switch positions with your partner. You don't have to, let's do this slowly. And also let's be as quiet as we can and then we'll talk for a little bit after we've switched positions. If you haven't yet removed your hands, you can take a moment to bring your consciousness back carefully into your hands and just kind of say goodbye with your hands to the person and take them off the shoulders and switch positions. Maybe it's better to have the belt. Okay, thank you.

[01:03]

So again, one of the nice things about this is that you don't have to know how to do this. You just let your hands figure it out. This is like letting your breath know how to be the breath. You don't have to tell your breath how to breathe. You don't have to explain to your hands how to do this. Hands know how to do this. And you just have to give them permission to go ahead and touch someone. Touch consciousness, body, earth, water, air, fire. Go ahead and just ask your hands to be with someone. Letting them be as they are. One of the things as you're touching someone,

[02:39]

you know, it might occur to you to have some doubt. You might wonder like, gee, I'm not sure I know how to do this. Or I wonder if I'm doing this the way it should be done or as well as it could be done. And you just acknowledge that. You know, thinking. Come back to the sensations of the touch. We're touching connection. Sensation of your own breath. You know, sometimes it helps to settle into your own body in order to receive someone else. You settle in your own body, your weight. You let your weight settle onto the cushion or floor. If you're seated in a chair and you have your feet on the floor, you have some consciousness in your feet as well as in your hands.

[03:41]

So you feel settled and stable in place, receiving. You're diving into the depths here. And you don't even know the secret. You don't have to know the secret. It's being revealed. You just let your hands receive what they receive. You might notice someone's shoulders feel a little tense.

[04:53]

These days, I hardly ever touch anybody who seems to be actually be breathing. Everybody seems to at some level be holding. We're all holding our breath. So you just acknowledge that. Oh, some tension. It's difficult, isn't it? I'm going to give those of you touching now

[06:24]

just a couple of the suggestions that you might try out and just see if it seems to make any difference or not. But if you nod your head just a little bit like you're saying yes, your chin goes down a little bit and up a little bit, just very small, subtle, tiny movements. And then just let your head decide, your head and neck. Is there some place where you feel just a little more present perhaps? And other places where you're not quite as well connected to the person you're touching? And just make a guess. We all tend to keep our head in a particular position. And now you're giving your head and neck permission to be a little more connected, receptive.

[07:30]

So you can also try out rotating your head, which is what we associate with no, rotating your head to the right and to the left. And again, if there's some place that just feels like a little more alive or a little sweeter, or tender. And you can side bend your head a little bit to the left and right. Slow movements. And in that range of side bending left and coming back to straight and side bending to the left, this is your ear coming closer to your shoulder, side bending. Is there some place that you've given your head

[08:33]

and neck a little permission to be free and move this way or that and just feel? Feels pretty nice. You're no longer positioning your head and maybe in quite the same way as before you started, when you started. You let your head and neck find a place where you can be with life, be with another person's life and consciousness, connect with someone. Now, before we stop,

[10:02]

and we'll be stopping in another minute, perhaps. Relax. And you know, I can't say this, you know, without everyone in the room hearing it, but, but while you're touching this person, you just say to yourself, to the person you're touching. Not verbally, you know, but just to yourself. You say to yourself, I'm willing to touch your blessedness. I'm willing to receive your preciousness. What the rose, what was told to the rose that made it open

[11:10]

is being told to me now in my hands as I touch you. When you touch someone's blessedness, of course, you're also touching your own blessedness. When you're willing to acknowledge someone else's preciousness, you touch your own preciousness. So now before you take your hands away,

[12:14]

again, if you bring your consciousness, so to speak, back into your hands, before you just take away your hands, make sure that the shoulders are separate from your hands once again. Because often when you're touching somebody, you'll have the sense of, you know, the shoulders have kind of disappeared. You feel a kind of, you can't tell where the hands end and the shoulders begin, or the shoulders end and the hands begin. So make sure you have hands again and there are shoulders that you're touching. And then once there's that boundary, you can either just to yourself, say to yourself, goodbye now, or you can kind of acknowledge with your hands, you'll be leaving the person's shoulders a little goodbye. Okay.

