granddaughter of william grimes, present a new edition of the first fugitive slave memoir in american history. william grimes wrote and published his book without any outside assistance and describes his escape from -- >> thank you all for coming and, sharing our ideas with us. when i was first asked to come and talk a little bit and to speak with loch it was very exciting to me. as you can tell a lot of my research does involve neuroscience but a lot involves various spiritual practices meditation, prayer. we've done study on people speaking in tongs and people looking at other practices and running full gamut how all of us in infinite variety of ways can be spiritual and how that effects us. that is very exciting for me here because i know a lot of you have experienced different types of practices. maybe had a different types

of religious experiences yourself. so i hope some things we have to share up here, some of the things i may be able to share with you about our work, what loch and i may be able to talk about hopefully open up your minds to some degree and see it from a different perspective. one of my favorite comments to me at one point was that somebody was very appreciative we gave them kind of a new language to be able to think about their spiritual and religious nature. to talk a little bit what is going on within them, not just wally but biologically. that sometimes can be very important for people to understand not just that spiritual side of ourselves but how it effects all different parts of ourselves. as a physician one of the things i come to realize, many of my colleagues have, this is a very exciting movement in medicine i think, we realize we just can't look at people as biological. that seems to be the prevailing perspective on medicine side and more and more people are realizing we're not just biological

beinging but we're psychological and social and wall. i think being able to look and explore all the different dimensions who we are as individuals and people is absolutely critical for us to understand ourselves from the medical per tiff to find best ways of healing each other and healing ourselves. i look at this as wonderful opportunity to share some of these ideas with you and also hear back from you a little later on in the program. i'm certainly looking forward to hearing a lot of practical applications that locke will bring to the which bring to the conversation as well. i should say a couple things about new area of research in the new book, how god changes your brain. if you were familiar with some of my original work we were looking at how specific practices like med and prayer at the moment. we would do brain scans on people and it was fun and

entertaining and amusing to bring in practiced booedist, a person who would speak in tongues. in laboratory in university of pennsylvania hospital, hook them up a machine to see what is going on with their brain and go ahead and do your practice. see what happens. it was exciting a little later on i have opportunity to talk to you more specifically about actually some of the things we've seen and found in the brain. what i realized was that is just one part of the discussion because it is great to know what happens in the brain when we're doing something but how does that change your brain over time if you keep doing it? that of course is really a big question because we see some people around us like loch and maybe perhaps a number of you have done practices for many, many years and the question is, if you're able it change your brain in the moment, are you also changing your brain over time? that is really what a lot of our new research is looking at because one of the things

we started out was, is the brain of somebody who is deeply spiritual, who has been doing these practices a long time different than somebody who is not spiritual or at least not doing some of these practices for a long time? there has been fascinating studies by both myself and few other investigators have shown just that, that the brains are actually different. then it is kind of the chicken in the egg, right? if the brain after experienced meditate tore is different than a non-meditate tore, is it different because they have been meditating 30 years or have they been always built that way? if we checked their brain out when they were five years old this is the person who is really going to get it? this is the person who ultimately if they find the right path can be enlightened. the question is, where is that chicken and the aeg answer. while we realize we can't go backwards in time, we take people who have not done

practices like meditation and prayer and start them on some kind of program and see what happens. if their brain does change fundamentally between after they have done the practice for a long time, by a long time i mean maybe just a few months to start out with, obviously would be ideal to bring people back many years later and see how things are going but we'll probably have to get to that a little later on but at least to see in a short term but at least two-time points where we can find out whether or not we can actually effect changes in a person's brain by simply having them do a particular type of med take practice. and what our data do show, and we'll talk about a little more later, that does happen. so at least in the chicken and the egg question, part of the answer is we do know now that the brain does change over time as you do different practices. now obviously we probably all have some prediction dispositions as well and that is something else we have to look at in the future. finally some of the other

