71 Inner Pain, No Awakening, Gurus, Psychedelics - Q & A

Edited recording of live session to support our path of awakening.  Listeners submit questions during this live podcast that they have regarding their path or the previous 70 podcasts.  Questions included, how to cope with great inner pain, why no awakening after decades of meditation, use of marijuana, psychotherapy assisted psychedelics, do I need a guru, how to find a guru, etc. 

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

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

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

Transcript

0:01

Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well this week. So I want to ask you today, as most of you know, maybe not all of you, but I have about 65 podcasts and maybe some of you have listened to them, and they're designed to help transmit some information that other people have helped me with through the years that I found helpful. So I'm hoping that you all find it helpful. But whether you've listened to those podcasts or not, what I'm wondering, do you have questions today about your path of awakening? And really we could talk about some of you are way advanced further than me and some maybe a step behind me or we're all in this together. If you're on this earth, you've got stuff to work on, right? Do you know anybody that doesn't? So we're all in it together. And what may be a big deal to me may not you may have already worked through that. That's the thing. We have all sorts of levels going on at the same time. And so we share, it's good. But there are some basics that are fairly universal to most all of us. And they run through, they're pointed to usually through all religions and spiritual pursuits. So I've been at this long enough that pretty much everything that people talk about is my direct experience. I also have good days and bad days. But what's so good about teachings? First of all, when you follow yourself, that's the most important thing. If there's a discrepancy between what Buddha says and what your life is, go with your life. There's a discrepancy between Christ and your life, go with your life. I like the bird illustrator back I think about a hundred years ago, Audubon. He was one of the first bird illustrators or maybe he was the first bird illustrator and he would make beautiful drawings of birds and paintings of birds and label them. It's this bird and that bird and the other bird. Well somebody asked him, they said Dr. Audubon, I saw a bird but it doesn't look like what's in the book exactly. And Dr. Audubon said, whenever there's the discrepancy between the bird and the book, go with the bird every time. So it's the same in spiritual life. The power you feel in you, it's what's unfolding in you. But other people's teachings, Buddha, Jesus, they can be helpful. And when you have the direct experience of your path after you've been at it for a while, and many of you have been, all the pieces start to come together and then you're reminded as something unfolds in your life, you go, you know, I remember that must have been what Jesus was talking about or that's what Buddha was referring to. And it sort of confirms because even though all of our paths are a bit different, there are repeating themes. And as you go deeper and deeper, everything makes total sense. And you see very clearly, my, the big guru in my life that's now a friend and not so much a guru, at his request, he said, I should just go out on my own at this point. He said, to see is to be free. And it's true. When you see clearly, things open up for you and a lot of things dissolve. Something that could have been troubling like the old story of a snake in the corner and you're scared all night long, you think it's a cobra and then daylight comes and you see it's a rope. Now, your troubles are gone. And it didn't take much, it just took seeing clearly. So these talks and podcasts are really centered around that seeing clearly. On top of that, any techniques or practices you have are very important. It's important to do them daily because, you know, frankly, we have a lot of stuff. If you're on this earth, there's a lot of stuff to let go of. So do any of you have any questions that are you've been wondering about or comments or things like that? All of us, as we've talked about, have things that we've got to clear up in our lives. And they're difficult. Some of them are heartbreaking. And so you can't really gloss over them and say, yeah, just meditate or it'll be better. No, you got to pause and feel it. It's heartbreaking. Some of the things and we have a lot of human tragedies. So we've got to first acknowledge that. That's our starting point, right? Like I said, you're the starting point. And if you feel pain, you feel pain. That's the starting point. But there's not only pain. And I want to talk. Some of you are sending in questions now. So I would like to or comments. Hillary comments. I wanted to comment that the level of pain that's coming up is quite difficult to bear at times. How can I best manage the process? Wow. What a good question. And Lynn, I see yours too. And we'll get to that. That's that's really good, too. Hillary, you know, you're on the right path if you're feeling a huge level of pain because you're not avoiding it. And. So let me there's a couple of things that I've found that might I think that are universal and that is mine, but they're also specific to our own personal development. And I think I was a spiritual weakling, really. And I've gotten stronger. It's like you weight lift and you do it long enough. Eventually you get a muscle. Well, that's for me. So a teacher once told me I had a very weak nervous system and just to sit with the pain to see how long I could bear it. And that is like weightlifting. It stretches your nervous system out and then you can bear more pain. You may be a huge weightlifter and you