75 Dissolving Hypnosis, Awakening with a Guru or Not? - Q & A

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness.

The live sessions are an opportunity for anyone to ask questions that come up during their awakening process.  It supports the previous 74 podcasts but does not require that you have listened to them.  We discussed the 3 steps of awakening meditation, the process of awakening, various practices, the hypnotic trances we live and how to dissolve them, awakening through a guru or not, mantra meditation, etc.

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

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Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining me today for our live session. I trust everybody's doing well. It's so good to see you all, Karen and Jennifer and everybody else. The names don't display so I can't, unless you're typing in something, I can't say hi, but it's a general hi to everybody. I'm a psychotherapist and I've been to India 13 times. We're about to go our 14th time. And what I do, I've been with dozens of gurus and teachers and so on and so forth. So, I attempt to put together those things that I feel helpful from the east and the west, blend them in a way that I have found helpful because each discipline is very powerful and neither one of them covers everything completely. So, that's what the podcasts are about. While I wait for questions, let me start with this. It's just the basics today. You are a bright light. You are just as powerful as Jesus or as Buddha. There's so much light and love and peace and well-being streaming through you. That's what you are. It floods through your incarnation. It's what we are. It's not like Jesus is special and I'm not. We're the same. It's not like Buddha is special and I'm not. We're the same. You're the same. We're all the same. But there is a difference and that is this immense power that flows through us often gets eaten up in distractions. So, it doesn't beam out like the strong light and miracles don't seem to be happening all around us. Although they are, we can't see them when we're too blocked. But our energy gets siphoned off. My main guru, now friend, Bhagavan, he used to tell us, he said, you're fractured into a thousand personalities inside, a thousand voices. There's just not the powerhouse of the one voice, you, coming through your incarnation. It's spread out and diffracted over a thousand voices, a thousand little personalities inside. There's a Western psychotherapeutic school of thought called internal family systems. And what they say is the same thing. Hey, there's a lot of voices inside. And when you work with an individual, you work with the various personalities because it's like there's so many voices inside. It's like there's a family. Some of them get along. Some of them are opposed to each other. Some of them are bickering. So, you work with people individually like a family. It can get to be kind of painful when that's our life. So, many of us are a little worn out with this and we just want it to stop. So, how? How to make it stop? Many ways. Most important is you listen to yourself and you take baby steps and you do what works for you. You don't do what Buddha found helpful. You can if you want, but if it or Jesus or me or anybody else, you listen to yourself. Having said that, Jesus, Buddha, Hinduism, also Islam and every major religion has many good guiding principles and you can listen to them. But I would quickly discard them if they're not serving us. Now, in the midst of having said all of that and I am a psychotherapist, so I know lots of psychotherapies and they can be very helpful in helping us release things, but they won't bring us to awakening, generally speaking. Yet, psychotherapy can be very helpful. What do I find to be the most helpful? Very simple as most powerful things in life are and that's to just sit still. That's called meditation and let everything settle down so we can see straight again, not be caught up in our dramas. Why can't we sit still? Because we're caught up in our dramas. That's a warning light. If I can't sit still, that's a warning light, right? I have to ask myself as a Why can't I? Well, often people have the misperception that when I sit still and close my eyes, I really can't meditate because there's so many thoughts and emotions going on and it's not peaceful and it's horrible. The misconception is that they're doing something wrong. That is a total misconception. What they're doing is exactly right. What they're seeing, maybe for one of the first times in their lives, is how discordant all those thousand voices inside are. We distract ourselves so we don't have to deal with it. That's why we keep going and keep thinking and keep moving and we want to do activities and maybe work all the time or do whatever, but just don't pay attention to what's really going on inside of us. So what kind of meditation do I like and how do you do it? And why do I like it? Well, again, very simple. Sit down. And just like if I put my hand here, you can see my hand, right? There it is. Just look at my hand. Does that require any emotion or thought? No. Those are extra. You just see my hand. Well, in meditation, I see other objects and it doesn't require any emotion or thought. I see thoughts. I see them. They go through my mind. You need to do this. You need to do that. What about this? What about that? Lots of thoughts. Emotions come up and I experience them. Oh, this happened and that happened. I'm upset. Those come up and I experience them. I see them. Does it require any effort to see them? No. What happens as I watch them and I don't jump into them? It's like the difference between looking at a bottle of wine and drinking the bottle of wine. You can look at it. That's one thing. Drinking it is another. Looking at a thought is one thing. Diving into it is another. Experiencing an emotion is one thing. Diving into it and following it is another. When you dive into it and follow it, it's completely distracting. It's like taking a pill and now you're hallucinating. That's what Thomas Jefferson said that thoughts were merely hallucinations. They are. We make them. We create them. They can be helpful. Thoughts can be