And good morning. Welcome to Alternative Currents. I'm Bella Johnson. This month's guest, Edward S. Bay Brown, takes me back to the early 1970s when I learned to bake bread with his Tassajara bread book. And I had an intro prepared, but I'm going to read actually from this well-worn copy of this book. In the words of Edward Brown, first came to Tassajara when it was still a resort in May 1966. Got a job as the dishwasher, learned to make bread, soups, and scrub the floor. I could never understand the cooks. One of the cooks quit, offered his job, I jumped right in over my head. Instantly I understood. In fact, I acquired cook's temperament. What a shock. During that summer, my friend Alan and I did Zazen together. One time Suzuki Roshi came down with several students. The first thing to do in setting up camp is to carry water and gather wood. Now we have carried water and gathered wood,

[01:13]

he said. The next spring I was suddenly head cook of a monastery, 22 years old and about as sure of my position as a leaf which falls in the winter creek. Proceeded to do a lot of things which I didn't know how to do. Learning first hand, the blind leading the blind. Bumped my head quite a bit and a few other people's heads also. The actual cooking I discovered was the easiest part of the job. I was head cook at Tassajara for three summers and two winters until being completely devoured, bones cast aside, I was finally exhausted of food. Now I build stone walls, which is really not such heavy work after all. And to bring you up to date, since Tassajara Bread Book, Edward Brown has been an ongoing student of yoga and Qigong, also a celebrated author of several cookbooks, the Tassajara Bread Book aforementioned, Tassajara Cooking, the Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings,

[02:15]

as well as co-author of the Greens Cookbook with Debra Madison. And recently edited is a book of lectures by his Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi called Not Always So, this released in 2002. Edward leads meditation retreats and teaches cooking classes as well as classes in mindfulness touch, a form of hands-on healing and liberation through handwriting, practicing specific handwriting changes to get out of your own way. As a photographer, Edward puts his images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, flowers, cows and scenery onto greeting cards using the original photos. And if you want an exquisitely sharp vegetable cutting knife, he is the man to talk to. He may be reached through his website at www.yogazen.com and is actually going to be in our neighborhood at the Morgan Bay Zen Doh for two days, Friday, September 3rd, at 7pm doing a

[03:16]

presentation called Real Life Zen, Meeting the Inner Dog and Tasting the Truth of Each Moment, and Saturday, September 4th, Receiving the Blessings of Our Lives, again at Morgan Bay Zen Doh. Let me give you numbers 374-9963 or 667-7170. For more information and also Edward Brown presenting At Ease in Body and Mind, a second annual meditation and yoga weekend at Tanglewood Camp in Lincolnville, Maine, September 10th through 12th. For more information on that, you may call 589-4591. Welcome, Edward Brown, after that long introduction. Well, good morning or afternoon, as the case might be. That's right. So as I said to you when we originally spoke, I presume you've gotten yourself a life since the Tassar Bread Book and a lot of things that I don't know about you and would love to have you bring me up to date as well as the listening audience.

[04:20]

Well, I spent all together, you know, starting out with being a cook at Zen Center. I spent 20 years at Zen Center. It's very interesting, you know, I left college and I went to the Zen Center to attain true realization and, you know, I got to the Zen Center. I had a sleeping bag and a little backpack and when I first left Tassar in 1973, by that point I had a wife, a daughter, a car and a carload of stuff. So I think this is something to do with Buddhism in America as opposed to like you leave those things to go practice meditation. We're still starting out, you know, like how do we do meditation practice and Buddhism and spiritual life in America and does it come with a family or not? And subsequent to leaving Tassar, then I got on what I think of as the Zen Center fast track and it turned out that the Zen

[05:23]

Center I belonged to was growing by leaps and bounds and I became, I had a succession of jobs and finally, you know, the next thing I knew by the middle of the 1970s, I was the president, the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of this $4 million a year corporation and rather than being a spiritual person, I was learning how to be an executive administrator and read balance sheets and profit and loss statements and think about personnel issues and various things like this which hadn't been my idea of what spiritual practice was. So I've had to, you know, a lot of ideas have shifted over the years and of course we can go on from there, you know, that that's 1975 and I was also at the time not only president, chairman of the board and I was also head of the practice for the San Francisco Zen Center at the editor city center building. So as you might guess anyway, my marriage

