113 Guru Bhakti, PTSD, Teacher Attachment - Q&A

In this live session we start with Guru Bhakti.  Devotion to the guru as a method of awakening.  We talk about what to do when you are attached to your teacher.  Someone with PTSD who is no longer traumatized by it yet still affected by it.  We discuss how to heal and release that PTSD.  We also discussed that psychotherapy can be highly effective.

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

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

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

Transcript

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Welcome everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. My name is William Cooper. I trust you're doing well. Today, we're going to talk about any questions that you might have about your path. And although these live sessions supplement the previous podcasts that I've done, perhaps you've never heard one of those podcasts and you've got questions about meditation or whatever you're doing, we can certainly open a discussion about all of that. In our last podcast, Episode 112, and it was a live session, we talked a lot about gurus, the energy from gurus. Do you need a guru to awaken? Can you awaken with a guru and so on and so forth. So, if that's of interest to you, I would refer you back to that. It was quite detailed. In this podcast, I'd like to continue with that thought for at least a few moments while perhaps you think of questions that you might have that you would like to discuss. There is a path of yoga called bhakti yoga, and that's the path of devotion. A guru is often helpful. These powerful gurus that I referred to in the last podcast, where you feel their energy, it's palpable, it's so strong that it's not, can't be mistaken for just a mental or emotional thing. There are people that can't get up off the floor. It's very, very powerful. So, sometimes, as we've discussed before, there's two main things in awakening. One is to know who you are, to experience who you are. And the second is to let go of all that you've accumulated, who you aren't, or at least let go enough to have a good life and not be impeded by lots of blocks and angst and depression and anxiety, but to be able to deconstruct those things and let them go and rest in who you are. In bhakti yoga, you are devoted to your guru, and that's a good step when you can't really connect to yourself fully. Maybe you're unsure of who you are. Maybe you're just blocked, and it's just difficult in the beginning. I felt that when I was in my process, and we discussed the value of my guru in the past and how he helped me. That guru helps open when you connect to that guru in bhakti yoga. Sometimes it's easier to connect to him or her than it is to yourself because their energy is so upfront and so powerful that there's no mistaking. So, it's a good sort of like training wheels. You can connect to your guru and learn about yourself through that connection. The trick is to, once you've learned about yourself, is to be on your own. Can you now connect it to yourself? Are you awake yourself? And oftentimes people become, in my opinion, maybe a little bit too, it's hard for them to leave their guru, let's put it that way, and to trust themselves. And until that you have that last step, I don't know. I'm not sure if it's complete. So, if somebody says, Hey, I awoke through my guru, through my path with my guru, I wouldn't argue with them. I would trust that that's true. Again, it's important to see if you can leave the guru and walk on your own. Okay. I just wanted to cover that about bhakti yoga. Mark says my guide was more of a catalyst than continuous necessity. Yeah, that's perfect, Mark. And that was a lot of what I experienced too. Mark continues to say my biggest lesson from him was the illusory nature of time. Yes. Time is a useful construct, but it is an illusion. I remember my first trip to India, it kind of threw me because time disappeared and I was the future is the best way I could describe it. I saw things in the future that did happen, but it wasn't even that I saw them, I was them. So, it's all on the deepest levels. These structures sort of dissolve and everything's happening at the same time. There is no time. Sue. Hello, William and everyone. Grateful to be here with you all. Grateful to be with you and welcome everybody, by the way. Welcome. It is good to see you all. I want to get back to what Mark said about his guru being more of a catalyst than a continual necessity. I think that's a perfect balance. Your guru can take you and help you see either through dialogue or through energy, or there are a lot of other methods to help bring you to clear seeing. And I think that is a good way, this ebb and flow catalyst rather than necessity, because in the end you are everything and there's no necessity for anything. You are it all. You