[13:22]

It's right about. It's right about. It's right about 8.45. So technically it's time to leave, but I would certainly invite those of you who worked with each other, you might like to, as you've spontaneously been doing, share something about what your experience was with the person you were working with. Maybe we could do that for a couple minutes, two or three minutes, and then we could take two or three minutes if there's a few comments to share with the group before we go. So we could take another like six minutes or something, if that's all right. If anybody needs to go, of course. Thank you for having been here and joining us tonight. But let's take two or three minutes

[14:25]

and you can see what you might like to share with the person you were working with. Wow. You're looking like you've been touched and touched. You're looking like you've been touched and touched. That was good, you didn't even have to do it and you got it all. Just listening, you know, you end up doing it all with yourself. A lot of stuff to work through that I didn't know I had.

[15:26]

As soon as you suggested it, I thought, oh no, oh no. This is the part of yoga that I don't do. But you're sitting here with it through the skin. Well, obviously a lot to talk about and share.

[17:28]

So, I'd like to take a couple minutes now, two, three minutes anyway. And obviously you can visit with people more after we stop the formal part of the event. But if anyone would like to share something about their experience with the rest of the group, I'd love to hear a little bit. Yes, yes. Great. They don't usually do this touchy-feely stuff here. I just wanted to say, I usually come with my daughter and when you started doing this, I'm thinking, Desiree, I'm going to kill you. And my daughter's the one that brings me and she couldn't come tonight, so I decided to come without her. And all of this to say that by trade, my job, I'm a tour guide at the Capitol. And my job is to welcome people into the Capitol, make them feel comfortable, make them understand the system. I get a lot of really disgruntled people, as you can imagine at this point in our system right now.

[18:36]

And my job is to make them feel warm or welcome or calm them down. And one of the things that I just really realized about this, I wanted to really share because it was pretty profound, is how close I am, how close I was when she put her hands on me. I just was like, and I always kind of consider myself an outgoing, warm person. And even to the point where that's my job, it's what I do. And it was just really a wonderful experience to realize that about myself, that there's a lot of work to be done. Maybe my outward appearance is like this smiling, high heart. But inside, it was instantly, I just went, uh-uh. But then after just a few minutes, it was like her hands were on my shoulders and then I relaxed. And it was just a wonderful experience. I just wanted to share that with you and to thank you. So I'm pretty proud. Thank you. Something else? Yes?

[19:40]

Mary, I was kind of thinking ahead of what you were going to do, I thought you were going to give me a massage. I'm not ready to go to work. And then you said, lighten. So I lightened up. Now Mary reports to me that she sent me a message to lighten up. How about that? When she was touching me, I think she had an attempt at that herself. He was tense. And then I felt he started to relax more. It was much more smooth, and that's when I felt the energy. We both started to relax. That was another message from Mary. Well, you know, it's so unusual, in both these cases you've noticed, but it's so unusual that we ever touch someone with this kind of mindfulness.

[20:42]

Almost all touches, go over there. Come over here. Hug me. And we're giving somebody directions about what they can do to make me happy. That's a lot of our touch. I want you over there. I want you over here. I want you this. I want you that. So it's not very often that we're just going to touch. And then, oh, I don't have to make you happy? There's nothing I need to do? Oh, then I relax. And you feel that too. You say, what do they want from me? Oh, they're putting me on the spot. And then, oh, I could just be me? Oh, sure, okay. So this is kind of a profound kind of thing that we can notice sometimes, that we're actually able to not be asking something or telling or demanding what we want. And we let somebody be the way they are, and then, wow, the person relaxes.

[21:46]

The person can settle into themselves, and it's pretty sweet. What's that? There's no control. No control, yeah. And I just think that in my job, I'm always in control. Yeah. I'm the leader. Yeah. And there was no control. It wasn't, like you said, I wasn't trying to give anything, and I wasn't trying to receive anything. So it's not that control, in some situations, that would be more important. But when we're doing that all the time, then it's more of a problem. So we want to be able to have some choice of being one way or another way or noticing. There's a situation where I don't need to maintain my control or my distance or my separateness, and I could soften and relax. Oh, how nice. I'm safe here. So we're letting somebody know they're safe when we touch like this, and that it's okay for you to be you. Someone else? Yes? Thank you very much for such a beautiful experience, number one.

