129 Melting Inner Ice, Nonattachment, Opening Chakras - Q & A

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for length and clarity.  We discuss how we freeze free flowing consciousness into painful inner obstructions and how to melt them.  Also, nonattachment, how to open the chakras, how to "Be Here Now", 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. Welcome to our podcast, Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I'm William Cooper. It's good to see you all. I trust your week has been a good one and that you're doing well. This is our time for you to ask any questions about your spiritual path or spirituality or anything that you would like to talk about. Hi, Nancy. Jennifer says hello everyone. Hi, William. Glad to be here. Welcome, Jennifer. So, we are happiness itself. We are a light inside. That's the nature of our being, but we don't always feel that way. Sometimes we just don't feel happy. And have you ever asked yourself, why don't I feel happy? That's a really good question, and I'm sure you have, but it's helpful for discussion. Why aren't I happy? If I am this radiant light, peace and well-being, I mean, that's what I want is happiness, peace, well-being. Why aren't I experiencing that? What's the problem? Well, we're often so full of obstacles. There's just a mechanical thing that happens that I didn't know about. Maybe you didn't know about it. You probably do now, especially if you've listened to these podcasts. But when I was a kid growing up and I grew up in a military family, I don't know that that matters so much. But when something happened that was upsetting, I knew it wasn't what I wanted in my life, so I would just say, no. Maybe I wouldn't use those words, but I would just push it to the side. No, I'm not for that. If I felt afraid, I didn't want to feel afraid, so I just refused to feel afraid. I just carried on anyway. If I didn't feel peace, I would concentrate on feeling peace and safety. So, what I didn't realize was happening was I was using my willpower to push these things away, and that turns out later to find out to be called repression. I was repressing things. And when you use willpower, maybe you've listened to my podcast on manifestation or manifesting things, or you've listened to somebody else's podcast on manifesting things. Well, we manifest things by using our willpower. There's only one substance in the universe, and that's consciousness. And when we use our willpower, we freeze consciousness into a shape. We form the thing that we would like if we're very, very clear and very, very focused. That's how miracles can happen. And there's many instances of people doing this. And you do it every day, your whole life. Our whole life is a result of our focus, the vibration that we're carrying, the vibration that we're projecting. And the best way, maybe a nice analogy, is you see this glass of water. Let's call that consciousness. Here's a glass of water. When I use willpower, I freeze that consciousness into a shape. Here's an ice cube. It's now frozen. It's got hard edges, this ice cube. I could freeze it into a shape, a shape of a dog, a cat, a gun, a knife. I could freeze it into harmful shapes or beneficial shapes. But I create objects when I apply willpower to consciousness. So why am I bringing this up in terms of what I repressed unknowingly as a child? I use my willpower to push away the things that were troubling me. And when I use my willpower, I froze them. The things that troubled me, I froze them into a shape and they went deep inside of me. Now, if only I had one ice cube inside of me, no problem. But I don't know about you as I went through life, not knowing the difference and just saying, I don't want to think about this now, or I don't want to feel sad. So I'm going to push it away. I'm going to focus on the good and not even let the sadness exist. Every time I did that, I formed an ice cube and it went inside and then another, and it went inside. So you can imagine after I ended up with thousands of ice cubes inside, that light that I am got bogged down. It's hard to shine through that much ice. It gets diffracted and deflected. So it goes in a hundred or a thousand different directions. And it's not that focused beam of happiness, of peace, of love, of wellbeing that it starts out to be. So I don't experience the happiness when I'm so full of ice cubes. So what to do? And again, we've talked about it a lot in our podcast, but don't freeze stuff into ice cubes and melt the ones that are already inside of us. How? Well, it's not so hard. You start now, today, and I'm probably already doing this, but for anybody new, that's tuning in, you practice on easy stuff. Let's say somebody says something to you. They don't like something about you, or maybe their tone isn't good. Have you noticed they'll say something and that will often quote unquote