134 Restoring Flow, Halting Self Hurt, Broken Relationship Q & A

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness.  Participants heartfelt questions and experiences guided our discussion.  We discuss how to release our blocks and let them melt, stopping hurting ourselves, the importance of "getting out of the pounding surf" as a basic step in our path of awakening, some grief is from biological separation as well as past and present obstacles.  Another noticed that he absorbed depression sitting next to a depressed man, etc.

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

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

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

Transcript

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Hello, everybody. Welcome. I trust you're doing well today. My name is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. Let me ask you a question. What do you think is perhaps the most unifying thing you can do for your spiritual practice? I'll tell you what I think, what my experience is. If I had to pick two things, the first would be letting go of tension because every block, every hurt, every pain that keeps you from flowing has tension in it. It's an obstruction. It obstructs your clear seeing. It also obstructs your flowing. You're flowing from the infinite, which is who you are, down through creation or existence, which is just the flip side of the infinite. There are two sides of the same coin. The infinite is beyond this universe and within it is the fullness of all possibilities. When you first come into your body as the infinite, it feels like bliss. Joy. Well, even before that, it feels like light. As that slows down, it slows down into bliss and joy and then moves down through your body and other forms, atoms, molecules, and out into existence. It's a flow. And you also receive that same goodness, love, joy, peace from existence because no matter what it looks like, it's all made of the same thing you're made of. It's all one. You can feel it. It feels like love, joy, and peace. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way if you're out of sorts with existence. If you're at cross purposes, life can feel very hard and there can be a lot of suffering, but ultimately life is created. Existence is created from peace, love, and wellbeing. That is the nature of consciousness. And it's just like if you had a knife made of frozen water, frozen into the shape of a knife, it could hurt somebody. But if you let it melt, it would be life giving water. Existence is much like that. You can feel it. You can feel the love and peace and wellbeing in the core of everything as you become clearer. So to restore the flow, I would say, let's let go of our tensions. And the second thing is clear seeing, which comes from clear teachings or just sitting still for a long period of time and letting all the mud settle out. You sit still and the water slowly clarifies and you can see. Clear teachings also help because it helps us know where to focus our attention and it gives us a head start. I think a lot of what we find in our teachings, we would discover ourselves. Perhaps we already have discovered many of them ourselves by sitting still and just looking. Teachings come from somebody else who just sat still and looked and then passes it on and said, Hey, have you noticed? So clear teachings are very helpful. Now, as far as releasing our tensions, what I mean by that is there's nobody inside of me except for me. So any hurt that I feel, any anger that I feel, any stress that I feel, any suffering that I feel, I'm creating. Nobody else is in there creating that suffering. People may do something on the outside or life may do something on the outside, but it's only my reaction to it that's creating my problems, my suffering, and the fact that I don't let go of my attitude. When I don't let it go, I repress it because it hurts. It just hurts too much. I can't deal with it, so I repress it. Well, that remains in my system hurting me and somebody else two years later doesn't pay attention to me or cuts me off in traffic and that repressed hurt or anger or fear comes flying back up and it obscures my view. I can't see clearly. So it blocks my flow. In my clear state, I just feel myself as the infinite. I feel and I see myself as light, joy, bliss, love, as I come down through my body into existence and I connect to all existence and it's a flow back and forth. I'm rejuvenated by everything around me because it is me. And I flow back into the infinite and then back into existence, strobing in and out in bliss and in wellbeing. I don't do that if I've got too many obstructions that are blocking me. I just feel pain because this flow, this life force as it goes through my body, mind, my emotions, it hits these obstructions. It smacks up against these obstructions and they hurt. They come to the surface, the things I've tried to repress and the things I've tried to repress, I didn't repress them because they were happiness. I repress them because they hurt. So. Let go. Let go. It's a simple thing because life knows it will poke you where you have a repression. Somebody in the line at the bank will say something or somebody will cut you off in traffic or a neighbor will do something or your spouse will do something. Or life circumstances will turn out in a way that you didn't want them to and you'll be triggered and your old stuff will come up. So when it comes up, you don't have to go