[06:29]

fell apart and then because it was also difficult, I dropped out again. You know, I stopped all those jobs and thought I'd just sort of practice Zen and then I started working at a restaurant Green's as a busboy and the next thing I knew, well, a couple of years went by and I was the manager of Green's and the wine buyer. So these things keep having a way of happening. If you're, if it seems like if you have any basic competence at all, you know, the world is looking for that and hungry for that and they'll use you and use you up and so that was quite a nice job though, you know, being a wine buyer. And then I went back down to Tessahara to lead a practice period and I had an experience there after 20 years of practicing Zen. One day I was sitting there in the meditation hall and I thought, what will I do today? And somehow this thought occurred to me, why don't I just touch what's

[07:32]

inside with some love and some kindness and some warm heartedness? And as soon as I thought that, the tears just started pouring down my face and then a little voice inside said, well, it's about time. And that was profoundly affected me because I realized I had been, you know, aiming to produce a particular mind and body that I thought was acceptable and that people would like and that would be okay for me to be me because, you know, I was performing appropriately, you know, in a good spiritual fashion, etc. And I checked this with one of my Zen teachers at the time, Katagiri Roshi, and I said, is this okay to just touch what's inside? Is that Zen or, you know, should I be doing something else? And he gave me a very interesting answer, which was that, you know, he said, Ed, for 20 years, I tried to practice

[08:37]

the Zazen of Dogen. The meditation of Dogen is that Dogen is the founder of the Soto School in Japan, who's quite a prolific and expressive writer. And he said, I tried to practice his meditation for 20 years before I realized there was no such thing. And so I think we do do a lot of things in our life, aiming for various things and trying to perform in various ways that people would like and that we'll be happy with ourselves, finally, that we measure up to our, you know, overly high internal standards. And at some point, maybe we can give it a rest and, you know, touch what's inside and be ourselves and be more true to ourselves and learn how to be what some people in, at least in the Zen tradition, you call that learning to be a human being or to grasp an ordinary person's life, finally, which is pretty nice. But that's that anyway, in itself, is over the last 20 years now been

[09:37]

extremely challenging, which, if you want to go on, but what do you think about so far how we're doing here? Well, no, I love what you're saying. And it really has occurred to me so often and why I've been drawn more and more to the teachings of Buddhism and Zen practice is just the fact that it's really easy to be spiritual when you don't have to be in the world in the way that we are thrust out in Western culture. But entirely, you know, a different thing when we're trying to practice amidst the chaos, you know, finding that Frank Ostaseski, do you know Frank? Yes, I do. Yes, was my guest last month or the month before and was talking about finding a place in the middle of things. And I just loved that. Well, sometimes meditation practice can certainly be that. And I think people do a lot of things that kind of help them find their place in the middle of things. I mean, I certainly

[10:39]

have friends who, you know, seem to do gardening in a way that it establishes them in the middle of things. And for many years there, I was, walking was one of the main things I did aside from meditation. And walking, especially in nature, seems to me to be very stabilizing. And meditation practice for me at many points in my life has been very stabilizing. And then there has been times over the last 20 years when it's been very difficult to do meditations and very challenging. And I've, you know, ended up doing a lot of different things finally. And I think it sort of depends on who you are, but it's certainly, you know, and it's certainly possible to find things that help us. You know, I mentioned gardening and walking. I mean, in a certain sense, it's finding things that help us, you know, come back to the ground and find our place. And sometimes, you know, home can be like that, certainly. But all of these

[11:47]

things, it's finally interesting that, you know, we have that capacity, but there's a certain kind of work or, you know, from the spiritual tradition that I'm in, of course, you call it practice, there's a certain practice to making yourself at home or finding yourself at home in your own body and being and finding yourself at home in the world and making your home. And all of those things are things that we do, and they don't just happen. And I think we forget sometimes that, you know, we think these things ought to just happen. So, but there's a certain amount of work to it, and it can be pretty challenging at times. Yeah. I was going to ask you what, you know, what you do when it's hard, when it gets hard. I mean, and what you do and what others do, I think it's different. Yeah. But knowing that, could you speak to that a bit? Well, you're asking a sort of, it's a fairly difficult question, you know, what do I do when

[12:56]

when things are difficult or things are hard? Because, you know, I do, I assume you're asking about what do I do that works? Well, yeah, but, but that's too simplistic, isn't it? More like the journey, you know, how do you actually, of course, when things aren't working, I've done, when things are hard, I've done a lot of different things. And, you know, with, you know, fairly haphazard results and benefit. And some of those things have been, you know, very useful and positive and, and, and lead to things and other things have, you know, caused, you know, in some sense, more difficulty and suffering. And so it's been very challenging. But it's like, how are you with yourself at those times of floundering? I guess that's more the question that I'm trying to get at. How am I with myself? Well, again, you know, I think that's, you know, one of the big, one of the big questions. And, you know, starting with