trigger something? What does that mean? It means it connects to an old ice cube. The ice cube comes up to your consciousness and you feel the old pain that maybe somebody in your past said something similar in a hurtful way. And you feel that ice cube come up and it hurts. Ow. So today, when somebody says something or cut you off in traffic, the first thing is don't turn your reaction into an ice cube. Just you relax the best you can. The pain, the frustration of them cutting you off in traffic or saying the wrong thing to you or using the wrong tone or whatever it is, the pain of that, just let it flow out of your body. Just let go. Just let it pass through your body. The reason I didn't like to do that as a child is because it hurt. I didn't want to feel that pain at all. So I pushed it inside so I didn't have to feel it. But the results are even worse because if I'm loaded down with thousands of pockets of pain, it's not so good for my health. It's not so good for me. I can't enjoy life. I don't feel happy. I look for enjoyable activities or pleasurable activities to do because I don't indeed feel happy. I'm not happy. So I look for pleasure, you know, take my mind off of it. But there's a deeper way and that's why you're here. And that's what you've been doing. Presumably you've been working on this stuff for a while. It takes a while. There's a lot of ice cubes. But as each ice cube melts and dissolves, there's one less and then one less. And what I've noticed over my lifetime is I feel better and better and better and better, more and more radiant, more and more radiant each and every week, month, year as more and more of these ice cubes melt. So let me say one other thing. But first I want to read what Linda wrote. Linda said, and hi Linda. Thanks for asking or sharing. Linda says, interestingly, I've never repressed any emotions. Quite the opposite. I feel all emotions all the time. There's a downside to that too. It's exhausting sometimes because I also pick up other people's emotions. With meditation, I've learned to accept the present emotion and not get carried away. You know, that's unusual, Linda. And I like it that you have never repressed any emotions. It is exhausting. I remember when I was in high school, I really admired people who didn't seem to feel emotions. And I strived to repress every emotion I possibly could because it seemed like a better way to go. I, of course, didn't think of it as repressing emotions. And I did that because it was exhausting. And I too am very sensitive. It is exhausting. What I learned later, and it's what you're pointing to right now, is as I felt these emotions more and more, like a weightlifter, my nervous system started to expand, not instantly. It was just a micro expansion week by week. But over time, I got where I could handle bigger and bigger emotions. They're still exhausting. I still often, when I've got big emotions coming through my body, I have to sit still and be very quiet because I can't take anymore. My nervous system is handling such a giant emotion coming through, a giant ice cube, that I just sit still quietly and let it melt. A German man told me once that I had a weak nervous system and I needed to just sit with more and more troublesome things until my nervous system could expand. And I took it to heart. And it has been very, very helpful. But I do know what you mean. It can be very exhausting. I do feel better and better. And here's something I don't know. Maybe you're experiencing this too, Linda. But as more and more of these ice cubes melt out, it used to feel like I was having sharp cramps going through my body as I really was feeling some deep stuff coming out. And then it got to be sort of a generalized, not a sharp cramp, but just a generalized feeling of old pain, kind of like as if I had the flu, you know, those body aches. It wasn't specific pains, but just general body aches. Those general body aches started turning into light as I saw clearly and started letting go of the repressed attitude in the middle of those aches. Because remember, everything is consciousness. That's how I experience it. Everything is consciousness. So as long as it continues to be an ache, there's some kind of lingering old willpower that's in the midst of that consciousness that keeps it from being felt by me as light and love and peace and happiness. It's an old attitude that I've put inside of that consciousness to keep it sharp, to keep it hurtful. And that's the exhausting part. So as I've gone deeper and deeper with it, I've started seeing more and more clearly and letting those attitudes go that hold it into a harmful or painful shape with sharp edges. And I'm feeling more and more light now, and it feels very explosive. I kind of strobe back and forth, so we'll have to keep track, and I'll give you an update. Thanks for sharing that. Maybe that was helpful, or