34 - Hurry vs Happiness

Many of us are anxious, stress, time pressured, and not fully present to the joys of our life.  In our Un awakened state we feel lacking and pressed to accomplish the next task in order to feel more complete.  But then there is the next task and the next.  We never really rest, and we can never feel complete by what we do because we are incomplete inside.  That is the Un awakened state.  We explore our plight and the way back out in this podcast.

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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Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well. Have you noticed that there are many people out there racing around, feeling anxious and stressed, tight? That's what I call hurry sickness. And there's a lot of hurry sickness going around out there in the world. What is hurry sickness? Well, it's when we're pushing ourselves so hard that we become stressed out. We feel anxious. Why are we doing this? Because we feel we have so many tasks to complete. If I just do this, I can relax and be happy. Oops, I can't relax now because I have to do that. Once I do that, then I'll relax and be happy. Oh, now that I've done that, there's something else that comes to mind and I better do that in order to relax and be happy. We're chasing the next thing over and over and over again. Oh, I don't have time. I need fast food. It has to be very fast because I don't have time. Please speak more quickly. I don't have time to listen to you. I'm stressed. Don't you realize I have to accomplish so many things in order to one day relax and be happy? I'll work hard now so that one day in the future I can stop working, relax and be happy. That's hurry sickness. It's rampant in our society. Have you noticed? Maybe you know people in your family that have been stricken with hurry sickness. What causes hurry sickness? Well, when we're cut off from ourselves, when we separate from ourselves, we're deprived. Our true self, which is always there, our being is joy. It's peace. It emanates relaxation, well-being. It is happiness itself that's there all the time. And curiously, when somebody has hurry sickness, they're looking for those very things. If I do well in my job and I work hard for decades, one day I can relax and be happy. I will go on vacations and I will experience lots of joy, peace, and well-being. Well, guess what? That's what we already are. That is our being effortlessly. Well, how come somehow we've tricked ourselves into believing we have to do so many things in order to get what we already have? And therefore now we have hurry sickness. And it's killing us physically, actually killing us. High blood pressure, heart attacks, depression, anxiety, lots of troubles. What causes it? Well, we're separated from ourselves. Because we're separated from ourselves, we feel separation, anxiety. We feel angry. Oh, we're separate from that which is very important to us. And we feel hurt. We feel abandoned. Now, we probably don't realize that's what's happening to us because maybe it's happened at young age or in some other podcast. We'll talk about past lives, but we could say it happened in a past life. If you want to believe that, you don't have to. But one way or the other, it has happened. And because we're separated from ourselves, we feel what you would feel in separation when you've been deprived, hurt, fear, and anger, and all of the derivatives of those things. What happens when there's lots of hurt, fear, and anger going on in society? Well, look around right now. People are a little short with each other out there. And because people are cut off from themselves, they might not be doing the best job that they can do in their professions. Have you noticed that perhaps politicians could serve selflessly better than they do? Or news organizations could give balanced information? Or do you think we're being taught helpful information in a complete way through our educational departments? Or does agribusiness give us completely nutritional food? Or do you feel safe around the police when they come pull up behind you in your car? Or, you know, I could go on and on. And I don't mean to pick out any of these professions. I'm saying it's across the board everywhere. Customer service. You know, that's an oxymoron sometimes. There are good people in all of these professions. You're a good person, and you do your best. But the point is, all these good people, no matter how good we are, and fundamentally we are, but when we're cut off from ourselves, we're separate. And we suffer from hurry sickness and all of the symptoms of that. Now, as you suspect, all the motivational seminars and books in the world are not going to heal this. All of the structural changes and laws are not going to solve this. They're all helpful, but they're not going to solve it. What's going to solve it? Well, when we find our own peace, when we find who we are, when we reconnect to ourselves, when we experience inner peace, relaxation, silence, happiness, well-being, vibrancy, explosive bliss, realizing ourself heals hurry sickness because, well, then we're complete. And then our life flows from there. And then, yes, there is customer service. Yes, there is selfless service in politics. Yes, there's a deep listening to you in other professions and service. This will happen naturally. I remember a guru of mine was saying, you know, there's a lot of criticism