helpful. Hey, I want to invent something. I have a thought. Hey, I want to start my car. I have a thought. But 90, probably 8% of thoughts are just psychologically motivated. I'm cut off from myself. I feel fear, hurt, or anger or all of those. How do I get whatever I need to feel safe? How do I get a relationship? How do I get love? How do I get money? That's what most of our thoughts are. And that's what the thousand voices are. The reason we don't have power, even though the same power that comes through Jesus and comes through Buddha and every other awakened sage, even though the same power is coming through us, it's getting lost and it's fueling. It's like a giant power station that's giving power to all these thoughts and emotions. So all of our energy is getting scattered all over the place. It's like we're lighting up a giant city that we don't live in. So where we live, there's no power left. So in meditation, you sit still and the power can return to you because you're not giving away your power to all the thoughts that are appearing. Now, they already have power within them because you created them long ago. So do the thoughts. They have a history and they're appearing. But if you don't put more power in them, you don't resist them. That would be called repression. Instead, you just let them flow. Let them do their thing. Let them speak. Let them talk. Let them flop around. Let them try to tempt you. Think me. Think me. Feel me. Feel me as you watch them and don't get involved. But you watch them. You're with them. What happens? They're like a wound tight rubber band and they just start spinning, spinning, spinning until they expend their energy and they're gone. When something is totally relaxed, it's gone. Like you go to a masseuse and you've got tension in your body and you're all knotted up and then those they work your muscles and you receive relaxation and then you're totally relaxed. Where's that knotted up muscle? It's gone. The tension is gone. So there's no knot muscle still there but there's no knot. So you're still there but there's no knot. You're not wound up. Somebody asked me what my definition of awakening is and it's you without your problems. You know, you hear Buddha nature or being like Jesus or something like that. Being one of the like merging with one of the Hindu gods or whatever your path is, there's something like that in your path, whatever it is. Basically what they're saying is that's you without a problem. You don't perceive as Jesus walking around with a lot of problems or Buddha like, wow, I got problems. No, but you don't need to have problems either. None of us do. It's our pleasure. We maintain them. We don't have to. What do I mean by that? Well, we can sit down and we watch things and they start to dissolve. They start to unwind. They start to dissolve around but there's part two that's very important that's often overlooked and I don't hear too many people talking about. I'd never heard about it but it's helped me immensely so I'm going to tell you what part two is and then there is part three which we'll talk about too. But part two is as you watch your emotions, as you watch your thoughts and you don't get involved, you just watch them. You experience them. You don't get sucked into them and if you do, everybody will. Don't worry about it. That doesn't mean you failed. You just, when you notice, oops, five minutes has elapsed and I was lost in that daydream, you pull yourself out and you just pick up where you let, you just start again. Just keep watching. You're training yourself to rest in your center. So what is part two? Part one is you're just observing the thoughts. You're letting them expend their energy as the emotions emote and the thoughts think that it uses up energy, right? And after it uses up energy, it becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. Well, part two is the part that's expending its energy, these little personalities, these troubled parts of you, they need to update their files and soak up the peace and wellbeing that you are, that the true you is. So it's important to be in touch with that, of course, and we'll talk about that. That's what I'm going to refer to part three. You let the emotions drink in the peace and wellbeing. They have to soak it up. See, the reason what keeps a personality going is, let me just make up an example. Let's say you're a boy or a girl and you have a trauma and you never update your files. You're just deep inside your incarnation and one personality has twisted off and it's traumatized and it's scared, it's scared, it's scared. And anything that comes up that would touch that fear, it just clamps down and it's scared, it's scared, it's scared because real bad things happened to it 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. These are true things that did happen, but guess what? They're not happening anymore. Are they? They're not happening anymore. But that part of you exists because it thinks it's happening still because it's locked in time. It hasn't advanced. So what happens when you soak it up? That part can, you can ask that part, is it better to be abused back then, which is horrible? That was a horrible thing going on, or is it better now in the safety of my life now and with me, which do you prefer? Now that sounds like a very elementary and rather ill-informed question perhaps, but what it does is it asks that part to start to update its files because it has to look around and make a decision which was better and what, wait a second, I'm not back there. It is better now. And then you ask it, okay, if it's better, then could you soak up? Could you enjoy that? That is better. And so the traumatized part can breathe in a little bit. And that feels good, right? To know that you're not being attacked. That feels good, right? Yeah, it does. And to look around and, oh, wow, things are good. It can start to relax. Now this might take a while and you don't want to push yourself too hard and re-traumatize yourself. So just to drop, go slow, baby steps, go very slowly. You know, we've got lifetimes to work this out. What's the rush? Even if you believe you got one life, there's still some time. Now the idea of past lives is that you pick up where