[13:58]

my experience of, can I touch what's inside with some warmth and kindness? Over the years, I've been aiming to do that more and more completely. And it hasn't always been easy or, you know, particularly possible. But from time to time, I am finally able to go like, oh, okay, I'm because certainly the tendency when things are difficult and painful, which and I'm talking about anger, resentment, terror, dread, shame, worry, panic. And then there's all the sort of things like sadness, sorrow, grief, longing, desperation. I've experienced a pretty wide range of intense emotional feelings. I don't think everybody does. And, you know, there are different types of people. And that's the kind of person I am. And so it's been very challenging. And at some point, rather than trying to get rid of those feelings, I just finally go

[15:07]

like, oh, okay, this feeling is here, I may as well breathe it right into my heart. And that's the thing that's finally, that I finally keep coming back to, I'm going to breathe this. And rather than trying to be separate from it, I'm going to have some kindness and breathe it, inhale it right into my heart. And when I do that, it's somehow easier when I'm not pushing, you know, myself away from myself. And I breathe into my heart, and I inhale into my heart and, and, and things soften. Edward, you mentioned you write poetry, do you? Do you write poetry when you're in that confused place more easily than you do at other times? And if so, would you like to read something that you've written at that time? Oh, I don't really write that much poetry. I am a big fan of poetry. Oh, I thought you said you had written, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's more that

[16:10]

I love poetry. And then there are certain poems that I come back to. Right now, I'm appreciating, I think it's Antonio Machado, it's in that Roger Hasman's book. Hasman, who did the book, you know, 10 poems to change your life, and then 10 poems to open your heart. It's in his first one, 10 poems to change your life. And it was, it's the Antonio Machado, last night as I was sleeping. And that's been lately, you know, stayed with me, and I use it a lot. The first verse, you know, is something like, last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt, oh, marvelous error, that a spring was breaking out in my heart. And I said, Oh, water, along which secret aqueduct are you coming to me, water of a new life, which I have never drunk.

[17:13]

That to me is very positive. Yeah. And the sense of possibility and letting go of things and being refreshed by, you know, a moment of life. Well, I like one of the poems that you sent me to the fragment of a poem by Kabir. Yeah. From the Kabir book version by Robert Bly. The guest is inside you and inside me. The sprout lies hidden within the seed. None of us has gotten very far. Set aside your arrogance, then and take a look around inside. The blue sky extends further and further. The daily sense of failure comes to an end. The damage I have done to myself fades away. A million suns come forward with light when I sit firmly in that place. Yes. So nice. Thank you for that gift. Again, listeners, I haven't really reiterated, we are speaking with Edward Espe-Brown, a long time Zen practitioner and author of many books,

[18:21]

including the Tassajara bread book, Tassajara cooking, etc. And most recently, editing a book of lectures by Suzuki Roshi called Not Always So published 2002. Who was the publisher on that, Edward? It's HarperCollins. HarperCollins. Okay. In New York, and it's now out in a paperback. Oh, good. Yeah. And there was a few hardcover copies remained. I bought them all. Well, there you go. Edward is going to be speaking locally here at the Morgan Bay Zen Doh in Surrey on real life Zen, meeting the inner dog and tasting the truth of each moment, Friday evening, September 3rd at seven. Quite. I didn't realize that, you know, set out such a lengthy title there, but, you know, that's pretty good. Meeting the inner dog. I was going to ask you about that. See, that was the next question. So, but we'll get back to that in a second. And receiving the blessings of our lives,

[19:21]

Saturday, September 4th. Both of these, you can call Vicki Pollard and Howard Evans at 374-9963 for more information or Hugh Curran at 667-7170. And that will give you more on that. And for those of you in the mid coast area at ease in body and mind, the second annual meditation and yoga weekend with Edward S. Brown, September 10th through 12th. And that's at Tanglewood in Lincolnville. And for more information on that, 589-4591. So, yeah, what about this? Meeting the inner dog and tasting the truth of each moment. Well, there's various derivations for meeting the inner dog. Most recently I came across this little hand, you know, a hand letter set, little booklet, which is about conversations with the inner dog. And it's a delightful little, you know, sort of booklet. The woman's name who wrote it is Lynn,

[20:26]

Linda Dannon. I guess it's a Irish name, she said. But she said that in her book, she says she had problems with her dog, with her dog's behavior. And of course, the analogy is that most of us have problems with our own behavior. So to speak in the basement, you know, which is like the dog, this little puppy that was originally quite a lot of fun. And then as the puppy gets older, in order to behave in polite company, we put various parts of ourselves in the basement. So this is the dog that is now in the basement. And because, you know, the part that we've rejected starts to complain. And, you know, classically when mammals are separated from their mothers, they will complain loudly for a while. So while they're complaining loudly, of course, you move up one or two stories or up to the attic of the house so that you don't hear the complaints anymore.

