61 India, Releasing negatives, Medications, Psychotherapy? - Q & A

This edited question and answer session supports one's path of awakening. Among questions discussed were how to let go of negative thoughts, are medications helpful or harmful to awakening, Where is a good place to start in one's travels to India, is psychotherapy helpful, etc.  Great info but audio quality is only adequate. 

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 everybody, welcome to our live session. I'm so glad that you're here. The reason why I do these podcasts is to go along with the podcasts that are recorded on Insight Time or one of the other platforms. You can find them on Insight Time or if you haven't already found them, just list it under my name, William Cooper. And if it's on another platform, you could go to the title of the podcast and just go Awakening Together, William Cooper, or just William Cooper Podcast or anything like that. And it's on all the other platforms. But whether you've heard these podcasts or not, if you have heard them, you might have some specific questions that you've been wondering about. And this is a good time to just type them in and I can answer them. Or if this is your first time, you can ask whatever question you have. And there's a diverse group. So as we go along, some people will be very advanced meditators, some people just starting out. And so whatever you are, your question will address part of the group anyway. And I think I always like to hear answers about anything when I listen in to other people's sessions. So it does everybody a service when you ask a question. While you might be thinking about different questions to ask, I'll just talk a little while and we'll just talk as we go along. But if something comes up, you ask a question. I remember back around when I was 30 and I was exploring, is there any such thing to psychics? And I was a board president of the Unity Church at the time, and they would have all different kinds of people come, but I was coming from a fundamentalist background. And so I was all nervous about psychics and can you trust them and do you go astray if you listen to them and so on and so forth. So I got the idea, I was a financial planner at the time, and I got the idea, I'm going to talk to about four or five psychics and see if they answer similarly to different questions I have or just come up with some similar perspectives on life. And a lot of them did and it was very powerful. But I remember one of them was kind of telling me about myself. We just met and then she was saying, you're this way, you're that way, and so on and so forth. And one of the things she said is, you have strong willpower. But the way she said it, it sounded kind of funny. And I asked her, she was saying it like it was a compliment, but her tone seemed a little reserved. And so I said, is that a compliment? Is that a good thing that I have good willpower? And she said, oh yes, you've achieved a lot of things. You're board president of the Unity Church. You're a partner in the financial firm. You have a Master of Theology. You've done so many things. They won't amount to anything, but you've done a lot. And you know, that started off an inner turmoil. And we discussed it. But willpower is a good thing and you can accomplish a lot with your willpower. And that's how we're taught in our society to motor through with our willpower, right? We go to school, quick daydreaming, focus, willpower. And I have accomplished a lot of things. But if you think about it, notice within yourself, I'll just give you this thought, and you might have already observed this. In willpower, we tend to focus intense and we cut ourselves off from ourselves every time we use our willpower. Think about it. You're in school, they say concentrate. You know, you tense and you focus. Concentrate at work and you tense and you focus. So we're not flowing. We're more reacting and pushing. So it's very important if you want to get certain things done in life. But the question is, what is life about? What's it for? If it's about awakening, you know, we're already perfect, but for that we've tensed up so much and we cover ourselves up. I mean, every spiritual practice is about letting go and opening up. So if we're in a state of affairs where we're constantly closing and then trying to open and then closing and trying to open, that's a tough place to be. And it's certainly not awakening. So it's that balance. We can flow through life. I think the fear is if we awaken, we won't get anything done. But look at every awakened master. We have thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of students, maybe millions. They're building temples and doing all sorts of things, feeding the poor, opening schools. They're getting a lot done, a lot more than what we normally get done. So opening and flowing is very, very powerful in our lives. And as I mentioned, every spiritual practice, whether it's mantras or meditation or chanting, it's all different ways of opening up, visualizing guided meditations. But at the root of it all, what is going on? There's somewhere deep inside, we have thoughts that cut ourselves off from ourselves. If I don't get this done, I won't be successful. So I need to block everything out and go forward. And I can't relax