have even more severe pain than I had. But your nervous system will even get bigger and bigger and bigger. So that's one thing. It's there's really no shortcuts to this stuff. I've looked. I've tried to get every. Could a guru take my pain? No. They said they might say they can, but they can't. In the end, I'm stuck with the pain temporarily. Maybe they can. Can drugs help with the pain? Not really. However, there's a lot of new research. As many of you know, I'm a psychotherapist and I was really surprised to find, and I'm not pushing this, but in about two years they're going to come up with a psychotherapeutic assisted, what do you, psychedelics. And I don't know that that's the ultimate solution. I don't think there's any way around the pain, but it can open up people's minds. And I'm not saying you, Hillary, but I'm just talking to a general audience. If you ever find yourself so stuck, you just need something to blast through. That may be helpful. And in some states, like in Oregon, it's already legal and there's a ketamine is a legal drug now, but the rest of them are going to be legal probably in two, three years. LSD, mescaline, peyote, ayahuasca, MDMA. Statistically, they found that those are very powerful. And the therapeutic change has been very powerful when people just use them very sparingly along with psychotherapy. Anyway, that's one thing I'm a little, I'm diverting. That would not be my main answer, but that is something out there. For me, I didn't do that. What I did is I just sat a lot of hours of meditation and felt the pain and let my nervous system expand. And sometimes still the pain is overwhelming. And then it's the second thing that I found, and this is an odd thing. You know, our reaction to pain at first is to, I don't want it. I want to get rid of it. I want to transcend it. I want to, you know, spiritual bypass it away or something. But as I sat with the pain, you know, we're all one unit and the radiance that's running through us has just been twisted into pain. So we don't want to get rid of that. That is our power. That is our radiance. It just feels like pain. The strange part is, as I've done this for a while, I suddenly noticed what is pain in one moment, if I let it will become light in the next moment, pure radiant light. I mean, that's odd. Yeah, I'm, I'm writhing in pain. And for me right now, often I have unresolved stuff, old childhood traumas that I will feel in my stomach. And I've been at this for a while, but a lot of them are now able to come up and they were under other layers and I didn't feel them so much, but now they are coming up and it almost feels like the last layer of stuff. You know, let's hope you know how it goes. It's like an onion. It keeps going, but that comes up and it is so painful almost every day. And then suddenly poof, it's pure light. And I'm amazed at the power. It seems like it shoots for miles. I mean, it's like such pressure built up and then poof, it goes into light. But I allow it to do that. I don't push it to do that. But I don't become fixed in that it has to be pain. This needs to remain as pain. It is pain. I don't know that I ever said it needs to remain its pain. But I don't know that I actually ever just let it in my mind. Let it be light if it wants to be and suddenly it wants to be and it becomes light and the pain is pretty much gone. In the past, I only could conceive of it as pain. So it stayed as pain. And my nervous system got bigger and bigger because I was handling pain. But it's not really pain. Everything is made of love and light is just twisted into a sharp object. That's how we make things in the world. We make objects, we take consciousness. That's all there is out there is consciousness and we shape it into objects, houses, dogs, cats, also pain. So experientially, you will feel it. Boom! Like you're just radiant pain. You're like one of those pictures in the old medieval days with the golden light around you. That is you. If you have a lot of pain, you have a lot of radiance because that pain is radiance twisted into pain. So I hope that helps. You know, one other thing I'll say about pain is that we're not in a foot race. And I'm not saying that you approach it, but sometimes I and other people approach it like a foot race, like I've got to get rid of this pain today. Now I know we want to because it hurts. Yeah, of course we want to get rid of it quickly, but maybe sometimes take a break. I mean, okay, watch some TV, go for a walk, have a drink. Again, got to be careful, not promoting drinking, but you know, let's be realistic. Do what you need to do. Take a break. You don't want to wear yourself out. And you probably do this. But I'm again, speaking to everybody, broad group, it's such a good question. We all experience pain. I just heard from a friend of mine, Sanjay, he lives permanently in India, but he's American and he's got visa issues. So he's in Seattle right now trying to straighten it out. And he's in a lot of pain, emotional pain, because he's got stuff in storage that's going to get thrown out and it's his whole lifetime. But you know what? He was laughing. And he also was feeling pain the whole time. He was like crying and laughing at the same time. He said he accepted what was going on, but it was so painful. And that's how life is. We're in the world, but we're not of it. Oh, I should say this. It really helps to handle your pain when, and I'm sure you are, Hillary, connected to your divine self, your infinite self. And people can use the word divine or you could just use you are. The divine has become you. They infinite you. Because that's where you rest. Buddha says take refuge in the Buddha. That's your infinite self. You take refuge in yourself. To a Christian, that would be taking refuge in God. And as Jesus pointed out, the Father and I are one. And I'm going to show you the way for that to be true for you too. So in the end, the