looking for it. It comes up on its own. And as you know, any feeling of upset is not you. It's from repressed material. It's from obstructions because you are love, peace and well-being. That is the quality of your being. And you know that because when you see around your obstructions or through them, that's what you feel. Love, peace and well-being. You see a sunset. Ah, you feel good. You're at the Grand Canyon. Your obstructions fall away for a second. They just fade into the background. Ah, you feel good. Somebody says they love you. Your obstructions open up for a moment. Ah, you feel good. Somebody gives you a compliment. You feel good. That's your natural being shining through. And that interaction in life, the Grand Canyon or somebody saying that they love you or somebody doing something nice, that temporarily dissolves your obstructions or it slides around them so that you can feel the nature of your being and it feels good. You feel good. It's like when you get a massage and you have tensions. When those obstructions are massaged out and you release, relax and let them go, you flow, you feel good. Same with life. It's that simple. As many of you know, I'm a psychotherapist and really pretty much all of psychotherapy is about these obstructions, things that we have not been willing to let go of. Maybe we can't let go of them because we're too overwhelmed or we're not ready to let go of them because they hurt. And holding on to hurt creates more hurt. Because now I'm shutting myself off from life because I'm hurt or I feel angry. So I shut myself off from life, from being open. I attack you rather than receive you because I'm angry. Fear, I shut down. So when life comes and it shakes us up a little bit, it pokes us and it brings our repressions up. Let's not repress it again. Let's let it go so that we can flow once again. When life brings something up, when our repressions come up, let's let them just unwind, release their energy, breathe in and receive the goodness that's all around us and let them relax, release and let go. Yes, I know it is not as easy as maybe that might sound because when something's repressed, it really hurts. It's a lot of energy. So it's a practice that you get good at over time, but it hurts as they release. It hurt. That's why I repressed everything. And it hurts that same hurt that I repressed as it comes up. You know what? It's right where I left it and it's hurting. So as it releases, it hurts. And this time, rather than repress it, can I just let it exude its energy out of my body? And what I mean by that is just feel it. It feels like a lot of energy. Sometimes it feels like muscle cramps in the body. Maybe the stomach is cramping or maybe there's tension and it doesn't always release quickly. It might take hours or days or weeks, but whatever energy comes up and you feel it and it unwinds and unwinds and releases and releases. That is releasing that part of the giant block has been released and dissolved. There just may be still some left to release and dissolve, which will happen naturally as you don't repress it. You just let it flow. And as it flows, it unfreezes and it restores its natural flow state. It, the odd thing is anger eventually turns into peace and wellbeing and love. And so does fear. And so does hurt as it melts. They're like ice cubes melting in the sun and you just have to let them melt when they come up. There's so much energy though. You don't want to act out on them and hurt somebody else because of the stuff you've repressed. They said something to you. You have a lot of old hurt coming up. You don't want to start yelling at that other person. Just better. If possible, keep your mouth shut. Just relax the best you can and let it convulse out of your body. Or flow out of your body. You'll feel it. And I think you know what I'm talking about. As you let that happen every day, perhaps every hour through your life, you'll find yourself being cleansed and opening and opening and opening and flowing more and flowing more, not completely. Another obstacle dissolves. It's unwinding. You're flowing even more. You're flowing even more. And you don't have to wait until every last obstacle is dissolved before you're flowing fully. Maybe not quite fully, but you're flowing remarkably well. And if there are more obstacles to come up, they will. The increased flow of your innate energy will bring them up too. It's like water flowing rapidly down a stream. It hits up against anything that's left in the stream and really exerts its pressure. Well, your life force does that against any obstacles that you have inside of you. So they'll come up, just let them and let them release and let go. You just relax as it's all happening. Remember, you're not your obstacles. You're simply aware of your obstacles. You are the one experiencing your obstacles. You're not your problems. You're aware of your problems. You're experiencing your problems, but you're not your problems. So they'll unwind and then you'll flow more easily in your body. The thing about consciousness is it's unscathed by whatever it's experiencing or observing. It's not touched. It's like light from a flashlight. You could shine it on a broken window and you could see the broken window clearly, but the light's not broken. It's the window that's broken. The same with your consciousness is light. It's the light of awareness and it shines on your broken personality, but it's not broken. Your personality is looking for healing. Your