Well, we have this question, becoming who we are. And in English it's like that, in German it's becoming what you are. And in English, it's actually quite a difference between who and what, but I guess in German it's not quite such a big difference. Becoming... Oh, good evening. Guten Abend. So in English, who really is about your personality or your identity?

[01:13]

Now, I'm looking at the question Because whatever form this question can take, if you really ask yourself this question, it'll take various forms. So we can discuss the question a little bit. And also it's Zen practice to take a question and look at it carefully. Now, when I was you know a teenager and before I started practicing Buddhism the question was always become would be something like become who you are but by the time I started practicing Buddhism

[02:34]

And into my 20s, it didn't feel right to say who you are, becoming who you are. I mean, it was okay, but it felt better to say becoming what you are. And I believe it's the custom now in Western German and European and American psychology to speak about what you are as much as who you are. Now, who you are, it has a feeling a little bit like to me in English, and I can only speak about it in that way. Like maybe you're a creek, a little stream.

[04:02]

And you think you're just kind of wandering about and willow trees are dripping in you and stuff like that. But you don't really know who you are. And then you notice that you're not just this little stream wandering through the fields. But you begin to notice that you're water. And water with a direction and current. And then you realize who you are as a big river. I think we have some kind of feeling if we really know who we are, we'd become a big river.

[05:17]

Or sometimes we think there's a little, what's the word, homunculus, a little guy inside us that's waiting to come out. And you're sort of imprisoning this little guy who's actually smaller than you. I see a little homunculus over there. And she looks quite happy. She got out. Yeah, seems to be enjoying herself. So I think we think also there's some little guy in us who, if we could let, oh dear.

[06:18]

If we could let out, would become wonderful. Now, it may be true. I knew I was asking for trouble. I shouldn't have directed my attention over there. That's what happens when people direct their attention at me. I start to cry sometimes. So now this, in English again, and it's probably true in German, but in English the word who, what, which, where, why, When, how, they all are the same root. And they all mean the choice between two things. Which time, where, what location, where, when, etc., Who, which person.

[07:46]

What, what thing. So in the word, in the root of the word, becoming who or what you are is a fork in the road. And we feel, I think, a question like this as a fork in the road. And when you ask yourself a question like this, you are wondering which road you should take. Becoming who you are especially has the sense of growth or development in it. Now, if you ask yourself being who you are or be who you are, there's no sense of growth or development in it. Being emphasizes the is-ness or right now, who are you? So if you practice with be who you are, the arrow points here.

[09:19]

If you track as becoming who you are, the arrow points into the future. So even here, there's a choice of whether you're pointing at the immediate situation, yourself in the immediate situation, or yourself as you'll develop. So when we have a deep question that we ask, then it depends at what age you're asking this question. Are we speaking loudly enough for everyone in the back? When you ask this question deeply enough, you may be asking, you know, which road should I take?

[10:25]

Or if you're older, you may be asking, which road have I taken? Or might I have taken a different road? You're getting older when you ask that question. Have I taken the wrong road? Have I... Might I have taken a different road? Then you're really perplexed. And you think, even practicing Zen, you think, well, if I hadn't practiced Zen, I would have taken the right road. Somehow, practicing Zen, I left, I mean, maybe looking for my true nature, but I didn't find my Western nature. Or I didn't find the person everyone would truly love. So what do we do with a question like this?

[11:41]

I think Rilke says, be patient with... be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love these questions like locked boxes. Like a book written in a foreign tongue. Wie ein Buch, das in einer fremden Sprache geschrieben wurde. Don't seek answers. Suche nicht nach Antworten. Live the questions now.

[12:42]

Lebe die Fragen jetzt. Now this question comes from, I mean, Ulrike and Angela thought up this question. Ulrike und Angela haben sich diese Frage ausgedacht. But they thought it up from Nietzsche and from Ferrucci. That's not a kind of luggage, is it? Okay. And Nietzsche has some statement like, the reward of death is that you don't have to die again. Nietzsche also said that the final reward for death is that one does not have to die anymore. This is a good way to look at this question. All these big questions will be answered, because when one is dead, one must at least not die anymore.