maybe you have some more questions about that or comments. Christine, is it better to confront or correct the person who said something than to build another ice cube? What an excellent question, Christine. That's a daily question we all ask ourselves. The thing with spirituality, there's really not one answer. That's the frustrating thing about it. You have to rely on your intuition and your best sense of things. If there's something that you need to talk to the person about that's causing trouble, then maybe you need to talk to that person. So you don't want to skip that layer. However, what I've found is sometimes I bring to the conversation a lot of old ice cubes that have nothing to do with this current situation. So I like to take time if I'm able to let some of those ice cubes come to the surface and melt. An interesting thing that I've discovered in my life is for all of us, we want to be happy. We want to feel at peace. We want to feel love. That is our nature. But when we're so blocked, we don't feel it. That's who we are. So we go looking for it on the outside. But some part of me deep inside wants to heal. I don't want to be blocked. You don't want to be blocked. Whoever out there is blocked. None of us want that. We just want free flowing happiness and peace. We're all doing the best we can. So we're sending out a beam. We're sending out a signal to manifest something in the world. Our pain is sending out that signal to help that ice cube melt. That pain is the ice cube. So it sends out a signal for something to happen out in the world to bring what I have previously repressed to the surface so I can feel it and let it flow. Let it run its course. Do what I didn't do as a child. I didn't feel it as a child. I froze it. Now instead when it comes up, it's full of the pain I didn't feel then. Let me feel it now instead of repressing it again so that it can melt and flow and turn into consciousness and love. So the first and most important thing I can do is let it come up. Now here's the odd thing, and I don't expect anybody to believe this, but your health, this longing to bring this ice cube up, part of that is the person who aggravates you. That is part of the universe helping you, sending you this aggravating person that brings that ice cube up. So it's all one thing. The healing and the aggravating person are all one unit. If you didn't have the ice cube, you wouldn't have the aggravation. You wouldn't have the person acting in an aggravating way. Likely. Sure, sometimes that happens anyway. I don't want to put too fine a point on it. So it's a tricky thing. Yes. Talk to the person if you need to, but also take time to feel what you feel because how do you melt ice cubes? One, you let them come up into your consciousness and you let them expend their energy. If we put this in the sun, it expends its energy and it turns back into water. What's a good way to do that? There's thousands of good ways to do that. That's what's called spiritual practices. But one of the very best ways is to just sit still in meditation and you're the one observing the pain and the thoughts that are motivated by pain behind them that are swirling in your head. When you sit still, that's why so many people don't like to meditate because it's not comfortable. They feel antsy and fidgety and lots of thoughts because these ice cubes are releasing their energy. So that's one good way to melt them is to let them come into the light by sitting still and meditating. And there's so many other ways in regular life. When somebody says something or you're in traffic, just feel it, let it flow through your body. Don't jump into it because remember when you put your will onto it, it freezes. Your will power is what freezes water into ice cubes. So if somebody cuts me off into traffic and I feel this old aggravation coming up, if I just let it flow, I don't say anything. I don't do anything. I don't start screaming. I just let the uncomfortable aggravation flow out of my body. Eventually it expends its energy. It releases. It's very uncomfortable, but it does release. Then I let that uncomfortable part look around and notice I'm fine. There's no reason to be aggravated, to breathe it in. And when you breathe in relaxation, that which was tense relaxes. And when something totally relaxes, it's gone. That aggravation, that ice cube, it has now melted back into water and has merged with the rest of your beautiful, happy aura. Now you have much more unfrozen aura that you are experiencing more happiness than you have before when you had one more ice cube. So it's released some. Christine says, oh yes, such a great point. Thank you, Christine. Linda says, exactly feel what you feel and it is released. Stillness and acceptance. Yes, exactly, Linda. Feel what you feel and it's released. I would say feel what you feel because it is, it does expend, it