pieces of information we talk about more recently is trying to understand how human beings actually experience their spirt wall, rejustselves. when they say i have had a spiritual experience, what does that mean? in fact one of the things we talk about a on-line survey we've been running where we have gotten thousands of people's responses as to what their spiritual experience was. it is really remarkable. i thought they would kind of come together very intensively. actually as it turns outlooks like there is such a incredible pluralty of what these experiences are b sometimes it is not asking people to describe their experiences but to ask their specific questions. if you probe, you find out they have number of similar kind of elements to them even though they may not be ones people talk about if you say, describe this to me. these kind of questions we have the opportunity to look at. this is an area as you heard

the term neurotheology, while it has pluses or newses as a term, it is exciting to use idea of using research and scientific research to delve into what happens to us when we're religious and spiritual. that has been really the goal of my work, which to try to understand that. as i think loch and i will talk about a little bit more, try to unlock positive practices of these experiences. religious experience and can be extraordinarily positive but also can be negative at times. it is trying to understand that negative side i this can help us to try to find better ways optimizing these practices and experiences are and lead us into more compassionate approach to our lives and ourselves. before we go into our dialogue, last little story i will tell, many of you may have heard it, this has become one of my favorite little stories, and there is probably different variation

ageses on this as general different story. one i heard an american indian boy got very upset one day because one of his friends stole something of his and he reallied to go and beat him up and fight him. he was kind of upset, he said should i be forgiving person, should i go exact my revenge on him. he went to a his grand father who was a very learned man. grandfather explain to me why do i feel the conflict between part of me wants to beat him is up and part of me who wants to feel compaq. the grandfather went into this story within each our mind, to my perspective each much our brains there are two wolves. two wolves, one is the compassionate and loving and forgiving side and the other side, the other wolf is the aggressor, the one that's hateful, spiteful, wants to seek revenge. the boy thought about this for a few minutes. well, grandfather, if they're fighting each other

which one will win? and the grandfather looked at the boy and he said, it's the one that you feed. so i think that is very true statement because ultimately what our spiritual and buy lodge and psychological and social pursuits lead to, is whether or not we can try to absorb and embrace compassionate side of ourselves, or, whether we wind up embracing the negative, hateful side of ourselves. obviously again my work is to try to find better ways of embracing that positive side. but i think we also not only have to understand the positive side but also try to understand the negative side so we can figure out our best ways of turning these kinds of experiences around into something that is of benefit both to each of us as individuals and ultimately all of us as a global society. so i will stop there and let loch say a few things. i was told to give a little introduction. >> okay. hi. >> hi. >> so yes, sometimes when i

tell people i'm a meditation teacher, they will ask me what lineage are you from? i start to say now i'm from the human lineage. in many ways that is kind of amazing on a stage, in new york, there's this dialogue up front in front of people between science and spirituality. and it is really kind of a historic thing that we're willing to dive in and dialogue. i hope it will be helpful to everyone. i know one of the statements from the dalai lama when he was asked, so, because he's been interested in these conferences, from brain science and been involved with one of teachers who wrote a book about this as well. he was asked, now, what would happen if science found out something that contradicted buddhism? he said, oh that's easy, i

would change my beliefs. and in many ways it is that kind of openness that having read a lot books and studied a lot, when i picked up andrew's books, like, oh, here is some just like me. instead of starting from kind of a very intellectual, conservative place, he just dove in with everything, with kind of this delicious quality of like, let's see what's true, okay? let's not just stay way back, or way up in the intellectual tower. let's, people are really interested in this. and bottom line, how does it relieve suffering? that's what we're looking at today, so there is the wisdom wing and the compassion wing, and both of them really come together and, specifically, when i read his book, i had been trying to find like him, a language for all of this.