[21:29]

And in a kind of Zen sense, of course, this is that you move up into your head, you abandon your body and live in your head. And both Karakuri Roshi and Suzuki Roshi, my Zen first Zen teachers, you know, used to say, Zen is to settle yourself on yourself. And sometimes Karakuri Roshi especially would point to his head, yourself, to settle yourself on yourself, and then point to his, you know, stomach, his abdomen, that you're settling your head. You're studying how to have, you know, your consciousness, which is normally so much in your head, to re-embody yourself, to re-inhabit yourself. And, of course, when you re-inhabit yourself, you're going to meet the parts of yourself that you left down in the basement, which in this case could be considered to be kind of, you know, your inner dog that you're going to have to learn how to relate to. And sometimes the inner dog is very upset with you for having been left for so long. And it actually takes a fair amount of time to gain the trust of

[22:36]

the dog that you're not going to abandon it again, that you're not going to mistreat it, that you really are interested in what's going on. And, you know, in other words, with your body, how you're studying how to actually have a body and relate to a body, and this is different than and be a body. Be a body rather than I live in my head and I tell my body what to do and I expect to do what it's told and not complain. And so this is a whole different way of relating to one's body and one's being, to be in the body and to say, how are you doing here and how would you like to do things. And so, for instance, in meditation, you know, I encourage people there, although there's a form to practice, I mean, people say sit up straight, but actually in a more intimate sense, you're studying where are your hips really happy and feel encouraged

[23:40]

and supportive and they are happy to hold you up and they feel settled where they are. And there's a good balance of being settled and energetic and, you know, and you're studying how to actually have your body have its life in a way that it feels happy and healthy and you're rather than just telling your body what you think it ought to do. And sometimes I joke with people, you know, I say, no, you know, or like following your breath, which is a basic practice in meditation or often in yoga practices, but who knows better how to breathe you up in your head or your breath. And the question is how to turn your intelligence or your thinking mind, you know, over to your body and your breath such that it can realize itself or, and, and in that sense, liberate itself from, you know, always having to be told, you know, what it ought to be doing and what it ought to not be doing. And these are very deep issues because finally it means, you know, are you means, you know, are developing a kind of deep trust in your own body and mind

[24:45]

and being and life in this world to, to be able to find itself and to realize itself and to, you know, manifest itself in a way that connects with others and brings you happiness and joy and others' well-being. So this is, and it's, you know, it's, it's not so simple and it's ongoing, but it's obviously work, you know, well worth doing. Definitely. I also noticed a real change. It seems, you know, after 40, you just can't get away with demanding things of your body anymore. It seems to want to have its own way. It's just about 40. Seems to want to have its own way with us at that point. And boy, if we listen to it and we're able to follow along with it, there's so much we can learn. Whereas, you know, up until then, the energy is just so... You have enough energy. In Chinese medicine, it's the kidney qi. You know, by 40, you don't have the same kind of, it's the energy in the kidney in Chinese medicine, which holds you together and allows you to go

[25:51]

forward like that and impose yourself on your, impose your mind on your body. And then at some point there, you just can't, you don't have the energy and, and to do it anymore. Just can't be done. So, well, there's also, then, you know, all those athletes retire at 40. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also that connection with the kidney being the mother and the liver being the child that I found just fascinating recently. Just watching the connection between those two. Just how, you know, after midlife, we tend to gain a lot of weight or disproportionately around that solar plexus area around where the liver is, as that kidney starts to shift. Kidney energy grows less, so it becomes more important too. And I found, I thought, geez, I've done this 20 years of Zen practice, you know, from the time I was 20 till I was 40.

[26:53]

But then it was, that was sort of like, life began. And things turned out to be in the 40s. I left Zen Center right about when I was 40. And people say, well, why did you leave? And, you know, in retrospect, I left to have a midlife crisis. I left to fall apart in peace and quiet, rather than in front of everybody at the Zen Center. And then I thought, well, that's nice. You know, we'll take care of that. And then it turned out the 50s were even harder because, well, I don't know what other people call it. I call it, you know, male menopause. And it's been very challenging. And I feel like I'm kind of emerging from that now. And I'm ready for what's next. What's the next 20 years? And I feel like,