you leave off. So you take with you, even if you're 98 and you just start this today, any advancements you make, you take with you. So that's good. You pick up where you left off. So it's the soaking up as part two. Part one is you watch and experience your thoughts without getting involved in them. Experience your emotions without getting involved in them. Even experience your habits and actions if you happen to be moving around through the day. Just watch yourself. These are old habits you developed years ago. Just watch them. They are being informed most of them by hurt, fear, and anger. Watch that. On some level, you're trying to get something to protect yourself because you're separate from yourself, at least to some degree, until you're totally awake. So part two is to soak it up. The path of awakening is listening to yourself. How do I figure these things out? I listen to myself. What works? It's not, well, Buddha doesn't bring it up. Fine. He didn't know. Something else worked for him. You have a wealth of information inside of you. What works for you? So we're back to meditation now. Let's continue that. So what do I do? I sit still, close my eyes. I get comfortable in my seating. I like to sit in a chair often because that's easier on my body. Postures, you know, I wouldn't get sidetracked. I would say you can awaken just fine in any posture that's comfortable to you. Mantras, they have their place. Maybe we'll talk about them later. But again, you can awaken just fine without a mantra. Diet, it has its place. It can influence things. Yet you can awaken just fine, no matter what the diet is that you're on. Right now, I'm not addressing those because what I'm talking, just sitting still and meditation is, let's say 90% of it. We're all different. I don't know, but it's powerful and important. And so often we get, I have gotten lost in little details and delayed and procrastinated because I was trying to get all the little details right. And I never really sat down and meditated, you know, every day you need to meditate. So part one, you experience and let it expend itself. Part two, as that's happening, you let it soak up the goodness around you right now. Part three is you want to over time. Notice who are you? Who is this one that's doing the watching? That's where awakening happens. That's the most crucial thing. And I've laid out step by step, one, two, three. But this is, if we want to talk about importance, it's the most important thing. Who are you? People would come to Ramana and they'd say, Ramana, what should I do about my life? Ramana, what should I do about my meditation practice? Ramana, what should I do about my business? And Ramana would stop and say, whoa, he was a great saint in Southern India. He died in about the 1950s. Very powerful, like Buddha. And he said, well, let's find out who you are first before you decide what should you do about your life. Find out who you are first and then see about your life. That's what we're talking about. The one who's watching, who is that? And remember earlier in this talk, I said, you see my hand and you just look at it and it doesn't take any effort or thought or emotions to watch my hand or anything else, including a thought or an emotion. It takes no effort. It's very quiet. The one that's watching is very quiet. Like right now, you're watching the screen perhaps of your computer or your phone. The part of you that's watching, what's that like? That's you. Because if the phone disappeared, you'd still be here. Or the computer disappeared, you'd still be here. Or if you're sitting down meditating and you're watching your thoughts and emotions, you'd still be here if they disappeared. If one thought disappeared, you'd still be here. If the other thought disappeared, you'd still be here, right? Emotions disappear, you're here. All of them disappear. You're still here. You're just not watching any thoughts or emotions. You're, whoa, no thoughts and emotions. Wow. So, you are the one watching. Who is that? It's not a who. It's just, what is that? And I don't mean philosophically. I mean to you. What does it feel like to you? What do you feel like? Never leaving that, that's called awakening. And I'm going to just give you a few hints. And many of you already know this, so it's not a hint, but we've got a lot of different people. And it took me decades to figure this out. So, you probably figured it out in the first week, but I didn't. So, I'm going to pass on a few things just in case anybody is out there that is, was struggling like me. The one watching or who is watching is difficult because I kept getting identified in my thoughts and feelings and feeling like it's like this, it's like that. I feel this way. I feel that way. None of that's me. The one watching, the reason why it's so difficult is it's like a continuum and you have to know the deepest part of you. You have to use your intuition and your intuition doesn't typically open up until you sit down long enough and let things settle out. So, at first it's a bumpy ride. You have no clue. And I'm speaking for myself. I had no clue. But as things settled out and my intuition opened up naturally, because you have less obstructions as things melt away, all this stuff out here, the thoughts, the emotions, the personality, those are all obstructions or constructions that we've made in the past and they obstruct us. As some of that melts out, our intuition opens up and we can, and what's always been there becomes obvious and it extends out of this creation and anything not created doesn't exist. Only things in existence exist. So, we don't even have a language to talk about that. Yet, that's who you are. And there's no feeling to something that doesn't reside in this world. It doesn't have a feeling. So, you could look for 20 years and you're not going to find. You could look through with your five senses and you're not going to find who you are because senses only work with objects, right? Thoughts, feelings, perspectives, philosophies. Oh, yeah. No, that's not you. None of that's you. Those are just fancy thoughts and experiences. Great. They're dramas. They're fine. But it's not who we are. Every one of us. So, that's who you are. That's one end of the