until I get this thing done, which means I have to be closed until I get this thing done. And once it gets done, I think of four other things I have to get done. And it just goes on forever, right? But even underneath that thought is an emotion, which is a 3D thought, basically. It's where we store our energy and cut ourselves off from ourselves. And we don't let ourselves get away from our thoughts because our emotions hold us there. And if you sink down into the middle of that emotion, finally, and you let all that go, finally, you'll notice a tension, which is a strict block against yourself. It cuts you off from yourself. So there'll be a tension at the bottom of all that emotion. And there's these layers that you'll notice as you sink down and connect to yourself in meditation or any other practice. The trick is letting go to melt all these things. And that's what awakening is called. Awakening, we're not achieving anything. We're already perfect. Our energy is already perfect. Our aura is already radiant. You know, our aura is always there and it's always very powerful, the radiant light. But part of our light, if we don't feel it as radiant, part of it is simply being twisted off and used. The energy that flows through us is being used to propagate and perpetuate blocks, so-called blocks, like fear, hurt, and anger. So our aura is there and the intensity that you feel, the hurt or the fear or the worry, that is your brilliant light. It's just that you've chosen to twist it off and use it in that way, as hurt, fear, or anger. But it's very powerful. You can feel the emotions that we often feel, the traumas. They're very powerful. That's how powerful that energy is that flows through us. We've decided to spend it, so to speak, in that way. It's like a and we spend it in these ways. And as my teacher used to say, we break off into a thousand different voices and personalities on the inside and sort of spend our energy that way. So the process of awakening is just to see it and we have to sit still in order to see it. That's why meditation is helpful. Otherwise, we'll keep distracting ourselves forever. But when we see it, it can start to unwind and it will do it on its own just by us seeing it. And we've talked about this lots in the podcast. So that's why the podcast, I think there's 60 of them so far, and I put out a new one every week. But they cover every different part of all of this. And you listen to the things that resonate to you. And if they don't resonate, just forget them and go on. Find what does. But it's a point of departures for you to reflect on different aspects that my teachers have shown me or I've discovered on my own. And you'll discover things on your own. Okay, thank you. Let me, Vaishali, thanks for asking this question and I'll read it and let's see where we go with it. How do I shift my focus from negative thoughts to positive ones while meditating or otherwise, which are originating purely out of fear and anxiety? That is, wow, that is such a good question. I guarantee you every single person, including myself, who's listening to this has had that, feels this continually, at least on some level, because we have a lot of old habits and old ways of looking at things that we've built up through our lifetime or lifetimes. And awakening is simply unraveling these old habits. So here's the tricky thing. In awakening, there are many levels because we are made of many levels. We have our mental level, our emotional level, this tension level underneath. We have a, you know, if you talk to gurus and they say, well, you've got a cosmic body and a karmic body and a energy body and so many different nutrient body and there's so many different bodies, a causal body. It goes on. So the best way I can answer this is the answer is going to shift around depending on where you are in your life. And it will change. The answer will change. I'm going to answer this question in a few different ways right now, but you'll discover others. And what I've discovered in myself is that some things that teachers of mine have talked about, take me only so far. And then I have to look at myself and I discover things that even they wonder about. I've had teachers tell me like you're deeper on some levels than even I am. And it's true for you too. So you really want to listen to yourself. But let me just start the ball rolling from my perspective. How do I shift my focus from negative thoughts to positive ones while meditating or otherwise, which are originally originating purely out of fear or anxiety? Well, to the degree that we're separated from ourselves, we will have separation anxiety. So everybody has it who's not totally awake. Everybody has it. And we will feel abandoned by the universe. So we'll have hurt. Somebody will say something and we'll feel our feelings tremendously hurt and or we'll have anger because we don't feel fulfilled because we're separated from our true self. That's the plight of the unawakened person, which to some degree, and we're all in various stages of it, we're experiencing all of us. So let's just start in the beginning, in a sense. My friend Bob said that in order to progress, you need to get out of the pounding surf, you can't get batted around in the pounding surf. So I'll just start very simply. Depending