[Many of us remember the poignant, humorous, and insightful talk that Jac shared at our retreat, while wearing two pairs of glasses. :) Now we can replay the goodness via the audio and lightly edited transcript below!]

Throw a hand up if you know the voice of the genuine, if you've heard the genuine? A deep nudge that might have seemed like it was your intuition, or just something that didn't come from your mind; something that didn't come from a thought.

Yeah, good stuff.

Did you ever disobey it? Keep your hand up if you did.

Ah, we have wise ones. [laughter]

Did that bite you back? Keep your hand up if that bit you. [laughter].

Aha. And did you do it again?

Aha.

We've all been there. Recognizing what comes from deeper than thought and what do we do with it? It looks like we have a choice. We really do think we have a choice. But, actually, given the same circumstances, even with hindsight, you would do exactly the same thing. The context in any moment from where we make decisions determines the decision we make. We actually don't have free will at all, but we like to think we have and we cultivate autonomy and we've written libraries on how to choose well and lead well and make the right decisions and be wise.

But all we can do is create the ecosystem within our own beingness, where the wisdom from within you will not get obstructed and deviated by anger or a distraction or an agenda. So the genuine has a clear trajectory from within you to perform, to act, to behave through your body if you get out of the way. But getting out of the way means knowing what your mind is going to present as an obstruction. There's your inner ecosystem.

I am going to use a prop. Yes, it's the best thing I can do. Alright, so these glasses, you've all seen me wearing them. They're a new addition to my life, welcoming aging as I go along. So these glasses are the outer form, all right? This is the lens of perception of me-myself-I. This is Jac and her things she likes and dislikes, and she likes coffee in the morning and she likes to go to bed about 8:00 PM and if she misses her wave, she'll stay awake half the night. And this is her and all her quirks.

But then there's this beingness place, it's a little bit deeper. We've heard from Victoria and other people about going into that beingness place -- it seems to be [a place with] no movement. I remember Lam said the other day, "Do nothing or do something," like, what about these two voices?

So the being lens of perception is a bit wider because me-myself-I is kind of just kind of selfish, really. I need attention. I want to survive in the world and I want to broadcast how wonderful I am so that I can get attention. And this me-myself-I, this one is so broken because it's out of sync with the genuine. That's actually why it wants to broadcast is because it's searching for wholeness. That can only come from an alignment with authenticity, with the genuine.

So when the beingness lens is on, it's a wide review. You're not attached to any, this is right, that's wrong. You can be, there's, yeah, this happens. That happens. I'm not really sure why. There's many causes for every effect. Whereas this one, if you can do both together, now we're talking integration where you are not denying your individual, me-myself-I, and the role that your body, mind, and your beautiful personality has to play in the world, but it doesn't have the power to deviate, to superimpose its agenda on that which flows from the deepcast that you have a capacity to open in any moment.

So the being lens of perception is always wider. It's always softer. And this little one took me a long time to figure out what is the relationship, then, between the inner and the outer. And I spent a few years, several years actually, before I even came to India. I spent several years just honoring the inner, regardless of how it showed up in the world.

Here's one example of where it didn't work out so well. (And it took me several years to find out why):

In deep meditation, I got an insight to turn my home in Ireland into two units so that I could rent one side and live in the other. Split a four bedroom house into two, and a studio. Great, all internal work, piece of cake. Sat with it, said, "Yep, okay, came, absolutely came from there. There is no mind involved at all." And I was so dedicated to ignoring this Jac woman who had common sense and wisdom about permits. No, I trust, I trust this deep inner wisdom. I went ahead without a permit, which really came back to bite and cost me an awful lot of money years, later because I didn't know how to wear both lenses of perception at the same time.

And that's a lesson that each of us has to learn. How does the inner show up as the outer, even with service? Because the inner will always serve because it's an "Us" initiative. It only thinks in terms of the unit. There is no division. Separation comes from this part -- the me-myself-I -- that says microphone and cushion. And these are two different things. My brain does that because it labels, they're actually not the same thing at all, or they're not different things at all. Only labeling makes them different. They're the same essence. And you can actually see that if you go deep inside, you can find that's true for yourself.

So how do we have this lens of separation and labeling, and this deeper beingness at the same time? And do they sync up? What I discovered for myself in this deepcasting was that, first of all, loving my beautiful mind and loving this beautiful expression that shows up as Jac. And there is so much compassion from the depth of what is for her, so much compassion for all her failings and all of it is welcome. And from that compassion, my mind learned how to be in service.