are everything. Any other questions that you all have or comments, jump in as you'd like while you're thinking of them. I want to say a couple words about, so in the last podcast, I talked about gurus in pretty much great detail. I'd like to take the next step and say, well, beyond gurus, and these are, if you want to call it, very clear beings that exude powerful energy and being around them, often their energy teaches you in a very deep way because what you can feel in them slowly uncovers the same thing in you energetically. And there's no denying it because it's your direct experience. You can't really argue with it. It's very, very powerful. Often though, these gurus, because their energy is so strong, that is the basis for their teaching, or I would say, in my opinion, one of the primary benefits of being around them is you learn through their energy. Sometimes their teachings aren't really so perfect. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're in the middle, but when I'm around these kinds of gurus, I'm more rely on the energy. And there's another group of teachers that I'll just call teachers that also may have very clear and powerful energy. Maybe others would call them gurus. I'm making the distinction because their teachings are very clear. They have very clear teachings and you can dialogue with them, ask your questions and perhaps energetically feel your answers as well as receive your answers in a verbal dialogue or an emotional dialogue, talking about emotions or thoughts or whatever it is that you want to talk to them about. So there's a whole group of teachers and they are excellent on Insight Timer. There's all sorts of teachers and probably many of you are acquainted with quite a few of these teachers. They can take you in a very deep direction. Sometimes they can cover everything. In my, maybe it wasn't as sophisticated, but my concern was somebody could be very good at teaching, say physical yoga, what we're acquainted to calling yoga, how Hatha yoga, Kundalini yoga, all different kinds of yoga. But maybe they weren't as adept at questions and answers, or somebody could be a good person to dialogue with, but maybe they excluded physical yoga. Things were more compartmentalized. Often spiritual teachers can be extremely clear. But one thing I found that sometimes they leave out is your emotional body. They might just say, drop the baggage or don't go there, or there's no need to hold on to personal issues or something like this. Just drop it, rest in the infinite, let everything go. And that is a deep truth and it is good direction to take. However, my question was, okay, great. How? How do I drop my emotional troubles? How do I let them go? So that seemed to be a weakness across the board. I'm hoping that whatever teacher you come across also deals with every level, all of them. And if not, I'm hopeful that you can put together a direction for yourself where you have a sound core and a sound foundation. So if something's lacking, you know it, and perhaps you rely on one teacher for one area of your life and another teacher for another area of your life, because some are very specialized and superb in certain areas, but not in others. So it's good for you to know your whole self, your complete self. And I often talk of, refer to myself, I experienced myself like a rainbow. There's so many different colors or realities that I like to touch all of them because I can feel them all up and down the line. And when one is out of whack, it translates and affects the other ones as well. So I like to keep my eye on the physical, doing yoga, things like that. The spiritual and the emotional meditation is good for that. Therapy is good for some emotional things. Also on the physical exercise is good. There's also nutrition. There's all up and down the line. There's spiritual teachings. In these podcasts, the series, what I'm trying to do is let everybody know the things after, oh, I don't know, 40 or 50 years of working at this, the things that I've found to be most critical. And I highlight them in this podcast, the things that I feel like we need to go deeply in, I spend time on in the podcast on. The other things I at least acquaint you with. So, you know, they exist. You probably already do, but I'm talking to a wide audience. So not everybody does. And knowing that these areas do exist and possibly that they're important, you can seek out answers. If I haven't covered it well enough, you can seek out answers through other wonderful teachers and they abound. And that gives you a core to listen to yourself, keep an eye on some crucial areas. And if you find others, you add those to your list. And if you find some of the areas that I've highlighted aren't so important to you, you just erase those from the list, but you follow your heart, you follow your evolution, your path. I do this in this way because when I