consciousness is not. As your consciousness shines on the broken personality, the broken personality can melt and release and let go. Those are the obstacles that I'm referring to that are releasing and letting go. So I would just say, let's let life do whatever it does and don't resist. Resistance is what creates obstacles. When I resist life, why would I resist life? Because I've got other obstacles that are repressed inside of me and I don't want to feel them. So I try to avoid things in life because I'm afraid it will bring up displeasure. In the end, life, just as you, just as your being, is one and it's completely trustworthy. It's on your side. When you melt away, life becomes you. It's just all one. So it's not trying to hurt you. It's trying to help you, but it doesn't feel that way when we have obstacles because we're more concerned about protecting our repressions and our obstacles because they hurt and we want to stay away from them. So we protect them. So they're not activated. We're more concerned about that than we are letting them go because we don't want to feel them. And because we're concerned about them and not letting them go, we're walled off against life. So we don't learn that life is trustworthy. We don't trust life because it has a pesky way of healing us and we don't want to feel the pain that goes with healing. It hurts. Wouldn't have repressed it if it didn't hurt. Okay, I'll take a moment here. Perhaps you have some questions or comments. I'll say hi to everybody. Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Heather. Heather says, I need to hear this. Oh, thank you, Heather. Nancy, hi, William and all. Hi, Nancy. Any reflections? Hi, Delaney. What is helpful to you today? Could be on this subject or it could be anything. Heather says, this is a big move. Moves are big things, Heather. I wish you the best on your move. Is there anything you would like to talk about in relationship to it? Heather says she's going to Virginia and needs to leave Tampa, Florida. This is where my trauma started. And Heather goes on to say, I'm nervous, 48, having to go live with my parents. Well, Heather, that is a big move. And the first thing I'd like to say is when you have a big move like that, a big change, it's good to take care of the basics, keep yourself safe, take time to adjust, move slowly, baby steps. And if we want to look at some of the deeper things going on at the same time, do it gently. For instance, all the turmoil that you're feeling, it is uncomfortable. It's only there because it's inside of you. Nobody's now creating that turmoil in all of us. I'm not just saying you, I'm saying me and everybody else. When we feel turmoil, it's our turmoil. An event did happen in the past, but it's our reaction to it that we hurt ourselves with for all the years since that actual event occurred. And what hurt us about the actual event was actually often our doing. It's our reaction to the event. I'm not saying that the event was great or everybody acted well. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that what I carry with me initially is my reaction to that event, whether the person acted well or not. And it's maintaining that hurt inside of me, that trauma. These podcasts that I've done center around many, many ways to let go of that trauma. So any of you that do carry hurt or suffering, I would suggest go back to the first podcast and work your way forward through these different podcasts. Though I am a psychotherapist, this isn't psychotherapy. Yet these podcasts are very powerful and I put in these podcasts, the things that I feel will be very helpful to you often because they've been extremely helpful to me. So Heather goes on to say, yes, divorce from my spouse, married 20 years, have three beautiful sons with him. Yeah, that's, that's hard, Heather. That, that is hard. And I'm, I'm sorry that you've been through that. It may be that your pain, your distress is coming from at least two places, Heather. Missing your husband, separating from your husband. That's somebody you've been connected to for a long time. So there's a biological disruption, a hurt, a grief, and that just takes time. The best thing you can do for that, or one of the things you can do for that is to connect to other things that are safe and offer you love very simply. If you have an active spiritual practice, ultimately you connect to the health and depth and love of your own being, but that sometimes takes some time. And so interim steps would be to connect to where being or oneness flows through clearly and let that soothe you walk in nature, talk to a friend. Be with a loving pet, anything that fills your heart, that biological grief will just take some time to heal. Secondly, there are things going on internally. Some things are just past triggered, old repressed things, as well as there can be current hurts as well. For right now, addressing internal issues might just be too much. Maybe connect to something nurturing like nature and the things that I just discussed or anything else that gives you internal rest or relief. But for everybody else and for you, when you feel ready, let's talk about some of the internal things as well. You'll find that what is hurting you now is both the biological disruption, disconnection. That's not your fault. It would happen whenever you lose a friend or a loved pet, or there's a disruption in your relationship. And just like with a tree, if you saw off the limb, there's a phantom limb. And even with