on the person, if they are really in the throes of negativity, medication can help or acupuncture can help or massage can help or jogging can help or so many yoga. So these are so many first steps. Okay, that's the first step. And then the second step would be this brilliant, beautiful light that you are is pure joy, love, peace and well being. And to the degree that you don't feel it, you're blocking it out. And that's a litmus test for all of us. If we ever feel hurt, fear, anger, tension, stress, that means we're blocking ourselves out on some level, maybe not completely, because we might feel a mixture of light and hurt and worry, but we're blocking ourselves out. How are we doing that? We've developed a mindset, which is what call a personality, which is a collection of thoughts, emotions and tensions. They all fit together as one unit and and habits, the actions that flow from those. And we've talked about these and other podcasts. So those that want to know more deeply, just start at podcast one and move yourself forward. And we cover all this quite thoroughly. But it's always good to review it. And a lot of people are new. So when we form these thought, we will hallucinate a thought based on our level of separation. If I'm separate, I feel separation, anxiety. So I develop the emotion of worry. That's agitation. It's worry. I feel like things aren't right. I'm I'm anxious. I'm cut off. That's because I'm separated from myself. That's the emotion from that emotion. I'll develop a thought. I will hallucinate a thought. Why? What can make sense of this worry? Because I don't think it's it's simply that I'm cut off from myself, that I did this. No, I don't think it that way. I think I look around outside me and think what's what's. Well, I might not get the right job or the job that I have might not come through. I might not achieve the right things that I need to do for my boss or or my girlfriend or my. Whoever. And so I hallucinate these thoughts and these thoughts are like a lens that I look through. It projects my positive energy, all this well-being, this light projects through that lens. And it's like a movie. It makes a movie on the screen of my life that shows that try as I might, I'm going to fail. That's the movie I keep projecting because that's the lens I keep shining my light through. So if that lens remains that negative hallucination and I simply put a positive thought on top of it, like I start doing positive thinking, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good in every way. But really underneath it is the main lens that says, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. You know, you're not going to get anywhere. Now you've got two lenses. You've got the negative one that's just really pounding. And you've got this kind of fake one on top of it that's trying to improve your attitude. Okay, it's better than nothing to put a fake one on top of it. At least it helps you get through the day. It's better than nothing. So it is a step forward. Let me say that. I don't want to completely disregard it. But you want to really ultimately deconstruct the one underneath it, the negative one. How do you do that? Well, when you meditate and you watch it, it will both unwind and throw off all the negative energy that has first made it, that it's made of. Now that'll feel very, it won't feel good. And your mind will spin and lots of thoughts will go on. And that's why people think, oh, I can't meditate. I'm no good at it. It's not peaceful. Meditation is not supposed to be peaceful because it's deconstructing the unpeaceful stuff. So as that releases, it's very unpeaceful. Now, once the stuff is released, then it is peaceful. But meditation is very difficult at first because we have all this built up stuff that's deconstructing. So that's how you deconstruct it. Meditation or a mantra, perhaps, and a mantra keeps you focused. Let's say you do feel the goodness in you, the true goodness. You also feel that because that is there all the time, as well as your hallucinations. What we, the lenses that we have hallucinated, they both are there. The positive, your energy is just the nature of your being. And that's with you forever because it's who you are. And these hallucinations are temporary, but they keep going until you deconstruct them. They don't just on their own disappear. They just go under the surface. That's why meditation is helpful to just keep everything clean, like brushing your teeth. If you don't brush it, everything starts clogging up on your teeth and they turn green and they fall out. Well, that's what happens on the inside of us. We turn green and we fall apart because we're not meditating or doing our spiritual practice. But mantras connect you to your positivity when you really realize it, like, wow, I feel good right here. And then you say something to kind of keep reminding you to stay with that part of you. Like you might say, you might go Om Namah Shivaya if you feel connected to, if you feel one with Shiva. But more simply and just as effective, you could just say whatever you feel light, light, light, light could be your mantra or peace, peace. If you're feeling a part of you that feels peaceful to stay connected, stay there and then you don't have to go up into the hallucination. Now you