was going through my process, it could be quite scattering. I could be with this teacher for some years and that teacher and this teacher and that teaching and this teacher and read thousands of books and all sorts of things and finally put it together in a cohesive manner. But it's a lot of time and effort, go all over the world, talking to different teachers, having different experiences. It's quite, it was a lot. Okay. Sue says, it is a bit difficult for me to not get too attached to teachers here on insight timer, for example, they help so much, but of course you still have to follow your path yourself. I really don't like to feel dependent even though I really am not. Do you have any advice on this? If my question makes sense? Yes. Your question makes great sense. Um, I wouldn't be too reluctant to follow teachers for a while because they might be speaking to you. Uh, it's like a vitamin deficiency. You might, you might need a certain, uh, to really lay it on thick in a certain area. I'm not sure. Of course. I don't know. The thing you want to watch for is how are you feeling overall? And when you sit still, when you meditate and hopefully you're doing that daily, what happens? What's left? Is there anything to let go of? The various practices are all there. Every practice, basically most all of them anyway, are there to help you let go of things, to dissolve things, things that are in your, that are causing you pain. So when a teacher or a practice is no longer doing that, then it may be, it becomes friendship and camaraderie, but maybe not a, um, a dissolving path for you. So I wouldn't be afraid of getting too attached to teachers, but I would just keep an eye on yourself and you're right. Listen to your heart and your heart will tell you. And the good thing about insight timer is you can't get that close to teachers because they're somewhere on one part of the world and you're somewhere else. So you can listen to more than one teacher and see what speaks to you. But in the end, you're right. It is good to walk your own path and to let go. Yet we are very vast beings, very deep beings. And this is not a quick thing I found. I don't know about you, but once you sort of heal one area and become clear in it, then you can see more widely and deeply and you see another area and then another one. After a while, it does get clear enough. So it's just like a few isolated things floating around. They might be big chunks still to be looked at, but it's not like when I started, it felt like a thousand different chunks of things floating around. And even when I knew myself, it still felt like I had, let's say 900 chunks floating around. So it gets better as you go along. And I'm not saying that it's not already for you because everybody I talk to, I'm not sure exactly where they are in their practice, but I'm referring to myself. It got better. I don't know if that answers your question or touches on it, Sue. If it doesn't, type something else back in. Mark, I was fortunate to work with Ram Dass and Michael Beckwith, Bernard Beckwith in the 70s, but met my guru in the late 80s and he came to us in Seattle. Yes, I like Ram Dass. I've been to some things with him when he was living. I've seen Michael Beckwith on video, but not in person. Would you like to share the name of your guru, Mark? You don't have to, but if you wanted to, sure. I'm not pushing that, but oh, Shiva Bala Yogi. Yeah, I like. Okay. Now is that Ruta Shiva Bala Yogi, the one that's alive now? Oh, that was the original. That was his teacher, Shiva Bala Yogi, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I've heard of him and I understand he was quite powerful and he did 14 years of probably nonstop meditation. These guys, they meditate a lot. He had his disciple, Ruta Shiva Bala Yogi, who is alive. He had him meditate something like eight hours a day or so for eight years, something like that. So, they really sit still, these yogis, and they meditate and it really helps dissolve and let things go. Very powerful. And it lets us know the power of meditation. In our culture, often just to make it possible, we say, okay, meditate five minutes a day or 15 minutes or maybe 20 minutes twice a day. But these guys, really, they've meditated like eight, nine, 10 hours a day. And Sue says, but my favorite teacher on Insight Timer who's really helped me start my journey is doing something else for a year and then it's difficult to adjust in a way. I'm trying to prevent that. Yes. Okay. I understand, Sue. You got a lot from that teacher. There's no accidents. The oneness, you on the ultimate level, you have decided it's time for a change, at least for now. So, you're sort of forced to find, okay, why it asks questions, you know, you're forced to ask questions. Why is this so difficult for me? What does it feel like? Do I feel, and I'm just making up things now, do I feel anxious? Do I