We were on retreat at the Monastery with a group of facilitators, training to support people in Recording and Listening practice. In a group discussion, someone brought up the magical efficiency of the R/L practice to get us beyond the story. In fact, the comment was how quickly she “lost interest in the content of the story.”
Why is this?
When I’m suffering it’s because I’m identified with the person who listens to and believes the conversation and lives the story.
The conversation might be something like “You can’t do that. It’s too hard. You’ll fail. You are not good at that.”
The story is “I can’t do that. I’m not good at that.”
Recording and Listening removes the relationship between egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate (the conversation) and ego identity (the story). It is the equivalent of being in the dark and then turning on the light. We then have an authentic human being in relationship with the wisdom, love and compassion that we call Authenticity or the Mentor.
Authenticity has no problems. Authenticity, in the form of a disidentified human being and wisdom, love and compassion, has no interest in the conversation/story. As we are fond of pointing out, without a conversation in conditioned mind there is nothing wrong.
The magic of picking up the recorder when we need support is that we switch tracks even before we start recording. It is the disidentified human that eagerly reaches for assistance to get beyond the suffering story, to learn to be with life, and open to what the Intelligence That Animates has to reveal.
When the human is free to express itself, what has been suffering is embraced in unconditional love and acceptance. The story drops, the “suffering person” disappears, and authentic nature as individual expression, openness, and curiosity exists in a state of Divine Whatever.
No wonder we fall in love with the recorder!
In gassho,
Cheri