[13:43]

Now Nietzsche also is interesting because as far as I know, and I'm not a philosopher, it is really from Nietzsche that we can be sitting in this room. For example, in Asia, at least until very recently, there was no idea that you could be anything other than a Buddhist or a Confucian or something like that. You sought truth in Asia through Buddhism or Taoism or something. The idea that you could reject organized religions and create your own truth or own past really comes from Nietzsche.

[15:01]

I understand. God is dead or a prime mover who doesn't move anymore. Now, I'm not saying Nietzsche's right. But Nietzsche introduced this idea and opened us to the idea of a personal religion. Now, the idea of a personal religion is inseparable from your choice of maybe practicing Buddhism. And our freedom in the West to bring in various religions or find our own religion or do our own version of a religion, all is rather historically new. So we have a lot of historical, cultural, personal freedom to ask ourselves such a question.

[16:16]

We may not want all this freedom, but we have this freedom. In fact, all this freedom may leave us rather lost. You don't know how to look at the question. And if there isn't Buddhism or Taoism or Christianity or something telling you that you can answer the question, how do you know you have the resources to answer the question? Now, you can try psychology. And psychology has sort of become ways where priests or teachers of the truth for each other But there's many schools of psychology and do you need a therapist and so forth.

[17:47]

So here I'm just looking at this question seriously, becoming who we are. Where are you at this fork in your road? Or do you feel you've gone past this fork in the road and it's too late for you now? So the main thing I'd like to do this evening is have you take this question seriously in your own terms. Now, I've presented all these possible ways of looking at the question. Be who you are.

[18:57]

Being what you are. Becoming who you are. Becoming what you are. Or, it's too late for me now. All of these questions really I brought up so that you might think of where do you fit? Can you actually ask yourself such a question? I personally think it's very useful to take the time in a seminar like this, we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, to focus on something like this.

[20:05]

I mean, this is so basic. This question is always sinking or floating underneath our activity and our mental processes. And it's always interwoven in our activity and identity and ego processes. Either it's a challenge or fearfully or something. So it's now, I think it's for some reason you're here, right? So why not make more conscious the reason you're here to take this time in your life to look at this question?

[21:10]

And the version of this question of who am I, which we have here this evening. Who am I? Is this a process? Is it already true or is it a process? Will I be something different in the future? Am I not being true to myself? I don't care how you ask yourself the question, but find some way to ask yourself this question. Now this evening, so far, I've just kind of talked about the question. But I'm a practicing Buddhist. Aber ich bin ein praktizierender Buddhist.

[22:22]

And so really I can offer you whatever else I can offer you on this question will come from my experience and practice and study as a Buddhist. Und was ich euch dann sonst noch anzubieten habe in Bezug auf diese Frage, wird von meiner Erfahrung und von meiner Praxis als Buddhist stammen. But what I've said so far is actually also Buddhism. I mean, the basic truism of Buddhism is start where you are. So that's what I've been doing. We're here in the seminar, and what did I see as I came in the door? Hi. I saw my picture in a little piece of paper and it said, becoming who you are.

[23:29]

So I looked at the picture and I wondered, that's me? And we have to talk about becoming who you are, so I'm starting. This is where we are, so I'm starting here. So if I say the first truism of Buddhism is start where you are, that's taken very literally. Say you just think, I should do zazen, I should do zazen more. And you're sitting in your car driving to work. So at that moment you trust the question that came up, I should do zazen more, to mean at that moment you can do something like zazen even though you're driving.

[24:39]

You start where you are. Whatever that blip is or feeling is, you take that as a starting point, not as something you do in the future. So we're all here this weekend together. And what have we got? We've got the question. You've got a Buddhist teacher. And you've got a Buddhist translator. And you've got a lot of Dharma friends sitting next to you. But mostly, and first of all, you have yourself and your own experience of this question.

[25:46]

And you also have your own ability to ask yourself this question or commit yourself to this question. So the first truism of Buddhism is start where you are. And that also then brings up a second question, where am I? Now, again, it's very characteristic of Buddhism to do things extremely thoroughly. So you start where you are. Then you have to figure out where you are. Now we have a bigger problem. Where are we? How do we discover where we are? So now we have this question of not just becoming who we are, but being who we are. And also the what-ness of us.

