114 Gurus, Jesus, Awakening, Process To Release Suffering - Live Q & A

Great questions asked in this live Q & A we discussed the process of awakening and it's relation to releasing suffering.  How to release suffering.  How is suffering useful.  Is it better to be spontaneous or do step by step practices?  Is it possible to awaken using guided meditations? Are they helpful and how?  Can gurus take your suffering? Can one experience awakening and know one's true Self?  How?  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

0:00

Hello, welcome. Welcome everybody. My name is William Cooper and this is the podcast Awakening Together Relaxing into Happiness. And I see a lot of my friends. Hello. Hi, Jennifer. This live session is a good time for anybody to ask any questions that have to do with their practice or their path, regardless of what it might be, can be anything really. And also this podcast supports the other podcasts that I've done, the other 113 podcasts at this point, which we talk specifically about different ways to release pain or problems or to realize yourself. This podcast is really about awakening and it covers any spiritual path that you might be on. So it's not exclusive to anything. Hi everybody. Hey, hi Blossom, Linda, Kate, Yvonne. Hi. So if you have any questions, please type them in the box as we go along and we can discuss them. They'll guide the direction of our podcast. While you're thinking of questions, maybe I'll offer a few thoughts. What I've noticed, and maybe you have too, almost everybody that I know is going through a lot of pain, suffering. Think about it in your life. Is that true? The people you know, it seems like everybody's got something going on. And I'd like to talk about that a little bit. And we've talked about it so much in the past podcasts, but it's important. And by the way, all the past podcasts are free to everybody. They're available on every platform by Googling my name and the word podcast or awakening together. And my name, William Cooper and podcasts. So let's talk about suffering. Let's talk about pain. I think you remember back in podcast 81, somebody asked me, it was a live session and somebody asked me to tell them about the time that Jesus appeared to me. And I did. And the upshot of that, I went through it in greater detail, but the bottom line is he came and he showed me his nervous system, which was pure, full of light, only light. It was a very clear. And he put a transparency of mine over his, and mine was exactly the same as his, except it had four or five little dots on it. And he said, that's the only difference between you and me as these four or five little dots. This is true of all of us. We all have four or five little dots. He didn't tell me what to do about the four or five little dots, like how to dissolve them. And that's what these podcasts are about. Not exclusive to, uh, Jesus or Hinduism or Buddhism or, uh, Islam. It's everything. This podcast include everything, but he didn't tell me how to dissolve these little dots in real life. These little dots are huge. They seem huge because when we come to this earth, in my opinion, things slow down very deeply and what appears to be little dots, but they are separations. They are separating these dots. What appear to be little and other realms, we can slow down in this realm and they become huge so that we can work with them. We can see them, we can get our hands on them and do something about them. In my opinion, one of the main reasons we are working in this realm is to let go of these little dots because they separate us from our pure self. And that's what Jesus was showing me, his pure self, which we all are. Different paths call the separation, different things in the Christian path. It's called sin. The ancient Greek word, harmatia, really means a separation from the whole where you've lost your place in the universe. In Hinduism, the separation is called ignorance or delusion, which is caused by ignorance. Buddhism, pretty much the same thing. I think every spiritual path talks about it. These dots basically. And Paul asked, Hi William, is being enlightened actually something we can ever really understand or know? Absolutely. Yes. I'll get back to that. It's a very good question. So these dots that we all have, think of it this way. Have you ever had a glass of water or something like that? And somehow you spill it on your clothes and you have this big wet spot and it's kind of embarrassing a little bit. Maybe you're out in public and you've got this big spot. Well, what to do? The spot starts to disappear or dissipate when it's exposed to fresh air, right? It starts to dry and dissolve and evaporate into the atmosphere and then the dots gone or the spot is gone. Well, in life we all have this wet spot. These are the dots and they come up and they exude just like the water exudes the vapors as it's drying. Our dots exude pain, they exude suffering and that's part of the process. These dots can't dissolve. In my experience, there's no bypass, there's no shortcut. As many of you know, I was with a very powerful guru for over 10 years and he showed me to Paul's question, I experienced awakening, but it was through him. It was his awakening, but I learned what it was. I learned that it's our nature for all of us. And at some point after 