[22:50]

Number two, is it possible for us to get a copy of his poem? Which poem? Oh, that Coleman Barks. Yeah. What I could do is leave this with somebody, and they could Xerox it and bring it back next week. You want to do that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. That was wonderful. I'm in this process in my practice of paying attention to a method called reflective listening. And it's listening without any control issues or judgment, or just reflecting back what the person is expressing. But this was beautiful and an extension of that, and made me realize how we think of listening just as with our ears.

[23:54]

And it gave me a sense of how much more fully we can listen with more of our entire being. Yes. Thank you. Because sometimes, of course, our body and our body position, that second one, when we're talking about where is your head, because if somebody looks at you like, how much are you going to tell them? You know, or... You reminded me of the time that I was... I once was at a high school, you know, two, three hundred kids. I did meditation instruction. I said, you know, you might want to... This is a room full of people. And they've got their hats on backwards.

[24:56]

I said, you might want to just be like, you know, try sitting like right in the middle of your life. Because then you have some freedom. Then you can move to the right or to the left or forward or back. If you're over here, you don't have a lot of options. You kind of, you know, put yourself over in the corner. And the whole room kind of went... I don't think so. But yeah, if you're studying or interested in reflective listening, then you're also... you want to see... and you're listening with your whole being and not just your ears, then it's like, how is your body going to do that? You know, how does your... you ask your body. We can all, you know, you let your body know, you have my permission to receive this person, you know, fully. And you see if there's some way to allow your body to, you know,

[25:58]

be there for somebody, be there with somebody, rather than, you're not going to tell me that, are you? Or some, you know, attitude. So it's very interesting. Absolutely. One more, and it's getting close to nine, and we'll stop. Thank you. Hi. My name's Terry. It's my first time just sitting here. Linda was touching me too. One of the things that happened, just the way she was touching me, what the experience was is, well, this is where the wings get attacked. So you felt those wings. And then when I was touching her, I know nothing about physics at all, but I had the experience, which is what's priceless, of weight in both solid and motion, with her shoulder and movement. And never had that experience before. Very nice. I understand something I didn't.

[26:59]

Thank you. All right, well, thank you so much for your willingness to try out something, and or your willingness to be here while others are trying out something. I appreciate very much your presence. We'll see what happens, won't we? I don't think it's such a good idea to believe that the future's going to be a certain way. I don't think it's a good idea to get stuck in the idea that I can't do anything. Or to get stuck in the idea that I can do everything. I will make the difference. But, you know, the more we give our hearts to life, something comes out of us. And just like touching someone, a gift comes to us, and we're giving and receiving.

[28:00]

And we can find various ways to do this in our lives. So I wish you all well in this endeavor. Thank you so much. Blessings. Good evening. I'm not quite sure what I want to talk about tonight. I usually, as you know, I don't exactly usually prepare my talks. But I usually have some idea of kind of what I want to talk about. Because I have the same feeling for my speaking like I do for my breath.

[29:09]

If I'm following my breath, I would not want to have too much of an idea ahead of time the way it's going to be. I would want my breath to inform me. So I kind of tend to let the words come through me the way I might let my breath unfold within me. So I guess that's what you're in for tonight. I was actually kind of, I went out to dinner with Susan and Lil. And towards the end of dinner, I was starting to feel some dread. Because I was going to have to come here. And basically admit to, like the rest of you, not knowing at this time in our lives, you know, what to do. And now that I'm here and admitting it, I don't feel quite the same dread.

[30:15]

It's actually, you know, rather, I'm fairly used to it actually not knowing what to do. But this is really not knowing what to do. And, you know, on one hand, none of my training has prepared me for this. None of my Buddhist training. None of my practice. You know, my meditation. Nothing, you know, none of my teaching, nothing has prepared me. And on the other hand, you know, here we are, ready or not. And in some sense, everything, you know, our whole life has prepared us for this moment, this time. I was at Brian's house today and Brian has been my, aside from being my friend and, you know, fellow student of Buddhism,

[31:38]

Brian is my computer guru, my computer doctor. So I got some email for the first time on my new computer. These computers don't live very long apparently. About three years or so and you're, it's pretty good if your computer is good for three years. So one of the messages I got was Coleman Barks has written a poem to our president. Do you know Coleman Barks? Coleman Barks is the translator who's done the most prolific translations of Rumi. I'll read you a Rumi poem or two.

