Episode

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-04-15

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

TalkID=648 SeriesID=29

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-03-18

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework Finding spiritual sufficiency in the midst of the wanting mind is the purpose of the homework this week. Notice how unfulfilled desires can lead to a loss of vitality and boredom. If thoughts go unchecked, desire occasionally moves even deeper into neediness and dependency. Notice where the wanting mind is directed and what it seems to lack. What experience is needed for fulfillment? Feel the sense of incompletion within the wanting. What self-descriptive thoughts perpetuate the assumption of being incomplete without the desired object? Feel the dependency on the object of your desire. Can you relax with the wanting without trying to fulfill it? Behind the wanting is the fear of not having. Embody that fear and see what it says about you.
When you find yourself pursuing a desire, stop the action and ask, “Why am I doing this?” Cut through all the excuses and rationalization until you arrive at “I don’t know.” When you have stopped, the emotion driving the action will be felt. Enter into the emotion and be the feeling. Become intimately familiar with all aspects of the emotion. Remain aware of all the thoughts that arise within the emotion. As you become more familiar with the desire, the power it has over you decreases.

TalkID=709 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-03-11

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework Observe how loneliness fosters the view of being disconnected. Loneliness has a compelling thought stream that reaffirms how cut off and tragic you are. There is often the accompanying pain from the belief in one’s insufficiency that says you are not worthy of connection. Are you able to see how self-mistrust helps engender the feelings of disconnection and loneliness? The mind identifies with the pain of being cut off and confirms its premise through external observation. The mind sees according to the emotion it is struggling against, not according to objective reality. To arrest this process, track the source back to the pain of feeling disconnected.
Let thoughts of your lack of self-worth go. Relax with the emotion, as painful as it might be. Bring caring attention (connection) to the emotion and then expand it to your whole being. Finally, soften your eyes and allow everything to be just as it is. Ask yourself, “Where am I disconnected in this moment?”

TalkID=711 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-02-25

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework Notice whether you define yourself more by what you do not do then by what you do. “I wasn’t able to have a child…I wasn’t able to be an artist.” That is, are you continually lamenting your missed relationships, careers, and opportunities, or do you appreciate the life you are living for itself? Aliveness is constrained by regret. Regret keeps it focused on what could have been instead of what is. It needs your appreciation of the here and now in order to fully express itself. Watch any tendency to downgrade your immediate experience as secondary because it is not how you wanted it to be.
Notice how you relate to your troubling moods. Do you feel they need resolution? Do your moods insinuate something about you that need further work and exploration? Do you think by exploring them further you can reach a conclusion about who you are? Is this investigation based on a subtle attempt to avoid the emotion? Watch any attempt this week to form a conclusion about yourself through your emotions. Hold yourself to the task at hand, which is to feel them completely without conclusions.

TalkID=708 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-02-11

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework It is important to catch complaining in its tracks and not allow this state of mind to feed off other people’s negativity or indulge in your thoughts. When you find yourself complaining, ask yourself these questions:
Do I want to die with a complaining mind, and if not, what must I do now to assure the ending of this character pattern?
What am I feeling right now?
Am I able to hold these emotions or do they seek further justification in outside events?
Am I perpetuating these emotions with self-pitying thoughts?
Am I seeking others to confirm my aversive world?

TalkID=706 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-01-28

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework Reflect on your childhood. What judgements were upheld in your family? What were the prejudices around money, class, race, gender, intelligence, etc.? How did these judgements condition your upbringing? How did they condition your view of your world? Are they still operating within your current view? You can usually discover some residue of judgement within your views, opinions, pride, and values.
How were you treated when you were young? What was communicated to you about who you were and what you did? Did you internalize these evaluations? What self-judgements persist from that time? What is your relationship to these inward voices? Are you feeding the judging mind by judging the judger? Notice your inward judgement and outward judgement this week. When you find yourself judging, go directly to the pain of inadequacy behind the judgement. Judgement is an attempt to ease this pain and for a moment there may be some relief. Pain forces judgement to keep judging and will persist until you open to it. Stop the cycle by acknowledging the hurt.
Judgement is seeing the world in the quantifiable terms of having and not having. Is there another way to see? Is there another view that is not based on a summation? How will you access this view?.

TalkID=704 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-01-14

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

Homework Sit down and write out lists one and two. Then take several situations that upset you this week and apply list three to your behavior:
List one: As a small child what I was trained to be was____________. (For example, I was trained to be good, obedient, helpful, etc.)
List two: Right now as an adult, I require myself to be ____________. (For example, I require myself to be thoughtful, kind, patient, humble, nonviolent, etc.)
List three: The negative emotions hidden behind the second list are____________. (For example I have a friend who is sick in the hospital. I am tired and worn out. But still I think I should go see her because that is what my first two lists demand. I do go see her but below the action is resentment. 
This week challenge your history of anger and resentment by knowing what patterns are driving your actions. Be aware of the feelings of resentment (list 3). Realize these compelling thoughts are motivated by your history (list 1) and perpetuated by your self-demands (list 2).
Another example: Suppose someone undermines you at work. You might say, “I’m upset because I could lose my job.” But what you are really upset about is that your second list is being undermined, not your job. The problem is not what the person does to you, but that he/she is attacking your second list. Your second list says people should treat you fairly. Her actions are exposing your third list and you have to feel the anger associated with that list.

TalkID=701 SeriesID=28

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-01-07

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

TalkID=764

Teacher: Rodney Smith

Date: 2002-01-03

Venue: Seattle Insight Meditation Center

Series
[display-posts]

TalkID=765