rainbow and it just goes on forever and it is everything. You are everything. When they say, yes, you're one, that's true. You are. So, it's this infinite that's beyond creation. You can see yourself. You can experience yourself intuitively, but you don't have to wait for that point because as you come into creation like one big arc or one big rainbow coming down through your incarnation, when this so-called nothing comes into creation, boom, a burst of light. It's pure light and that you can experience in your body without intuition. Now, the more clear, the tricky thing is these first parts of the rainbow that I'm about to talk about, you really have to be kind of clear to see it or feel it. So, you probably have good intuition at that point. But when it comes into creation, boom, pure light. And then that light, as things form in creation, they slow down. Creation is a very slow-moving situation. So, the light slows down and it slows into sound. That's the sound of creation. You can hear it. There's also, and I do, and I just say me, I just say that to encourage you that an ordinary person has checked it out and it's true every moment. There's also a high-pitched sound. High, very high. Often people mistake that they've got ringing in their ears, like something's wrong with that. Maybe. But also the sound of the universe is ringing. You may be hearing the universe. Maybe it's not something you want to get rid of. So, as that slows down, the next thing are high, very high emotions like bliss. As that slows down, joy, happiness, peace. That sort of sits with that low-pitched sound, but it's also, it's everywhere. Peace. This coming from beyond is made of that, and when it comes into the universe, those are the qualities of you. Peace, love, joy, happiness, fulfillment, well-being, a feeling of well-being. That's what it feels like in your incarnation when you're not separated from yourself. Now, we're still talking about meditation, but let me continue the rainbow. Peace, love, joy, and then that slows down into atoms, and those become molecules, and then those become houses, and cats, and dogs, and trees. And you, your body. You're not your body. If a hand disappeared, you'd still be here. If your nose disappeared, you'd still be here. If your whole body disappeared, you'd still be here, or you'd be somewhere. You wouldn't be localized to this incarnation, but that's who you are. We're a rainbow, so it's a little simplistic to say, well, I'm bliss, I'm joy, I'm peace. No, you're all of these things. What else are you? You're also, well, let me say this. When I look at any object or anything, it strobes in and out of existence about a million times a second. It's just like this. Things come from nothing to something, nothing to something, nothing to something. Are you the nothing, or are you the something? I'll tell you, you're everything. So, it's a false dichotomy. Oh, I need to awaken, and I am no longer attached to creation. No, you are creation. So, the difference is, when you connect, somebody who's repressed and covered up with too many objects, like I have been most of my life, I'm in so much pain, I can't connect to anything. If I try to, it even feels painful, but as that dissolves away, I can connect more and more, inch by inch, more and more, deeper, deeper, deeper. When I walk, I like to feel the ground six feet underneath me. You can't skitter across the top of the ground and connect. I can't yet, maybe people can, but that requires you to walk slowly. Otherwise, it's like thoughts just racing and being so distracting. People, I mean, when I walk fast, I'm usually distracted, or I'm in pain, and I just don't want to, I just want to keep moving. But in awakening, the things they tell you to do in the ashrams or the Buddhist Sangha, walk slow, breathing, you know, all that, that happens naturally. It doesn't hurt to get some guidance, doesn't hurt to kind of get good at it before you awaken. So you're all ready to go, but these things happen naturally. If that makes sense, they happen naturally. So back to who am I? I'm the one watching. Alexa Klee put a statement, which I really appreciate, and so has Claire, but fully awakening is being authentic self, I believe she says, I believe it doesn't work through spiritual bypassing, but tending to all my traumatized parts. Yeah, not in a hurry. That's absolutely true. Now, everything everybody is saying is true. That's the weird thing about spirituality. It's a lot of different levels and perspectives, but they tend to all be true for the most part. Because in full awakening, you have to know who you are, right, which is the one watching. But it's also the one experiencing and being watched. You're all of that. And the love that I just described and peace that the one watching is the energy that you are needs to be soaked up by the one you're watching. And then they become one, right? That's like I said, there was a tension in your muscle, and it's knotted up and you go see a masseuse and you receive you soak up relaxation, it disappears. And you it's not like two separate things. I have a knot. And I have a relaxed body. No, it's all one thing. It's a flow. It's a relaxed body inside and out. So full awakening is just another way to say that I have fully received myself and anything that would be different. Like here's a personality over here. It's been traumatized, therefore it's separate. It now has received so fully, it's relaxed. And it's melted back into me the oneness and we've become one. And that flows through my life and my being very powerfully. So that's full awakening. So you're right. That's full awakening. Alexa Klee says that's non dual theory. Yes, it is theory, but it's also reality. In my experience, I you can't really dichotomize. Now, it's true that you can break these things down into little parts, but something can be a theory and also true. So but it includes everything else. And I don't care about a theory. I'm just telling you what my experience is. I don't I don't go by a theory, by the way. I can put theory words on it because I'm trying to explain something. But really, I would advise nobody to go by a theory. I remember I mentioned this in another podcast. James Audubon, the bird illustrator