10 years or so, he said, okay, you've learned all you need to learn. And now go out on your own and become your own version of this, which I had to start over again, because I no longer had the benefit of his energy coming through. The same as when Jesus appeared after he showed me the dots, I was filled with love. He gave me lots of love, but when he left, the love left too. I experienced his purity while he was there. I experienced the guru's purity while I was on the path with him, even though we were half a world apart at times. And then other times I was with him talking face to face. So, because he was an Indian and I would go visit. So yes, enlightenment is absolutely possible. And we talk about it so much in the past podcasts, and probably we'll talk about it today, but what we experience in life, what jumps out is more of our suffering usually than who we are, because who we are is very quiet. And the suffering is very loud. What I want to talk about today is these dots, the suffering as they dry out, as they dissolve, that water spill has to be available to the air to dry. Well, our pain has to be available to our consciousness to dry, which means we have to feel it. Now, the traditional way of dealing with a lot of suffering is to repress it or to dissociate from it or cover it up or drink too much alcohol and get away from it or watch TV or something like that. And these are useful strategies at certain times in our lives to protect ourselves. We have to do this to get out of the pounding surf. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with it, but in the end, the suffering has to dissolve and it has to be exposed to the fresh air of our being. To do that, we have to feel it. We have to reassociate. So, there's a lot of material that I've talked about in these podcasts, especially podcast number 27 through 30, I think is good. It's entitled PTSD, but I think these techniques are available to all of our suffering, the ones in 27 to 30 and some of the past other podcasts, many of them talk about other approaches of releasing this suffering. I'm going to visit it briefly right now. So, the spot comes up, the one that Jesus didn't tell me how to dissolve. The reason he didn't tell me I've become convinced is because life tells us it happens. Life brings it up. If there's a dot that needs to come out for us to look at and in this world, in this creation on earth, it doesn't seem like a dot. It seems like everything in our life almost like a huge problem that we have to solve. When it comes up, it also has to be exposed to the fresh air of our being and we have to reassociate to this suffering. We can't do it from a dissociated place. We have to own it. Otherwise, the energy is cut off from it and it's really not connected to the fresh air of our being. Dissociated might be I have a pain in my stomach. I'm doing fine, but I have this pain over here in my stomach. It's not me. It's this tension in my stomach. Well, there's only one being inside of my body and it's me. So, who's creating that pain? It's me. So, to reassociate, I just say, ow, I am hurting myself and my stomach. I am causing tension. I am causing myself suffering. I hurt. I hurt. I hurt. Now I'm reassociated. I own it. I allow it. I feel it. And as I feel it, it can mix with the fresh air of consciousness and being. It hurts because we feel it. It hurts a lot. And we might feel it for days or weeks or months, maybe just hours if we're lucky. I don't know. But from this place, it has to go through some steps from this place of association. The first step is we own it. The second step is we let it exude its pent up energy. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I'm suffering. It's painful. So, it exudes. It's like an ice cube melting. We let it exude. So, there's a period of time of this. And then the next step, very important, all these steps are important. After it's exuded quite a bit, you'll kind of have a feel for it yourself because it is you. At some point, that suffering part that's been exuding now needs to connect to what's going on in your world today and take in some relief, take in some goodness, breathe in some goodness. See, what's happened is this suffering part is locked in time in some other place in your life, like when you were two years old or three years old or five years old or seven or eight or I don't know, sometime. And it hasn't updated its files. And it thinks the trauma that created the tension that you're carrying in your body, that original trauma, when you originally started carrying it in your body, it thinks that that trauma is still happening because it hasn't looked around and been able to breathe in like, wow, I'm safe now. It's okay. And that takes some time to notice that. So when you reassociate with your suffering part, I'm hurting after it's exuded, you then connect to something. Maybe a simple step is touch a tree and you can ask this hurting part or you can ask yourself, does that feel better or worse? Just the, the feel of nature. Does it feel better or worse than the trauma that I went through when I was five? Does this tree feel better or worse? Or does this nature walking in nature feel better or worse? This is a very simple yes or no question because a traumatized self may not have the wherewithal to answer a whole lot. And