is released, but then let that part that was tense breathe in relaxation. That's the second step. Let it just melt into nothingness or wellness. It's like when you go get a massage, your muscles, they hurt, they hurt, they get massaged, and then they take in the relaxation. They breathe it in. And when they breathe in relaxation, what happens to that tension? It releases and it's gone forever or gone for a while anyway. With these ice cubes, sometimes you get an echo after it's really released. Maybe you get, maybe it's a big ice cube and most of it released, but there's a little bit more left. But breathe in. I say that because sometimes just in the release, if something doesn't, in the expending of energy, if it doesn't totally release, it hasn't updated its files. It's locked in the past and it hasn't looked around and notice everything's okay. Now that old ice cube was formed 20 years ago. Maybe that comes up when somebody cuts you off in traffic. It's an old aggravation that is stimulated by the current problem of being cut off in traffic. That being cut off stimulates a current problem and an old problem flows up with it oftentimes. So the old portion of the problem still retains at times old perspectives. And that's why it's important for you to own that. This is me. And I still have some old thoughts from way back. I'm feeling them. And then I look around and notice I'm not in danger. I'm, I'm safe. I'm fine. And breathe it in so that you can enjoy the fact that you're fine. This part of you, this ice cube part can soak in the fact that you're okay. And then as it soaks in that it releases, relaxes and disappears. And Linda says, accepting the emotions without judgment is ideal, but of course really hard sometimes. Yeah, if I could add to what you're saying, that is true, Linda. And again, thank you for sharing and helping our discussion. Accepting emotions without judgment is hard. And again, in the spiritual path, there are so many levels. Sometimes we have to work something through mentally and then emotionally, and then maybe work with acceptance, but deeper, deeper, deeper. What I'm saying and what you have said also is we're looking for that to not be accepted, but released where there's nothing left to accept. It's just gone. Now that process might include a conversation with another person or a conversation with myself or journaling and things like that. But as that works its way through in the end, we're looking for the ice cube to melt and not be there anymore. So accepting is almost like, well, something happened and I'm going to accept it or not say that it's okay, but somehow put it in perspective or get comfortable with it. Maybe at times there's nothing good about what happened. What we're looking for is there's an emotion that is associated with it, hurt, anger, fear, something, frustration, to let that expend its energy and look around and notice in the end, wow, right now I am okay. My nature, because I've been meditating and I now know my nature, I'm in touch with myself. My nature is peace, love, and wellbeing. And maybe oftentimes it's covered with ice cubes to a degree, but I am the awareness, the awareness that watches what comes up. And when I put my attention on that awareness, even though I also feel pain of the ice cubes coming up, the thoughts and the emotions, I notice my awareness is light and love and peace. Some level of that. Maybe you don't feel all of them at once, love, peace and wellbeing and happiness, but maybe you feel peace. Maybe you feel happiness. It depends on which chakras are opening at the time, but that light is always there. So we're looking for these ice cubes to melt. I did a recent podcast. It was in the last month and it was actually on attachment, the flip side of acceptance. That would be non-acceptance. And it's short. It's about four or five minutes. You might enjoy it. Anybody out there that's thinking about acceptance. What I was saying in that, I gave the example, if you have, if you've worked hard all day and you're hungry and you need the money and you got paid a hundred dollars, you would be very attached to that. And if somebody else tried to take it, you wouldn't like that. It's your a hundred dollar bill. You worked hard. You're very attached to it. And if they took it, you probably wouldn't be fully accepting of that. They stole your money. You would be attached to that a hundred dollar bill. Unless somebody said, I'll trade you a thousand dollar bill for that hundred. Then suddenly you're in full acceptance. I'd rather have a thousand dollars than a hundred dollars. Sure. You can have this hundred dollar bill. Assuming they're no catches. It's legitimate. Sure. I'll take the a hundred dollars that allowed pure 100% acceptance to happen. Short of that, there might be kind of acceptance and kind of not acceptance, at least in my experience. The