still have to deconstruct the hallucination or it will be waiting for you tomorrow. So that's why you have to meditate. So and I go through all that in the first five or six, seven podcasts because that's pretty basic. Now there's another interim trick and that interim trick, which is still kind of step two, is OK, there's this lens I hallucinated that's really negative. Even before I deconstructed, let's say I don't even know, I don't even have the energy to deconstruct it. Something you could do is create another lens and look through that. Now, you still got to deconstruct the other one eventually, but you could change your thought. And that's the basis of a lot of therapies or it's the basis of watching a movie, right? You get your minds off of your hallucinations and you start hallucinating as if you're the hero of the movie. So you start to see yourself as you have their problems, which they resolve in the movie. And so by the end of the movie, you feel inspired because you're hallucinating as the movie would direct you or you listen to a guided meditation. And in the meditation, they'll have you hallucinate in a more positive way. Imagine that you're floating on a river and you're letting all of your tensions go. And there's a little leaf and you put all your problems on the leaf and it floats down the river and now they're gone. It's a hallucination. Your negativity will still be there after the guided meditation, but you get a break during that meditation. It's like medication, but no side effects. So that's very helpful. But ultimately, it's just a very simple thing. We sit down and the reason we sit down, it's hard to distract ourselves and we just watch the stuff that is going on automatically that we created in the past. It's thoughts just thinking themselves, emotions running, all these things happening. We just watch them. Now when you watch them, that means you're not in them. As I often say, looking at a bottle of wine is quite different than drinking a bottle of wine. Looking at a hallucination or a thought is quite different than jumping into the middle of it and being in the 3D movie of this hologram that we're creating called our so-called life that we've hallucinated. Everything starts becoming very still and very healing when we sit still and just watch what's happening. We don't get involved, but it will spend its energy. Thank you, Vaishali. Yes, Deconstruct. I would listen to the first five, 10 podcasts if you haven't already and it will talk about deconstruction. It's just old. It took a lot of work to develop the hallucinations, so it takes a little sitting still to let them undevelop. Karen, you have asked this question. Can you say more about emotions being 3D thoughts? Holding our energy. Do you see this as an unconscious or a choice? What about emotions that have no concrete or conscious thought? Yes. Great question, Karen. Again, everybody experiences this because we all experience thoughts and emotions. Thoughts and emotions are extremely helpful tools when used properly. Thoughts can be formed in a number of different ways. As well as so can emotions. I think I alluded to it in my last answer, but I'll just say a few more words about it because you've really focused on a slightly different question. That is emotion in our pristine state, when you're quiet, when you've sat still long enough and like a glass of silty water, all the silt sinks down and you're clear. The way you'll experience yourself is you'll experience a part of you that you can only experience through your intuition, and it's beyond this creation. It's empty. It's quiet, but it's like bursting with potential, so it doesn't necessarily feel empty, but because it's not created yet, you can't feel it with your five senses. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't touch it, feel it, so on and so forth, but you experience that, and when that comes into the world, it's a burst of light. You will experience tons of light. That's you, and as that slows down, you'll hear the sounds of the universe, deep and high pitches. Maybe you'll hear other pitches. Sometimes people think of ringing in the ears, but they're actually hearing the universe. These chants that monks do, the very deep ones, those are them imitating the sounds of the universe that you yourself will hear. I remember walking down the beach, and I thought there were monks behind me, and it was too strange. I whipped around, and it was just I was hearing the sound of the universe, which I can hear all the time if I want to, and everybody can as we settle down. That, as it slows down, turns into joy, well-being, love, peace, all of those kind of things, and then as it slows down from there, it turns into atoms and electrons and then dogs and cats and trees and things like that, so that's who you are. That's who we all are. We're all that, so in its unobstructed form, it's just a brilliant radiant light that comes out of you, but when we cut off that light and we hallucinate things, we block ourselves. To create something in this world, we have to use the energy that comes through us, which is the energy of the world. Also, the energy of creation, that's the energy that we turn into objects, so we turn this light into emotions. That's why our radiance decreases the more emotions