[27:54]

um, you know, it's, it should be pretty nice now. I can't imagine things being, well, I mean, you know, obviously one can have sickness or various difficulties or problems. But in terms of just the unfoldment of, you know, inner life and spirit and everything, I don't, I don't, I think that I've done enough work now with midlife crisis and male menopause and all the things that have happened that I'm, I'm kind of ready to go forward in a different way and see what my life can be and, and be there for people in a different way, rather than, you know, in being in the middle of my own undoing, redoing, etc. You get to move into your male crone, huh? Yeah, there you go. Thank you. Edward, I think it's about time to take a break, or it's appropriate to do so. And want to remind listeners that we are interviewing today, Edward S.B. Brown,

[28:56]

who is going to be doing a couple of events locally at the Morgan Bay Zen Do, Friday evening, September 3, Saturday, September 4. For more information, and this is real life Zen and receiving the blessings of our lives. For more information, Howard and Vicki 374-9963 and Hugh Curran 667-7170. And also an event at Tanglewood in Lincolnville, Camden area, September 10 through 12. For more information on that 589-4591. You are listening to Alternative Currents on WERU-FM 89.9 Blue Hill and 102.9 Bangor. Listener supported, volunteer powered, and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. Welcome back to Alternative Currents. I'm Bella Johnson here today with Edward S.B. Brown,

[30:58]

longtime cook, yoga practitioners and priest, priest, there's the word. Yeah, etc. Edward, when you talk about the handwriting kind of thing, liberation through handwriting, can you talk a little bit about this? Sounds really interesting. This has been a complete, I would, well, not, I mean, everything is not exactly, I was going to say it's been a complete joy, but it, I get very excited and passionate about this because it's been so powerful in my life. And it started about 19, about 10 years ago now. And I was at Tassajara at the Zen Center and a woman at the work circle there said she'd been studying handwriting with a woman named Vimala Rogers, who have I have since taken classes with, and I have her books. And Vimala is an amazing person who

[32:01]

had a collection of hundreds of handwritten notes before she could read. She was fascinated with handwriting before she could read. And she spent her life, you know, studying handwriting. And she studied it where she wants to see for herself and know for herself rather than accepting what other people say about handwriting. And she got a job like in grammar school as a hall monitor, part of which was to empty the trash cans. And she pilfered notes and started studying handwriting. Fabulous. Anyway, the woman at the work circle at Tassajara and since then Vimala has gone on to, you know, study yoga. And she lived at the Ananda Ashram in the Sierra Nevadas. And she learned Sanskrit so she could read the Bhagavad Gita and the original language and so forth. And she's in the Bhagavad Gita, it turns out that there are 26 qualities that you can develop.

[33:04]

And so she's associated these with the letters of the alphabet. Oh my goodness. Anyway, the woman at Tassajara said that if we gave her a sample of our handwriting, she could tell us a little bit about ourselves and something that we might work on in our handwriting. If we were interested in that, something that we might change. So I showed her my handwriting, you know, just two or three sentences. And she said, you're very smart, you're intelligent, you're spontaneous, you're creative. But, you know, tell me something, do you feel stuck in your life? And I thought about it for a moment. I said, well, you know, actually, I do. I do kind of feel stuck in my life. And she said, I'm not surprised you're making this self-satisfying F. And, you know, I can't show you this over the phone or anything, but it's where the upper loop of the F goes in the usual direction, so-called forward. And the lower loop, instead of also coming forward, it loops backwards. So the bottom loop of the F is more like a loop on a G or a Y,

[34:11]

rather than the lower loop of the F, more workably or in the non-self-sabotage ways, like the loop of a Q. And so the self-sabotage F is one step forward, one step back, and your life isn't going to go anyplace. And I changed my F, and by golly, and how does the universe know this? Or how do these things work? I mean, it's like uncanny, it's like unreal. And the next year, I finished Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. I've been working on it for more than 10 years, and it wasn't getting done. After 31 years, I received Dharma Transmission, or Dharma Entrustment, you know, final recognition of being a Zen teacher in the lineage with the Buddha, one with the Buddha. 31 years I've been working on that, it just wasn't happening. And then Patricia and I bought a house. I was more than 50 years old before I bought my first house,

[35:14]

you know, bought my first and only house. And it's a big deal here where I live to buy a house, because this is some of the highest property values in the country. So three things happened within a year after I changed my F. It's just unreal. Change your F and change your life. Yeah. So I became a devotee, and I started going to classes. And so, including what she calls her handwriting immersion course, which is five days. And so, you know, from time to time, I do, I offer classes in, you know, changing your handwriting. And I also do consultations, etc. And sometimes, you know, things are just amazing. I mean, sometimes maybe not much happens. And this does depend on, you actually have to practice it. You know, it's like a lot of things, if you don't practice it, but it's an extremely powerful, somehow extremely powerful tool. And