it may take all it has just to notice, oh, this does feel better. And then you say, good, drink it in at least. And it may be very difficult for the traumatized part to take in much. So you say, could you just soak up one drop, like a dry sponge, just soak it up to the degree it can, you'll feel some relief. And you want to go very slowly because you don't want to overwhelm yourself. So you might take one drop of relief of goodness per day or per hour or per. Now, if, if your self wants more, sure, take two drops, three dry as much as you'd like, but you don't want to overwhelm yourself and force yourself either to experience too much pain by bringing all this up by reassociating too quickly, too fast, too hard. We all want to be out of pain quickly. So we might push ourselves too hard and then we'll lock down. We'll seize up inside. So you don't want to do that. You want to just take a little every day and then turn the TV on and take a break, you know, do whatever you do. Take a break. Sure. Dissociate a little bit. You, you gotta give yourself a break. You can't do all this all at once, but in this creation, in this world, as I said, these little dots have gotten very, they we've slowed down and now they feel very big. So we can take in and work with the whole separation. This so-called dot, every breath that you take in every bit, every drop, every bit of relief you'll notice dissolves one drops worth of that dot of that suffering. Think about when you get a massage, every bit of time, the masseuse rubs your tension, every bit of relaxation that tight muscle takes in relaxes it, it dissolves it until that tight muscle no longer is tight. The tension is completely gone. Well, that's the same with suffering as it takes in the drops, the suffering becomes completely gone. So I think this is a big part of our life to know how to let this suffering first, not fight it, let it come up because life will tease it up. And that's why everybody's suffering. I think all around us, maybe us as well, because it's time, it's time to let this go, let it dissolve, let it go. But we can't let it go unless we go through this natural process of feeling it. So it's an odd thing, but what might appear to be a bad thing, Oh, I'm suffering my, I hurt a lot. I'm going through a big problem. It appears that that's a bad thing, but I think it's a good thing because it's that dot coming up to be dissolved, to be released. And that's part of the process that has to happen for this to dissolve. It has to happen. Life is helping us. The second thing, letting go of those dots is a big thing. But the second thing, and which is a bigger thing is what Paul asked. And let's define awakening. I'll repeat Paul's great question. He says, hi, William is being enlightened to actually something we can really understand or know. Yes, we can't understand it. Maybe let's say, I don't think we can completely understand it through the mind because it has nothing to do with the mind. The mind only works with objects, thoughts, feelings, definitions, philosophies, um, practical experiences, so on and so forth. It deals with things that you can see, you can touch, uh, you can talk about, and to do that, it has to turn them into objects. It has to label them. That's very helpful in our created world, but to understand our being who we are, you can only touch that and know clearly who you are through your intuition. You can't know it through taste, touch, and all the rest of them hearing and, um, all of our five senses. You can't know yourself. You have to know through intuition. I think in about the third podcast, we start talking about that. So I would, if, if some of you haven't listened to the past podcasts and you want to, and you want to know about awakening, I would start on podcast. Oh, I'd start with one and move forward to just touch on it right now. In India, there's a method called neti neti, neither this nor that. If you can let go of something in your life and you're still here, then you must not be the thing you let go of because you're still here. So if you can let go of a thought, you must not be that thought. If you could let go of all thoughts, you must, must not be any thought. You can let go of any of them emotions the same way. So you're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions. Well, that's just a quick start. You're not a lot of other things as well, but quickly as a shorthand, if you're not your thoughts and emotions, things get real quiet. What you are, what you are must be very quiet because it's not a thought and it's not an emotion. It turns out, for instance, if you focus on my hand, the part of you that's aware of my hand will still be there. If my hand disappears, it will. If this is a thought, if my hand is a thought and the thought disappears, it will still be here. So that quiet awareness is who you are. You can't let that go. No matter what you do that, you cannot let that go. The problem that we experience is often we're caught into our thoughts and our dramas and our emotions. And in our culture, we're trained to believe that's who we are. We're not that at all. It's simple logic. But in the past podcast, we go through it much more deeply, but that's a shorthand answer. So when you've stopped long enough, and that's called meditation, it requires stopping so