we create and just leave kind of as little chunks of stuff we've created, little objects like space junk floating around in our aura. Our aura decreases as we use our energy to make all these things, so that's the energy from which emotions come. Now, to do that, you could look at it in two ways. We could have been jolted as a child or in some other life through an experience and we cringed. We cut off ourselves in that one area with this cringing and because we were cut off from ourselves, we got separation anxiety or fear or hurt or anger or all of those. That became the emotion and then we hallucinated a thought based on those emotions and that traumatic experience. It could go the other way. We could hallucinate thoughts that get us so wound up that we then, from those thoughts, can create objects called emotions to go with the thoughts because if I just have a thought like, oh, I'm afraid, but I don't have the emotion to go with it, it's not very powerful. That's called taking a psychotropic drug and you get rid of your feelings and so it's easy to discreate your thoughts because they're not 3D anymore, so they're not scary, so they're easy to work with. I can talk to you and who cares about my thoughts. I'm more open because I don't have the 3D aspect, but if I retain that 3D aspect, it's freaking me out and I don't even want to talk about it, don't even want to think about it, I want to repress it. So it can go both ways. I can create it through my thoughts and my perspectives or it could be created through jolts and traumas and people talking to me or the society I'm living in or things like that. Does that make sense? I don't know if I answered your question. I hope I did. And Sonita, yeah, I see you say I separate, I suffer with bad separation anxiety. That, so many people do. I mean, that's standard for most of us, really. And it comes out in many different ways. It could come out as existential angst. It could come out as me just scared of everybody. It could come out as PTSD. It comes out in so many different ways. The antidote is your spiritual practice. Let me see if I can find something here because, yeah, maybe, do I have it here? Let's see, what is it? Joseph Campbell. I'm going to see if I can just remember his quote. He said, the task of man is to, the life task of man is to match his heartbeat with the heartbeat of nature. And what does that mean? It means that we are, well, I can't find my little sheets of paper that I had, but it means that, you know, nature doesn't think. It flows. And back to what I started out with, nature doesn't work by willpower. It just flows. It's open. The whole universe flows through you. And it's very powerful. And when I'm open, I feel it. And that then reassures me because I love myself, which happens through meditation or therapy or whatever, because we're often in the habit of cutting ourselves off from ourselves. But as we notice that we are love itself, we love ourselves. And since the universe is us, we can take care of ourselves. We don't have to solve every little thing personally. The universe solves it for us. And that's where you get into movies like The Secret and this and that and the other. Sometimes, though, what they miss is that when we're not clear, part of us is shooting ourselves in the foot while the other part is projecting the positivity. And so, hey, do what you can with where you are. You will move forward. And as you move forward, just be aware. Let these negativities go. Let them dissolve. We have to do the work. It never comes simply. OK, Steve, let's see. You say, the medication thing is weird, bad in my mind. I'm not against it, but not totally. I know what you mean. I feel the same way. But let me talk about it, but not totally not for it just feels like a false, fake promise or something because it's synthetic and taken from the outside rather than fix you from the inside. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. That is my feeling. And yet my friend Bob says, get out of the pounding surf first. Like if sometimes you just need a little relief to be able to move forward. I'm not suggesting that a person stick with meditation, medication for their whole life if they don't need to. I'm suggesting that they work with their spiritual practice, they meditate and so on and so forth. And I remember talking to Bob and another teacher about this 20 years ago. And I remember Bob said, hey, you're not your body and mind. So who cares? Who cares if you watch a movie and it helps you open up? Who cares if a friend talks to you and it helps you open up? Who cares if you take a medication and it helps you open up? And it it's not the final thing. I can't just do nothing and talk to a friend my whole life. I can't do nothing and watch 800 movies. I can't. But it might help get me out of the pounding surf. I can't do nothing and just jog all the time to release tension just perpetually because I keep stressing myself out once I quit jogging. No, I want to discreate the problem and the block. So for some people, medication really, really helps. I think the fear is most of us think, oh, it's a crutch and the person's going to get addicted and it's a shortcut and then they'll just. And yeah, some people do that. Some people do that, but not you guys. You guys are