[32:43]

You know, it's, on one hand we're, you know, a group of people who don't know what to do. And on the other hand, here's a poem. What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest. Can you feel it in your chest, in your heart? What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my heart. What was told the cypress that made it strong and straight, what was whispered the jasmine, so it is what it is. Whatever made sugarcane sweet, whatever was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chagel in Turkestan that makes them so handsome.

[33:54]

Whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush like a human face, that is being said to me here. Now, I blush. Whatever put eloquence and language, that's happening here. The great warehouse doors open, I fill with gratitude. Chewing a piece of sugarcane in love with the one to whom every that belongs. I think meditation, as you know, brings us, has the power to bring us back to our own hearts, to our own eloquence, to the gift. You know, which is speaking to the rose and through everything. In a slightly different vein and perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of the times.

[34:59]

Here's another one. More range. We're friends with one who kills us, who gives us to the ocean waves. We love this death, only ignorance says. Put it off for a while, day after tomorrow. Now, don't avoid the knife. This friend only seems fierce, bringing your soul more range. Perching your falcon on a cliff of the wind. Jesus on his cross, a lodge on his. Those absurd killings hold a secret. Cautious cynics know what they're doing every moment and why. Submit to love without thinking. As the sun this morning rose recklessly, extinguishing our star candle minds.

[36:10]

As the sun this morning rose recklessly, extinguishing our star candle minds. We're friends with the one who kills us, giving us to the ocean waves. So Coleman Barks has been studied with a Sufi teacher in Philadelphia. Started working on Rumi poems in 1977. Something like that. So I'll read you a little bit of his letter. Coleman Barks, well-known Rumi translator, was at the National Gallery, Nave, in Washington, D.C. on February the 26th, reading Rumi's poetry with a cello accompanist. He offered one of his own not-very-poetic poems.

[37:15]

Just this once, President Bush, before you order airstrikes, imagine the first cruise missile as a direct hit on your closest friend. That might be Laura. Then 25 other family and friends. There are no survivors. Now imagine some other way to do it. Quadruple the inspectors, put 1,001 UN people in, then call on peace activists to volunteer to go to Iraq for two weeks each. Flood the country with well-meaning tourists. People curious about the land that produced the great saints, Jilani, Alaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels near those tombs. Encourage peace people to spend a bunch of money in shops to bring home rugs and samovars by the bushel.

[38:20]

Send an Arabic translator with every four peace activists. U.S. government will pay for the translators and for building and staffing the hostels. One hostel for every 20 activists and five translators. The hostels are state-of-the-art and they belong to the Iraqis at the end of this experiment. Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my friend Jonathan Granoff at the UN will be the core organization team. No one knows what might come of this. Maybe nothing, maybe it would convince some Iraqis and the rest of the world we really do not wish to kill anybody and that we are truly not out to appropriate oil reserves. We're working on building a hydrogen vehicle as fast as we can, aren't we? Put no limit on the number of activists from all over who might want to hang out and explore Iraq for two weeks. Is anything left of Babylon? There could be informal courses for college credit and pick up some soccer games every evening at five. Long, leisurely government furnishes air transportation,

[39:25]

that is, hires airliners from the country of origin and back for each peace tourist who must carry and spend the equivalent of a thousand and one U.S. dollars inside Iraq. Keep part of the invasion force nearby as police, but let those who claim to deeply detest war try something else just this once for one year. Call our bluff. If this madman Saddam's WMD threat is not somehow eliminated by next February, I don't know what a WMD threat is. Oh, of course. You can go in with special ops and do it that way. Medical services, transportation inside Iraq, lots of big colorful buses, slogans, paint them, along with many other ideas that will be thought of later during the course of this innocently, blatantly foolish project, will all also be funded by the U.S. government. There's a practice known as sama, a deep listening to poetry and music with sometimes movement involved.