in the 1800s, illustrated the early birds. He drew birds and somebody came up to him one day and said, Dr. Audubon, I spotted a bird and I have your bird book, but there's a discrepancy between the bird and the book. And Dr. Audubon said, whenever there's a discrepancy between the bird and the book, go with the bird every time. And that's the same with your experience. If what I'm saying doesn't fit your experience or what Buddha says doesn't fit your experience, what I do is I go with my experience. Now, I listen to other people because what I've observed is maybe five years later, something I've been at it five more years and suddenly, well, that Buddha's making more sense. So I don't dismiss it, but I listen. But I do discard it. I don't live my life. I temporarily or maybe permanently discard it if it doesn't fit my life. Now, Claire said what we talked about and she said, well, unless you're in a hurry in a city late for work, I mean, that gets the mind racing. And my friend Bob once said, you know, the very one of the early steps is you've got to get out of the pounding surf for awakening. You can't be tossed. And we have created a karma. And this is a very difficult one that most all of us are experiencing. And that is having to work and do things. And that's not easy. And you can't just say, yeah, it's all fine. You just meditate. It's all one. No, because as soon as I leave my house, I get caught up in the drama of what's going on around me. And the drama is informed by those parts of me that have no longer melted and merged into the fullness of me. Jesus was a pretty busy fellow. He was trotting all over the Middle East and people chasing him and stuff. But he did fine. Buddha was a busy fella. He ran all over the place, taught a bunch of people. I'm sure there are a lot of personalities and they had issues and they probably yelled at Buddha and did all sorts of things. It's hard being a guru. I've seen gurus and they have, there's a lot of people clamoring on them. It's hard being me. It's hard being you. But that's grist for the mill. That brings up in us the things, the very things that we meditate with when we can and we start to let them melt away. There's no reason I can't move through my day and love and peace, except I don't think I can because, and I'll just again talk about me. You see if it applies to any of you. But I had a certain way of looking at life and being in the world that had been going on all my life. I just thought it was the way I was. And really for a long time, I thought it was the way everybody was. Like if I think it, I'm sure everybody else thinks it was a rude awakening to find out. No, other people don't always think what I think. And it was another rude awakening to find out just because I felt a certain thing. It didn't need to be there. There's some things that are so fundamental in our personality that we take them for granted. We think that's just the way we don't even see them. There are lens that we don't even see through. It's like being born with sunglasses on, pink sunglasses, and we don't ever even realize that the world isn't pink until something smashes up against us and it makes us look at it. So what I've learned, my rough rule of thought is if there's any tension, any discord, any anger, any frustration, any hurt, any fear, any abandonment, any discontent, anything like that, that's all not who I am. I am none of those things. They're things for me to release. I don't have to feel anxious and hurried to get to my job. There's no law that says I do. Yet I do until I don't. So I catch myself and I go, wow, I'm just doing this automatically. I was raised in the military and I was. I have to be on time. I have to do this and this and this. Well, that's a tall order to reverse that habit inside of you. But I'm doing that because as I stay connected to who I am, that continually informs me. I am connected to the peace. And if I notice my body is like my emotions are not peace. That's not coming from me. That's coming from an old hypnosis. And that's what that is. When you take a suggestion, whether it's from your culture or your family, that's a hypnosis. Or if it's from the hypnotist, it's a hypnosis. Those can be let go of. And then, Claire, I appreciate your what you're saying and you're OK losing your job. But all of this awakening stuff is about balance, too. And I can talk. What do I do? I get to my job on time if I can. I don't sit around and go, well, I'm going to meditate. And hey, if I get there, I still am not over that habit of being rushed. So I'm just not budging. And maybe I lose my job. No, I go to a job and I go there tense. But that afternoon or that night or the next morning, I meditate and I watch that tension. I feel it. I ask it like somebody else was saying earlier that that part, what do you need? And I let it soak up me. That's what it's wanting. It's wanting me, the piece of me. So, yes, Jennifer, you're right. You turn you turn off that pace when you're not at work. That's your first step. When I'm at home, can I turn it off? Can I do it there when I'm shopping? Could I do it there? These are baby steps forward. You know, what I used to do is make it kind of an all or nothing. Oh, I have this and it happens here and I'm not perfect. That's our culture. That's not necessary. Go easy. And it's OK to want and need money. Claire Claire says, but I want need the money. You know, we all do. Nothing is a dichotomy. We've got the I hope this doesn't sound bad, but we've got what we deserve. It's where we are in life. People say, well, I'd like to see a miracle. You know what? The miracle is the energy coming out of us that has created the life we're in now. What's going on in our life now is based on the energy flowing out of us. And it's the perfect thing going on out there for us to work with so we can let go of something to raise our clarity. Right. Life gives us what we need. Life is healing, even if it seems, oh, no, it's not. It causes pain. Well, you know what? Unfortunately, and it doesn't need to be this way, but the way it is these days, many of us don't learn unless we are in pain. I'm going to lose my job and I'll starve to death. So I'll do what's required or I'm in so much pain