that you can let some of the suffering go. These dots that we just talked about, you can let them go. Why do you want to let them go? Because they're very dramatic and they suck in our attention. I'm suffering, I'm suffering. What's the answer? I have to have the answer. I've got to know. I need to talk to this person or that person and so on. And it takes all of your energy. And before long, you think you are this person trying to solve that problem. I mean, that's our entire life. And that's our entire culture. So we don't really conceive of letting go of the mechanics of the problem, which is our thoughts, which is our emotion. In letting it go, we connect to our being and in connecting to our being, eventually, as we let more and more things go, there's complete trust. And in complete trust are all the answers. Because you are one, you are everything, including all of the answers. You are pure knowing. The value of being with a guru, as I've explained in some past podcast, are they can give you a preview. I could feel the awakening of my guru. I could experience it, even though I couldn't experience my own. So I knew it was true and I knew how it worked to some degree. It's quite different when you walk your own path alone. But one thing they could not do, Jesus or the gurus, anybody, and I've seen hundreds of gurus, I suppose, or awakened people. And I've talked to them at depth, as I said, with my one guru, I was with him for over 10 years. One thing they cannot do, I've never found them to, even if they think they can, they can't really. And that's take your suffering. Nobody can let go of the stuff you're holding onto except for you, because you're holding onto it. Now they can guide you. They can help you. They can give you good insights. You know, Jesus said, let go, forgive that. What is that? That's letting go. Or if somebody takes your cloak, uh, what does he say? Give him your tunic, you know, just let go. That was one of his, uh, main methods, let go and be in touch with who you are. When you're totally in touch, you are one. And as in his words, the father and I are one that meant no Jesus, only oneness. The Hindu, uh, path talks about this in great detail. And so does the Buddhist path in a more organized way. Anyway, yes, you can know enlightenment is a direct experience. It's not a philosophy. It's an explosion. And your being is an explosion, but none of us like to sit still very long usually. So we don't get to experience our being. And why don't we like to sit still usually in our culture is because we have so much suffering and we want to get away from the suffering. We want to dissociate. So we want to keep moving. We want to eat stuff. We want to turn on the TV. We want to have adventures. We want to have dramas. Get our mind off of it. Find something better through action. It's really to know yourself. It's the opposite. You have to sit still so you can't get distracted. But when you sit still, it hurts because you can't avoid your pain. You can't repress. Okay. Carly says, I'm so resonating what you're saying right now. I'll read some of these comments that have come up. Sue says, if teacher Saeed stated in his live that we are all homeless because we lost our connection with nature, nature is so healing and good for us better than all the cities we live in. Also, we are stressed and anxious because we try to outrun nature. Such an eye opener. That is so true. It's a very true statement. However, I would like to add to this really true statement and nature is so healing. But to add to it, we are disconnected from ourselves. We are the nature. As I become further along in my path and I know who I am, I can sit still in a room. I can sit still in a shopping center. I could sit still anywhere because my being is the heart of nature. So it's me I'm disconnected with. It's me, which is the same as nature, but I don't want to overlook the deepest and clearest, which it's me. It's my being. It's your being. We're disconnected to that nature like gurus has a good interim role when I'm so disconnected from myself that I need a little bridge to reground me. That's when I go to nature because it gives me a place to, when I can reconnect to nature, when I can connect to nature as I begin to feel uh, the vibration, I can then slow down and calm down enough to feel that same vibration in me, which is my being by the way, big eye opener for me. You don't have to have all those black dots and all the suffering dissolved in order to be awake. Awake is knowing yourself, knowing that your being that we talked about just a little earlier that you know, through intuition, you can't find it out in the world. You have to go in and you can only know it through intuition. But when you know your being, you'll still have problems in your life. You'll still have spots left to dissolve. So you don't have to, the path isn't to dissolve all the spots so that then you'll know, then you'll be awake. That is not the path. That's the wrong path. No, wait a second. There are some benefits to that because as I, you got to start somewhere. And I was so covered up with these dots that did not feel like dots. It just felt like problems, layer after layer of infinite suffering and problems is how it felt. So I just started working with what I could get my hands on the first one that