[40:28]

We could experiment with whole nights of that, staying up until dawn, sleeping in tents during the day. So instead of war, there's a peace period from March 2003 through February 2004. It could be as though war had already happened. As it has. And the healing and rebuilding. I'll be the first to volunteer for two weeks of wandering winter desert and reading Halaj Abdul Jalani, Dear Rabia, and the life-saving 1001 Arabian Nights. I am Coleman Barks, a retired English professor living in Athens, Georgia, and I don't really consider this proposal foolish at all. Signed, Coleman Barks. Ah, boy. So, people all over the world are doing one thing or another,

[41:30]

or saying and offering what they have to offer. We're all doing that. And who knows whether it makes a difference, finally. But what else are we going to do? Stop living? I don't know. You know, I told some of you yesterday, Helen Caldicott, who's been quite involved with nuclear disarmament for a long time, she said she started an email campaign to encourage the Pope to move to Baghdad until further notice. And she's distributed the Pope's email. It's going out there now through the emails. I got an email back from my brother who's a Catholic and said, people shouldn't be telling the Pope what to do. But people aren't telling the Pope what to do. They're asking, would you? Yeah.

[42:32]

Anyway. What am I doing? So, I was wondering, you know, if you might like to do something a little different tonight. Lemonade. Can I make lemonade? Yeah, we have lemons we could make lemonade. I've been interested for some time now in touch. And I'm wondering if you'd be willing to partner up, find a partner, and then we could exchange, we could touch one another. And you could touch your partner for about 10 minutes.

[43:37]

I'll give you a little bit of instruction and then your partner could touch you. And this touch is on the shoulders. As though some of you have been to meditations where I do this, I come around to people and I have my hands on your shoulders. And I would guide you through this. And if you don't want to be part of it, you know, one of the things that happens, which is just amazing, but, you know, while we're doing this, if you, whether you're doing it or you're just observing and you don't feel like touching or being touched, if you notice the quality of consciousness, you know, in the room, because it's going to change if we do this. It's very powerful. So, if you're, those of you who are willing to do this, I'd like to take some time to do this. We'll take about 10 or 12 minutes. We need to take, you know, a minute or so for you to find a partner. And with your partner, you'll need to be in a position where, you know, if you're sitting in chairs, you can put the chairs, you know, one behind the other so you can reach out and touch your partner's shoulders.

[44:39]

Those of you who are touching the person, you don't want to have it be too difficult, like the shoulders are up here. You want to be comfortable where you can touch the person's shoulders in front of you. So you can be sitting on the floor and touching somebody sitting in front of you. Or if some of you are comfortable kneeling on the floor, you can do that. Or you can sit in a chair and have somebody behind you. You can switch. And again, if you'd rather not do it, it's fine with me because, you know, and you can just be here. But this touch is emphasizing mindfulness, and it's emphasizing what I talked about at the beginning of meditation, receiving. So you're just being with somebody present and letting them be however they are and receiving them. And you're not telling them, hey, straighten up, calm down, relax, get enlightened. You know, can't you do better than that? What's wrong with you anyway? So you're just, you know the kinds of things you might say to yourself?

[45:44]

You could, with somebody else, you know, Oh, okay, it's you. Okay, cool. So that's what you're like. That's nice. Anyway, and I'll give you a little more instructions. But, you know, the emphasis is on mindfulness touch here, not, you know, fix it touch. We do a lot of fixing in our lives. So this is the kind of touch with as much as possible without directives, like I've been, you know, without fixing, without, in other words, diagnosing what's wrong with somebody and then fixing it for them. You know, in the more advanced courses like this, we do those things on purpose. You're touching somebody and you have a nice connection and then see if you can find something wrong with them and fix it for them. Oh, you're a little sleepy. You need to wake up. I'm going to energize you now. And then if the person resists, if you notice some resistance, Oh, just break through it. Explain to them through your hands that it's for their own good. So anyway, let's, those of you willing, please find a partner.

