Say Yes to the Story Without Losing Yourself

day and I've betrayed myself. Right? They're all these little betrayals, but they're all the same energetic thread moving through my body. And as long as I know it, I'll never leave my wholeness.

So, in Shimriya Suzuki famous line was: We study ourselves to forget ourselves when we forget ourselves, we become intimate with the 10,000 things. I think it might be from Dogen originally Park B. Dogen. We must thoroughly know ourselves every piece, every loss, every story, every emotion, every part of our physical body.

Once we begin to really grasp the fractured separate self, when we grasp our humanness, how our emotions work, how grieving works, how the body works, right? Then we can begin to let go of our attachment to these aspects of ourself. I view the experience of being human as occurring in many different layers or different versions of reality, and you can kind of pick the words that you want. But the key that I've found on the spiritual path and for getting it so I can live from abiding awakening, so my spiritual realizations and my experience of awakening is stabilized is that when whatever is occurring in my life or in my body or my emotions, I'm seeing it on multiple layers of reality at the same time.

But most importantly, I'm seeing it on the level of energetic transmission, which defined my definition is our energetic transmission is the gold atoms, so to speak, that build up all of our human experience. They are the building blocks of experience. Everyone has their own transmission, and transmission is what happens when your soul or spirit enters your human body. And so, what is born out of spirit and humanness is your transmission.

And your transmission is a shape and an energy and a frequency. It's very specific to you. And everything that I see is built of my transmission, right? Meaning, I'm not saying that the you know the computer that we're looking at or the lights or the video camera, I don't know what it's made of, but I'm sensing it, right?

And it's, I'm not touching it or anything, it's just I'm sensing it through my body, and everything I'm sensing is transmission, if that makes sense. And you can become aware of that. That is the most authentic version of you or me or anyone is the moment that our spirit hits our humanness. Our humanness is not the most authentic version of us.

It is only part of us. We are actually spirit and humanness at the same time. And what is born is the transmission. It's not something that I can easily describe.

It's not something that I could tell you how yours is. It's something that I found as I got further along the path. It's when I am looking from my abdomen or the ground of being or my lower dantian out into the world, it's what is looking, right? It is kind of the edges of it in a way.

That's one way to get to it. If you often, if you try to look right at it, you won't be able to see it. But you can feel it. It is an experience.

It is not like you can also be the looking, like you could be spirit, looking from spirit, but you can't see our spirit. That makes sense. It's not an experience. That's before this.

That's not what I'm talking about. This is our transmission. It's a little bit different. Anyways, so the goal is from my for what I'm teaching, the goal is to be able to connect with and see that as the building blocks of all of the phenomenon that you experience.

So sadness, loss, anger, heartbreak, happiness, joy, love, all those things. And the way to do that is if you're very familiar with the human story and the emotional world and the body sensation world, then you will feel those, you'll sense those, and then you'll very rapidly let those go. And then what you're left with is what is its essential nature, the essence of things, right? That's what we're talking about.

And that is made of you. It is made of what you are. So the different levels excuse me, or layers of reality that I how I view it, is: you have what we truly are, which is spirit, but we that can't be experienced. It's before experience.

Then they say, what is your face before you were born? Right? That's what they're talking about. And then you have your transmission, energetic transmission.

That's the first level of us that is like that you can experience. It's what I recommend we learn to attach to, right? For example, sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent, but for example, I recommend that we learn to not attach to the false self, right, and loosen our attachment to it. And then eventually, as you get your conscious awareness and you cultivate your awareness and connection and valuing of your personal transmission, that becomes quite robust and always there.

It's very stable. Then I recommend you switch your attachment to that. That will give you much better stability and groundedness and ability to stay connected with your most authentic experience of yourself throughout the ups and downs of daily life. So that's a little bit of an aside.

Anyways, so it goes spirit and then transmission, and then usually go you can say like subtle energy and then gross energy and then body sensations and then emotions and then thoughts and then picture thoughts, word thoughts, and then external world, like actions and behavior. So, those are kind of the main levels of reality that I think are important to be aware of. So, for example, if I have a common experience, say the experience of starting this business, the spiritual teaching business. I haven't been on social media.

I mean, I look at social media before, but I didn't post very much or interact that much. But now that I've started the Form of Emptiness, I'm posting like eight to ten reels a day for the last five weeks. So, it's this whole new experience, right? And so, when I have a reel that does well, right?

Like today, I had a reel that I don't know, I got like 1600 views and I don't know, 16 new followers. I don't know how many likes, 40, some likes, I'm not really sure. But, regardless, I noticed this feeling of, oh, I'm a good person. I'm like, oh, I'm a good person.

Look, I can do this. I'm going to be successful, right? Let's look at this. Oh, I could be a creator.

Look, all this, right? And there's all this kind of like, ooh, I have a little lightness in my step. It's a little excitement. And I can feel the story, like the story of the separate self is like a positive story.

Like it feels very like, ooh, inviting, nice, right? And then all of a sudden the next day I post, it just always happens, and then I get like one view, right? And then I'm like, oh, I'm going to fail. I can't do it.