I could, because I was so overwhelmed. I thought I was going to go under. I didn't think I was going to survive. So you start with where you are. And as I let those go, as I dissolved more and more, that gave me more space. And then I could follow more spiritual paths and I could start to calm down. And then, although it's not necessary, I did come across various gurus that helped tune me in to my deeper self, not in the way you would expect, but just by being around them, especially the one that I was with for 10 years, so powerful that after a while I got clearer. But I think, but it happened, actually my clearest moment happened independently of that guru. I finally, it dawned on me that I've been looking in my mind. I've been looking for myself in my personality. And it dawned on me, even though I'd heard it a million times, that I'm not my personality. I can't find, there's no, I can't find what I'm looking for because I'm looking in all the wrong places. And probably because of my path, I got used to being in touch with my being. All I can say is at one point I realized, I'm the one that's aware of all this. And you can't find awareness. It just is. It was a direct experience. Yes, you can know yourself and you can know enlightenment. And it is a direct experience. It's something you experience. People think that anything you experience through intuition is very wispy. It's just because we're not used to it. It's actually much more definite than what you experience through your five senses, but you have to be open to it. And you'll do a lot of flopping around. At least I did before it opens up. And there's a lot of pain between myself and clarity until it opens up. The reason why I'm not open is because of pain. It's because of these blocks. So it's, um, it's a path. Anyway, Sue, good, good observation. And also Paul, thank you. Ruby. Ruby's asking in your path, should you just let go and be spontaneous or take a step by step process to detach? Well, they're kind of the same thing in a way. Um, and it's a very good question, Ruby. What happens when you take a step-by-step process is you're allowing yourself to either let go of these spots, these, uh, separations, and you're doing it in a step-by-step fashion. And the steps focus your attention because sometimes without steps, we just get caught up in our fantasies and our delusions. For instance, meditation is a practice. You sit down and you don't jump into the refrigerator or open a glass of a bottle of wine or eat a pie. It's a process. You sit down, you don't flip on the TV, you sit down. And depending on the type of meditation you do, you go through the process of that meditation, sitting still that helps focus you to let all the obscurity, the delusion begin to reveal itself. First of all, it reveals itself. So meditation feels very bad at first because all this stuff that I've been avoiding, I can't avoid when I sit still and don't distract myself. So it begins to unwind and burn off. And then it begins to breathe in the light of my being. And then my separated self begins to merge into my bill being. And rather than expressing the pain of separation, it begins to flow and express the joy of my being. Also in meditation, as I sit still, I could put my attention on that which is watching everything, the awareness, and I could melt into that. And after a while, at first it's very quiet and maybe for months, it doesn't seem like much, but then suddenly, boom, uh, it's very radiant. You don't see it unless you look at it, unless you put your attention there. If you're looking right, you don't see everything on the left. So in meditation, you sit still and, um, put your attention on that, which is important. Either the things you're or that which is aware of them or both. Okay. So those are step-by-steps. Every spiritual practice pretty much has various steps to help you do one of those two things. Spontaneous also important. So I don't think it's an either or it's a both because you never want to lose track of you, of your heart. So even if a teacher says, breathe in, breathe out, breathe deeply. If your insides are more rewarded with a shallow breath, do that. If a pace for you, where you are in life needs to be slow. Don't do a fast practice. This is spontaneous. You're listening to yourself. Spontaneity allows you to come from your core and flow from there. Pure spontaneity gets to be a problem because generally our core is clear and pure, but the first layer out is made of separation. And from separation, because we're separated from ourselves, we feel abandoned, hurt. We feel afraid, fear, and we feel angry and unfulfilled. And from there, we generate a whole personality of thoughts and emotions and perspectives on life that are quite incorrect. And those are called delusions and that becomes our life. So although our center is very pure and spontaneous as it comes into our life, it is captured. It looks at life through the lenses of separation and delusion. So what I feel to be spontaneous suddenly becomes maybe what I think is spontaneous, maybe how I think I should act. If I'm spontaneous, I'm saying this often happens. So these step-by-step practices help dissolve the delusion so that you can flow more spontaneously without being captured by our own delusions. And at the same time, yes, you don't