[27:06]

We're some stuff sitting here. And we're arriving in the present. And even if you're not fully here, maybe you could arrive in the present. So you can start working on this question with arriving in the present. How do you arrive in the present? Well, one of the basic ways to arrive in the present is to sit down. So see, now we're already practicing Buddhism. You've sat down and you're saying, I've got this question. Okay, so now another truism of Buddhism is don't seek outside yourself.

[28:19]

Okay, now here I am talking about Buddhism as a process. In the spirit of Rilke of be patient with all those unsolved things in your heart. And don't seek answers but live the questions now. And try to love the questions like locked boxes. Like books written in a foreign tongue. So what he says is exactly the Buddhist teaching about how you work with questions. So you don't seek outside yourself.

[29:37]

So you have this attitude toward the question that the question itself includes the answer or the question itself is enough. Und so hat man eine Einstellung gegenüber dieser Frage, dass diese Frage in sich selbst die Antwort enthält oder die Frage ausreicht. Now, if you don't seek outside yourself, what does that mean? Wenn man nicht außerhalb von sich selbst sucht, was bedeutet das? It means you have to trust yourself. Es bedeutet, dass man sich selbst vertrauen muss. Because you can't seek within yourself and not outside yourself unless you trust yourself. So again, I'm looking at this as a process of Buddhism, but I'm not looking at it as, how do we get from here to enlightenment? I'm not looking at it from how do we get from here to an experience or realization of emptiness.

[30:42]

Let's throw that kind of Buddhism out the window. Because any idea of emptiness and enlightenment, though, that may be an important part of practice, but right now we don't want anything to condition our asking ourselves the question in the most simple, direct way. These questions are locked boxes. We don't know if enlightenment or emptiness is in it. We don't know if Christianity is in it.

[31:48]

We don't know if the discovery of a relationship with God is in it. We don't know what will be on if we really follow such a question. So the first part of just this process of looking at a question in a Buddhist way, and I would say also in a kind of common sense, practical way, Is to start where you are. To start with the question itself, not even worrying about an answer. And as much as possible to start with having an experience of being where you are.

[32:49]

And then the second truism is to not seek outside yourself. And to begin to work with seeing how deeply, or do you at all, really trust yourself. It means you also must trust the question that if the question is truly deeply asked, the answer is somehow in the question. So it means that at one depth of yourself is the question. Now, we're trying to tonight open ourselves to the depth of ourselves which can really ask this question. Now, if you're going to be able to really ask this question,

[34:13]

You also have to have the trust that at another depth of yourself is the answer. In yogic cultures, the definition of the body is not a container, as it tends to be in the West, but as a share of the whole. A share of the truth. So you need the trust that you yourself, if you're not going to seek outside yourself, you have to trust that you yourself are a share of the truth. And that this asking of the question itself is also who you are. Because if you're not a container, then you're an activity. And the activity you are is whatever combination of activities you are at this moment.

[35:45]

So from a Buddhist point of view, we already know that part of an answer to who you are and who you're becoming is that you're something that asks this question. So you know that who you are is already who you are in asking this question. So to notice that kind of thing, that obvious kind of thing helps you to build trust. So now I'm continuing a little bit more here with how in Zen Buddhism we start from where we are. Or how we trust a question like this.

[36:53]

I think Hugo of St. Victor, who was a 12th century mystic and theologian, said that trust that all things are filled with sense. All nature is filled with sense. There's nothing in the universe that's sterile. So that kind of trust is necessarily true, that all things are filled with sense and there's nothing but sterile. That's also a way of saying, don't seek outside yourself.

[37:56]

I'm wondering whether I translated sense correctly, because sense is sterile. All things are filled with meaning. So it means that you don't have to find the most meaningful place, and this place is sterile. All things are filled with meaning. There's nothing that's sterile. We can think of that as God's creation everywhere present, God's presence everywhere present. Or we can think of it in a Buddhist sense that all things are equally interdependent and manifesting the truth. Okay. Now, So what, since I'm practicing Buddhism, what are the methods that Buddhism would say you can ask yourself such a question?