[46:56]

We need to, you know, we don't have a lot of time, so we need to get started. Get a partner. If you're going to do this otherwise, don't. And if somebody ends up without a partner, get up here in front of me. You guys need to move up. You're going to have to use Brian to demonstrate. I need to use Brian to demonstrate? Well, Brian, get up here. Where's that little conker? F. Did everybody who want a partner find a partner? Okay. Brian, you need a partner? He just needs a partner.

[48:07]

So partner up. We have one up here. Brian can work with you. So we have a statue up here in the front tonight. Kuan Yin. In this case, Kuan Yin has a, doesn't she have a globe in one hand? So, you know, it's the wish-fulfilling gem, sometimes considered to be a wish-fulfilling gem, which is trust or confidence. When you dive, to dive into the depths of your experience, you'll find what you need to know. That's trust. You know, that staying on the surface of things will not give you what you need to know. But diving into the depths of your experience, you'll find what you need to know. That's the wish-fulfilling gem. So in a way, that's to value your experience, to find your experience precious,

[49:10]

and to honor your experience, then you receive it more fully and deeply. The Rilke in Rilke, he says, it's not too late and you are not too old to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. So this is the wish-fulfilling gem, to dive into the depths of your life. But Kuan Yin is also sometimes portrayed, you know, with a thousand arms. And in those portrayals, in the palm of the hand is an eye. These are not just stuff that somebody sort of made up. So the palm of your hand is where the eye is. When you go to touch the person, see if you can have your palms, you know. Your fingers and the pads of your fingers are also sensitive, but you particularly can receive right through the palm of your hand, the eye of the palm.

[50:14]

You can particularly be in contact. So take a moment, you know, and I'm going to be giving you little bits and pieces of instruction as we go along, but take a moment to bring your awareness into your hands. And then you might even ask your hands to go ahead and, you know, be ready to receive somebody and to be with somebody. And let your hands figure it out. You don't need to figure this out with your consciousness, with your intellect. And then when you're ready, go ahead and bring your hands to the shoulders. You know, right on either side of the neck. And you're going to see if you can listen. Okay.

[51:24]

Basic to this is that you're willing, you know, you're not just touching consciousness. I mean, you're not just touching a body, you're touching consciousness. You're touching a person. What was told the rose that made it bloom is being told to me here in my heart. You're willing to touch someone, consciousness. You're willing to touch flesh, skin, bone, marrow, feelings, thoughts, sensations, and just receive it. Be present. Be present.

[52:48]

Be present. I'm going to mention a few points now that, you know, may help you. Be receptive. And for now, I just like to mention kind of some of the qualities of touch. Buddhism often thinks about touch in terms of the four elements. So perhaps as you're touching, there'll be a sense of solidity or earth, density, solidity, firmness, ground. Here, there may also be, you know, a sense of the roots.

[54:19]

And these are not things you need to, you know, intellectualize or know that you're touching, but just as a kind of suggestion or a hint. This may be something that's coming to you, some sense like this, this kind of possibility. And then there's water, fluidity, fluidity like ocean, waves, currents, streams, rivers. Fluidity, you know, as you know, has symbolically or mythologically, you know, dreams, reflections, feelings, energy.

[55:36]

And water can be completely smooth and mirror-like. Water can also be, you know, waves, white caps, surging. Then there's air, there's currents of air or wind, pressure. There's the breath, kind of movement of the breath, rhythm of the air.

[56:48]

Air is often associated with rhythm. And the fourth element is fire. Air, by the way, also has the sense of extending everywhere. Those are, those three elements are the, you know, the same as solid, fluid, gas for any particular element or water, ice, water, steam. And the fourth element is fire. A sense of heat or cold, a spark.

[57:53]

Often when you touch someone after a while, you may notice a warmth. If you're letting, when you let someone be as they are, there's a kind of relaxing. Oh, I don't have to please you or take care of you. I could just be me, that's nice. Oh, what a relief, okay. Sometimes when you touch somebody, they'll feel your hands feel warm and you feel their shoulders are warm. After a while, perhaps, you can't tell exactly where your hands end and shoulders begin, and there's just a current or a connection. Completely just together, one being.

[58:57]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