Father is you, right? If there's only one, there's only the Father. So they're all saying the same thing. But what helps me is because I meditate a lot, I'm in touch with my deeper self even when I'm in the midst of my pain. And so is my friend Sanjay. But he was laughing and he's a delight to listen to. You feel such good energy, but he's in pain. But you feel the good energy. He's also in bliss. Okay, thank you, Hillary. Let me ask Lin. Lin says, yes, I've worked with many spiritual practices for the last 30 years. I still have never reached a spiritual awakening. I do my meditation, silence daily, always seeking I am. Yeah, that was me. And then suddenly, boom, I had an awakening. And then I didn't get concerned that, quote unquote, I lost it because that's what happens. Because you have so much unresolved stuff, it covers up your awakening because it's not all resolved. And I just knew that, kind of, somehow. And I accepted it and motored on. And I continued with my practice. And it just opened and closed, opened and closed, and longer and longer being open and open and open. And I, along the way, got hooked up with a guru, Bhagavan. And he showed me awakening through his eyes, through his energy coming through me. And for about 10 years, I thought I was that awake. So much power was coming through me. I thought that was me. But it turned out it's just I was living through his energy and bypassing my path, in a way. But he was showing me, he taught me. And then he said, okay, now you go out on your own. He withdrew all the power. And I was a mess. Still probably a mess. But now I'm feeling my power. And it's not mine. It's all of it. It's us. It's the one. And I feel it and I have confidence because I know what it was like through Bhagavan. So with that background, what I can say to you is awakening is there all the time, Lynn. And you feel it, you might be overlooking it for two reasons. One reason is the way I talk and others talk is boom. And you feel this radiance and love and power and everything turns into light and love. And you think, wow, that's a big experience. That's what I'm missing. I haven't had that. I want that. And of course, I did too. Everybody does. And I would be wrong to say that I did not want that. And then I experienced it. And it's lovely. And there are people that just get stuck there. It's like taking one of those psychedelics. But one of the problems with the psychedelics, people take them every day or every week, every week, every week, and they never get off of them because they don't go forward. Well, you can do that with a guru, too. You just stay with the guru. Oh, please, please bless me. Bless me. And let's chant. Let's do. Please, please. And that's your life. And if the guru leaves, oh, your people are crying. They're so sad. And that was me. It was me, too. So it's important. There's something deeper than that energy. And it's important to know that. And it took me a long time, like 10 years to figure this out. The true you, the one that watches everything, we overlook it. So far, we and I'm speaking from my perspective. We watch our thoughts. We watch our emotions. We feel them. And but then it's hard. We think that's us, even though we know it's not us. Somehow we think it is us because we comment. I'm feeling bad. I'm feeling this. I'm feeling that. And we our attention is really there, as it should be. I know I'm speaking paradoxically because I'm going to say two things. We do inhabit our personality and we want it to feel better because it's a bumpy ride if it doesn't. But it's not us. And even if we know that, it takes so much energy. Any pain takes so much of our energy. We lose track quickly. And again, speaking of me, of what's watching and what's watching is awareness. That is truly who I am. If all that pain disappeared, I'd still be there. I'd be watching it. And I go, wow, that's great. It all disappeared. So I'm not the pain. I'm not the personality. If I got amnesia, I go, wow, I can't remember anything. My personality is gone. But I would be aware that I couldn't remember anything. So I'm the one that remains. I'm the one watching. What I missed with all this, I knew all this, but what I missed was the one that's watching me go so far back into the infinite, it goes out of creation and out of creation, things are not created because it's out of creation. So there's nothing. Therefore, ultimately, it doesn't feel like anything. It's the opposite of all this stuff. I say, yeah, radiance and explosions, and it's nothing. It's just quiet, pure quietness. When you know that's you, that's awakening. And so that's there for all of us every time, every moment, always. But we overlook it. So we think, well, we're not awake. No. Once you know who you are, you're awake. Ramana, when people would ask him questions, he'd say, before I answer that question you just asked, find out who you are. Instead of what is your relationship going to be like? What job should you have? What should your awakening be? Find out first, who is it this you that wants to know all these things? And that will change. That change, that will shift your perspective. So yes, Len, any of this energy is not us. Now, here's the paradox. When you rest in who you are and you do it consistently and you know it, you just, you know, process it. In India, they say neti neti. I'm not this. I'm not that. You look at if that thought disappeared, would I still be here? Okay, I'm not that thought. If this emotion disappeared, would I still be here? Yeah, yes, I would. So I'm not that emotion. After a while, you find out you're not anything except for the one watching, right? When you, it's one thing to know it, but it's another to rest there. That's who I am. It's just your automatic, who you feel that you are. As you rest there, the paradoxical thing, Len, is that slowly the world orders around that instead of the focal point of my