problem now is I am now very attached to my thousand dollar bill. So it's the same in our spiritual path. Let's say I love Jesus. Now I'm attached to Jesus. I like him better than Buddha, or I'm attached to Buddha over Jesus, or I'm attached to that. I want to let this earthly realm go. I want to go to a heavenly realm. So now I'm attached to that, or I don't want suffering. I'm attached to that. I don't accept suffering. It's very complicated. There's only one way out. And that's in oneness. Yes. A thousand dollar bill helps me accept that somebody takes my a hundred dollar bill. We exchange it. I'm good. But the ultimate thousand dollar bill, what's worth a lot more than that is when you are resting in the fullness of your being, the fullness of our being, peace, love, and happiness. There's nothing better because the only reason I want something, generally speaking, is because I want peace. I want to earn money so I can be peaceful. I want to have a nice car so that I, or a good house so that I can get love, have a relationship and get love. But I am love, but I am peace. I want to have a good life so I can be fulfilled, but I am fulfillment. So when I find, when I rest in my being, when I melt enough of these ice cubes, that is the path of total acceptance because I can let everything go. I can enjoy everything, but I don't have to be attached to anything. Like Jesus said, be in this world, but not of it. This becomes a reality. And it's something that we all can experience in our lifetime if we want to. Linda says, I see what you're saying, working towards it with meditation. Yes, meditation is very powerful, Linda. And somebody wrote me an email or a comment the other day and said, do you have to meditate to release things? Can you do it in everyday life? Sure, you can. Like we were saying, everyday life will present you something multiple times during the day that will tease up something that's repressed inside. And now, instead of repressing it again, just let it come out. You don't even have to necessarily all the time re-evaluate it. You could, but you don't, if you feel called to, sure. But sometimes it's just this old stuff that just, this energy that just needs to run through your system. You feel it. And sometimes the old thoughts and emotions will come up as well at the same time because they're frozen together. When they got repressed, the whole complex got repressed, the uncomfortable emotions, the uncomfortable thoughts, the uncomfortable habits, the whole thing. So sometimes when these things come up, you wonder, wow, I feel like I'm going crazy a little bit. Like that was an inappropriate response I just made, or I thankfully didn't make. I just felt it and let it melt. Because if you make the response, you freeze it again. Now it still may be on the surface, so you don't have to worry about ever doing the wrong thing. Because if it does get frozen again, it'll come up again. The next time, just let it go. Or it might stay on the surface and just now let it go. Okay. I made an inappropriate comment based on my old feelings, but now I'm going to do better. See, Linda, you started a nice discussion with your comments. So any other thoughts or comments or perspectives you might have? By the way, we do talk about different issues that we experience. And though I am a psychotherapist, it's always good to say these podcasts, none of them are psychotherapy. So if somebody really feels troubled and you really need some connection, I would find a psychotherapist in your area. Or if it's more appropriate, you know, Buddha said a Sangha was very important. People that support your spiritual path that you can talk to or a friend. These podcasts are designed to just give food for thought and shed light on different areas of our lives where they might be helpful. If you haven't listened to these podcasts and you follow me on Insight Timer, you'll be notified every time I do a new one or have a live session, or you can just go to my profile and you'll see all 129 so far. I keep adding to them. If you listen to them, find a title you like. They're all self-sufficient. They're all good all by themselves. But the most powerful way to listen to them is if you start with number one and move your way forward, because each podcast builds on the last. For instance, podcast 27 through 30 talks about PTSD. And those are where we experience repeated stress or else one big, large trauma, either way, repeated, lots of low level stress or one big trauma. It gets stuck in our body and it's more like a muscle cramp than a regular problem. So there's a different way to release these kind of knots in our psyche than maybe other kinds. So through these podcasts, we talk a lot about letting things go, a lot of about releasing and different ways to do that, as well as the other side of the equation, the light that we are and how to be in touch