feel depressed? Do I feel lost? I don't know. Human nature is we might feel a wide variety of things. I don't have direction. Does that indicate that I haven't really touched on who I am deeply? Because once I know who I am, I can rest there and drop into myself infinitely and any blocks that are still remaining, any disturbances are revealed because they're not who I am and they just sort of stand out in a glaring way. So, as I sit still, they're revealed. That's what these guys, Shiva Balayogi and his disciple and all that from that lineage, they said a lot and things are revealed. It's very powerful. This guy, this guru, Shiva Balayogi, I remember I met a guy in Theravanamalai and that was his guru too. And he said, and he was from New York. I think he also saw him in Seattle. I'm not sure. But he said he was so powerful that people would, in the meetings he was in, they would get up and they would move around and they might start dancing and things. And they had no intention of doing that. They didn't even maybe fully know what they were doing, but the energy was so powerful. They just had to flow with the energy. It was just remarkable. He was very powerful. And these guys actually have good teaching. Sometimes I say these gurus, it's more about the energy and less about the teachings. This lineage has very strong teachings. And I talked about his disciple and gave a website in the last podcast, number 112. So, if anybody's very interested in that, go to podcast 112. It is published and they're all free. Linda, I would love to have an experience with a yogi or go to India, but wouldn't know where to start. Grateful for your presence here, William, really enjoyed your last live event. Thank you, Linda. I want to alert you to, well, I'll look it up right now. I did a series of four podcasts called traveling to India. So, if you'll go back to my podcast, I think, yeah, it starts with at podcast number 76. Again, all the podcasts are free. They're all available on insight timer. If you don't find it there, they're available under awakening together, William Cooper podcast on any platform, just Google that. And they'll all come up in a hundred ways. You can do it on Spotify or Apple or whatever, but I do these live sessions on internet on insight timer. I really like them. Uh, they're doing a good thing for the world, I think. So in those four podcasts on traveling to India, I give you my experience in India, a place to start what I do, uh, travel tips, all sorts of things. So it will be something that at least you can think about. I'm not saying to go to India, but I'm saying I'll give you information on it. And it, it, it's, uh, powerful. And also India is very powerful. And also, uh, Linda in the last podcast, podcast one 12, I talk about those, uh, guru, many gurus. There's so many, I only take a handful, but most, I think all of the ones that I talked about, I gave the websites and they travel all over the world. So you don't have to go to India. Often they'll come to the town you're living in or close by, and you can experience them and see for yourself. So that's another way. I'll give you two more that I did not list last time, that there's somewhere between gurus and teachers. They're, they're also powerful. You've probably heard of them and they're probably on insight timer, but one is, uh, Ravi Shankar and he's got this organization, art of living. And his website is, uh, art of living.org art of living.org. He has various practices as most of them do. And, uh, he's got a nice energy. And another one is, uh, is side guru. You've heard of him, probably his, um, his website is side guru.org S A D H G U R U.org. And he's got a bunch of podcasts on insight timer too. Uh, they're all interesting. Um, again, I, I really have made my podcast because I think I keep you fairly centered in the podcast. There's so many teachers out there. Some do a better job than other, even some of these gurus. So I don't want you to, I emphasize it because I myself have gotten down the road and found certain parts of me were unattended and it caused real problems. So use a balanced approach. That's why I tell people, maybe he don't sign up for anything. Just take a taste, take another taste, uh, open and deepen, use what's useful and then move on. Mark asks, what's my podcast site. You can just Google awakening together, William Cooper podcast, and it's on every, every platform. If you want to know my website, it's www.william e my middle initial e William e cooper.wordpress.com. William e cooper.wordpress.com on that. I have, yes, a link to these podcasts, but also some writings I've done and other things. So that's available too. And really I'd say the value of my podcasts are that, like I said, I've been to India 14 times. I've been to Brazil, been to Bhutan. I've been all over the United States. I've been all over Europe. I've talked to a lot of