personality. And when it forms around this quietness, it slowly starts to radiate light and energy. And then it gets more powerful and more powerful and then boom! You know what then? Now you've got the kundalini and Len commented, yes, that's it. The big kundalini energy. Yes, thank you. So Len, you've got it, but to continue to explain for everybody else, the rest of your life will light up and that is kundalini, but it comes, you've got to start at the pure central part that is the silence. And the problem is we're so used to in our culture is lots of special effects and quick hamburgers and TV, and it's all designed to work on our personalities and our emotions. So we want to feel stuff, sensations. So we overlook the quiet, the nothing, the quiet. But when you sit in the quiet, everything lights up, but it's a slow process because it's at first still revolving around the personality that is also still there. It doesn't just disintegrate when you know who you are. The old construction of a personality still remains and slowly it reorients itself around the focal point of infinite silence and well-being instead of separation, which is made of hurt, fear, and anger, which are the typical cultural building blocks of our old personality. And that's where we feel our pain and that's what sucks us in and that's what we think about. And so great question. I hope that moves us closer. And Len comments, yes, it's a simple, simple, understandable answer. Very helpful. And Heather says that she's felt that infinite nothing and was terrified. That is a common experience. That's a common experience. But as you shift focal points, it turns out that the universe is you and there's nothing to be terrified. But you don't know that. You do it inch by inch and just sort of reassure yourself, like stepping into a cold bathtub, or that's not a good analogy because that never feels good, but testing the water, a nice water, because the infinite is very nice. It's beautiful. It's it. And somebody asked a little earlier, I maybe it was Rhonda said that she was new to this. And what is my definition of awakening? And it fits with all these great questions everybody's asking. My definition of awakening is you without any problems. It's just the radiant you, it's the you that's already here right now. And it never leaves. And so that's good to know, Heather, it never leaves the you. The only thing that leaves is the problems. So the infinite, when you rest in the infinite, you will not leave anything else, except for problems will start to dissipate. If you only focus on the infinite, for a while, you're forming a block to block out this creation. But we are both things at the same time. We're the infinite, and we're all of creation. So which includes all of your current personality and everything else. So I've done all of us, maybe at different times, we might because of what we've read, or what we're trying to experience, and we're reaching to really feel an awakening, we'll feel the infinite, or maybe it happens spontaneously. And for a moment, we block out the other stuff. But that's us doing something, we're blocking out the other stuff. In real awakening, you feel everything you don't, there is no disconnection. So there's nothing to feel terrified about. And terror doesn't happen at at a point, but maybe in the beginning, there is terror, because it's all new, and we don't know. And so that that can create terror. And that is a common experience. Lots of people feel that way. And the other thing that people feel you've heard of is the dark night of the soul. And the dark night of the soul is when you've had an awakening. We'll say when my guru, he took the energy away his awakening energy, and now I was engulfed in all of my unresolved issues. And I was dark, I was the dark night of the soul, I felt like I was cut off. I wasn't, but I felt like it. But all of us have unresolved stuff. And when it comes up, as we awaken, part of the definition of awakening is our old repressed stuff that is our problems, they start to leave, but they only leave, leave when they're not repressed. And when they're not repressed, we feel them, they engulf us. And what do we call that dark night of the soul? Oh, our stuff that hurts so bad that we repressed it way back when. Now, we're not repressing it. And it still hurts because we do. It's just been sitting there under the surface. So that's the dark night of the soul. You do your spiritual practices and it, as we've talked about in other podcasts, it emits its energy. It's like a frozen ice cube. It unfreezes and it turns into water, but it emits a lot of cold while it unwinds. A rubber band all wound tight, just you let go of one end and it untwists while it's flopping all over the place, like all the thoughts and emotions in our mind, like our life is flopping. But if we don't hold on to it, and somebody said a little earlier about acceptance, the questions go by, so I can't always hold on to them, but it might've been you then, but it could have been somebody else. But acceptance, maybe it was Heather, that's you not holding onto the rubber band and just letting it spin and it expends its energy and goes looping loose and limp and is peaceful. So yeah, acceptance, everything that gurus talk about, all these thoughts, acceptance and generosity and gratitude, forgiveness, all these things, connecting to the earth as you walk, taste your food, all these things, they happen naturally in awakening, but you can prompt them from the outside. The Buddhists look and they teach you to write actions and the way to be before you're awakening, so that by the time you awaken, you're sliding into a healthy personality. So it's good to do. If you need therapy, do therapy. Now, therapy is not awakening. It's not that you just solve all your problems and now you're awake. It doesn't work that way. Through meditation or just sitting still, you become connected