[39:23]

Not knowing the answer. Not entrusting the question to be or lead you to the answer. Trusting to start where you are. So you don't know what to do. Oh, you've got the question. You've got your version of the question. So you ask it. You don't know what to do. So you ask it twice. You still don't know what to do, so you ask it thrice. Really it's that simple. So the method is repetition.

[40:24]

And really mantra practice, these kind of ways of asking questions, is rooted in mantra practice. So you take this question, your own personal question, a fundamental question, and just start repeating it. Now what happens when you repeat a question? Because of course you have to go on with your daily life. And you're doing things. And you have to think various things. But you're developing a skill to keep repeating this question. You create, you generate a background mind. Now one of the most basic results of repeating a question is you generate a kind of pregnant layer of mind.

[41:33]

Pregnant with the question and ready to give birth. but can exist simultaneously with foreground mind activity. Now, when you do this, you again, you are really in Buddhist practice. Because the generation of a background mind And the development of that is essential to Buddhist practice. And essential if you're going to discover a meditative state in the midst of activity. Now also when you repeat a question, And you just repeat it.

[42:50]

It slips out of the fabric of language into you. It begins... Now, a truism of yogic culture is that all mental events have a physical or bodily dimension. And vice versa, all bodily instances have a mental dimension. So this question at first is proportionately mostly mental. And in the skandhas. And as you repeat it, it begins to slip out of consciousness and borrowed consciousness. And it begins to sink in the skandhas. And it begins to accumulate a lot of associations.

[44:07]

And as it sinks further, it begins to have a feeling dimension. And then it begins to have a physical dimension. You can feel the question physically. So we can even say you're now developing a background body. A body that can hold this question in the midst of your activity. Now, another thing you need if you're going to do this is courage and character. You need the courage to ask yourself such a fundamental question. Don't take it for granted that you can really ask yourself this question.

[45:12]

You may like the idea that you can ask yourself this question. And you may think it's important. But do you have the character and courage to actually ask it? And do you have the character and courage to accept whatever answer comes up? And do you have the character and courage to follow the answer where it leads? Habt ihr den Mut und Charakter, der Antwort zu folgen, wo immer sie euch hinführt? Tut mir leid, dass ich so moralisch und tugendhaft klinge. But if you are not willing to follow, to accept the question and follow where it leads, why should the answer bother to come forth? Und wenn ihr den Mut und den Charakter...

[46:21]

are not going to participate with you in answering a question that you're going to brush off. So you need repetition. And you need courage and character to follow, to answer a question. This is also this trust. And this lets the question put out little filaments, little tiny minuscule roots into your activity. I think Hugo St. Victor actually said, all the world is pregnant with meaning. So you begin to put little tiny roots, I figure what they're called, out into your situation, your mind, your body, your activity. I think you've had about enough of the thoroughness of asking yourself a question.

[47:40]

But, you know, if we're going to spend a few more minutes before we end, let me say, also it helps if you practice meditation. What does meditation give you? If you sit down, outside as much as possible this fabric of meaning which ties questions into our ordinary consciousness. Sitting down, as I said last night, is an absorbing of differentiation. absorbing the differentiation that locks us into the sense of who we are that makes us feel we may have taken the wrong road.

[49:12]

Because most of our mind doesn't present us, you know, we go down this road and we don't really see possible choices. So you have to sit down, like if I stand up, it's like I'm in some kind of mental space and activity and I'm thinking, but if I sit down, particularly not on a chair, you sit down into another kind of physical and mental space. And when you do that, you enter a kind of space of free association, etc. And the possible forks in your road become more apparent. Und die möglichen Weggabelungen unserer Straße werden offensichtlicher.

[50:30]

The question can flow. Die Frage kann fließen. Your personal history flows. Eure persönliche Geschichte fließt. So it's a very good situation to ask yourself repeatedly a question. Das ist eine sehr gute Situation, wo man sich immer wieder solch eine Frage stellen kann. And meditation also develops one-pointedness. So to answer this question, to be open to this flow of the question, also it's helpful to have one-pointedness, to stay with the question repetitively. So what I'm trying to talk about now is not Buddhism so much, but what Buddhism might offer us is a practical, deep way of asking and answering a fundamental question. Now there's some other aspects of this I would... Maybe it's good to leave till tomorrow to talk about.