these gurus, every single, some I've seen one, I saw over a thousand times, another 200 times. I'm a psychotherapist. I've been with so many teachers. I've done it from the ground up and it doesn't make what I'm saying as the only good thing out there far from it, but it is very good. And it will help give you a perspective. If you haven't had the 40 or 50 years to devote to all this, you can disagree with any of my podcasts anytime. And they may not, certain ones may not resonate. So when you listen to one and if it doesn't resonate, but no, that's my experience. So just throw it out. But if they, hopefully enough of them will speak to you on all different topics and give you a center, because I have taken all of these offshoots and gone down every little rabbit hole and nook and cranny. And in my podcast attempted not to do that yet to say at the same time, these things are valuable. These teachers are valuable. These gurus are valuable. Go for it. Look at them, but don't leave your center. And then we talk about how to find your center. If you're not sure what that is and how to let dissolve things that are blocking you. And we work with a lot of different methods. One thing on my podcast that I don't work with, because it's just not what I'm doing and that's physical yoga. So that can hook up nicely with what I'm doing. And also seeing some of these energy gurus I'm talking about and others teach on other levels that are far beyond what I teach. So go listen to them, but don't lose your center. Mark says Beckwith was my TM teacher. Oh, okay. When we were both 18 long before his doctor divinity. Oh, and Oprah. How wonderful. How wonderful. Yeah. I started TM in 1973. That was my first organized meditation. And you might've started somewhere around then too. It's a very good meditation to start with. I do a podcast on it and I call it TM inspired teachings because I don't want to, they have their own thing, but there's a lot of, as you know, meditations that have been inspired by TM. So I referenced those and we talk about that. It's a very good way. Linda, we hear or relate to what we need. Very valuable. Thanks for sharing. Yes. Yes, Linda, we do. And that's the value of listening to a wide variety of teachers. Your heart knows certain things draw you and certain things don't. Oh, Mark started meditating in 1974. Okay. Yeah. I started in 1973. We were just almost touching shoulders there. I was going to Vanderbilt and you know, they offer things for students. I think back then a student could learn to meditate for $150 or something. It was a lot of money back then, but it was well worth it. And then I hitchhiked up to Livingston Manor in New York and did the science of creative intelligence with the team group. Oh yeah. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the guru of TM meditation. He passed away maybe 10 years ago, but it sounds like you've been, you've got a, a quite a, a, a long history. Like I do. Mark Linda asks, where am I located? I'm in North Florida in a little place called port St. Joe or Mexico beach. I'm, I'm actually right between those little cities on the beach. I spent 30 years in Austin, Texas, and it just got pretty crowded. So I just recently moved here with Jennifer Mark. Uh, my student rate was like 35 or$45 at, uh, UW. Wow. I love that. I wish I'd gotten that right. Seattle University of Washington. Nice. And a lot has, has happened in Seattle. That's a very vibrant place. I can see how you saw your, your guru there in Seattle. He says, thank you very much for this talk. Would it be all right to, to ask a question about PTSD? Absolutely. Please. What you have on your mind or what should we talk about with PTSD? That is one of the most glaring things that is not brought up. I hope I think more and more, maybe it is now, but it's often where many of us get stuck. And those things that are holding us back that just don't release are often some form of PTSD. Okay. He says diagnosed with PTSD 30 years ago, meditation led to many truths, felt healed, forgiveness, love, light, connected, whole, in spite of disabling illness and trauma was no longer triggering. Had a dozen years like this with heart failure, meditation became impossible. Then people failures, pandemic and more disability. I'm sometimes better than not, but never where I was. I do feel guarded even with all I know is true. Any advice? Yes. And that's an excellent observation and a question letting us know in a very personal way. And let me tell you, I think I thank you for it. And I think it touches all of us because all of us in some form or fashion have experienced in a minor way or a minor way, what you're talking about. I talk about PTSD in this series of podcasts. I think it starts in episode, let's say 27 through 30. I would listen to those because I've discussed them in a good bit of detail, but I'm going to talk about it now more