to this infinite silence that we are. That's the first step of awakening and the biggest step. And then from there, that flows through and when you let go of your problems and therapy can help that. Now that helps the letting go. Now the therapy does, but if you do the therapy ahead of time and you've already let go of problems, you've got less to let go of. But letting go of problems all by itself doesn't necessarily bring your awareness to who you are. So you need to do both things. So Lin says, and I appreciate every comment that you make Lin and everybody else. Lin says, yes, this has helped me embrace my own unique practice. The ego self always wants more. I am going to stop reaching. I needed this today. Thank you, Lin. Yes, that's the big one. We are programmed and maybe let's just say we program ourselves ultimately to keep reaching. That's what the ego does. It's a getting machine because remember in separation, the products of separation, when we think we're a separate entity, which all unawake people do, we feel separation anxiety. That's the root of our anxiety. We feel abandoned. The universe has abandoned us. We've abandoned us. So we feel hurt and we feel anger because we're separated. We feel frustrated and angry. So because we feel this, we create an ego to get love because we don't feel love, get peace because we don't feel peaceful, get answers because we don't feel that we are the answer. And that has utility up to a point. And all spiritual practices are designed to slow that down, slow down the getting machine because when the getting machine is fully active, it sucks us in and we don't have any bandwidth left to be in touch with our silent self. We can't sit there for as long as it takes for the center of gravity to shift to what is true because truly that's who we are. We're not our personality. So you have to stop getting for just a moment and we can't do it all at once. So just stop getting for 10 minutes a day, but know what you're doing or 20 or 30 or whatever you can. And that stopping is called meditation. But you're on the right track, Len. And all your previous practice is there. It's you hear it all the time. It will pay off. It already has. Sometimes there's just a piece that needs to snap into place and then boom, it all comes together. Okay. Guru. Hillary asks another good question. Would you advise getting a guru and how would I find one? As all spiritual people do, they answer a question on many, in many ways. And it sounds like double talk. And so I'm going to do some of this double talk right now. It's a very good question, but we're on many realities, many levels. And so you answer it in different ways. The most, the deepest answer, and it's the truest, is that you are your own guru. Listen to yourself. Never get away from that. No matter, even if you get an external guru, never get away from that. Because sometimes gurus will tell you one thing and you always want to check it out because it might be right and it's helpful. And maybe I've overlooked and I can learn and, or maybe later in my life, I will follow that direction. It's not appropriate for me today, but maybe later it makes sense. So you always try what a guru says, but in the end, if it just doesn't fit right, don't do it. After a while, try it out for a while, but feel free to object to the guru. And gurus actually appreciate that. Actually, they like you better if you do. Now, if you get a guru that starts screaming and stuff, well, they need to see a therapist. The guru does. And sometimes gurus have unresolved issues. So if you get the odd guru that's crazy, get out of there. You should be able to have a conversation and the guru should be able to not lose it. So you should be quite free and not intimidated to say, hey guru, this doesn't, it's not working for me. Now, maybe the guru could give you, shed some light on it. Well, the reason why is because this or that, try this, try that. But in the end, remember, you're always checking it against yourself, your inner heart. Like the guru says, you try it and you go, yeah, that works. Okay. Yeah. But then after, after a while, it may no longer work. You've, it's done its job. And then you go to the next thing that works. Same with gurus. Don't get signed up with a guru. If you get a guru that demands you stay with me for the rest of your life and blah, blah, blah, don't do that. Listen to yourself because that becomes bondage. At first it might be freedom and they might say, oh, to dig a well, you have to stay in one place and dig very deeply. You can't go all over the place and dig lots of shallow wells, stay in one place and dig a deep well. Well, there is some truth to that. And you know, yourself don't cut and run every time you have to deal with something. But on the other hand, you can outgrow gurus and you can end up being deeper than your guru. You might be deeper than you even know. I had one teacher tell me who was quite psychic that I was deeper than he was on some areas. Now I was not deep on a lot of other areas and he was helping me with that. He's the one that told me I had a weak personality, a weak nervous system. He was German. So, you know, but to his credit, he said, hey, but you're deeper in these other areas. And I believe he was right. So same for all of us. Same for you also, Hilary. Now, would I advise getting a guru? You know, what they always say is when the student is ready, a guru appears. Start with what you got. How would I find one? Start with what you have around you. I used to go anywhere in the United States because that's where I live. You know, I would make vacations into spiritual things where I would maybe go to Sedona because I had Googled. And when I could have vacation time, I would go to Sedona. It's beautiful. It's going to be a great vacation anyway. But a particular guru is going to be there. A lot of gurus travel. Or there was one in California. So I