people that lose arms, they have a phantom limb that just hurts like we just discussed. It's just what's happened. And that just takes time for healing. And then as far as the underlying obstacles, a separate, a whole separate track, a whole separate direction where hurt can come from, different than the biological, are the internal emotional obstacles and blocks that may be also coming up right now. These you may let lie for a while until you're ready to deal with them. But let's look at them for everybody else and for you in the future or when you're ready. And the second area of hurt is the hurt already in me or the hurt that I'm emotionally inflicting on myself. Now, we all do this for all different reasons. I'm hurting myself now. There is no other person inside of me causing that hurt. I'm doing it to myself. I can start to let that go. I can start to stop hurting myself. A big revelation to me was that most, if not all, spiritual practices are not about doing something. They're about stopping hurting ourselves. We do mantras so we don't jump back into our thoughts, which separate us from ourselves, distract us from ourselves and hurt us. Or mantras keep us from going into our emotions, which again, separate us from ourselves and hurt us. Or any other spiritual practice helps us to stop hurting ourselves. So this is something we can all start doing very simply is just start doing the opposite of repressing things. Feel things fully. Many of you know, I had a guru, a very powerful guru in India and I used to go to India. Still, Jennifer and I just got back from India earlier this year, but I used to go to India a lot. I've spent years in India. I've been 14 times now. And I had this guru there named Bhagavan and he was the most powerful. I've met a lot of powerful gurus. You can listen to my podcast about gurus or it's often in the title what the podcast is about. But anything along those lines, miracles. I have a podcast on that. Real, very real. He was very powerful. I remember, I think it was the first time I went to visit him. He wasn't well known in the West at the time. He has millions of followers, but there were about, oh, maybe a couple hundred of us listening to him on the lawn on a Wednesday night and you could ask him questions. And one thing he said to us was, he says, do you know why you suffer? And me being a psychotherapist, I was quite interested to hear what he had to say. And he said, the reason you'd suffer is because you don't experience life fully. You interrupt life. You don't let it flow through your body. You resist and you repress and everything you resist and repressed goes deep inside and you continue to hurt yourself with it. One thing that hurts to repressions that really hurts three, four, five, six, seven, all through a lifetime. 10,000. I don't know how many, a lot. He said, the antidote is to start feeling again. Let that energy come out. I don't want to let it come out because it hurts. That's why I repressed it. Yeah, it's a poison. It does hurt. You can let it out. Don't resist. Let it flow. Restore your flow. Don't push because if you push and use your willpower to manage it and push it, there's power in our consciousness and that freezes the hurts back in place. So you don't want to get too involved with them. Just let them flow. Let them emote. They'll do it on their own. You don't have to do anything. Somebody says something to you and suddenly for some unexplained reason you feel massive amounts of hurt and or fear or anxiety. You don't have to do anything. It comes flying up on its own. All I'm suggesting is don't get in the way. Don't yell at the person. That's not productive. Don't take it out on your environment. It's all about your repressed stuff. Let it melt. Let it come up. Let it come out. As I mentioned, if you need more words about on all of this, go back to my podcast. Start with number one and work your way forward. If you follow me, they will notify you every time I release a new podcast or do a live session. So there's that too. There's a good summary that I did and I think it was called relaxing into happiness. Listen to that one and then go back to number one. Okay, let me see what you all have been saying. So we left off Heather, divorced, married 20 years and she's, uh, she's healing some trauma and that's what we're going to do. That's what we're here to do. Yes, Michelle says resistance. Yeah, when we resist, we try to make life, we try to manhandle life to fit what we perceive our needs to be. That perception is based on all of our repressed stuff. We're trying to not have our repressed stuff hurt again. In other words, we don't want to feel it. So we want to keep it repressed. So we try to wrestle with life and that's not a flow. That's not a trust of life. Life will give you what you need, but how can it if we're fighting it and we'll be fighting it as long as we're repressing our obstacles. We just will because we're, we're trying desperately to keep them repressed. Heather says it's the girl I always wanted to be. I had the picture perfect life, so I'm still looping and I need to let it go. I am hurting myself. Absolutely true, Heather. We all do this. You know, you are the perfect person already. The qualities of your being, I know it just sounds philosophical, but it really isn't. As you let some of this obstruction go, you start to feel your innate nature and it turns out you don't need love because you are love and you feel it. It's radiant. You don't need peace