Welcome to Darmapunx NYC and I hope that your Tuesday has been a good one and I'll try to add something of value to you today with tonight's reflections and practice and time to connect. Having an in-person gathering on March 26th at Center Yoga, which is on 23rd Street, just off of Park Avenue, and that's from 2 to 5.

And you can find the information to join,

go to center yoga NYC.com.

And if you would like to support my work, it's Darmopunks NYC, the Venmo, and also you can find the

PayPal on darmopunks NYC.com.

And there's a Patreon as well. I hope you will consider that, but either way, just enjoy having you here wherever you are, whoever you are, here we are, and I'm glad for it. So tonight talking about not knowing and not knowing the truth, how the brain can both be in denial and in acknowledgement of the truth at the same time,

and understanding the sheer proliferation of how denial works and the value of having a kind of awareness that cuts through all of the perceptions and beliefs and

inner thoughts that cloud and hinder our ability to perceive the conditions of our lives.

So the Buddha, he notes Diti, our beliefs about the world and the way we believe the world should be our thoughts about

our self these two arenas present profound obstacles to this is one of my favorite phrases in the

darma yathabutanana dasana which is a the poly way of saying seeing life as it

is thoughts about herself our hopes, our fears, our kind of distortion that not only clouds us from seeing really important foundational truths about life, but also cause suffering.

A classic example of of distorted belief that leads to a kind of denial or false perception

is whenever bad things happen if we add this thought why is this happening

to me then what we're doing is we're personalizing universal experiences and no matter what experience you are going through,

whether it's frustrating interpersonal events, health issues, pain, problematic relationships, financial worries.

These experiences are actually profoundly transpersonal.

Then there are loads of resources, support out there with people who will understand

and would be able to help us move through our challenges.

In many ways we spend our days drawing line between what we view as acceptable and unacceptable

to hold an awareness denying the unpleasant and the inconceivable even if the unpleasant and inconceivable are essential for us to consider.

Another example might be addiction.

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