would go to California and I would see that guru during my, that would be my vacation. So I'd kind of mix it with being in Malibu and seeing the guru. Or I'd go to Yogananda's Lake Shrine and meditate there and walk on the beach in between my meditations. And they have beautiful gardens and things and it's by donation and it's just wonderful. So there's a lot of Indians come here, Indian gurus. And I would just check them out. And because the advantage of like being around somebody like Ammaji, her website is amma.org. But being around somebody like Ammaji or Baba Shiva Rudabalayogi, they're powerful. Now Rudabalayogi, he communicates through Zoom. They have Zoom meetings about every month and you can just, he's an Indian, you can find him at his website, srby.org. So gurus are doing lots of different things. I would check them out. Out in California, there's Francis Lucille or Ajah Shanti. And of course there's Eckhart Tolle. You can Google them and they travel. Find out when they come anywhere near you and go see them. Or just Google, be creative. Google something like who are good gurus that come to the United States or whatever country you live in and see what people say and check them out. In Florida, Michael Singer, he wrote the book Untethered Soul. Very good book, bestseller. Very interesting fellow. You could go see him. But I wouldn't sign up for anything for a while. Don't get wrapped around a group. Just check a lot of them out, like a smorgasbord. And then if you find one really helping you, be with that one for a while, as long as it serves you. But be open to leaving if you need to. The reason why I've done my podcast is because I've seen a lot of gurus. And some of them you get certain teachings and other ones you don't. I've tried to put all the teachings that I found beneficial and I haven't gotten everything in there yet. And I probably never will. But I'm trying to give you what you need as you listen to all the podcasts, despite, regardless of what guru you get. So if you get a guru, you can sort of bounce it against the podcast that I put down there. And you might go, yeah, I don't like this podcast. The guru is making more sense to me right now. So go with the guru. But in that moment. But at least you have something to bounce it off against. That's what the podcasts are designed. Or if you just want to be your own guru, the podcasts are designed to help guide you to do that. So, but thank you. And of course, there are lots of gurus in India and that's a bit more ambitious. I'm doing a series of podcasts on that later in the year. But if you want information about that beforehand, you could either talk to a friend or Google about information or attend one of our live sessions and just ask me and I'll tell you whatever you need to know in the moment. Gurus can be very powerful. I don't want to downplay them. One of the most instructive things about gurus is both their teachings and the energy that you feel. It shows you what's possible. And perhaps they'll do a miracle in front of your eyes, which tends to open up the mind. I don't, that's not the thing I'm most trying to see, but I have seen them. Mainly it's the intense presence that you feel around some of these gurus. So I would start locally and just, um, some of the ones that I've mentioned to you are maybe a little bit more teachers than they are gurus, but, um, maybe they're a little of both, but I definitely would. Uh, if it's something you feel called to do, yeah, fine. Start the process and just look around and look at lots of gurus and see what you think. See what you feel. Like I said, in the end, you're your own guru. Cecilia says, speaking of psychedelics, what is your personal opinion on smoking marijuana and whether it affects a person's spiritual growth? That is such a good question, Cecilia. And again, you have to listen to yourself. When I was in college, I smoked a decent amount. And then after a while, I, I noticed I wasn't getting anything done. And I was at Vanderbilt and I decided I'm stopping just because I need, I'm going to go under in life, in life. I already was in pain. I had a, I already, I woke up with trauma. I, I was born with trauma, let's say. So I, I didn't need that. I needed to, I started learning. I learned TM meditation and, you know, I, I started and majored in psychology and I was supposed to be in engineering because I needed to work on my stuff. However, it is nicely recreational and for some people it helps, but it can be illusory. The, the changes that occur, I don't think are long lasting or real. They never were for me. I have a, another teacher I've worked with, Prajnananda, and he's the head of the Kriya, international Kriya, all over the world. One of Yogananda's or Yogananda's teacher, Yukteswar's, his guru was Yukteswar's disciple, same as Yogananda. And anyway, he does an international Kriya thing. And what, what I like is at the end of every meditation, he says, notice what has changed so that you can integrate it in your life. It's not just passively I meditate and change happens automatically. Yes, that does happen, but you have to consciously, and that's where the positive use of willpower comes in. You have to consciously put it into practice in a sense. To see is to be free, but once you see you move forward, right? You do something. Well, sometimes in, in, um, what I found when I smoked pot is I would see a lot, but I would lose it the next day. I would think changing would, changes happened, but they didn't really. And I was sitting on the same couch, uh, month after month. Um, and I've noticed that in a lot of people. What I've noticed now that I've been to India a lot and had gurus and stuff like that. When I smoke, the reason why I feel better when I smoke is it closes my nervous system, the conduits that go to pain. So I don't feel pain. I only feel the good stuff, but these days I want to feel my pain so that I