[51:38]

When you begin to work with a question like that, you recognize that in some way you're involved in aspiration or vision. Now, it's also true as a Buddhist practice that we not only start where we are, we tend to look very precisely at simple things, as I've just done. So we can ask ourselves, what kind of vision or aspiration do we have that's really the background of such a question? So I think in the context of feeling of, you know, you want to ask this question.

[53:34]

And you want to ask this question for yourself. But you also want to ask the question with others and even for others. And the word in English, becoming, like becoming who you are. The word becoming means appropriate beauty. If you say you're very becoming, it means you're beautiful, but it means you're beautiful in the situation you are just now. So Buddhism would say, ask this question in a way that's very becoming to you. It makes you beautiful.

[54:40]

It makes you feel beautiful. Now, you may not always feel beautiful, but you notice that you don't feel beautiful. But you're much more likely to get a fruitful answer if you do this in a way that feels beautiful or appropriate with others and for yourself. And you use such a question not just to find an answer, But to discover your mind. And to discover your concentration.

[55:40]

If you discover your mind and your concentration, you'll be much closer to finding out who you are, who you're becoming. So I ask all of you, each of you, to find a way, form this question in your own terms, and find a way to repeat it and stay with a kind of feeling of the repetition, even if you don't say the words. And so möchte ich jeden von euch bitten, wirklich deine eigene Version dieser Frage zu finden, einen Weg zu finden, wirklich an dieser Frage daran zu bleiben, und auch dann herauszufinden, wie du dir diese Frage immer wiederholen kannst. And if you haven't answered by tomorrow, I'm going to be disappointed. What I would really like is by tomorrow you've actually decided to take the question seriously.

[56:45]

And even better, you've found a way to settle its repetition into you. You found a way to hum it or feel it mentally and physically. You've discovered a kind of background continuity through the question. If you have a feeling or taste of that by tomorrow, we've accomplished a great deal. Once you learn this skill, you can put other questions into this skill. Start that as a skill that becomes a power and then a faculty of being. So we can do a lot with one question seriously taken and investigated.

[57:46]

Thanks. We're following, in a way, we're following Nietzsche's suggestions. Or the precedent he gave us. That you are your own, you can be your own religion. Or you can have your own confidence to seek the truth. To seek the truth of your own life journey. Seek the truth of who you already are and who you might be.

[59:13]

And also through Nietzsche, we have this joining of a sense of a personal truth with choosing a traditional religion that works for you. So looking at a question like this, Nietzsche's question becoming who we are, who I am, Can be, first of all, your own quest, your own pilgrimage. And it can be your own development of the teachings of Buddhism. Who am I already?

[60:44]

Who may I be? Let some form of this question Let it slip deeply into you until it's inseparable from your breath and your feeling. Guten Morgen.

[61:58]

Okay. Well, I hope that this question, becoming who you are, becoming what you are, is humming somewhere in you. Becoming who we are. And I think some of you weren't here last night, so I'm sorry. And for those of you who weren't here last night, we just really looked thoroughly at this question of becoming who and what we are, who and what you are.

[63:15]

And I wanted to really just look at the question, and not with the sense that it's a Buddhist question, or that it's going in a Buddhist direction, but just that it's a question that actually It's probably more Western than Asian. And certainly whether it's how one would frame such a basic question in Buddhism or in the West, still it's a personal question for us. So I'm trying to look at this question with you and in myself, in ways, again, that don't depend on Buddhism.

[64:49]

Now there may be and there are Buddhist elements in the way we looked at it last night. But we can also say contemporary elements, too. I'm emphasizing this because I really want this to be your personal question. And for those of you who are therapists, and I know a number of you are, that I think much of everything we talked about last night can be part of therapy or whatever. It's not Buddhist. But I think it is Buddhist, or at least one of the characteristics of it that makes it Buddhist is the way we looked at it last night, is the thoroughness with which we looked at it.

