you just walk through the room for a moment, put your stuff down and go to bed. And you get up in the night to go to the toilet or something.

[46:49]

And you walk across the room and unerringly your hand reaches the door handle. Toilet. And you then go into the where the shower or bathtub and so forth is in the toilet. And unerringly you hit the toilet and not sit under the sink. Well, obviously you have incorporated an inner as an inner space, this hotel room.

[48:06]

So you could say that when you get up in the dark, you are making the space by your movements in the space, even though you now have an image, interior image of the space. Shall I say that again? Mm-hmm. Just if you'd like to hear it twice. Yeah, it's beautiful. She's been sexy. What a sweetheart. You wake up, I mean you get up, and there's an interior configuration of the room. But in effect, your experience of that room is a mental fact independent somewhat of the physical fact. Now, why do I say it's independent?

[49:17]

Because you're walking in the mental experience of the space, not walking only in the physical experience of the space. Okay, so that, as that is the case, I think it's the case, this room is also a mental experience. A bodily mind experience. And I think the more you develop a this inner medium of mind, even when you move in this room, you feel like you're creating the room in your movement of the room. And in fact you are.

[50:20]

And when I spoke about that, partly I did it because Georgia was here. And as I was talking to an architect the other day for dinner, not Giorgio, and he's debating at his midlife crisis, Whether he should go back to music or stay as an architect because now architects have so many rules and lawyers and stuff, he's tired of it. But he says it's thrilling when he notices a dimension in a sketch of a plan he's doing. And he notices that dimension, oh yeah, that has to be 15 meters.

[51:30]

I'm quoting him he says that's 15 meters that means and then he says the whole building appears in my mind from that 15 meters it flows out of that knowing that dimension and then I draw that that which has appeared He said, I find this as exciting as music. But in some sense, we're doing that all the time. And this sense, it seems to be enchanted or accentuated. by this development of inner attentional space.

[52:43]

Okay. Sorry for all that. Thanks.

[52:45]

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