having started in different traditions. this one says this, this one says this, but they're about the same thing, aren't they? yes. why does this one go this way and this one goes that way and travels here trying to get there? let's figure out how this all happens. i started to kind of experiment within and dialogue with other meditation practitioners and teachers and got to a sense of you, you know, then i would try it out on my innocent students. and they would be, you know, i would first be my own guinea pig and then try it out on them. but i started to come to see certain things about a kind of direct method of teaching, because a lot of the way that i teach now is kind of from the direct path, from the maudra, the dantra, the sen tradition, the

assumption the ability to access this nature the brain will respond to right away. in fact in your book you mention that the brain changes very quickly. so, when i read his series of studies on long-term meditate tores, on meditators acknowledged by their communities to be cheerfulful ones, the ones living it they matched up exactly to almost pointing out instructions i had come from the other direction, try to figure out what is the best way to say it and how to point to and it helped me actually move these instructions around. i will use this one goes first. this one is like the glue. then that one. oh, that's great. it just is incredible. as we talk about the brain studies i will kind of kind of discuss a

little bit how this all after matches up. so this should be interesting to see what happens here. >> we were speak a little bit earlier before we got here, we actually never met at all beforehand. apparently he tried, i guess somebody was keeping us from talking to each other. but, that's the way it goes but one of the things i think is, to just kind of go into this a little bit, we talk about compassion, one of the questions we have to say, okay, where is compassion? is there a part of the brain that enables us to be compassionate in addition to how we might think about compassion from a spiritual perspective or religious perspective. what a lot of studies are starting to show, including some of our own, when you engage in a practice like meditation you do activate a number of different parts of the brain. one of the questions we get asked a lot, is there a god spot? is there this part in your brain that is the religion

spot in the brain? my favorite answer is yes, there is a god spot. it is the whole brain. it is everything up here. if you're really a new neuroscientist these days you fully acknowledge the brain isn't just up here but it's the whole body. the whole body is really connected to the and vice versa. you almost can't think, which is really the whole body is the god spot i suppose. when he peer into the brain itself trillion are a number of different structures in the brain that get into the act specifically. what is interesting to me as we canvas all these different practices as loch said, one of the things always been interesting to me is this issue why do people have all these different approachs? what exactly is going on? that is always frustrating to me. that is part why i got into all of this inquiry. because i wasn't happy with the fact, well, how come there is, jewish person says this and, buddhist person says this and they do certain practices and they

have some similarities but on the other hand we really kind of go in different directions? that was a little troublesome to me. i began to think a little more, so what is happening? that is why we started to look at all these different practices. what we found is there is this kind of network of structures in the brain that seem to be always activated when people are doing different practices regardless what tradition they are involved in. but what is also interesting is that how they activate this network of structures is dependent upon exactly what they're doing. so the same parts of the brain seem to be involved but they seem to get involved a little bit differently each time. i thought that was kind of interesting. because, for example, we know that when people are doing a meditation practice which is perhaps, an intensely focused type of practice, maybe folking on prayer or mantra, or image, that they activate a part of the brain called the frontal lobe, right behind the

forehead. this is activated when ever we focus our attention on something. when ever we did studies on buddhist meditation and focusing on prayer they activated something, this front part of the brain, the frontal lobe. on the other hand, i mentioned earlier we start studied people speaking in tongues. this is practice different than meditation practices. i don't know how familiar you are with that, basically where this vocalization comes out of the person we they say is not really them in charge of it. that they're not the one who is making it. it is really, in many ways of the spirit of god who is speaking this language, and sort of like language even though it doesn't really line up with any particular language that we know of. when we scan the people who are speaking in tongues for example, their frontal lobes were also part of the process. instead of going up in activity because, we, would sometimes see that when people are focus, it actually dropped in activity. so when they are kind of

surrendering themselves and allowing themselves to have this experience being taken over by the practice, that they actually have a decrease of activity in frontal part of the brain. i think it is very interesting to see how the person actually experiences it subjectively and try to see how it matches up with what is going on in the brain itself. now a couple other things to just mention about that. people also found that the frontal lobes are very involved in our feelings of compassion. so it does make sense by effecting the frontal lobes we're also effecting our ability to be compassionate. in fact the frontal lobes regulate another part of our brain the lympic system. that is the main emotional part of our brain. if we find ways of turning on or turning off the frontal lobes to regulate our emotional responses we can see how doing that kind of a practice can ultimately generate the kind of compassionate states loch might be asking his to do. so, i don't know if you want -- >> yeah.