that, yeah, I'll meditate or I'll go to therapy or something. It doesn't need to be that way, but it is often. If it is, life will give you pain if that's what you need. If it's not, life won't give you pain. It will evolve. You're not stuck in one rut. It changes as you change. Claire says, yes, I love what you say about listening to the voice, the observer. Yes, it's both listening and experiencing. And let me explain that as you sit still and get used to the one that's watching, start to notice everything else could disappear and you'd be fine. You're still watching. Things could change. A whole new set of thoughts could come by and you'd still be there watching. You're fine. What is that energy like? Is there any fear in that energy that's watching? No. Any hurt? No. Check it out. The hurt and fear is the stuff you're watching. And that's why people go to therapy because they wanted to change or that's why they meditate. And when it does change and it's gone, you're still here. So that stuff can change. But that which is watching is always watching. Oh, now it's watching a great life that you have now created, but it's still watching. Now it's watching a terrible life, but it's still watching. And is it fine either way? Yes. If you check out the feelings of that which is watching, it's not afraid either way. It's always when it comes into life, it's always happy. It's always joy. So getting to know who you are is important, especially if you're asking your personality to reorient and restructure. What's it going to trust? If it knows you, if you are in touch with yourself, it can trust you because you trust you. If you're cut off from yourself, you just generate more fear and pain and hurt. So how are you going to ask your personality to change? Because the ground of what you know is fear until you know yourself. I mean, you could without knowing yourself, you could come up with a mental trick and just make some tension and repress all the fear and say, no, I'm at peace. You could do that, but you wouldn't be at peace. You would just be repressing. So you're fine. Like I said, you're the same as Jesus and Buddha right now. You just get to know yourself and then let that flow down through your personality and let your personality soak it up. You observe your personality, let it run its course. And at the same time, soak up the good news that everything's fine. You're fine. And guess what? As your personality feels fine, it releases, it relaxes, and the troubling parts disappear. And now your personality simply channels the beautiful energy that you truly are, not the hypnosis of what you're not. You're not hurt. You're not fear. You're not anger. You're not frustration. You're not. That's hypnosis. When I used to work with hypnosis every so often, well, one time a high school contacted me and I was doing hypnosis in psychotherapeutic settings, but they contacted me and said, can you hypnotize our high school seniors? They're graduating and they want to have a fun party. Could you do it? I said, okay. So I did it. And I had them believe they were rock stars and all sorts of things. They weren't. I had one thing that really freaked them out. I had them forget the number two. And then I had them count their fingers. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Oh, I've got 11 fingers. Now that changed their life in that moment. They were freaking out. And I said, don't worry. I mean, plastic surgery can take care of that. Whoa. They got even more freaky. I gave them the number two back. They were fine. Don't we do that in our life? We accept a suggestion. That's what hypnosis are. They were just nice kids, smart kids. Well, we're hypnotized in life. Somebody tells us something, this is the way it is. And if you say something often enough, that creates hypnosis. If you say something that has trauma associated with it, that creates hypnosis. If you say something in a very authoritarian way, I'm the authority and I know this and you need to believe it, that creates hypnosis. If you have, you can have group hypnosis. You're in a culture and everybody believes the same thing. Well, suddenly you believe that. That's why earlier I was alluding to direct experience. You want to stick with yourself because that breaks all hypnosis. And people can say to me, Oh, this or that, or this or that, but I am seeing the reality go in and out of existence. So they can say whatever they want. Oh, that doesn't happen. Well, that's a philosophy because I can see it. So I can see these things. I can see that everything is made of peace and love. I, it's like I can see and feel the atoms in everything. When you aren't hypnotized, you see directly and that's the same in your awakening path. Okay, I'll give you an example. So I had the numbers disappear for the high school students and they were freaked out. One, three, four, five, six, 11, you know, well, the smartest guy in the class, the valedictorian, he was a whiz at math and he was really troubled that he had 11 fingers because one part of them knew that wasn't possible. But there he counted his own fingers and he came up with 11. So he was convinced that he had 11, but at the same time, he knew that there's something wrong. He didn't know he was hypnotized, but he knew something was wrong. So he asked me the smart kid, he said, stick out your hands, please put your hands out. And what he wanted to do was put his hands on my hands and match him up because he was a smart kid. And he knew if he did that, he would break the hypnotic trance because reality will break a trance. Hypnosis isn't real, right? It's a trance. Confront reality and you break your trance. All traumas are trances. All personalities, the sub personality are trances. So the direct experience of meditating and you're connected to yourself, when I say let those parts breathe in and soak up, update their files and learn that you are peace and love and everything is okay, that breaks the trance. And that's called awakening. When you break all the trances, you're awake and it's a direct experience. And the more trances you break, the more things you naturally experience. You become intuitive because by nature you are intuitive. You see the universe strobing in and out because it