on your spiritual path and you trust yourself. You might just say, hey, well, let me just trust myself. Let me try. Let me if I need them. If nothing else is working, let me try this and see if it gets me out of the rain. And then from there, can I meditate? Can I do my spiritual practice? Can I do yoga? Maybe I can't get out of bed. I need something to just get out of bed, right? So we got to give ourselves a break. And there's only one thing, and that's the infinite. Where does medication come from? The infinite. It's all part of the infinite. From my perspective, there is no personal self. I mean, there is one. We use it. It's a tool, but really there's not. So who's orchestrating all this? Is it me? No, I don't exist. It's like thoughts do not think. They're just lenses. It's like movies don't, they don't feel anything. A movie, a DVD doesn't feel anything, but yet it creates a movie on the screen. Our personalities create a movie of our life. They don't feel anything. Thoughts don't think and emotions don't emote. So who's doing all this? It's the one that is you. You created the medication and you have the sincerity to do it, to use it in a correct way. So trust yourself. But if, yeah, there, yes. And Steve says there's such a line between humbling and humiliating. I know. Yeah, there is. It's tricky. I'll tell you a story. 20 years ago, probably, I talked to Bob and the reason a friend of mine said, here's the thing. I went to India. I had a profound awakening experience. The energy that was coming through me was so powerful. It was knocking people down. I could see the future. It wasn't that I could see it. I was. The future was me. Let's just say these experiences were so profound. And I talk about it in one of my podcasts because I was, my guru's energy was running through me. It was so, so, so powerful. And he gave me the experience of awakening. Everything was love. And this didn't go on for one day. It went on for 10 years. Now I'm, he said, go out on your own. And I'm experiencing it progressively through my being, through my incarnation. But back then it was through him. And I didn't know any of this. I was new. I was just some guy that went to India and boom, it was crazy. That's a whole nother story. Everything you've imagined is true about India. Can be. India's everything. You can get caught up and see whatever you want. But if you're looking for this deep stuff, it's there. Up to you. But I talked to, so I was one with everything. Everything was just radiating all around me and through me. And I was it. And yet I was so depressed. I didn't, I couldn't understand it. How, how can I at the same time be the universe? And I don't mean just philosophically. I mean, like I swallowed an atomic bomb and people were healing and all sorts of things around me. And yet I was depressed a lot and in despair and worry. So a friend of mine who knew me said, well, have you considered antidepressants? And I said, no way. Because it's humiliating. And I was leading a big group. I didn't mean to. I started it. But so much of this guru's energy was coming through me. Suddenly there was a hundred people paying to be around me. So I became a teacher. Just because of this, because of his energy. I just, as more and more people collected, they all looked at me like I knew what I was doing. So I started teaching. So I, I finally, I talked to Bob and he said, no, you're not your body and mind. Try it. I did. Mixed results for me personally, after a year, I just stopped because I didn't want it to interfere with my awake. I was going back to India and I was seeing my guru again and I didn't want it to get in the way. I don't know that it would have gotten in the way really, but it, since it wasn't doing that well for me or it was okay. You know what it felt like to me, the stuff I was taking, it felt like I experienced everything I was experiencing before I was experiencing it a hundred percent, but I just didn't care. I mean, I, it came through me and because I didn't get worried about being worried, I could just be worried and then I could work on the worry. And that was helpful. So for that year, it probably really did help me. But I remember, so I had a hundred people and they were asking me, somebody said, well, ask it. What do you do about depression? What can you, if somebody, I'm depressed, what can I do? And I said, well, you could use acupuncture. You could do this. You don't get better. And then, you know, I couldn't control myself because just the infinites flowing through. And I said, or you could take medication like I am. The room went just deadly silent. The lady doing the registration at the end said, maybe you don't want to bring that up. But I got so many people talking to me saying, I'm so glad you brought that up. Um, but I was humbled. I was humiliated, but it was very opening. Um, oh, therapy. Um, I think I neglected the most important thing, therapy. Medication can give you, not everybody needs medication, nor should everybody take medication. If it, if, if it's indicated for you, just trust yourself and do it, trust yourself and stop it when you don't need it. But it isn't designed to solve everything. It's designed to give you a space where you can do therapy. And, you know, there's lots of people, well, therapy's too