because you are peace and you feel it. You experience it. You don't need fulfillment because you are fulfillment. See, when we're blocked, and this is sadly what much of our society is blocked, so it seems like it's the natural thing. But when we're blocked, we look to some perfect relationship to fulfill us or we look to life to take care of us. We try to get everything just so or the perfect job because what we're missing is that we are all the things that we're looking for. We don't need to get a person to fill in the gap. Sure, relationships are great. It's good to have them. It's good to have a good job, but not at the sacrifice of yourself. So this, oddly enough, Heather, may be a big blessing for you. Well, let me reword that. This Heather is a big blessing for you because it brings you back to yourself, which is a blessing. And even if this is the biggest blessing, which I think it is, I'm not saying that can be seen or felt now because you're in the throes of all this big disruption. My friend Bob used to say in your spiritual path, the very first thing you need to do perhaps is get out of the pounding surf so that you're not tossed around. And right now you've got to take care of yourself. There's been this biological disruption. You've got probably a lot of emotions flying around. You want to do some basic good things. Take care of yourself, whatever that means to you. Eat nutritious foods, go for walks in nature. Talk to friends, just basic things, touch the ground. Later you can deal with the emotional things we're talking about perhaps. It might be too much for right now. If it's not, do a little bit, do a little meditation every day. Do whatever helps you, but you've already got your hands full, I suspect. So take care of yourself and know that our hearts are with you. We send you blessings. You've got friends. So I'll read some other comments that people have said. Thank you so much for sharing, Heather. That's a big one. And look, it's gotten a lot of talking going. Claire says about my prior podcast, I mentioned that it would be a good idea. I think for most to listen from podcast one and work your way forward. And Claire says they're brilliant. Thank you, Claire. Alice says, gives Heather a big hug. See, life loves you, Heather. That's what I'm saying. There's flow right there. Alice flow to you because you shared that was a flow. D says, oh, here's another flow. D says, yes, hugs. And we judge ourselves so harshly. Yeah, we do. It's because of these obstructions. There's no way around it. Let them go. Heather says she feels it. All this love. Alice, Christmas Eve is the one year anniversary of my husband's death. Oh my goodness. So sorry, Alice. I cry when there are tears and I feel better afterwards. See, Alice, that's perfect. That's healing. All that old pain is going and that feeling better afterwards. What you're feeling is you and you can extrapolate as that grows and grows and grows. There's more love. There's more relief. There's more well-being and blessings to your husband. As he's passed on, you know, the thing and I'm not saying this about you, Alice, but just in general, I'm not so sure that there's a border to anything after we die. I think we take with us what we leave with and we continue. So I send blessings to your husband and I'm happy to receive blessings back from him. He's growing. And so are you, Alice. Blossom Violet. Good morning, William and everybody. Good morning, Blossom. Linda writes, but isn't resistance sometimes necessary in a social context? I can let go through meditation. I feel much better. But when standing face to face with the person who makes you boil, it's necessary to repress and stay polite when we're in a room full of people. I'll start with this, Linda. First of all, you do whatever works and no other person's advice really is applicable to you completely because you're in the situation. Nonetheless, I'll give you my thoughts and you see, and these things are layered. Growth is layered. Sometimes you just have to repressed maybe. But I wouldn't put it that way. What I would say is, can you, I'm just seeing, I don't know, but can you be in a social situation where you don't lash out at the person? What would be the most healing is if you don't lash out. And at the same time, you don't repress, you just keep your mouth shut, smile and feel your feelings. Don't try to make sense of them because that's what the mind will try to do to try to make it better for you so it doesn't feel so bad. But the mind is just frozen emotions. It won't be of much value at the time. Just let some of this energy boil off. This person being in the room with this person can be a blessing because it can bring up this repressed stuff and you can feel it. However, having said that, it may just be too much right at the moment. Better to start practicing on easier things sometimes, like the person who cut you off in traffic. Can you simply feel your anger and begin to let it go without acting crazy? Because no matter what you scream at the person, they're going to keep driving how they are. I mean, it's just you in the car. So start with something easy. But graduate level is if you can, Linda, feel some of your feelings, if not all your feelings, but don't say anything. You might have to leave in the middle of that social occasion. You may have to distract yourself halfway through. You might have to do something else halfway through. Go talk to somebody else, go outside, wrap a present, go into another