When I teach one of the questions are probably the most predominant area of questions that

come to me are really how do these meditations help us to get out of painful life patterns

you know the patterns that we've been rerunning forever on how we avoid intimacy or don't function well

and intimate relationships or the patterns that we're trying to get out of in parenting or perhaps

addictive patterns or for many it's how we treat ourselves but that's the main domain of inquiry

people come with how do I break patterns they're considered karmic patterns and by that it's

really not an you know a woo thing it's more karma simply means cause and effect that in some way

these patterns are generated by our thoughts and behaviors and then they those thoughts and behaviors

seed the next round of the same thing so we're just caught in a pattern of how we're living

the ground of all our karmic patterns and I'm tonight talking about the unhealthy karmic patterns

the ones that make our lives feel small and stuck the ground of them is the basic reflex that

has been identified in both western psychology and Buddhist psychology of when things are pleasant

we tend to grab on it's not like we just relax and enjoy them which takes a certain open

hand in this we we pursue we're we're we're chasing after pleasures we're trying to keep them

control them and when it's unpleasant we don't just open to what's happening we resist we push

away we judge every karmic pattern that we're stuck in that's unhealthy comes out of this basic

mostly unconscious reflex that we live with in the poly script it's called duke that were

continuously in some way dissatisfied and sensing something's missing or something's wrong

but it's not always really blatant often it's a very subtle kind of you know just a sense like we're

waiting for the next thing we're waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not

it can be subtle but sometimes we're suffering in its anguish it's like this really doesn't feel good

the good news is this is really why the Buddha taught the Dharma the path is that we can

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