because it affects all of us. What I found is meditation is very healing and it does help things settle, but PTSD requires a different method. And even though meditation is helpful to PTSD, I don't think it's complete. And I think PTSD goes very, very deep and it needs different ways to release than what we experience in meditation. So yes, I would listen to those podcasts, but let me talk about it a little bit now. And I don't know if you've worked with a psychotherapist if you have, and I'm not suggesting you need to, cause I don't know. But if you have, and I'm speaking to everybody out here, if you want to work with one, find one that has a good bit of experience with PTSD. Many therapists, I'd say the majority don't have experience with PTSD. And you want to ask them, how many people have you worked with? How long have you been working with it? Things like that. So that's one avenue. And whenever I talk about things, remember this is a podcast. And even though I am a psychotherapist, none of this is psychotherapy. We might talk about psychotherapeutic issues, but it's not psychotherapy. So if you need psychotherapy, find it. And I do have a podcast on how to find it inexpensively or free. So I'm trying to cover every base to say, if somebody needs it, you can get it. Anyway, that's podcasts, maybe around 95. I'm going to guess you can just scroll back through them and you'll see it in the title. So here's what I do because I've had a lot of PTSD. And I've had a lot of experience with gurus and teachers and it didn't really touch the core of the PTSD. How do you know you still have PTSD? If something is persistent and it still bothers you, are you anxious? Do you get depressed? Are you guarded? That's not the nature of your being. So there's something that's clamped down, an attitude that's not releasing. My guess is that's PTSD. Again, not being in therapy. I don't want to diagnose anything, so I'm not, but we're just talking. So in the process that I describe in those five podcasts, and I can't do it deeply in this one podcast because it's just a kind of a wing and a prayer right now, go back to those other podcasts. But as a shorthand version, if it were me, what I would do is I would listen to podcast 27 through 30 without needing to completely devote myself to them. I just would listen to them. I might work with them a bit. Then I would start in the beginning of all these podcasts with number one, because these podcasts are designed to release things and PTSD. One of the problems is things haven't been released fully. Try as you might. Okay. I would do them in, in sequence and order is what I would do. However, to talk briefly about some of the methods and you may already know them about PTSD, but Peter Levine, he was one of the grandfathers of how to treat PTSD. And on my website, I have a couple of videos that I have found very helpful that Peter Levine has done. And that's the website I referred to earlier in this podcast, uh, www.williamecooper.wordpress.com. I would go to that and go to the resource page. And towards the bottom, you'll see a couple, you'll see a little thing about PTSD and you'll see some videos. I would listen to the podcast and watch those videos. And Peter Levine's technique is you first of all, proceed very slowly because you don't want to lock up with PTSD. PTSD can be, uh, gotten by all of us. If we've had repeated troubles in our life, like little repeated troubles, troubles and hurts. And to me, that's the definition of childhood. I think we, most all of us have those, but when they happen repeatedly, people tell you something over and over and over. If you have problems and it's not a big thing, it could just be a little thing, but over and over and over and over after a while it takes and it becomes PTSD. The other thing is what most people are acquainted with is a big trauma. I went to war, I did this, or I got in a car accident or something like that. That can impart PTSD either way. There's a world of hurt there. And Peter Levine says, go very slowly because if you touch this hurt too deeply or you push too hard and too fast, you'll lock up and you won't heal yourself. You'll be too eager and you won't heal yourself. So you, you want to go very, very slowly doing that. You first become in touch with your PTSD or at least the edge of it or a piece of it or a part of it. That's a hurt. That's not releasing experience it. And typically what he doesn't say, but I'm going to add to it. And again, it's all in this pod, my podcast, but typically PTSD is locked in time. It's a part of you that's been twisted off and believes that it exists in a different time and space. It might feel like it's two years old, four years old, five years old, six years old, eight years. I don't know, but it's stuck in a time and a place. And it doesn't know that you've grown up, that you've already meditated for 20 or 40 