[66:13]

And the... believe that nothing, that your own intelligence and effort is most of what you've got. You can't depend on... You'd ask me that? Maybe that's enough. You can't depend on... on something outside yourself or some already formed situation to carry you. So you really have to look at and make the effort to ask the question and to trust the process of asking the question. And this sense of getting the question into your body is probably a Buddhist emphasis.

[67:45]

But now this is such common knowledge, we don't have to call it Buddhism anymore. Everybody thinks this way pretty much, or a lot of people do. Now, for me, I thought, well, I have to work on this question too, of course. So, for me, it formed into is, might be. Or what is, what might be. And sometimes it's the other order, what might be, what is. And for me, there's a different feeling when I say what might be. And when I say what is, if I repeat just what might be to myself, I feel somehow not grounded.

[69:00]

But if I say just what is, that's good, I like that feeling, but I feel with this question I also want to consider what might be. So, in other words, for each of us, and for me it was this way, you have to find your own phrases or way of asking the question. And the more it reduces to a few words that carry the feeling and potential of the question for you, the more you can get the question into your body and into your situation. And into your situation, by that I mean that it's now humming enough in your body and mind, that your situation, not doing meditation or something, but just your situation during the day, can begin to speak to you.

[70:31]

Okay. Is there anything anybody would like to bring up or mention or any thoughts you've had since last night? Yes. I had the question how it appeared in me it became like a pulse between this becoming and being I mean it's similar like is and might be and I yeah it was feeling enjoying this pulse and representing and since yesterday it changed like more in this becoming there is a When I follow that, there is like something pulls, and I don't like it, and this idea of self-improvement, and yeah, the way I am is not okay, and I have to, yeah, and so I had this idea, how can I

[71:59]

and that it was a picture of how could one collapse into the other, and how can you become collapsed into the being, or how is the way of being? But the topic is the conclusion. But that's not cool, maybe. Yeah. You want to say that in Deutsch? Can you hear her all right? No. No, OK. Yes, this question came to me in such a way that such a pulse emerged between this part, becoming who I am, that is, becoming, and being, that is, becoming who I am. And yesterday it was somehow very nice to just feel this pulse, to not decide in reverse. And then it changed so much that I thought that with the pole, the beginning, the becoming, that there is a train, that it pulls me out somehow and ideas of, yes, I have to change and improve, and the way I am now, it's not okay.

[73:12]

And that's not such a good feeling, that's the goal. If I might comment on what you said. I think what Andrea is pointing out to us is that there's an energetic dimension of a question and of a pattern of words. And if you say the words one way, you feel something. If you say it another way, you feel something maybe uncomfortable and uncomfortable. And this process of exploring basic questions, this fork in the road that's in us in who, what, where, when,

[74:25]

this choice that we're always present with, these many forks in the road that create the path of our life, you're much more likely to make good choices if you make them energetically rather than thinking. But you need thinking and the word to present it to yourself so that you can then feel energetically these choices. Yes, I don't mean to say so much after just one response. But the sense of letting the question sink into your body, the first level of noticing that is you feel an energetic difference with which order you say something or which combination of words you use.

[76:07]

Okay, someone else? Yes. That was the first choice. Which sense? Which sentence? Which sentence. Yeah. And the language is probably, because in English it sounds quite, I don't know exactly how to translate that in a good way. And that was the first difficult choice. and so but French people don't ask this themselves this question because you have so much First you have to choose it in your own language, in your country's language, and then you have to choose it in your personal language, and then you have to let energetic elements make the choice.

[77:28]

Jacqueline has the problem that when she translates these questions into German, excuse me, into French, that she can't decide at all. It's easier in English. in what I said? Didn't let me. Did you say anything? I didn't. I don't know what she's talking about but I know when she doesn't translate me. Okay, someone else? Yeah, I think, excuse me, I think what I was thinking, that's why I didn't hear what you said about these four versions of these questions we discussed yesterday and how I felt I can use it almost as a monitor to find out where I stand by looking at the four and finding at which level.

[78:36]

Why don't you say that? Yes, I just started to think about it myself, when this dialogue took place here. So yesterday I made a list, these four categories, so being, who you are, being, what you are, becoming, who you are and becoming, what you are. And I can almost use it as a kind of monitor, where I am standing right now, depending on which of these four versions I feel drawn to. What I said just was that first you have to put it into your own language, your country's language, And then into your own personal what feels your own personal way of saying it.