want to lose track of your heart. So I'm saying these two things at the same time, and you have to find your own balance. So the answer is, yes, you want to be spontaneous. And it's also that, yes, you want to be aware of these delusions and how to let them go. And that's a step-by-step process. So never lose track of your heart. There was a, uh, what was it? Campbell, uh, the, the, the man that, um, I'm trying to think of his first name, but he worked a lot with archetypes and, uh, mythology and things like that. And he said, man's purpose in life is to match his heartbeat with the rhythm of nature. That's your purpose in life. Really? Because they're one in the same. Oneness is the same as nature. That's, but nature doesn't think it doesn't emote. It's not muddled up. So there's a clear energy. There's a clear vibration. It's the same vibration as the real you. And it just sort of tunes you into who you are. So man's purpose is to pay attention and let that, uh, let yourself be yourself spontaneously and let go of everything that you're not. So that's a step-by-step process. Okay. Ruby says, got it. Thanks. Sue said about the answer I gave to her. Thanks William, for your great explanation. Mod G side, don't not pronouncing your name properly. Probably does practicing guided meditation lead to the same awareness and self development? Well, there's many practices and each of them have a time and place. We're like a multi level, uh, we're like a rainbow multicolors. We exist in lots of realities at the same time. And where people get into a little bit of conflict and trouble is when we approach ourselves as one thing, I'm me, I'm this one thing, but I'm not, I touch infinity and then beyond. I'm also in my own little world and my own psychology, uh, in my culture. Are there other realities? Absolutely. I talked to Jesus before I told you that story. Uh, if you want to hear more, it's in episode 81, I think. So there are all these realities and they all exist at the same time. All these techniques, all these practices will touch a different part of you. And at different times in your life, you need one more than other times. So you never want to get fixed on a certain practice because you'll evolve out of that practice beyond that practice, beyond the guru, beyond the guided meditation. Psychotherapy is very good. We've talked about these spots. One way to help with the spots is psychotherapy. And if you're overwhelmed, I said, go slow so that you don't get overwhelmed. But if you ever get overwhelmed, consider psychotherapy. I have, uh, one of the podcasts, I think it's around 90 talks about how to have free psychotherapy or low cost psychotherapy. If any of you said, you know, I could use some, but it's out of my price range. Listen to that podcast. Maybe it'll help. So back to guided meditation, specifically guided meditation. There's so many levels of guided meditation because some guided meditations embedded in the meditation are teachings that help you outside of the meditation, release things within the meditation. You sort of picture yourself doing something or releasing or growing or learning things. And then you take those skills out in the world and you practice them. So guided meditations can be teachings. That's one form of guided meditations. Another form of guided meditations can be, you know, in our life, we live through our fantasies. I think I'm a certain personality. I'm a William. I view life through my lenses. Well, what if my lenses are very deluded and the more delusion, the more painful they are. And I'm really suffering. I believe something and it's causing me lots of trouble because I believe it. Nobody can tell me otherwise. And it's true. And I'm really suffering because I'm looking through a suffering lens. It's one of my making, but I don't realize it usually, or I don't know what to do about it. Maybe I realize it, but I don't know what to do about it. So in a guided meditation, I step out of my, my lenses. I take my glasses off and I put on the glasses of the guided meditation. I'm suffering. So I lie down, I turn on the guided meditation and it says, take a deep breath, begin to relax. Let all the muscles in your body begin to release and let go. Imagine that you're at a beautiful park. It's a beautiful day and nobody's there. And the grass is green and the sky is blue and the sun is gently warming your skin. As you begin to relax and release, you see a log floating down the stream. And somehow you're able to put all of your problems on that log and let it drift down the stream. And you let them all go. Feel how that feels. Soak it up, enjoy it, et cetera, et cetera. Or an angel appears to you and ask you, what would you like? And you tell them, or you ask the angel for guidance and the angel gives you guidance. What is that guidance? Pay attention. Things like that. So they can open you up to your meditation or they can give you an alternate reality that is better than the reality, less painful than the reality that you typically are in. So you get relief from the pounding surf. You get a rest. Your nervous system gets a rest. So all of this is good. And there's so many versions of these guided meditations. Maybe you do one for manifestation. Maybe you do one for this, for that, the other, what you want to pay attention to though. If