I can't, I can't be a creator, right? And you go this up and down, right? And so the way that I navigate that, right, as I'm seeing it, I don't, you want to not push any of it away. You say yes to all of it, yes to the story, yes to the, ooh, look, I feel better today.

Go with it. That's okay. Even though you know it's going to fail and you're going to fall at some point, it doesn't do any good to hold back. That's going to make you fall harder, right?

But you're going with it. Yes to that. Yes to the emotions. You feel the emotions, the happiness, the excitement, the body sensations, the growth, center, the subtle energy, and the transmission, right?

I'm feeling all of it. You say, well, how could you feel all of it? Well, the way to feel all of it, and this is what we were talking about before, is to see it from the ground of your being, to see it from your lower abdomen. Because quite literally, those layers of reality stack through your body as you go from more subtle to more gross, right?

And so if you're looking from your lower abdomen, then you can see the giddiness or the excitement or the story in the mind, and you see all of the pieces that it builds out of at the same time. So you never lose yourself in the story, right? If instead I'm in my body, in my heart, and then this shiny story occurs in my mind, then I go and grab it and I merge with the story, right? I've now lost contact with all of going on in my body.

And then that's how we lose our integrity and we go unconscious, right? So likewise, the next day, when it happens, then I have that next thing, right? And the next thing is, oh, I'm going to fail. I'm not I'm not good at this.

Why is it that, you know, the real on Instagram got 18, you know, whatever, however many views, 1,500 views, and TikTok got one view, right? And then it's negative story, right? And so we go through this process. And then what I have to do, I've been doing this for a long time, what I have to do is most of it is effortless.

This is actually kind of a leading edge for me because I have some anxiety and fear about visibility. And I've thought about doing this for a long time. So for me, it's actually kind of a vulnerable process. And so when there's new things that come up, right, when I shift beyond my old way of being, which is happening all the time, then I have to keep up with any sort of grieving that occurs with that.

So I have to process the ups and downs and the disappointment and some of the emotional loss that occurs, right? And as long as I process that and I don't resist the emotion, I stay in my kind of awake, you know, fullness, or whatever you want to call it. If I resist it and I go, oh, I don't need to process it. I'm not actually disappointed that, you know, I had a reel that was 1600 yesterday or today, and then tomorrow I, I have, I didn't have any.

I'd be living a lie because it is true. It's our humanness. You have something go well, you want it to go well again. It's just, It's just natural.

So try to put it into words. It's a little bit tricky. I encourage you to explore and investigate with curiosity and integrity and what's the word, seriousness, but also with a certain amount of love. All of the different parts of your being, right?

The stories, the emotions, the losses, the body sensations, the contractions, the pains, the joys. When we have really exposed ourself to it, felt it, we know it, right? We've, we've, I've grieved being betrayed, right, by all of the relationships. People don't know me, but I have, I was a serial monogamous.

I've had like 12 failed romantic relationships until my current, my marriage, which is going good, which is good. But so, so I had to grieve. There's a lot of betrayal in there. I had to grieve all those betrayals, right?

And then that all connects to betrayals in my childhood, being bullied as a child, you know, certain betrayals from my parents. It's all the same pattern. It's all the same attachment trauma, that betrayal thread. And so I have to know the thread through my whole being, right?

I have to know it when it happens when my daughter wakes up and she tells me she doesn't like me and she wants mommy, and I feel betrayed. I have to know it when something happens and I meet someone that reminds me of one of my exes, and I remember how that ex betrayed me. I have to know it there. And I have to know it, you know, when I go and I don't know, eat candy because it's Halloween, even though it makes me feel sick the next day and I've betrayed myself.

Right? They're all these little betrayals, but they're all the same energetic thread moving through my body. And as long as I know it, I'll never leave my wholeness. You see, but the minute I either claim to know it, right?

Because I'm not saying I know it like the self knows it. I'm saying I'm so familiar with it, but yet as I navigate through it, I don't project any sort of judgment or labeling or boxing in of it. You see, I'm that's where they say, like Zen Mind, beginner's mind. I'm moving through it with this open, oh, what is this?

Interesting. But as I go through it, I've been through it so many times that it feels very familiar. So I can say yes to it without pushing it away and without collapsing onto it, right? That's that authentic relationship.

And so it seems maybe like a lot, but it's not so much. It is some work, but it is very doable. The ability to know yourself well enough to not get lost and stuck in the external story and stay grounded in your own authentic vision, integrity, intention, calling, and personal transmission. Right?

So we must know what we are not, which is what mostly what I talked about. And then we must know what we are, which is totally different. And then we must know the world that we live in, right? Knowing the world that we live in was the guided meditation I did.

That's the world. Knowing what we're not is a lot of what I just talked about. And then knowing what we are, we will talk about it maybe another time, but I've talked about it before. But basically, it is your calling, your personal transmission, what your soul truly wants, and then what it feels like to live and act from your own transmission.

That makes sense?