expensive. I don't have health insurance. You can find somebody that will work with you for very low cost or free. If you search around enough, there's a, uh, peer therapy and I just, I've never done it. I've had friends, they liked it. So just from afar, I'm going to say it's called something like, uh, R what is it? Uh, Hmm. I'll, I'll type it in the show notes for this. I can't quite remember, but it's available all over the world. You can get therapy somehow. This in India is the biggest weakness because we do have an emotional body. And often in India, they overlook that because they see right through it. And they go to the infinite that's in the culture often. I'm not saying all the time, but often. So therapy doesn't seem in my mind, very well developed over there. A lot of times gurus fly off the handle, lose their mind, do crazy things. That's why they never had therapy there. But over in the West, yeah, we're kind of shallow in our own way. Often you guys are, but often as a culture, but in therapy, it's very well developed over here. So we have that advantage. So I would utilize it. Um, let's see where in India would love to the Vaishali asked where in India would love to visit that the place or that ashram. Um, you know, India has, I, I'm, I've done four podcasts. They have not been published yet. They, they're still about two months off. Um, but, um, but they will be coming. I'm going to just give you a couple of hints right now. Not that I'm trying to hint around and we can talk the next live one more in depth. If you guys asked me this question a little earlier on, but just for time, I'll say in my, in India, there are many places with powerful gurus and powerful places to go. If I could only pick one, and this is me, other people have had experiences up in the North and the Himalayas around the Dalai Lama. Uh, there's a, a lot of Buddhists up there, obviously. Um, and they speak very highly there, but for me, it's in the South, Tiruvannamalai in the state of Tamil Nadu. Um, it's a small village, but it is so loaded with gurus. I mean, you trip over awakened people, they are everywhere. And all the travelers I've traveled around India quite a bit, 13 times an average of three months per time. And I'm planning on going this fall or the winter, I hope, but, um, I've never come across a place as that has so many, so, so rich of, um, of gurus and even Western therapists and everything. And it's a little village. So, uh, you, you will get a lot in that little, I would go to the Ramana Ashram on the website. It says you can stay there for free or by donation for three nights, uh, ask for seven days or 10 days, and then they'll come back and say, well, how about five or seven? They really let you stay longer if you want. And I would read this book called In Search of a Secret India by Paul Brunton, came out in the 1950s. And, um, it gives a very, um, powerful account of, um, a newspaper reporter that looked all over India and it's like my experience. It's the good, the bad, the indifferent, and he says what he finds and he ends up in Theravada Anamalai. Um, but I would go with Theravada Anamalai. There's a real powerful ashram in Pondicherry, also down South. It's, uh, was a French protectorate, very beautiful. And Sri Aurobindo, I would go to his, but that's very powerful. Sit by the tomb. It's very powerful, unbelievably powerful, but really Theravada Anamalai would be where I would go. You can Google it. T-I-R-U-V-A-N-N-A-M-A-L-I. This will be recorded so you can listen to it, uh, next week if you want. It'll probably come out Wednesday. Yes, uh, that is a great book. A Search, A Search, what is it? A Search for a Secret India is by Paul Bruton. Um, um, well, you guys are asking such great questions. I hope I've, um, covered them. Any other questions that come to mind? Just in case, if you're thinking of one, I will say that, um, yes, it's a beautiful place. Uh, Debu writes Aurobindo Ashram is in Pondicherry. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful place. It is, the architecture, it's almost like Paris in an Indian way. Um, and the, the ashram is in the very French part and lots of big trees and gorgeous and probably, I guess, about four or five blocks from the ocean. And you sit under the trees and you're by this tomb. And, uh, a friend of mine said, I asked him when I first came to India, a guy that I met at the, um, at my guru's ashram. And he said, I said, where's the most powerful place in India to go after this thing that we were doing there? And he said, go to Pondicherry, Aurobindo's ashram. And I could not grasp that a tomb, a dead person could be powerful. I, I just didn't believe it. I wasn't going to go there and somebody, um, I got hooked in with a group of people and they ended up going to Pondicherry. So we went there and I really couldn't move for about five hours. It was strong. Uh, but if you could only go to one place, go to Tiruvannamalai. Um, and Steve asks a good question. What is resentment? I mean, what's my part in that? Thank you, Steve. Again, everybody here experiences resentment. We all have. Uh, here's the tricky part. Um, all spiritual practices are about letting go. Jesus talks mostly about forgiveness. What is that? Letting go. He says, if somebody sues you, uh, and give them your cloak, give