years. It doesn't know that it's living in its own isolated little place because it's twisted off. So it needs to update its files with that knowledge. Now, getting back to Peter Levine, he says, going slowly, you're in touch with that hurting part and you pendulate or you swing like a pendulum with your energy and nothing dramatic. It's just, I'm hurting. And now you connect to something good, hug a tree, walk barefooted, talk to a friend, hug yourself, pat a cat. I don't know, meditate, whatever works for you. Ultimately it's resting in the truth of your being experiencing that, but that's not always where we start. We don't always, uh, we're always not always used to that in ourselves. So find an interim, uh, like the Bhakti yoga I talked about, find something that you can connect to. Maybe it's not a guru, but maybe a tree is in the backyard and you can connect to that. So you pendulate, you swing from the hurting part, you connect to something good. You let the hurting part, breathe in the goodness, ah, and feel it. See, now it can feel some relief. I know the rest of you might think that's boring because it doesn't have the problem. You have to go to where the hurt is. And that's the hurting part. It's not about you. It's about the twisted off you. So the hurting one does these very basic things. It might only be able to touch a tree just in a very minor way and let it breathe in or take in what it can. It might only be two years old and it can only take in a tiny bit. So you listen to it and you let it receive and let it take in a drop of goodness. And you ask it a simple question, yes or no. And I'm adding a lot of my own therapeutic stuff to Peter Levine stuff. He doesn't go into this quite in the detail I do, but I think it's necessary to make it work. And so you ask that hurting part of you that twisted off part, you say, is it better or worse that we're hugging a tree than not hugging a tree? And it'll say better. Or it might have a long pause because it doesn't know it's only two years old. All this is new to it. So it might take a day or two to just become acquainted to what the heck you're doing. But after a while it might say, yeah, it's better. And then you say, soak it up because what heals the PTSD is it receiving, it has to actually receive goodness in meditation. We often let it burn off energy. We might feel the energy that we are the being that we are, but is that PTSD? Is it receiving often? It's not. It's just seen as a block or attention or something to be pushed away or gotten rid of or meditated away. So it's never invited to receive as that hurting part is updating its files. Another good question to ask is, do you realize that you're safe here now today and let it soak that up a bit, let it receive. You can ask it again, a yes or no question. I know it was really bad where you came from. Does it feel better or worse for you not to be in that trauma now for you to be safe now? Of course, the answer is obvious, but you want that part to take it in and really soak it up to ponder it and then realize, oh, wow, this is much better. Let me enjoy that. You might even suggest, so is it better or worse? It's better. So can you enjoy that? Would you like to enjoy that? Would you like to receive that and soak it up since it does feel much better since it is good? Soak it up. When any traumatized part soaks up relief and goodness, what happens? It relaxes, it receives, it relaxes, and in that relaxation, it opens. And in that opening, it dissolves. And in that dissolving, it melts back into you. It reassociates back into you. This doesn't always happen very quickly. Sometimes it takes some time, days, weeks, months, but a little at a time, you proceed slowly and let it relax back into you, back into goodness. So in this way, the twisted off part updates its files. It no longer is living in this other world of continuous trauma. Instead, it looks around today, sees that it's safe, receives it, breathes it in, and therefore updates its files, relaxes back into you. And now it's no longer stuck in the past. It's receiving goodness now instead. So in working with PTSD, you ask it to receive, drink that in. Every drop it can drink in, and you have to go slowly, like one drop a day or whatever works for you. But every drop it takes in, it relaxes. And just like a muscle in a massage, when it relaxes, the tension disappears. The PTSD disappears. Now along the way, it may release a lot of pain, so it may hurt, and it may be an ebb and flow of, wow, I'm hurting. Now I'm receiving. Now I'm hurting. Now I'm receiving, but I'm hurting so much. Maybe I have to take a break now. That's going slowly. You have to take a break. This might be spread out over a week, a month, a year, or 10 years. I don't know. You listen to yourself and it's about the ultimate healing. So that twisted off part, that heard part dictates the tempo that you