>> you said something about how that matched up with some of the practices you had been doing. >> yes. i mean one of the areas that you mention early on in a couple of your books, is relationship between the right pa rye the tall lobe parietal lobe and that must. thalmus. there is attention area in the frontal lobe is activated so there is kind of a natural focusing ability rather than having to go through the frontal directly. that is kind of an amazing thing. that it's kind of what is called effortless attention. it opens up. in this right parietal lobe is fascinating thing. because it is really is, a feeling when it is very

active. you can explain this. but i will try as a layperson to see if i understood what, my homework was. so that the, when the right parietal lobe orient us to time and space, particularly to how far in distance things are it almost create as subject-object and when it is on at its normal rate in human beings we feel very separate and oriented almost if we're often connected to the fighter flight a little bit. we're scanning for danger and orienting almost like we're in the jungle still and wondering if this person is attacking me because their eyebrow just went up, how far is that door so i can get out of here. or, and that during, especially the longer term meditators, but i think some others as well, when this subject-object, right parietal lobe decreases there is a sense of vastness,

openness, connectedness, oneness, peace, spaciousness, emptiness, which is kind of the first flavor of what all kind of advanced meditation is are pointing toward. so just by activating that and decreasing that, and then, with those who find a way to activate that, eventually that this state is not just a meditation state, but is the experience of the norm. so in some ways that's kind of what we're both really interested in, just not having experiences of meditation, but really, in some ways what i'm kind of calling as the new normal, right? and the new normal is a new set point of, kind of a normal, what they call, ordinary, ordinary mind, but it is also the awake

consciousness, or kind of an awake state, which you can walk around in all day long, where you feel open, connected, there's a natural compassion, that you feel the same as others from this awareness. and, it is almost as if, so, what i thought when i read that, i thought, okay, well, it's, we're a little behind times with that. in some ways this high activated, right parietal lobe is still set as if we're living a few thousand years ago. and if there's a way to kind of almost help it through these practices which i think the ancient practices were devised to do, we don't lose a sense of the orientation. actually we become almost like a tai chi master. we become like sense of safety and ability to know how far something is there but in addition, all these other qualities which are

restricted by being kind of, feeling like we're only an animal, body, mind, separate from everyone else, and being self-conscious with a certain part of the frontal lobe kind of managing that, and then when this relaxes, there is a natural ease, almost like you drop into kind of a heart-centered compassion,. and that, that was so key. because that is kind of like the first stage of the most advanced practices, and yet when you know that, then, i could immediately point that out to people and they can, kind of go right into that, rather than having to go from the one-pointedness to the mindfulness and this being kind of the third stage. >> and that actually, when we, what supports that too i think is this idea that that parietal lobe, as loch said, is a very important part how we experience ourself and

orient that self in the world. we see this is an area deeply effected when we do these tests of meditation but can be effected differently and can be turned on and turned off depending on the circumstances. it may not necessarily be there is one best way of doing it or one way that doesn't do it very much but we can almost always see this is a part of the brain that gets effected when people do have these kinds of experiences as loch said. when they are, when people have an experience where they lose that boundary the self and other. this is what, what part of the brain is actually doing, it takes all of our sensory information and it tries to create a picture of ourself and picture of our world basically. so if you get into a tis where you start to block out that information, and whether you do it purposely very focused in a way where you focus on an object or somehow can release it before you get to the frontal lobe so to speak, then, this part of the brain, it keeps trying to work for