My mind is in service to the genuine. So my path made my mind orient inwards so that my mind bows down in sacredness, in service to the truth that arises from within me. And that's how this became smooth to wear both lenses of perception. My mind wasn't the problem at all really at the end. Once I tamed it a fair bit, and quenched the desires and got rid of all that superfluous matter needing to broadcast, needing attention, owning, claiming. All I was looking for was home inside. That's what all those initiatives are for -- yearning for home. And what's left is beautiful effort of the divine, like showing up as an outpost in its own manifestation.

So for me, outcasting made deepcasting. ... This inner alignment only really made sense, it only really matured, once my mind became obedient to it. And who my mind serves is that inner wisdom inside. That's my responsibility to be accountable for what I do as a person. But at the same time, what I honor is inside. Does that mean I don't compromise? Not at all. There's a lot of compromise, but it's a delicate balance to find out, how much compromise is required here? What really wants to happen here? And sometimes I don't know. And when I don't know, I do nothing. And there's a lot of, "I don't know." It's like, "Dunno, gotta wait for that one." "Dunno, dunno, gotta wait and see." And eventually, of course, "Oh, that's the stirring. I'm already doing it. Oh, I'm writing that. Oh, I'm initiating this. Oh, there we go." And my mind starts playing catch up to a movement that comes from elsewhere.

So I hope that's useful to some of you [chuckles]. The other thing I want to mention ... is what's been your journey of learning its strength? And I want to mention a little bit of what's going on now, because I've worked as a spiritual teacher for 15 years and you can go in way deeper than beingness. There are a lot more lenses of perception than beingness.

You know there is ultimately nothing and there isn't even the concept of nothing. And it's totally fine. It's very freeing actually, don't you think? 

[The rooms lights up in laughter.] Yes, yes, indeed, it's very freeing.

In my own marriage, I've been the primary breadwinner since we were together 10 years. And, I said to myself, "No, this is going to come to an end." Six years ago I started researching why are spiritual teachers behaving badly? Why are we not trauma informed? Why are we projecting our needs onto students? What's going on? Why are teachers sleeping with their students, flirting with their students? Why is the personal growth stopping; what's going on? It's in scripture and it's in current day, and now, with the unfolding of scandals, at least we have a way of talking about it.

So six years ago, I started to really research to see this. It's not about people getting it wrong, it's about the ecosystem not being there to support spiritual leaders. It's about the deification that we do to spiritual leaders. They can do no wrong. And when, of course, their humanness has no place to be held, of course their human needs get projected onto the sangha [spiritual community] or some place, and it comes out painfully. So the ecosystem for spiritual leaders offers them a place to recognize their human needs and to have their human needs met. To have us give us an opportunity to speak to other spiritual leaders. Not about how do you market, how do you manage social media? Because it's really an awful thing. It's not those conversations. It's about learning how to be vulnerable. Because if you spend an awful lot of time in beingness and deeper, you will forget this beautiful human being who will always have needs and wants and will need friends and will need fun and levity and hobbies and nature and food and shelter and money and all that stuff, too.

So allowing spiritual leaders to be vulnerable. And so whether you are a leader in a spiritual context or a leader in a music context, or with children, or all of you are leaders. How do you meet your own needs? Do you know your own needs? And if you're not taking responsibility for your own needs, they will leak into your work and create harm, consciously and unconsciously. And that's how we end up creating karma. No matter how much of an abiding self-realization we have, we will continue to create harm. And we live in a culture that says, "Oh no, no, the teacher did that because that's your ego." Actually very often, no, the teacher actually has a blind spot. And we have to change the culture of spiritual leadership to recognize that our humanness is a constant evolution. Just like that beautiful palm tree that's decomposing out there.

The evolution and the cycle of that will continue. That palm tree in another 50 years will probably be grass. Recycling again. And so how do we honor our human evolution that will never stop? Can we continue to grow and to learn and to train and get more skillful to honor our human, so that we continue to be accountable as people? Accountable to the tiniest harm that we cause to another human being? We can justify -- because we're all pretty bright here -- we can justify anything we do for a higher value and shame on us if we do that. Shame on us if we do that.

Thank you for your time.