room. You don't have to do everything all at once. You don't have to feel it all at once. Any feeling that you feel, any energy that you let emote and come out is that ice cube melting out of your system and turning back to water. It doesn't have to all melt at once, but any headway is good. But you want to be loving and gentle to yourself at the same time. These things are tough. Remember, you're the only one that's making your blood boil. There's nobody else inside of you. It's your repressed stuff. I know this person probably has been very difficult, but in the end, that doesn't require your blood to boil. You could just look at them with sympathy. I mean, true, heartfelt compassion, something wrong with that person. I'm sorry. That is a possibility, but that only emerges naturally when your underlying repressions have melted out. Otherwise, you're just trying to manage your repressions and act nice, act the way you're supposed to, but you don't really naturally feel good about the person, but it's a struggle and you'll find the way. All of you that want to awaken will find a way, step by step by step, and it will be your way. You'll find a way. So we're just brainstorming and talking about principles, but you'll, you'll put them together in the way that works best for you. Oh, Michelle says, Heather, much love to you. And Heather goes off. Thank you. Claire, tears of love and joy, Alice. And Alice says, yeah, beautiful memories with her husband who's passed away last Christmas. Alice says, Blossom and Nancy, beautiful souls. There's a lot of flow. All of you are so brave to share. And in that sharing, you open us up. And you also let go a little bit more inside of you, of things that don't need to be there. Linda says, regular meditation helps. It really does. Linda, when you sit still, the part of you that's watching is you. I say the part of you, but it is you. That's awareness. When what you're watching heals and disappears, you'll still be there. Your body will feel good and you will be aware of your body. But what you're watching is not you. So meditation helps because after a while you start to center and who you truly are. And it gives you some distance from what you're watching. It's like I said before, you can shine a flashlight on a broken window. And that light isn't broken. It's the window that's broken. You're not the car that you drive. You're the driver of the car. Yes, you can work on the car so that it drives better. Or you can fix the window. Or you can fix your personality. But it's good not to be confused which is which. Sitting still in meditation is a good safe way to let things as they come up, let them release, let them unwind and let them go. As I've mentioned, I've talked a lot about this in earlier podcasts. So I'll walk you through it in those podcasts, any of you that find this new or would just like a little support. Heather goes on to say, I know I have to see my mom and sister who I've not seen in three years going to Virginia. Did we choose this path? You know, Heather, let me say this first because it's more practical. Your path is beautiful. The only thing that's difficult is you're feeling your obstacles that were previously repressed and they're coming up. Otherwise, I wouldn't be asking that question. Did I choose this path? I would just feel happy all the time and delighted with whatever was unfolding in front of me. In life, because I wouldn't have my junk popping out. Now, this is not just you, Heather, it's every human being. So this is the human condition. That's why Buddha said life is suffering. But then he went on to say how to heal. And basically, it's let your obstacles go, let them come up, let them release. So life is blessing you every second. You didn't choose life. You have very little impact on life. You wouldn't even have been here if your ancestors hadn't met each other all up and down the line. Your grandmother had to meet your grandfather. Your great grandfather had to meet your great grandmother all the way down the line. The weather had to be just right. The car couldn't have broken down all those things. So life has brought you here and life is blessing you. It's a wonderful adventure. The only reason we think it isn't is because we're hurting ourselves. We are choosing to hurt ourselves. And I'm just saying it's time to stop. We're being called to stop hurting ourselves. And Heather, this is the time to take care of yourself. Get out of the pounding surf. Yes, your path is unfolding beautifully. That's true. But part of your path is loving yourself, taking care of your basic needs for you. Being with your family that you haven't seen for three years. That's a lot of change. So move slowly, do what you need and take care of yourself. Gary says, Heather, we all love you. Yes, we love you and we're sending you love. And Heather, if you haven't listened to these podcasts, I really would go back to number one and listen. They will be helpful and they will add to your meditation. Meditation is a long process because we've been storing our repressions for decades. Decades. And so it takes a while to sit still and let them come up and dissolve, release and let go. We relax even as they hurt. We're the one consciousness never hurts. It's aware of hurting. It's aware of the body hurting. But when the body quits hurting, when the emotions quit hurting, they're exuding frozen hurt. But when they quit hurting, awareness will also observe and experience that. So this is about your