you. it keeps trying to give you this sense of yourself and this sense of space and time but it just doesn't have the information upon which to do that. so it says, my orientation is to, nothing, ultimately. it can get there. so that's, it is, obviously incredibly powerful experience but it is something that we can really see happening in the brain itself. in fact i brought a few slides along. they're actually leting me move too. i will get up for a second. cam i get that slide? let me show you this one slide. see if that works. ah, perfect. this is actually now, again one of the things always kind fun to talk about how we did this study in the first place. it is hard to say to somebody, okay, we'll take you out of your spiritual realm, your spiritual place. we're going to bring you into a lab in the middle of a hospital with alarms going

off. we'll going to stick you into a scanner and say, all right, have a nice, natural meditation right now. that is not always something that is easy to do. but one of the things, there is lots of different techniques. another thing that is also exciting to me to be able to use these different types of studies to explore the different practices. this was a technique that is called spec imaging. what spec imaging does, it starts out, another fun thing we get to do to these people, we put in a small iv catheter. stick a needle into their arm. we do this before they do their practice. while they're doing the practice, through that iv catheter we infuse a small amount of radio tack tiff material which follows the blood flow as it gets up to the brain. they don't feel it going in, which is good. we always ask them, did you know we were there. they almost always say no. >> they don't glow

affidavit. >> what? >> they don't glow afterwards. >> they do, technically. this is it. so they do glow to some degree but you can't see it hopefully. but, what we're actually doing then is when we infuse this tracer, what happens it second quarter lates in a few minutes. it is up into the brain, gets locked in there. if i were, for example, to inject one of you right now, finish the talk and drove you down to philadelphia and put you into the scanner there it would tell you what your brain is doing right now. it is a great technique for studying spiritual states. we can try to get somebody into that spiritual state as best they can, and at that particular moment we infuse them with this tracer. they finish their practice, whatever it is, speaking in tongues or meditation and we put them in the scanner and it tells us what happened at time they were meditating. this is perfect context to show us what loch was saying. the parietal lobe is this

area back here this is slice through the brain. this is like take the top of the head, my, am i allowed to touch this. basically if you sliced it like this and actually looking at it face on, okay? [laughter] so, the, i think there is a pointer here. yeah. this is the front part of the brain. the frontal lobes i was talking about. these are the parietal lobes. they're located in the back part of the brain. red areas show most activity followed by yellow, blue and black. what you see here is what we call the baseline state. where we had the person come in and they were sitting quietly, in and of itself that was also interesting. we said go in there sit quietly, don't think abouting in. well, that's what i do when i meditate. we had to come up with something else to do. this is kind of the normal waking state, okay? when they were meditating,

this is after about an hour of meditation. what you see here the pa rye et al lobe we were talking about on the right side, pretty ready to this side in the normal waking state. there is little bit of red here but rest of it is much less active than what you see on the other side. so in the midst of this practice of meditation there was very sudden decrease of activity in this part of the brain that helps them to orient themselves. that in of itself i think is very interesting. this is a study that we did of fransiscan nuns in prayer. again a very similar kind of thing. if you look at parietal lobes there is red activity here but much more yellow over here. so in the depth of their prayer, they also had this experience of losing their sense of self and feeling at one with god, and one with the universe. and what i think may ultimately be the important thing to say here, it depends a lot on what the

actual experience is to the person cognitively andnally as opposed to perhaps the exactness of what the person is experiencing. whether they are feeling at one with god, or at one with the universe, may be less relevant in the context of what we can see on a brain scan at this time. that doesn't mean, they may fundamentally be the same experience. they may be the fundamentally different experiences and we also have to recognize the limitations of what we can say simply where we are right now. that is a pretty large area of the brain and we don't know if that means there are 10 neurons got involved or 100 or a million. so we can kind of see some basic changes. but we have a long way to go in terms of study in terms of these kinds of experiences. >> that is interesting see the fransiscan nuns and buddhist had same experience for real people who were --. they went in a belief. then they had the same experience and then they defined experience according to their belief. so the middle part was the