them your staff, give them everything. Just be done with it. Don't get involved. Let go. Somebody slaps you, turn the cheek, let go. That's what he did. That was his powerful practice. Letting go. What happens when you totally let go? The father and I are one. He told everybody the father and I are one. It's what all great saints say. Now he got killed because you're not really supposed to say it. So Yogananda said, it's better to say God has become me. Cause if you say I'm God, that's, maybe it ends up the same thing, but that gets you killed. Say it the other way and maybe all right. Maybe just don't say it. Um, but this letting go now, what is resentment? Resentment feels like somebody has crossed our boundaries. They've betrayed us. And we're trying to put every action we do is an action born of love for ourselves, even though it might not seem like it later. Like I resent you. Why? Because I care about me. I love me. And you did something that was not nice to me. So I resent you. So that's my way of loving myself. But now I've created this object of resentment. I've created the separation because if I didn't separate, here's what would happen. I would just feel perpetually I'm love. I'm well-being for any Christians out there. It's the fruits of the spirit. I think it's Galatians 3, 23 or 4, 23, something like that. Uh, the, the fruits of the spirit. These are the qualities of your beings. And that's what you'd feel all the time. That's what you feel all the time. If you were awake or if you were, Jesus was awake, you are awake, but you cover it up. But so here's what happens. Somebody does something to us. And if we stayed in our center, we would look at them and just go, wow, I feel love myself. I feel peaceful. I'm concerned about this person because they've done a very bad, nasty thing. What's wrong? Are they okay? What can I do to help? So I wouldn't get resentment if I was connected to myself. Where I make a mistake is when they do something, I cut off from myself. I don't trust myself that I'm okay anyway. It's their problem. And then I, I, I kind of make a tension. And then I create an emotion, which is a boundary. I tense up. And then I think about how bad you are. And that's called resentment. And I keep it forever because it's like my permanent boundary against you. Now, Jesus said, don't do that. Let it go. How do you do that? You meditate, you discreate it, or you do some other spiritual practice as you let go. That's called awakening. But all human beings don't know how to do this. Most, none of us do. Jesus, like I said, he got killed. No, people didn't go, oh, wow, that's a great idea. We love you. Why don't you be our teacher? They just said, no, we've had enough. We are going to kill you. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do this forgiveness thing. So I've done a podcast on forgetting all these things are very logical questions. And through the 60 podcasts, replacing one every week, doing a new one every week, we cover these things because they are such good questions. But our part in resentment is that we're the ones that disconnect from ourselves. We're the ones that quit trusting ourselves that I'm OK anyway. And it's at a very basic fundamental soul level. We cut ourselves off. So it's not like I cut myself off. I feel resentful. Now let me think about a philosophy. Yeah, I read the Bible and it sounds like a good idea. I forgive you. But deep inside, I'm all tense and feel terrible. That's because I haven't just created and reversed the cutoff that I did long ago. You have to get way deep. How do you do that? You sit still, called meditation, and it will come up. Or if you don't do that, life feels the resonance that's going on inside of you and it feels the discord. And that's an energy. And you create a situation that will bring something to you to help you realize how resentful you are. A friend will say something and you'll go, oh, I resent you too. Well, guess what? Now you can see that you're resentful. So they're giving you a gift in that sense. You created that response, as odd as that sounds. On another level, you did not. On another level, they did it. But on an ultimate level, it serves you. And I've got to trust that you know what you're doing and you are the universe. So you orchestrated it on a deeper level. Okay. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed meeting and talking with you all. We're going to have another live session like this on the 9th of July. We'll get through the 4th of July and do it on the 9th, which is a Saturday, same time at 1030 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So you're all invited. Anybody's invited, whether you've listened to the podcast or not. But it's designed to put all this stuff together for the title of the podcast is Awakening Together. And that's really what we are doing in real life, really are doing. It's not a philosophy. It's a day by day opening. And that's what these things are to support. You're opening, you're awakening, and it's going to happen anyway. That's the way the universe works. You're going to awaken. And to the degree that we're separate, that can be enjoyed in its own way. And we could even talk about that some other time. Okay. All is well. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.