with that. So it's a step-by-step process through the podcast. So I hope you find them helpful if you haven't listened to them. And I'm not to say we're, we're all very deep here. You are, I am because we're on our own spiritual path. And so if I say something and you're way beyond that, then just disregard what I'm saying and stick with what you already know, because we're, we all have different strengths as we've gone through our life. But I find when I listen to other people talk, it's deepening for me because I don't have to do it. I can just listen and reflect and it can be very powerful. So many of you are already very far on your spiritual path, but I think these podcasts still might be helpful or just look for a specific title that's of interest to you. Hi, Blossom. Let's see. Gary says, hi. Hi, Gary. Good to see you. You all are doing so well. And I know it's hard at times. I don't think anybody's on this earth that's not clearing things out of their system. I've talked before about a long time ago, I had the strange thing where Jesus appeared to me and he showed me his nervous system and he said, we were very much alike, except I had about four to six. I could see them. There were, let's say five little tiny dots on, in my nervous system, little dots, like the size of a pencil lead, little dots. And he said, that's the only difference. Just release those. He never said how to, but when you come to this earth, I become convinced that what happens is everything slows down and is magnified so that we can clear out these four or five little black dots. You know, where they are, you feel them, you know, they're this, this part of you that doesn't fit what, who you know yourself to be. And the thing about consciousness, by the way, of awareness, you are pure awareness, just pristine, beautiful, childlike, happy awareness. That's you to the degree you feel any tension in your life, any stress, any sadness, even a flicker of it to that degree. There's some black dot in there. There's an ice cube or two still. And that's your, your, your clue. You ask yourself if you feel any tension at all, any anger at all, you ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What's going on? Because on this earth, that little black dot is magnified. And I don't know about you, but it seems like it's the size of the Grand Canyon at times. It's huge. And part of that black dot is the person who shows up in my life to show me the black dot. That's the person that is quote unquote, causing me problems. Well, are they causing me problems? Or are they just helping me see a problem I have already had? I've already had this black dot because they show up today and say a certain thing. I feel it. I feel the whole Grand Canyon. I might blame it on them. You cause this, you shouldn't have said that. But in fact, they are a part of that black dot. It brings it to my awareness because in life on this earth, I don't know what else we're doing of much importance, except clarifying, dissolving these dots, doing our spiritual practice, which all of you are doing. That's why you're here. It's beautiful, but it doesn't feel good. It's hard. And support is good because it is hard. It's good to look around and notice, wow, I'm not alone. This is hard, hard stuff. But every time an ice cube melts, you feel more centered. This is what you are. Here's a flashlight. You're this light, but much brighter, much bigger. It's only light. That's all there is, is light. That's you. And when you put a bunch of ice cubes in front of it, they get it, they block it. And you don't feel yourself as light. They melt and they turn back into light. Now your light is even stronger. Your aura is even stronger. You get around some of these masters that have melted a lot of stuff. These gurus, the light is so powerful. It will literally take the wind out of you, out of you. I mean, you might have to sit down or lie down in their presence. They're so powerful. That's you. They're no different. That's you. Just a few less ice cubes. So, if this ice cube talk is strange to anybody, anybody that's new, you can go back to the earlier podcast. And really what I'm talking about is just releasing obstacles, releasing blocks, releasing troubles. What is awakening? It's you without your problems, you without your blocks, because you're not a problem. When you shine consciousness on something, like I showed you I shine this light in a dark room. I shine it on, let's say a water bottle. And the room is completely dark. I can see the water bottle, but that doesn't make the light the water bottle. I could take the water bottle away and all I've got is light. But with our consciousness, we take on the qualities of that which we're focusing on. So, if we're looking at a problem, we'll feel like we are the problem. We're not the problem. When the problem disappears, we're still here. And the