can process it and burn it off. And I feel a hangover for two or three days after I feel these pain receptors are closed. However, it is fun. It is recreational. Um, and I have a friend that got in a car wreck and she has terrible pain in her hands. So she smokes and it helps her hands. She smokes like one puff or she takes a gummy, but a very light dose and it helps her hand. So it has medicinal qualities. So again, all this is double talk to say that yes, sometimes it helps even on a spiritual pursuit. You could smoke, but if you, I would do it very intermittently and integrate, what have you changed from that last experience, making an experience that you do once a month, once a week, maybe at the most, this is just me talking. This is my opinion. You do what works for you. But that's what I would do and have a gap and integrate it. What has changed because of it? And if nothing's changed, it's just like, wow, I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to smoke. Then how can you deal with being overwhelmed? Do you need to, as we've talked about earlier today, expand your nervous system to deal with it? Do you need to meditate and just let it expend its energy like an ice cube melting under the warm sun? Yes, it's cold, but it's melting into water. That's what melting feels like in our human world. That's called pain. That's melting. So it depends on how you're using it and use it purposefully. Use it with awareness and don't use it instead of your spiritual practice, instead of your meditation. Make sure you do your hour a day of meditation or 10 minutes or whatever it is for you. I hope that helps. It can be helpful. A lot of these psychedelics, they have the same problem. Ram Dass, he did a million psychedelics and he told, I was there and I was going to ask him, and either I asked him or somebody else asked him, did they help your awakening or anybody's says, well, at first they show you. So you see that awakening is possible, but then it's like a rubber band is tied to you and it pulls you back into your life. So the next day you wake up your same old self, maybe an even a little bit more pain, but at least, you know, awakening is possible. He said, once you have that experience, you don't need psychedelics. Then do your spiritual practice. Because after that, it's just a lot of different versions of the same thing. And it's a distraction. That was his opinion. And he went to India to find a guru and find a road map that would let him know what, how to navigate, what goes on with psychedelics, the things he saw using psychedelics, how can you get there naturally? But again, on this latest research, they say that some people using a little bit, let's say three sessions with a therapist or one session with a therapist or two or four sessions that can be helpful, but it's not like a lifetime of stuff. Muji, another spiritual guy I met in Terra of Anomaly, he's very popular. People like his YouTubes, M-O-O-J-I, you can Google him. He's from Jamaica. He says, yeah, do some pot if you want, but if you're doing it over a week, you're not, no, it's not, you're just the stone person. And in India, the sadhus laugh at, there's that they call them babas. What do they call them? I can't quite remember, but they're up in Varanasi and they take, they smoke chillums full of pot and hash and that's their spiritual path. And it might be a good one. It's not my path. So I'm just talking, I'm just a guy talking right now, but they feel like they're, they look down on it. They say, oh, they're just a bunch of drunks or basically they don't go for the inebriation. They don't, the sadhus down where I go, they don't go for that. They go for sitting in the cave, being quiet and feeling who you are and letting everything else burn off. It's kind of old school. I'd go for a middle ground. It may be good some, but listen to yourself. Stop when it's not middle ground. Okay. Neat says, I hope that's helpful. Great question. It applies to most, probably most of the people listening or a lot. Neat says, oh, I relate to that a lot. I feel a gap from meditation in life. Sometimes not sure how to close it. Not sure what my tools, it's like I'm missing something. Yeah. Neat's that was my experience. Um, it's, um, if you haven't listened to the podcast that are on inside timer or just Google awakening together and my name, William Cooper, or awakening together, relaxing into happiness, William Cooper podcast, you'll get all 65. And I add almost every week I add one it's designed to bridge that gap. But the reason why you're feeling the gap is there's a lag time because we interact in life using the personality that we built when we were separate, it is fundamentally built and hurt fear and anger. So we can be so relaxed. We could be like some gurus. They're sitting in a cave. They're totally awake. And then they go into the village and they're screaming at people when they look at them funny because they haven't integrated through their personality yet. Well, we're like that in the West. We're the same as gurus. We go into our own cave. We meditate. We might be experiencing different levels of awakening, but we're not having a woken through our personality and our body yet. Maybe we have a little bit, but then somebody says something and we get quote unquote triggered and we're screaming or yelling or inside in pain because it's a process and our personality will orient around whatever we experience as our center. So if we feel that we're really separate people trying to get enlightened at that moment, we are separate and our personality is reflecting that and it's built on hurt, fear and anger. When we've meditated enough and our center of gravity has moved to the infinite, our personality will slowly, it takes a while, but it'll slowly revolve and reflect that. And we will be displaying as in the Bible and Galatians 523, I think they say the fruits of the spirit. Everybody's