[36:15]

by changing the movement of your hand and your lettering, you're literally changing your neural pathways. And people say, well, this is hard. I can't do this. My hand doesn't want to do this. And it's like, I'm sorry, but it's not your hand. And if you think that's tough, it's your mind, you know, that, you know, that must be having problems with that, because your mind is saying, you want to what you think you're going to what? Because you've never done anything like this, you know, and over and over again, it's just uncanny. What, you know, not, you know, always, but, you know, I just got a little postcard from a woman, I said, why don't you work on your R's now? And R is a letter of creativity. And she said she worked on her R's one evening for I forget how long if she said how long, but you know, like half an hour of handwriting practice. And the next day, she started writing again for the first time

[37:19]

since the war in Iraq. And she was just blown away. I mean, that it could have that kind of power. And I have another friend who worked on her D's, which is a letter of sensitivity, which is usually sensitivity about what other people think of you. And Vimla encourages people not to make loops in the stem of the D. But I have a friend who worked on her D's. And when she first started working on it, she was sensitive to 35 foods. And after she'd worked on her D's about three months, she was sensitive to three foods. So it's just sometimes it's just unreal, you know, what happens with people. So I have many stories like this. And on the other hand, you know, sometimes people work on something and not much seems to happen. And sometimes I work on something and not much happens. But it's fascinating. And then, you know, and then traditionally, you know, she says, and you know, a lot of boys especially say, well,

[38:20]

you know, I or anyway, you know, some of us didn't, you know, sort of rebuild about learning to write. And she says, well, of course, especially boys know intuitively that the handwriting we were taught in school was teaching us to do what we're told, fit in, don't stand out, don't think for yourself. And, you know, just, you know, be a good, you know, fit in, obey the rules, etc. You see, and that's what handwriting was teaching us. Well, it's funny, because as much as they kept trying to correct my Rs, I kept making my own. Yeah, there you go. Curious to see them, Bella. They're in Maine, you'll have to show me. Yeah, they're, they're like they did around the turn of the century. It's kind of like, you know, it's Yeah, interesting. But you know, I kept getting, they kept trying to correct me. And I was just like, not gonna happen. So funny how that works. Yes, our neighbor changed herself sabotage F. And the next thing you know that she was a dentist at the time. And the next thing she

[39:22]

knew she was pregnant, and she sold her dental practice that moved her life ahead. You have to watch out for these things about what's moving forward. And, you know, if you're not sure and willing to, you know, venture into the next phase, it's better not to change anything. Right. But then she, you know, she is that possible? I don't think it's even possible, is it not? Well, you know, some people, you know, endeavor to do that and kind of stick to what they've done in the past. And, and it kind of works out for them. And, you know, I mean, it's a kind of a choice to as much as possible to do that. Some of us are not so interested in doing that. And we'd rather learn how to let go of the past and be open to the future. And, you know, there's various handwriting things that have to do with that. Anyway, just to finish up about my neighbor, though, she, she then got a, you know, a specialty in TMJ. And so she's,

[40:23]

she's, you know, things are things are going well for her. And then just yesterday, we decided to that she could work on that her name is Jennifer. So she's going to work on her capital J, because she's been bending over backwards a little bit too much for people. So anyway, yes, I've been delighted with that. And then do you want to know about Mindfulness Touch too? Yeah, I do. And I wonder how much you're going to touch on either of those at the Morgan Bay or the Tanglewood. Now that we're talking about it, I may just have to, you know, I might just have to have a like a lunchtime seminar or something. Well, I haven't talked to about that with Vicki and Howard and with Melissa, you know, and, you know, maybe we can put a little something in because, you know, I think these are wonderful, engaging things and things that, you know, meditation, you know, in and of itself is pretty challenging. So if you can do yoga or, you know, handwriting changes or Mindfulness Touch, there are a lot of things that you can do or, you know, now I'm doing, you know, Qigong, there are a lot of things that you can do that

[41:26]

are pretty powerful in their own way. And, and whether it's as, you know, either as a core practice or as a practice to go along with meditation, I found them just terrific. Gives you something to meditate about. No, just kidding about that. Actually. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, well, I was just gonna say that, regardless of what we're doing, you know, one of the keys for me is I came across the expression actually in Thomas Moore, you know, Soulmates, his book Soulmates, and his idea is very much like mine. And he says, if you're in a relationship that's difficult, really, what you need to do is not figuring out how to make it work, but to widen your, what he calls your poetic imagination. I believe that's what he called it. But it's widening your poetic or your creativity or your, the, in other kinds of languages, it's giving yourself more choice.