is strobing in and out. And you're in your inner eye can see that all these things we talk about are not rocket science. They're just due to sitting down a long time and breaking those trances. So this is available to every single one of us. Okay. So people say, well, different things work for me other than meditation. You have to ask yourself, well, why can't I sit still? But I'm not saying the other things aren't valuable. Some people, physical activity is valuable. Other people, you know, diet is very valuable. You have to trust yourself and see what works. Other people, psychotherapy, and I've been through lots of psychotherapy and it's helped me immensely. Other people taking psychotropic drugs, I mean, like prescription drugs is helpful. Other people, you know, we talked about, and I think the last live session or two back about a new thing that's coming out, which is therapist-assisted psychedelics. Not my thing, but it's helped a lot of people and the science is undeniable. So it's about being open and seeing what works for you. Walking meditation, yes, Jennifer, can be very powerful. Mantras are helpful. They can be helpful for certain people. But as Ramana said, any of these things, walking, meditations, mantras, drugs, if they help you, they help you. But any of these things, as Ramana said, you want to back off of them as you don't need them. You don't want to become addicted to the process. Like, wow, I have to be in psychotherapy forever. That's my endpoint is infinite psychotherapy or because psychotherapy is not awakening or infinite drugs. I knew somebody in Brazil down in Sao Paulo, went to Ayahuasca church every Sunday. They didn't look like they were doing so great to me, but I think probably it helped them. But forever? No. You do it to kind of get through something and then meditate after a while. You are meditation. Oh, Claire says, is he the guy that taught the Beatles meditation? No, that's Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And I actually, the first time I went to India, I had a huge awakening experience and I went to see Bhagavan different than this guy. And I met the guy that lived with the Maharishi. He was there. And the first Westerner to meet the Maharishi. This is the one that taught the Beatles. They were in the room next to me. And one of them, the British guy, the first Westerner who met Maharishi, and this is before the Maharishi passed away, which was probably about eight years ago, I think something like that, 10 years. He paid a million dollars to the Maharishi for awakening. So now he was in the bedroom next to me getting awakening from the next guy. Nobody can awaken for you. Bhagavan gave me the awakening experience through his energy for about 10 years. And I, so I got to experience awakening. But then he said, you're ready to go off on your own. And he withdrew the energy, total blackness, total darkness, the soul, so that I could re-experience it through my incarnation rather than through his energy. And a lot of people sort of get stuck with the guru thinking that's their own personal awakening, which I did for the 10 years. For most of the 10 years, I thought I was doing the awakening. I only realized the difference when he withdrew the energy. As far as TM, if you're interested in a mantra kind of meditation, just go Google centering prayer, and you'll get like a paragraph on it. And it's basically TM meditation, or you could get the book or just Google the relaxation response. Both of those are basically TM meditation. They have mantras, but you pick your own rather than the Maharishi give you a mantra. You just pick your own what resonates with you. Peace, love, you find your own word, well-being, just something that something that touches your soul, that kind of keeps you in tune with who you are. In TM meditation, you sit down, close your eyes like you do in regular meditation, the one that I described, but as thoughts come up, rather than just sit there and observe them, when they come up, in order to keep you from jumping into them to get engulfed in your thought, you just say your mantra, peace, and you let them both go, you just let them both kind of bubble up all the thoughts and the mantra, you just let them, let them go. And then you're quiet. And then after a while, you might just say your mantra, peace, there's no hurry, just when you feel like it, maybe a minute later, maybe 30 seconds, maybe two minutes. But if a bunch of thoughts come up again, then you say your mantra at that point, peace, you do that, too. Yes, Claire said she changed her mantra after being on a live session with Cary Grossman. It's better, it's it's better on my tongue, heart and stomach. And that's what I'm talking about, Cary. You're listening to yourself. Often when people are working with chakras or mantras or whatever, it's good to listen to the person that's helping you and instructing you. That's a good start. But in the end, you want to listen to yourself. Like if somebody says, you've got energy in your heart, that's your heart chakra. But what if you feel it like here, maybe energy is coming out of here. You're missing the boat. If you keep your attention there, put it where the energy is, like Dr. Audubon said, if there's a discrepancy between the bird and the book, go with the bird every time. Same with your mantra. Go with something that feels good. Because it feels good because it's good for you. Your nature feels good, right? Let's say you want to be connecting and feeling the pure energy running through your body. You're you've sat with yourself, you've observed your thoughts, and you've sat with yourself so long that you've also put your awareness on your awareness as well as your thoughts and your emotions. You let your awareness rest on your awareness and you start to get to know what you're like. Like Jesus said, what does it profit? What is it? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? You know, if I miss who I am, what is it? I go through my life not knowing who I am, but I get real rich or something or I get to work on time all the time. Okay, but what does it profit me? I got nothing out of that. So you put your, you get to know yourself, you put your awareness on your awareness. As that flows through your body, you might want to feel the energy. I said it comes in as bliss and joy and light and OM and high pitch, low pitch and all that. We just talked about that. But maybe it comes into your, maybe you feel it differently in your body. So you don't get distracted by what I say. You listen to what does it feel like in your body? Maybe there's light coming out of your stomach. Maybe it shifts around out of your heart, out of your stomach, out of your third eye. Maybe it's out of your elbow. I don't know. Be with you because your body has its own channels that are opening up in the perfect order. Anyway, all this to say, Claire, I like that about changing your mantra. It's more true to your tongue, to your body, to your vibration. I like that. And I like that in every aspect of your, anybody's spiritual practice. If Jennifer walking meditations work best for you, I like that. And if somebody else has running works best for me, I like that. All I'm saying is in the end, as things calm down, as Ramana said, when you find you're able to sit down just a bit, I find just sitting meditation, the most powerful way to be. Now I walk every day, at least two hours on the beach early in the morning, get up at four 30. So I believe in walking. I believe in walking meditations. I like to do exercise, all these things. So they're all good. That's the thing. Listen to yourself. Let's see. Claire says, Claire says, this is great. And making me love your mini podcast awakening series on this app because you are the exact same. Yes. I'm the same person. Uh, I know what you mean. It's just too difficult to be something that I'm not. So I'm the same everywhere. And so thank you. I'm glad that you are listening to the mini podcast. Uh, Claire, as I said, there's about 74. Now I will put this one on. That'll be 75, but we're covering the stuff. Claire goes on to say, uh, years in her, Oh, avoidant behavior. She's had years of this and in her experience. We all have. Yes, Claire. And thank you for saying that because yes, we all, that's the personality. Remember the personality is formed out of separation. And when we're separate, we have separation, anxiety, hurt, and fear. I mean, hurt and anger. We're angry that life isn't good because we're separate from it. We're we're afraid or more separation anxiety. We're alone in the universe and we're abandoned. God has abandoned me. So I'm alone in the, I'm an existentialist. I'm alone. I'm abandoned. So that's how we form our personality to get what we feel like we're missing. We're not really missing it. We're deluded. I mean that in the best sense of we're not seeing clearly is what I mean. Trust yourself, Claire. And just like I'm doing, and we do it through baby steps because you're, you've made some great comments, but you know what you, the last one says, but I realized that's just a judgment also. No, things come from the heart and that's beyond judgment. Your intuition. One's intuition also is always happening. Even if we don't feel like we're connected to it, it's always there. And sometimes we mistake it for thoughts or philosophies or whatever, but it's not, it's coming from a deep place. And what you just said was coming from a deep place. It was not a judgment. So, uh, yeah, I've cried. Claire goes on. I've cried. God, how could you abandon me? Yes, I have too. I spent years, you know, I went, I have a master of theology, four years at a seminary. I guess my number one thing, have I been abandoned? I think I have been sorting that out. It was a baby step forward. It was my first step. Okay. Now I've been to India 13 times, but I've done a lot of stuff. Psychotherapists, a mistake. Why? Because I had issues. A lot of psychotherapists have issues, but we work on them and you want somebody that knows the territory. So that's not a bad thing, but I'm with you, Claire. That's all I'm saying. Okay, everybody. Thank you so much. If you follow me on insight timer, um, they'll notify you when I publish a podcast or do these live sessions, William Cooper, you can go on any platform also, and look me up under something like awakening together, William Cooper podcast on anything, any platform will have all of them. You know, I'll tell you one other thing. I like the saying as in teacher once said, because we're speaking about meditation today, he said, no, you don't have to meditate to awaken. But he says, I don't know anybody who's awakened, who didn't meditate. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. I'm sure there have been many people that have awakened who didn't meditate, but I don't know any of them. Maybe you do. I like in the Bible, it talks about Jesus. What did he do? He went out into the wilderness forever and he had all sorts of issues come up. He called them the devil and Satan and everything, but he was having issues. He was in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Now in Bible talk, that means a long time, I'm guessing years. So if you're going through a tough time, we know Buddha went through a tough time. He was under that Bodhi tree. And before that, he was having a heck of a time. Do you know any awakened person that hasn't had a heck of a time? Ah, I like the second verse in the book of Thomas, where Jesus says, he who seeks shall find, he who finds will be troubled. He who is troubled will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Isn't that our spiritual practice? If you seek, you will find whatever you need, life will bring it to you. And as life brings it to you and you stick on your path, all of your unresolved stuff comes up for healing. But we don't repress happiness, we repress hurt and pain. So what comes up is hurt and pain, and that feels bad. So he who finds is troubled. Jesus was in that wilderness screaming and yelling and crying. Buddha was under the Bodhi tree screaming and crying. I've been screaming and crying and you probably have been screaming and crying, but stick with it day by day, baby steps. You don't have to do everything in a day, just do something small every day. So small that you can do it and you'll get there. He who is troubled shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. That means awakening in Bible talk. Y'all take care. Bye.