problem's gone. Just like the water bottle's gone. When I remove it from the light, the light is still there. When I let the problem, when I let the ice cube dissolve and melt, I'm here. I'm just a brighter light. But awareness does take on the qualities of what it's shining on. So, sometimes we get tricked. We trick ourselves and we think we are the thing we're looking at. We're looking at the problem. We think we are the problem. We're looking at hurt. That's simply an ice cube inside of our system. We're looking at that hurt and we think we're the hurt. I'm hurt. I'm sad. No, you're not. If that sadness disappears, it would be gone and you would still be here. You're not sad. You're just looking at sadness that you repressed. Okay, that's true. But you're not that which you repressed. If you go to therapy or you meditate or something and you release that sadness, you're still here. And your aura is brighter. It's not being diffused by that ice cube, that obstacle. So, as I've said, if any of this is new to anybody new here, just go to podcast one. They're all free. Start and work your way forward. And it's step by step. Some ideas. And if they don't fit for you, some ideas of how to dissolve this stuff and let it go. They don't work for you. Or one particular podcast sounds absurd. Well, then just let that go and move on. Nancy says ice cubes are a brilliant analogy. Makes sense. Yes. Thank you, Nancy. It's something I noticed within myself. That's how I came up with that analogy. They feel like ice cubes and they do melt. And sometimes not all at once. And sometimes it's okay to just take a break. I mean, do you have to sit and meditate for a year straight on one ice cube, one iceberg over and over and over? It wears you out. Like Linda said, you get exhausted. So take a break. Well, I didn't melt the whole ice cube. Well, you know, half of it's left now. You only have half an ice cube. Don't worry. It's still there. It'll find you. It'll come up later. The half, not the whole way, because half of it's melted and you're more powerful because you're covered by one half less ice cube. So as more and more of these melt, I feel, I'll use myself as an example, stronger, more centered, better and better. People say, oh, how do you sit? How do you become centered? Well, maybe that's not the exact right question because you are centered. The question is, how do I, what do I actively do to confuse myself and distract myself from the fact that the universe is me? I am centered. I am the center because when all these ice cubes melt, that's what you see. And you don't have to wait until every last one is melted. Some have melted and you start seeing it more and more and more. But what am I doing to take myself away from the centeredness that I always am? What am I doing? I'm shining my light on a problem and I'm believing that problem. I'm getting distracted by it. I'm jumping into it. It's like watching a TV show. I'm really not on a spaceship flying to Mars. I really am not. I'm just watching a show. I'm watching TV is what I'm doing. But for a moment, I think I'm the guy flying the spaceship because that's the TV show I'm watching. That's why we like TV. It takes us away from ourselves. That's why we like movies. That's why we like to think that's what that's about. Ninety five percent of what goes on in our mind is delusions. We just make them up. Sure, if we if we do it consciously and with forethought, it's a lot of fun. We use our mind properly, but typically our mind runs away because it's a slave of all these ice cubes and it starts making up stuff and old fears and fantasies. And oh, my, I saw a movie once and something bad happened. And now I see a shadow in the backyard and oh, I remember that movie and a bad thing's going to happen. There's bad people out in that shadow. No, they're not. That's ninety five percent of our thinking. So as these ice cubes melt. We stop doing that. So the question to ask us is, why am I not here now? Be here now. Well, how do I do that? You are here now. The only question is, are we here now and distracted from knowing that or are we here now and we are not distracted? So we know that we're always here now. Where else could we be? It's melting the ice cubes. Linda says you mentioned opening chakras earlier. How do I know which chakra is blocked? I can't feel it. Ice cubes are blocking chakras, too, I presume. Very good observation, Linda. Oh, and Christina. Hi. Very good observation, Linda. Yes. My perspective. This one time I was in India. It was my first time and I was with my guru at the time. Very powerful. He's now a friend. Very powerful. And in his presence, stuff started happening. And one thing that happened, I'd never had this happen, but my chakras started opening one by one from the bottom chakra, root chakra, all the way up. Just very gentle, just kind of poof. And then the