[42:28]

And to, and to shift away from the sort of feeling of I have to, I should, I must, I can't, I'll try, and to actually, you know, allow for something to come forth from your own spirit, which is, of course, not just your own spirit, or your own heart, so to speak. But, you know, it's the universe, or the divine, or the blessed, or if you're in that tradition, you know, it's God, you know, it's the energy of the beyond coming through you, your inspiration, and your gifts, and your vitality, and to let, and how do you receive that, and then allow that to work in your life? Right. And that's, you know, there's just a lot of ways to do that, and certainly meditation is one of them. And you had mentioned, you know, receiving the blessings of our life, and that's certainly, you know, to receive a moment of experience as though it's a blessing is very powerful in this regard. And then to receive, you know, one's own inspiration, and ideas, and,

[43:35]

you know, possibilities, and to be open to things in that way is another kind of the blessing, because things are way more, lots more is possible than we often, you know, appreciate or allow for ourselves. Well, it's interesting you were talking about in relationships when there's stress. I mean, I often find, much to my chagrin, because I'd love to say, well, you know, this person's got their stuff going on, but more than likely, it's that I've stifled some deeper part of myself that, you know, gets transferred onto that person somehow. So it's interesting that you also came up with that idea to kind of release something creative or expansive within the self. Yeah. I don't complain much when I'm in a good space that way. Yeah, it's sort of like you don't have to, you don't have to be annoyed or offended by what other people are doing if you're giving yourself permission to respond to things. And if you're saying, well, I can't, I can't tell them this, or I can't say

[44:41]

that, or then you're going to be upset that, you know, you can't, but you're the one who said that you, that you can't, and then you say, well, they don't want to hear what I have to say. Exactly. Interesting. So mindfulness touch, we can touch on that a little bit, maybe. Um, well, I became fascinated with this. I started doing, um, oh, excuse me. Um, I started doing some hands-on healing work with a group here in California, which has since disbanded. Um, and I found it just fascinating and I found it very challenging at first because I was, um, at the time I started that very much of a literalist and, or, you know, a realist. And if you're a literalist or a realist, there's a lot you can't sense or feel because you just told yourself like that, um, I can't, I can't touch what people are feeling. I can touch stuff. I can't touch feelings or I can't touch judgment or I, you know, so you, you kind of pre, you can easily pre-decide

[45:46]

what you can touch and what you can't touch. And the basis of mindfulness touch is that when you touch someone, you could also, you could not just be touching substance, but you're touching consciousness. And then, so that's first of all. And then secondly, the other fundamental principle here is that in mindfulness touch, you're endeavoring to touch someone and receive the person and receiving, and this quality of touching and receiving is very rare. And because most touches go over there, come over here, calm down, straighten up, relax. And most touch or it's saying, I really like you and why don't you? And it's giving some kind of judgment or directive or it's diagnosing, it's fixing, it's helping. Um, so with our touch, we're endeavoring to communicate something. And implicitly, when we communicate that, we're telling the person that

[46:50]

we're touching that they're wrong. You know, if they're feeling anxious, we're telling them, calm down. And we think of that as being helpful. We think, well, I'm going to help this person by encouraging them to calm down. Um, but implicit in that is it's wrong for you to be upset. And so a lot of consciousness, um, which we can then find and touch very directly and easily. Um, a lot of consciousness gives these most, most conscious moments of our awareness, we're giving directives to the object of our consciousness, telling it what to do and how to behave. And then of course it doesn't. So this is frustrating. And so, um, to, to, to practice mindfulness touches, to just practice being with whatever's there and not, not helping, not fixing, not changing, and just agreeing like, oh, you're sad. Oh, you're tight. Oh, you're tense. Oh, you're struggling. Oh, you're relaxing. Oh, you're, you know, this is warm.

[47:51]

This is cool. This is hard. This is soft. So you're, and initially I used the four elements from Buddhism, which is earth, water, air, and fire. So there's a sense of when you touch someone, there's a sense of solidity, sense of fluidity, a sense of kind of wind or, uh, currents of air, um, you know, certainly the breath. And then there's a sense of heat or cold or a kind of, um, uh, what sometimes is called incandescence. Um, and then, um, uh, so you're endeavoring to, or, you know, your aim or intention here is to touch and just receive. And oftentimes when you touch somebody and just receiving how they are and allowing them to be how they are, then that's very relaxing because nobody is now judging them and saying, well, why are you so uptight? What's wrong with you? And then if you're, if somebody, if you feel in the, and this is very similar to what happens just in the presence of somebody who's not judging much,