go. You don't. It does because it's the one hurting. Okay. So that's just a simple process. I go into it more deeply in my podcast, 27 through 30. On the tail end of all that podcast 30, I talk about another way of approaching PTSD, which is called internal family systems. And in that you're actually treating that part of you that's twisted off like a different personality, like you're a multiple personality in a very mild sense. I'm not saying you're a textbook multiple personality, but Richard Swartz, the originator of that therapy, he says, we're all multiple personalities in a way, because we have all these parts inside of us, all these different inner voices, and he's looking to help them dissolve and integrate. So I guide you a little bit in that method. And that's when you talk a little bit more intimately with that part of you, you at least go with the fiction that it is a different part. It's really not, but it kind of is in the world of personality. Remember, we exist on many realities at the same time. So in the world of personality, it has its own rules. And you talk to it, you might ask it, do you know I'm here? And it might not like, what, who are you? How old are you? You might ask. I'm three years old. You know, you don't argue with it. You don't get too intellectual. You go, okay. Do you know how old I am? No. It might be shocked when you say what your age is. You say, I'm here. I want to connect to you. Would that be okay? Don't expect an immediate yes. Maybe you'll get one, but maybe you won't. Like, who are you? Because you're reassociating what has been disassociated. And that's what happens in PTSD. You're not only disassociated through lots of pain, but it's locked in and it becomes frozen. And that's why oftentimes meditation doesn't touch it so well. It might though for certain people. So I never want to rule it out completely. I hope that helps. That's just a quick answer to you. Okay. He says the idea of existing separate from all of the growth I've had is new to me and helpful. Thank you. It does feel like old habits. The old trauma is no longer stressful. Yeah. But when you put your, and I'm not wishing for this, but in my experience, meditation and all of my growth can make it no longer stressful. But when you actually connect to it, you'll find it's no longer stressful to you, but it's stressed. It hurts. It hasn't taken it. You've been meditating. It hasn't. So that's why it's still here. And it's what's feeling guarded, but because it's part of you, ultimately you feel guarded. You're feeling the effects of that. So really the difference that makes all the difference that I found in my private practice, and really I work so much with hypnosis with 25,000 people in groups and individually that I figured this out just working with so many people that there is a part of you. I kind of invented some of these therapies in a sense that there's a part of you that just hasn't soaked it up. And that's why it doesn't like, Oh, it's like a muscle attention and massages. I alluded to, you might have that tension for years and you might get a massage also. And that tension will remain unless it soaks up the relaxation. It has to soak it in. When it does, it disappears. When it doesn't, it remains. Same with this twisted off part. Again, I'm going to describe it in great detail, podcast 27 through 30. So, um, yes, that one difference might make all the difference. I think it does. Actually. I think it's the difference that makes all the difference. Uh, Richard Swartz centers, his IFS internal family systems on that part, taking it into I came up with it decades ago, but he's got a very elegant way of putting it together. I, I'm not saying I would listen to the podcast and see if that's helpful. If you need more help, then I might find a psychotherapist that works with either of those two methods. Okay. Thank you. Mark says many gurus come to Seattle. Yes. Guru Mai. Yes. She's another good one. She's from Frankfurt. I've seen her a couple of times, or she's got an ashram just north of Frankfurt. Amma, Amma G. Yep. Been to Seattle to see Amma G and others. And they are nice to experience. Yes. When they leave, so does the energy that you experience leave. And so the trick is to do your work and find that you are the guru that you're looking for. And you're an old timer, Mark. I know you know what I'm talking about, but I'm saying it for everybody that's listening. Okay. Such good questions. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your nice donation, Mark. I'm always grateful. Another way to donate. If you find yourself happy with these podcasts is just a simple thing. Send a link to a friend. If you like them, then somebody else might like them. And that makes me feel good just that people are helped. I don't know. That feels good. Okay. Thanks everybody. I look forward to seeing you next time. Take care. Bye.