same. i felt one with, fill in the blank. i felt one with, buddhists would say total conscious. the fransiscans, i felt one with, god. so the belief comes in almost as the cognitive interpretation of the experience which is the same in all human beings. and the other interesting thing is this right parietal lobe goes down in this, the thalmus, which is the regulator of information in the middle of the brain, so usually when the right parietal lobe is on very high and the there's a lot of information coming in during waking state. then they go, they move together, right? >> right. >> so during sleep they both go down. so you kind of lose your sense of self and fall asleep. goes down and, less information is coming in. dream is kind of in the middle. the interesting thing is, in this sense the right

parietal lobe went down, so there is a feeling of openness, peaces spash thusness, but there's more information coming in. it is just not, so my understanding from meditation it is not on the front screen. >> right. >> and actually, there's more information coming in. so once you get used to this, it's really kind of the wisdom mode that is available. so there's more connection to others. there's a different kind of intelligence that is not lighting up the executive function, right of the mind. so that sense of identification and neurotic kind of scanning, self-revving is low. and, but, you actually have more information. so if you can hang out with that, what happens is you start to learn how to live from this quiet mind, from this natural quiet mind. so from this, if you can, you don't even have to quiet the mind or stop the

thoughts. if you go to this experience of open awareness, and, have then your belief that comes, oh, there's more information coming in. if i just start to learn how to talk, sometimes they call this kind of baby buddha state. so you kind of, the understanding is, is usually hooked up well right away, so you can hear what's happening but your speech center, it is not that it can't hook up. that it takes a little practice to kind of learn how to speak. but from that, because, most people understand meditation, otherwise you go and have a meditation experience and then you have to go back to work. you go on a retreat. and then it's over. then we got to go back, oh, my god, we need another retreat. really what this is, is the possibility that human beings have almost really to move to another developmental level called,

awakening. because it is available to everyone and that the thing i think we're both interested in is, not having to have people go and spend 30 years in long term monastic environments. you can if you like. >> that's one way. >> it's one way, and even there only a small percentage will get there, right? to me the interesting thing what we start to see what it is that is operating, what is the embodiment kind of quality of this awake consciousness, we can start to point to it in a way that will help people just like we originally didn't know how music was made. so only adepts would be great musicians. then we learned how to write notes and teach music and all of sudden everyone could start to play music. >> absolutely. loch, you also you mentioned another part of the brain a structure called the thalmus. that is a very interesting

part of our brain. it is actually a central structure, it does, as you said it helps different parts of the brain to communicate with each other and connects the sensory information that comes to our train what we hear and sense and smell and so forth, and see, all of this comes to the structure called the thalamus. when he started out we looked adlong term meditators versus non-meditators. what we found there was asymmetry. one was more active than the other side. this was kind of interesting. sort of the chicken and the egg question. was it because they had been meditating so long or was it something they were kind of inherently built with? in our most recent studies we're looking at taking somebody and, actually having them go through a meditation program, what we're finding is this thalamus seems to be one of this very key areas that is effected by this practice. i have another, segue,

beautifully into my next slide. >> yeah. i'm for the chickens. >> he is for the chickens. >> i believe the chickens. >> there is really a little bit of both. this is one of the studies we talk about in our new book, we took older individuals in this particular case we tried to make it real practical for them. they came in. we asked them how is your memory going? as everybody knows as you get a little older you don't remember things as well. we wanted to know if this practice would help them with that. make their brain a little healthier and help them remember things better. these are same kind of scans we're showing you, these are spec scans. there are four of them. a is the very first scan on a person. this is someone who has not done meditation before, at least any kind of formal way. we got a scan of their brain. we talk taught them a practice called kara tin

crea. those not familiar with this, there is practice where you repeat several phrases over and over again. there are technically five phrases. they are asa, ta, na, and ma. the ah sound is the fifth sound. while you're doing that, you saw me doing that you also do the mudras where you touch your fingers in success. you go sa, ta, ma, na. and you do this out loud two minutes. do it in a whisper for two minutes. do it in silence and do it again in a whisper and out loud. the whole practice takes 12 minutes. we thought, wow! if we could change somebody's brain with something that simple, wouldn't that be pretty amazing? we bring them back eight weeks later scan them at rest. and then while they're doing meditation one more time. the arrow is pointing at the

