Participant: I was here last summer and released a huge amount of hatred and self-loathing. I've been releasing for a year and have times where I am really intoxicated with being this or love. And yet I find that there is still a certain fear about going deeper. That it seems too good, that may be if I go deeper something bad will happen. Then I fall back into the oldself-hatred stuff.

Hale: That's a great story. But is any of that here now?

Participant: Not right now.

Hale: So, right now, it's just a memory, right?

Participant: Yes.

Hale: Can you feel how you’re wanting to get rid of the memory?

Participant: Yes.

Hale: And can you see how that's just a hook?

Participant: Okay.

Participant: I think a lot of times some of my disapproval comes from looking back in the past.

Hale: Yes, of course, exactly. Nota lot of it, all of it. When you're in the moment, you don't have time to disapprove of yourself. You disapprove of yourself right after the fact. It's what you did, its focusing on what was. But can you change what happened? No, it's done. It's dead. Finished. Except in our minds. We have a traumatic event or uncomfortable feeling come up in awareness, and we don't like it, and we want to not have that happen again. So what we do is start meditating on it to figure out how to not have it happen again, and then we go “It happened twice, it must be a pattern. Oh, you know what that means about me. My God! It's happened three times in a row.” And you forget everything that's happened in between. “Oh, that doesn't count. I'm studying the pattern.” As you do that, it appears more and more real, except it never was. It never had any more reality than you give it.

Participant: That's good.

Hale: So what's here now?

Participant: Just beingness.

Hale: Yes. And isn't that what's always here now? Except sometimes we’re noticing, and sometimes we’re busy making patterns of nothing?

Participant: It's good. I feel good. (Laughter.)

Hale: All right. So could you simply allow that to be enough?

Participant: That's good. Thank you.

Hale: You're welcome.