[48:52]

you start to feel very happy or relaxed because I don't have to defend myself from this person's judgments about me. And this also happens just in the context of meditation, you know, because Buddhism is that mindfulness is the basic practice in Buddhism. So if you're practicing mindfulness of the breath, you're not trying to make your breath a certain way. You're not trying to make it longer rather than shorter or deeper or calmer, or it's just letting the breath be how it is. And after a while, it's as though your breath relax and of itself, it just starts to relax. And then it starts to expand because you're no longer telling it, well, well, you know, relax. Well, you know, can't you be calmer? And that kind of agitation is actually, you know, your breath is not relaxing because you're telling it, you know, to do this and do that. And at some point it's as though your breath is saying, you know, could you just let me do this for myself, you know, instead of, you know, telling me what to do. So mindfulness,

[49:58]

anyway, this is the basic vehicle or, you know, practice of a kind of real possibility for change, which comes when, you know, there's no longer judgment and there's just noticing how things are. And once we notice how things are, there's a kind of shift that can happen. And we can enter into a different kind of space, not because we legislate it or impose it on ourselves, but because we're intimate enough with our experience that a change can occur. And it's not something we necessarily, it's not something that we figure out ahead of time. And then pretty soon, because we practice that, you know, we can trust that the change will be all right and that the shift will be fine and that we'll settle more deeply into ourselves and into, you know, being connected with our life and, you know, other people in our life and so forth. So it's pretty nice. I found touch work. And it's interesting too, by the way, you know, I've found touch work to be extremely, for me,

[51:03]

you know, extremely important. And I've learned a tremendous amount in it. And it's interesting that in that sense, of course, that like meditation, you know, it often requires a kind of formal context. That it's hard to meditate if you just say, well, you know, without setting aside time and you say, we are going to meditate here, I'm going, we're going to hit a bell to begin, we're going to hit a bell to end, and this is the time we're going to do this. And also the formality of, there's a certain formality that helps with sort of touch like this, because otherwise you get concerned, like, boy, if somebody touches me, like what's going to happen? No permission. Yeah. And you want to be in a context of, this is a touch that we're doing in this context, we're not, and it's not about, you know, it's not about relationship or love or sex or anything else. This is about connection. And this is about studying our awareness and how we're aware of

[52:06]

various things. And certainly a lot of things can come up in that context, but you have also the sort of the sanctity of that space that you're not going to go, you know, that this isn't going to lead to, you know, these other things. And so you're, you know, if you're not careful about that, then it's hard to have, it's hard to have intimacy without actually having some formality. It's very interesting. You know, it's the same with meditation, because meditation is, because ideally, you know, meditation is a place where anything can happen. Like finally you can let your mind do, you know, do or think or feel anything. You don't have to tell your mind or body how to be, because in the context of meditation, you're not going to do anything. You're not moving and you're not talking. So when you, if you happen to feel angry, it's like you could feel angry because you're not going to move and you're not going to talk.

[53:06]

So you're not going to hurt anybody. And if you feel sad, you're not going to, you're not going to go, you're not going to, you know, go jump off a bridge or something, because you're not going to do anything with it. And so you have a kind of safety or a container for experiencing things without having to do something about it. And this is, this is very powerful, regardless of it's in the context of meditation or it's in the context of touch, or just in the context of your daily life. Pretty interesting. Now, Edward, is Patricia doing this work with you? Patricia does a lot of work with me over the years. This is Patricia Sullivan we're speaking of. Yes. And. But she's not coming to Maine with you this time? Okay. I just want to remind listeners, again, speaking with Edward S.B. Brown, and we're running a little short of time. So just to make sure that I reiterate the events that are going on. He's presenting at the Morgan Bay Zendo, real life Zen,

[54:08]

meeting the inner dog and tasting the truth of each moment Friday evening, September 3 at 7pm. And the next day receiving the blessings of our lives at Saturday, September 4, you can call Vicki Pollard or Howard Evans 374-9963 for more information. Again, 374-9963 or Hugh Curran at 667-7170. The other event in our area with Edward S.B. Brown is at Ease in Body and Mind second annual meditation and yoga weekend at Tanglewood Camp in Lincolnville, Maine. For more information, Melissa Hatch 589-4591. I want to thank you, Edward, for being with us on Alternative Curse today. And yes, and would wish you very well on these retreats. I'm looking forward to coming to Maine. I just find Maine so refreshing after California. I cannot tell you. Well, I'm from California, so maybe you can tell me.

[55:10]

But I've been here over 30 years. Yeah, it is a different. Well, it just feels so much more wholesome and down to earth. Yes, that it is with all the granite that surrounds it. And yes, nice grounding. So best wishes to you. And yes, join us again on Alternative Currents next month. First Friday of the month at 10 a.m. This is Bella Johnson saying, enjoy your summer.

[55:34]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