got their own language. The Bhagavad Gita talks about the same thing. We start displaying gentleness and peace and well-being and wholeness and gratitude and acceptance. These are the fruits of who we are and our personality is informed by who we are and it starts being that way. So there's no gap between the infinite and our world as we awaken through our body, but that's a process. For a while we can be awake, but as we walk through the world, we've got to use the only personality we've got and that is the one we formed out of separation. And so it's got hurt, fear and anger and we're in this odd place. We know who we are, but we're walking down the street, we go to the grocery store and somebody says something while we're in line and we're upset. Hey, they cut in line. I'm gonna get in a fight because I'm using my personality and it's reactive. That's a dramatic example. It could be a small thing. That bird chirped and it disturbed me. I don't like that bird. You know, I do not love that bird. Okay, that's a great question. I hope that helped a little bit. Yummy said microdosing pills psilocybin is supposed to help with depression. Probably not as much as lifestyle changes like exercise, diet, meditation and sobriety. Yes, all the lifestyle changes. Great question. Are the most powerful, I think. I've heard of microdosing. Again, I've just taken continuing education for my psychotherapy license, so I don't have experience. I'm just going with experts in the field and there are a lot of them are MDs. They're actually doing the clinical trials and they say that things like psilocybin, they don't talk about microdosing, but actual therapeutic use of psilocybin with a therapist can be very effective. Perhaps microdosing can be. I don't have any experience in that, but it's so effective. It can be like light in days, more effective than just therapy alone because it opens things up. And then you also work with a therapist and you integrate it. So you actually put to practice the changes, which coincide with what you mentioned yummy, which is the lifestyle changes. So it's inner lifestyles changes, outer lifestyle changes, and it's hugely effective for depression, anxiety, PTSD, things like that. Yeah. Yummy says there's a saying meditation or medication and it's true, but there might be a bit of a middle ground. I am a meditation guy. So I'm, I'm, I'm reaching out here, but from what I've seen, I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to awakening as being open to what life is providing. And maybe there's a bit of a gift here, but what I've seen, I went to Brazil, I went to, um, around Brazil, but in Sao Paulo, I had a friend and she went to ayahuasca church like every week. She was a friend of a friend and they asked, Oh, do you want to go? And I thought about it, but I'm already working on my stuff. I did see John of God there. Um, who's now in jail, but okay. Another story. But he was very powerful. He was a guru with some unresolved personality stuff, and he got in trouble and he's in jail, like abuse and things like that. That happens a lot in a guru world. They don't do their psychotherapy. They don't, they just become awake on one level and they don't do their work. So they do odd things. Anyway, he did odd things. He got thrown in jail. Um, but the women doing the ayahuasca, I, she didn't seem like she was making much progress. Maybe she was, but she did it every week. And so I'm not, but other people do a middle ground. There's another Brazilian guru that's got an ashram in, uh, Rishikesh and his name is, uh, Prim Baba, apparently very powerful. And he likes to use ayahuasca with people and maybe it works. I don't know. Yes. And there's a documentary on Netflix called how to change your mind. And it goes through this and it's supposed to be a very good documentary. I haven't seen it. I would not, there is no quick fixes. Maybe there's a, an aid, maybe there's a help, but not a quick fix. I've tried, I've tried gurus. I've tried, I have tried some drugs. I've tried different things. And if they worked, at least for me, I would be there, but they didn't even the most powerful guru I've ever. And I've met a lot in India, powerful ones. They couldn't take my problems. I had to sit and let them melt out. Like I talk about in the podcast. I don't think there's a shortcut, but I think in a way there is where you can see clearly. And maybe that's helpful. Yeah. Ram Dass had a stroke and I never thought about that. Maybe years of chemicals. I, that's a good point. And I never thought about that. And Tia says discernment is the key. Yes, you're right. If it's hindering the actual work of becoming all there is, I don't think it's helpful. That is the key to all this discernment. Trust yourself and stay aware. If it helps you, it helps you. I don't care what I say or anybody else. If it helps you, it does. And if it doesn't, and you stay aware and you notice, and you're honest with yourself, isn't helping me and stop. Um, so thank you so much. I should wrap it up. We've, we've gone our hour and somebody says, I just lost the name. I was once shown an image of true peace. I wonder if that was an indicator of it just passed by an indicator of something. Peace is peace. If you feel peace, even if it's on psychedelics, that is peace. There's only one piece. The thing is for it to radiate through your life every second, you have to do that just without stuff. So it can give you a glimpse, but, um, trust yourself and it has to be in your daily life. That's what meditation is good for and other spiritual practices to supplement that meditation. Meditation should never disappear in my opinion, but other practices might supplement it. Yoga. I could, we, that's a whole nother podcast. Okay. Lots of other ones. Okay. Thanks a lot. I'll see you next time. Bye bye. Take care. Great group. Great questions. Bring more questions like this. Thanks. Bye.