and concern about politicians or quote unquote evil corporations, and they seem so solid, but they're all made of people and governments and companies and everything else. Every other structure will shift dramatically once we awaken. They're all made of people just like us. The world will change, but any other way, when you do the math, isn't going to work. We've been trying for thousands of years. Hurry sickness. We even at this point, even though we're trying and hats off to us for trying, we hurry our spiritual progress sometimes. Let me illustrate this with sort of a superficial example, but you'll get the point. Imagine that you put a rock in your pocket and then you meditate very deeply for an hour. After that hour, will that rock still be in your pocket? Yes. How about you do 10 guided meditations? Will that rock still be in your pocket? Yes. How about if you earn a billion dollars? Rock's still in your pocket. Exercise. The rock's still in your pocket. That rock will keep being in your pocket until you take it out, no matter what you do. Do mantras. Guess what? Rock is still in your pocket. Crystals. Rock is in your pocket. Learn everything you can about all religions. Rock is still in your pocket. It will always be there until you take it out. Guess what? We have rocks in our personality and our head because that's our separation from ourselves. What separates us from ourselves? Well, we've talked about it so much in the previous podcasts. I'll go over it quickly right now. It's what you already know, but because we are separated from ourselves, we feel that hurt, fear, and anger. Because we feel hurt, fear, and anger, we will hallucinate thoughts, what we call thoughts, in order to solve the problem or give us a fantasy to escape into or to come up with a plan. We will start to follow that plan, which will be motivated by that hurt, fear, and anger. Maybe that plan is to get a job or get a relationship and do all these things in the outside world that will solve our quote-unquote problem of separation. If you love me, then I don't have to love myself. If you give me safety, then I don't have to feel safe within myself. I don't feel these things because I'm separated from myself. Well, when you do things, as you know, in the external world, they don't work out usually. Because people leave, they die, jobs change, people change, their habits change, their perspectives change, and they're no longer safe for me. Or they want to grow themselves, and they don't want to spend all of their time taking care of me. They need to take care of them. So, that's not a solution, but that's what we often do. I was talking to a woman in India today, and she was upset because she had seen a video showing her how to manifest things in the world, and she needed to affirm and not think about things that were illusions, which basically was her life, and the pain, and other things, because that would send out a bad vibration, and it would counter the manifestation that she was concentrating on. But she couldn't do it because her mind was racing, and it's hard not to think about your life when you're in pain, and so she couldn't manifest it. Anyway, things were so backwards. How do we solve this? We're separate. We're all out of whack. What do we do? We have to stop. There are no shortcuts. We have to stop. Sit down, and as we've talked about in the early podcast, watch the things that are dividing us, these delusions within us. Feel them, experience them, own them, and that's what the other 30 podcasts before this talk about basically, step by step. There is no way to stop without stopping. You have to stop. There's no way to be still without being still. If I'm stressed out, and I just every day go through a guided meditation to relax, but I haven't fundamentally changed, I'll be stressed out every day, and every day I'll need to do a guided meditation, or do mantras, or hold on to my crystal, or whatever. These are good things to do, and guided meditations are relaxing, and they can guide you, and they can teach you, and they're very powerful, and there's so many good ones out there, and crystals do make a difference, as do other gemstones. We'll do other podcasts on those things, but fundamentally, unless you heal the reason why we're separate, you have to keep putting a band-aid back on the problem over, and over, and over, but because so many of us are so used to fast food, and our hurry sickness, we don't stop and meditate. For most of us, three minutes is a long time for meditation. We can't do it, and as I described in an earlier podcast, it's not supposed to be pleasant, because we are releasing all of the unpleasantness, and if we don't feel it, it's not releasing. Our mind should be racing, it should be difficult, but at the source of our spiritual practice, so often there's a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding. I had that, I have been through it all of my life. It's been very painful up until recently. Now, bliss. So, I went from depression, anxiety, deep hurt, and feelings of abandonment, darkness, to bliss, and radiance, and everything I talk about in these podcasts, I experience when I say everything is made of bliss. I feel it. I see it. It's a direct experience. It's not a philosophy. I am one with everything around me. Now, I'm saying that simply for encouragement. For me to say that is something. That means if you're not experiencing that yet, step by step, go