all you do is guided meditations, typically what you'll find is the next, you feel great after the guided meditation, but the next day your life is back. Your old delusions are back and you're living life as you always have. Maybe you're not, maybe you've learned, but maybe not. And if you haven't and you're living life through your delusions, it hurts again the next day. So you listen to a guided meditation and then the next day, all of your personality comes back after the guided meditation and you heard again and again and again. So the only way out of that loop that I found, well, there's not one way, but ultimately the way out is to let the personality become clear. And that requires sitting still and feeling your feelings, letting them exude their energy and then letting them connect to something good. Let them update their files, let them release, relax, and let go. When they totally release, relax and let go, they dissolve. And then they're gone. You don't have to work with something that's gone. It's gone. And at the same time, know who you are, connect to your being. So these are the two important things that often doesn't happen through a guided meditation, not to say it can't, but often it doesn't. Often the way that happens is through clear teachings, through sitting still, owning your sufferings, and also being aware of who you are. And that takes time and you have to sit still and not be distracted with our own mental images in our head. Rather than dive into them, we watch them, we're aware of them and we let them release. So guided meditation is very helpful. It's a helpful tool as are all practices. Ultimately, the deepest is, I think, sitting still meditating. And in the series of podcasts, I think around podcast five, six, seven, something like that. I talk about what I label the awareness meditation, and it's a good sitting still meditation. I talk about it more further on in the podcast. You can just go through all the titles and find it. As I said, they're on all platforms. Just Google my name or Google Awakening Together podcasts. And Kate reminded me, the person that does the archetypes is Joseph Campbell. Thank you, Kate. Man's purpose in life is to match his heartbeat with the heartbeat of nature. Uh, Joseph Campbell said that. So yes, it is quite healing just to notice that you exist on many realities. Some are open, some are not. They all will open. And as one opens, it helps enhance the other ones to open. So you may flip from one reality to another. Uh, you might be in an emotional reality or a mental reality, or you might be in touch with the explosive nature of your being, or you might be in other realms or you might be in, who knows? There are lots of realities. So notice where you are and notice what you're asking for, what that part of you on that reality is needing, what it's asking for and match your practice and your tempo and your teacher with what feels right to you. How do you know it's good? It feels good. How do you know it's kind of out of, um, sync with you as it doesn't feel good. Now I will say this exception, be aware that when a very good practice starts to release hidden problems that also doesn't feel good. So you have to, as you develop in your practice, you know the difference like, wow, this hurts, but it's releasing. I've been hurting a lot for the last number of days, but that's part of the process. I don't want to interrupt it versus, uh, I'll go back to that example. You're in a practice, uh, breath of fire, breathe fast. Maybe that helps you. Maybe it doesn't. So you feel in your body. Does that help? And I don't mean to pick on that one thing. It could be slow breathing. Maybe that's not helping. Listen to yourself and breathe how you need to fit it to you. Excellent questions. I'd say the heart, the biggest revelation for me is who I am, this awareness. I'm mentioning it again in this podcast because it's so subtle and I just got so sucked into my thoughts and my personality. Hey, I'm a psychotherapist. So of course I'm, and I'm looking to heal that stuff. And in the process, somehow I'm thinking that's me. Ruby asked when we decide to let go, does the universe post challenges? Ruby, I would answer it this way. There is only one. That's the universe. That's you. You are the universe. You are the universe. I honestly, you really are. It sounds crazy. It sounds philosophical. Oh, you're the universe. You really are. There's only one and it comes through all of our bodies. We have, there are different bodies, but there's only one essence, one you, one me. It's the same. It looks through different lenses, which are the different bodies. So we appear different, but we're not. And the universe from the inside, from my body looking out, seems like it's a thing out there, but it's not. It's you. And it's in here. It's also out there because there is no in and out. It's everything. It's all one thing. It's not even a thing. It's just one. So these challenges, what can appear to be challenges are simply the earmarks of you clarifying in your incarnation, in your body. It seems like they're challenges, but they're not. It's just the same. For instance, I have, I've had pain. I have suffering. I have tension in my stomach. My stomach hurts. I'm suffering. I'm anxious. There is something out in my world that I perceive as causing this anxiety. I am working on my anxiety. I'm trying to have courage. I do have courage. I go confront this thing out there or this person. They put up a fight. There's challenges, but I'm saying it's all one thing. As I release my anxiety, as I sit with it, I sit still. Perhaps the outer world starts to shift. Perhaps everything changes. Perhaps my lens changes. Perhaps I learned something about me that caused that person to act the way they did towards me. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe not. The universe also will put up an apparent roadblock, quote unquote, when I need to feel more acutely and focus on the thing that I'm releasing. So that anxiety, maybe it needs to keep coming up because it couldn't come up if it was gone. If my anxiety was gone, what's left to come up? There is no anxiety. So, or there is no anger. If my anger's gone, there's no anger to come up. There's a story in India where a man comes up and slaps a guru. I mean, really socks him in the face and the guru thanks the man. Thank you. And somebody says, what the heck? Why are you thanking this guy? And the guru says, well, because he hit me and I saw that I had anger and my anger wouldn't have come up if I had completely released it. Instead, I would look at this man and I would say, whoa, wow. Are you okay? You hit me. What's wrong? What's going on? Are you suffering? What can I do? How can I help? It wouldn't be you hurt me. It would be, wow, you are hurting. How can we help you? What can we do? Or some other response. So it would appear that the universe was throwing up a roadblock block sometimes in my life, but sometimes it's showing me I still have anger. I still have anxiety. So it keeps giving me the thing that I desperately don't want in my life so that I will keep working on it because I'm not finished. So maybe that's what you're talking about. And yeah, it'll do that. It works because we're so deep and vast. It works in so many different ways. Lima Lima Lima says, I'm still wondering about my purpose. Uh, that's a big question. I will say that I did a podcast on the purpose of life. Maybe you've heard it. Uh, it's earlier on. I, I, I don't know. Maybe it's number, I'm just guessing around 70. I'd go back and listen to that. If you haven't to answer your question, it's a extremely good one, but I want to give it time. So if you join us in any of the other lives, live sessions in the future and ask me that at the beginning, I will devote our time to that. And everybody's asking me such good questions, uh, feeling it to heal it. Sarah says, yes, uh, you feel it and it does heal it. Are we important in life? Rem says, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We are life and we created life and we are, it's an odd thing. We're both the painter and the painting. It's like being inside your own painting. Uh, we get to experience all of it. Like Jesus said, be in the world, but not of it, but still be in it. So that's a whole nother thing, but great observation. Maybe we can talk about that later. Ruby says, thank you. It was a good understanding. Thank you, Ruby and Lima, Lima, Lima. I love your love being a mom to my sons when they were little. Now I have security in my job, but I'm 58 now. Thank you. I will say this Lima, Lima, Lima, you have purpose in your life. Your life is perfect the way it is, but it may not feel that way. Um, life is exactly, you are crucial to the world and the universe. You are holding it together in a way. Maybe you don't fully, um, we are all interconnected and it's more than a saying. It's a truth. I would like to flesh it out more and maybe in a conversation we could get closer to something more satisfying. So ask me again, by the way, I feel that you take with you what you are. You are always yourself. So to the degree you become clear in this life, you take that with you on to these other realities and what other people might call future lives or other lives or heaven or whatever you want to call it. I don't care. And you continue on your path as both the painter and the painting. So all clarity feels better and better and better. So there is nothing for naught. I'm 68, you're 58. I'm happy with my age, uh, because every day I can be a little clearer. I have the same problems everybody else does. I have clarity and I have these dots also not the dots that I, to the degree I used to, but you know, I've got 20% of my dots still. Jennifer says, thank you, William. And every one terrific interaction, peace and love Kate. Thank you, William. So yes, I'll thank everybody right now and say goodbye. Please save any unanswered questions or lightly answered questions for next time, or whenever you can join us and ask me, they are all superb. So thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you next time. Oh, and thank you Lima donated a big donation. Thank you. All of those donations go to feed orphans in Bali. Plus I'm very happy about them. And another way to give, by the way, is give these links to somebody that, you know, of all these podcasts of mine, I've designed them to be helpful and they're free. So if they help you, if you feel that they're good, spread the word that helps more. And in my mind, that's world peace. Okay. Thanks so much. Take care. I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.