next one, poof. And I would feel energy up, poof, poof, poof, all the way out to through the top of my head and energy just going up, up. And then it was kind of like, in a way, joy or bliss, raining very gently back down all through my body. And I asked a monk who came by, what do I do? I've never had this happen. He says, just enjoy it. Point is, I didn't do anything. This just happened automatically. It happened because I was in the presence of such clear energy, my guru. But it wasn't permanent. It just gave me the understanding of how these things work later. Now I feel different chakras opening and closing and opening, but it happens not because I try to make it happen. You can do that, but instead I just keep melting ice cubes. I just keep life gives me what I need to show me where I'm blocked because anytime I feel tension, anger, hurt, anxiety, I know it's my old stuff. So rather than work on chakras, I work on the obvious. Jesus said to the Pharisees, he says, don't, he says, you, you focus on the minor things of the law and you miss the weightier matters of law. Focus on the big stuff. And what I found for me as I focus on my blocks, my quote unquote, old problems that I repressed as those lighten up, my chakras open automatically. Health is restored automatically. Energy flow is restored automatically. As I let stuff go in, the natural flow of oneness is restored automatically. So that would be my suggestion. Keep doing your practice. And I wouldn't worry so much about the chakras. It'll happen automatically. However, if you do want to, you know, approach it a little bit, I did a series of podcasts within all of these podcasts here on insight timer. It's somewhere around podcasts, probably in the nineties. And it'll say chakra meditation. That's the chakra meditation that my guru gave me. If you do want to work with chakras, it's a good meditation to use for chakras. I also talk about chakras a tiny bit, but in general, what I found since then, I mean, since I was with my guru way before I did that podcast on opening chakras, it's in this series of podcasts. I just try to give you every possible thing that I know that might be helpful on your path and you pick and choose. But what I found was letting my stuff go opens everything. Awakening opens everything. Linda says, great. Yeah. It's all, it's all quite simple. Uh, life will bring up what you need to release because it will feel painful. Life will just bring it up a letter in the mail, an email, somebody unfriending you. I don't know doing something. It'll bring something up and you'll feel it. If it's not love, peace, and joy that you're feeling, okay, good. You just found an ice cube. The ice cube will hurt. You relax. It won't relax. It will feel horrible or not feel so good because that's a poison that you've been holding. Just let it expend its energy like a wound tight rubber band. You let one end to go and it will automatically all by itself. Unwind. You just don't get involved. You just watch it. Same with your, whatever comes up your ice cube, it might be anger, fear, but it's got an energy all of its own. You don't have to do anything. You're feeling it. Wow. This is intense. Often our minds will say, I should do something. I, what should I do? What should I do? Maybe there's an obvious thing to do. If there's an obvious thing to do, then do it. But often it's just let it expend its energy. It's something old. It was a current event that triggered it, but it's often mostly something old and let it release, expend its energy, look around and notice I'm okay now. I'm not really threatened. I am an infinite being and I'm fine regardless of what's going on around me. So I'm going to breathe in that fact. And when I at least take in enough, you'll find that tight place, loosen, loosen, and then finally release. And just like a muscle tension that takes in a nice massage, it will let go and it will be gone for good. Okay. Well, such great questions. It's good to see each and every one of you. And thank you, Christine. Christine says so helpful. Thank you, William. We're all on the same path. We're all in exactly the same boat. We all based on our own work, we'll be more further down the path on some things than the person next to us. And they will be further down the path on other things. We share what we know and we help each other. And I would just say, do our daily meditations, do our daily spiritual paths and lots of little consistent baby steps will completely transform you. What else are we doing here on this earth? Okay. You all take care. I look forward to next time. Thank you. Bye. Nancy says, thank you, William. Always helpful and encouraging. Bone says the path has so many exits and entrances. Yes. Every thing in life is either an exit or an entrance or both. It's infinite. Absolutely. All right. Y'all take care. Look forward to next time. Bye.