forward, and you will. I inched forward every day doing something, inch by inch, and what is my state now? Is it permanent? Yes. Permanent. Is it stable? No. Things still come up. You know, I'm a human. Things come up. They can overwhelm me. I can get overwhelmed or distracted for a bit, but quickly I come back to myself. I'm a work in progress. Will it be stable? Yes. I know that because, like, you know something in your life that you're working on, and you see progress. You can see it. You can feel it. I have permanent awakening. It's just not stable yet. It will be. Yours will be, too, and with the title Awakening Together. Relaxing into happiness. That's what we're doing, really, but my life was painful. I woke up every day depressed and anxious. Now, I am a psychotherapist. I do have a four-year Master of Theology. I've been to India 13 times. I've talked to dozens of awakened people. I've been with many gurus, and they've helped me. I am here to say that I've been helped, and this stuff does work, but I've done a lot of things that didn't work, and I've tried in these podcasts to eliminate those things, and even though my podcasts sort of are simple step-by-step, they're effective. You use what works for you, and I'm not the only one with podcasts out there. If mine don't work for you, find somebody else that's doing a good job, but let it be some kind of sequence, step one, step two, step three. Don't let it be, well, I'm going to listen to a guided meditation. I hope this is a good one. That's not going to get you anywhere, or a podcast on manifestation, or finding the right relationship. Those are good things, and probably those podcasts are excellent, but they need to be in the right sequence, at the right time, in the right place. If your mind is racing, and you're throwing energies all over, and your vibration is crazy, how are you going to manifest anything much good, even if you're doing it perfectly correctly? You can't, probably, because there's too much cross-currents. Anyway, if you look inside of yourself, you'll notice your intent is correct, and good, and your heart is good, but you might yourself have hurry sickness, and it's time to stop. Stop, and start taking care of yourself, and you probably have been doing that for decades, and you probably know far more than I do, and that's good, and I would just say that this is not addressed to you, and thank you for listening, and maybe another podcast will be more relevant, but for most of us, we don't have a clue, and we're trying our best, and these podcasts are designed for you. So, what would I recommend? I would recommend you going to podcast number one, listening to it, taking your time with it, and then to two and three, and work your way forward, because even though all these podcasts are independent and self-sufficient, they're built in a sequence, one built on the next. So, we're going somewhere, and we're doing it step by step. How does your mind work? What are thoughts? They're hallucinations. How do you create thoughts? What motivates thoughts? Those are the emotions underneath them. How do you dissolve them? How do you get them to stop? Should they stop? These are just 101 basic questions. The proof in the pudding is when it works, when your thoughts exhaust themselves, relax, release, and dissolve into bliss. Then you have peace, not through effort or willpower, but through clear seeing and just holding them in awareness. Awareness is curative, and we talk about these things in early podcasts. So, if any of this makes sense to you, I would say go back to the early podcast and move yourself forward. Also, there's a lot of support on my website, www.williamecooper.wordpress.com. There's a one-page instruction on the meditation that I like called Awakening Meditation, plus lots of writings and contemplations and so on and so forth. I think you'll like the podcast, but the website is worth a visit, especially the page on meditation. Make sure you've got your meditation tacked down. What we're going to do in the future here is we are going to talk about things like past lives and karma and what it's like to be with a guru and what can they help you with and what can't they help you with and things like this, just on and on and on. But if we talk about them before you do podcast one forward, what it turns into is an intellectual thing like, hmm, past lives, that's interesting, but it doesn't heal anything because who cares about past lives, really? I mean, it does fit, but it's not the weightier matter. It is a good thing, and we will deal with these things and karma and so on and so forth, gurus and drugs and can they help you, ayahuasca, LSD, all sorts of things. But these are just window dressing. They're small issues. You have to do the real work. You have to accept yourself. You have to love yourself. This is about you loving yourself, and you do love yourself. Both your being is love and every action you take is because somehow it helps you, whether it feels that way or not, even the maladaptive behaviors you're doing in some, for some reason, because they help you. So you do love yourself and you're surrounded by a world that loves and supports you. We'll talk about all this and have in prior podcasts and will in future podcasts. So anyway, thank you so much for listening. I'm wishing the best for everybody. I hope this was helpful, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Take care. Bye.