thalamus. there is left and a right. kind of similar we were talking about with the chicken and egg question, because this person has a little asymmetry to begin with. this side has a big blob of red compared to this side. i can tell you this person loved practice. really got into it and thought it was incredible and helped them alot they felt. when did the practice for the first time you can see there is some kind of acute shift. suddenly both sides are at least a lot more equal. this side is a little bit brighter in of the red activity. when they came back, eight weeks later, technically these two scans should be comparable to each other. this is both in a resting state. you can see that now their thalamus at this point has become more a quill greated rather than rather than asymmetric. when they actually did the meditation for the last time where they now really trained and know how to do this practice very deeply, a

substantial degree of asymmetry. so what this is suggesting to us, that you can change your brain in a very short period of time, and this part of the brain which is very involved in our sense of reality, and how perceive reality as loch was saying, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to go through your life with that wonderful experience of what you get during a meditation state? but where you don't have to always be in that retreat. where you don't always have to be saying i have to step away from the world and do this, and now i come back to world but actually do this on a day-to-day, moment to moment basis. think these kinds of scans are starting to show us, they're certainly not deaftive, the process by which that they happen. definitive. it can effect structures in our brain that mediate all of our ideas, belief about the world and ways we experience and perceive our reality. >> that's great. yeah, so, i thought since we

had a few more minutes we might try a short little pointing out instruction based on, these brain scans to see how your brain is doing. and then we'll just kind of get a -- >> i have a brain scanner in the back actually. i'll bring that out. >> very big one. >> who wants to get injected? >> then we'll go to a little question and answer time. so is for this those who want to try this. let's just see, if this very simply, okay, this, the idea this is for awake consciousness. so i would like to, invite to you keep your eyes open and almost kind of feel very alert and bright. take a little breath. keep your eyes open and, just in a normal way. so, we'll just assume that, that our awareness is kind of located, caught up, interested in thought, feelings and sensations. rather than keeping awareness connected to

thought, see what it is like if awareness could unhook from its interest in thinking feeling, sensation here, and just drop below your neck. and then just don't refer to thought, for what's here. so include everything, including the openness, inside and out. just finding this which is non-conceptual, but aware. includes everything. open and hear. what would you say? what would be a word just is a quality of what you notice? >> [inaudible]. >> unity. so there is some kind of unity and connection.

how many are in unit here? connection? another word? peace. natural peace. so without trying to stop thought, recognizing that this open, peaceful, quality has, is already here, how many with peace? okay. a few more for peace. any other? spacious. spay schuss. there is quality spacious, open and here. how many spacious, kind of boundless vast? then just notice from this, noticing of awareness, almost as if the awareness, the way the awareness is aware, does it have a quality where it is able to focus without effort? to be attentive, without concentrating.

anybody notice that? yeah. so there's, kind of a natural, open, relaxed, peaceful, boundless, attend tiffness that's available. anybody below the neck with a quality of compassion or love? what is it? >> [inaudible]. >> lightness. lightness, not really feeling solid or constricted. how about joy. joy. soft. joy, bliss. humming, is the energetic quality of the body. is just aliveness, that the awareness is noticing. so, as that awareness is kind of below the neck without going to thought, anything about connection?

so natural sense of unity, connection, openness that's here. what if i were to ask you to wonder, in this peace, openness, less thought that you're focused on? how many people, less kind of monkey-mind dominated? yeah? so what if i were to say in this open natural state there is more information coming in? not on the front screen, but connected by wifi. so that, you're not actually spaced out. you're actually spaced-in, you're actually in kind of the wisdom heart, mind. from which you could learn to move, feeling naturally connected, joyful, peaceful,