[79:52]

And then you have to be open to this energetic feeling of what works for you energetically which is really where mind and body are kind of overlapping. And by noticing that, you can actually begin to notice right now while I'm talking to you, not just listening to it, but feeling what I'm saying energetically. You can begin to locate that spot. And one of the elements of Zen practice as a short path is the ability to develop an experience as an entry. In other words, by working with a question like this, you begin to notice something that's obvious, that there's this energetic level at which we feel the question,

[81:21]

And while the two ways of saying something might make nearly the same meaning in language, a slight difference in the words makes a different feeling energetically in us. Now where Zen practice would come in is you recognize that spot where mind and body are kind of pulsing against each other. And then you remember that feeling with your body And then you can reproduce that feeling as an entry in other situations. Do you understand? This is a kind of skill that you can... Yeah.

[82:28]

It's a kind of skill. But you have to see the possibilities of it as a skill before you would probably think of developing it as a skill. Okay, that's enough said at this moment about that. It's becoming carpenters of the soul. Yes. What do you mean with pulsing and more harmonious pulsing or more kind of like faces?

[83:29]

Both. And even rubbing against each other. Yes. But which then is the one that creates the gate for other situations? All of those, if you remember the feeling, it's just the sensation of where mind and body are at a point where you can feel them together. And all these states allow you, if you can remember them, to find this point where body and mind are together. Okay, what I'm saying is, again, a given in yogic culture is that all mental processes have a physical dimension. All physical activity also has a mental dimension. Now, athletes, particularly at a high level performance, know this extremely well. Okay.

[84:47]

And if we talk, as we often do, commonly nowadays, about mind and body being interrelated or the same and so forth. This is great, you know. It's nice that this idea is now accepted. But is it part of your useful vocabulary? In other words, I can use certain words. But can I just as freely move those words and sentences out of a primarily mental process into a physical process? Do you understand that? In other words, you can say a sentence mentally and you can say it physically.

[85:53]

Or somewhere in between. And knowing that feeling, you can also just look physically or look mentally. Okay, now this is just a... increasing your mind-body vocabulary. And perhaps we'll find that we come back to this occasionally during these two days we have. Okay. You had something you wanted to say? Yes, for me, from this question, who and what, I come to ask myself how it is to be Angela. So I asked me how, and so I felt that with the question how it is, I come more to my feeling, to my physical side.

[87:02]

Okay. Yes? The way you said, I found for me yesterday more helpful the phrase discovering what I am, what we are, just becoming or being that was too general. Yeah. That was more helpful. Okay. Yes? When I took that question, who am I or what am I, yesterday, while sitting here, all sorts of answers came up, and then I tried to just stay with the question.

[88:09]

And after a while, the Kenya's question, well, becoming where, what does that mean? And... The point I, or the state I ended in was I can only become who I am. So it was kind of like going around in a circle, and I ended there, and it, in a way, felt calm and okay. You know, so I thought, okay, here, back at the first question, who am I, to find out who I can become, because I can only become who I am. So, I thought, okay, that's about to just be with that question, like you said, just be with the question. That was really Can you hear her? Now maybe you could stand up or turn around. . Yes, yes.

[89:33]

For me, it's important to become what I am. The other thing is that in my culture, I'm directed on an aim, how I should be. If I give up this idea and just direct my feeling just as I am, then I create a much larger energy level on one hand. On the other hand, it's like a ship going very fast and has no steering anymore. So it creates a big shift. It's just been... Yeah, OK.

[91:04]

This year, it seems to me that I love to shift again in the aim-directed idea. So I could have the idea maybe not to follow Zen anymore, but the aim-directed idea. It was just as I am, but maybe it could happen that I'm just laying in bed or just sitting in front of my computer and pushing that button. That doesn't help. It isn't. Deutsch? For me it is unnecessary to say what I am. It has a very positive energy effect, but it also creates, in my case, feelings of fear, because then there is no control over it. You are always the way you want to be and you no longer have a goal of what you should be.

[92:05]

Yes. Yes. I think that's a very abstract theory.

[92:50]

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