emotions that are hurting your body that's hurting. And you're making some big and healthy changes. Get out of the pounding surf, take care of yourself, get safe. And it's too much to ask for you to feel everything all at once. So let's not do that. Let's just get you safe, Heather. Heather says, thank you. And I appreciate you taking the time. Heather, you've given us a blessing because all of us are in the exact same boat, different script, same boat. We have things we've been holding down obstructions. We don't want to feel. It's very hard to let stuff come up for all of us. It hurts. So we don't do it. And then we get crusted and covered over. Claire, good luck on your journey, Heather. I'm on a similar one. It's scary, but we will grow. Yes, it is scary. I'm going to say this as words of support. The fear that we all feel, I do, you do, we all do. When we have change, that's fear we've pushed down there so it can come up and heal. And as it lets go, as it unwinds, as that let's go, it releases and let's go. Relaxation comes in and we feel much better because we feel better at heart. Underneath all that fear is a good feeling. That's why as it relaxes and releases, we feel better. I'm not saying the fear feels good as it leaves. I'm saying we can relax as we experience it leaving, even though it's hurting our body and we experienced that hurt. Pamela asks, is fear really, truly self-centeredness? Well, that's a great question, Pamela. Let's say 95% of the fear that we feel, and I'm just making that number up. You'll find your own number. Is psychological fear. And that is self-centered, not on purpose, not in a bad way. It's just as when we were overwhelmed, we couldn't handle things. So we were oppressed lots. We pushed it down and there's a lot of fear inside of us. And as it comes up, as it's triggered, we feel it again. And often we try to repress it again because we still don't want to feel it. That part is self-centered. We did it as a protection to start with, but now that we're pushing it back, it could be self-centered. We could say that, although you can only do so much at a time. So it might also be a bit of self-love to the 5% remaining. There's natural biological fear. If a tiger is sitting right in front of you, Bob, my friend, Bob, he had this rule. If a tiger is about to eat you within the next 10 seconds, that would be appropriate fear. Or if a tiger is 10 feet away from you, that would be appropriate fear. But short of that, it was his rule of 10. But short of that, all the rest is psychological. There is biological fear, but quickly it turns psychological. And so most of what we are hurting ourselves with every day, beating ourselves up with every day, trying to control life with every day is we're trying to stay away from our old repressed obstacles. Linda says, through regular meditation, I can now feel compassion and empathy for situations in traffic or someone being rude on the street. I let it go. But some older hurt is still a work in progress. Exactly, Linda. Sometimes it's easier to work on things that we can work on where we're not overwhelmed, like maybe traffic or maybe something else. But some old things, like you say, Linda, are so big and they're so buried like a iceberg and the tip of the iceberg keeps or our obstacle keeps melting as it comes up in meditation or as we're triggered in life. But don't act out, but rather just let it emote silently and release its energy. Basically what it does in meditation, because we can use all of life as a meditation to, to release. But as it melts, it reveals there's more underneath it and it keeps coming up and up and up until you can feel when it's almost totally melted or it starts falling apart. There still may be some left, but a lot has fallen apart and melted. You can feel the difference. I think a lot of you can because of your meditation practice, because you're not repressing so much. And I say so much because sometimes we have to take a break and we can't feel everything all at once. It would be overwhelming. Pamela says she loves that and thank you. Well, you're all doing very, very well. My theory is we're on this beautiful earth to heal because what else is everybody doing? You look around, everybody's got something going on. It's not just you or just me or just people on this session. Everybody and the beautiful energy of life that flows from beyond all the way through life and a deep connection, it bumps up against any repressions, any obstacles. It's just like water flowing. If there's any rocks in the stream, it will bump up against them. Well, the rocks in us life flowing vigorously will hit them. And when it does, they hurt. We often tie them to the circumstances we're going through. Oh, it's because of this person did that or this person did that. But really we wouldn't be having that reaction if we had not repressed what we have. It is true. They did do this or they did do that. That is true. So I'm not denying that. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have done this or that. But what I am saying is our reactions are all about us. So life is helping us heal by bringing these things. When a lot of them are healed out, a lot of these obstacles, then life is beautiful. The same things can happen, but it feels more beautiful. It feels more vibrant and connected. Gary says, William, I went out to breakfast this morning with a couple of my adult children and middle aged man seated behind us was telling his mother how depressed he was. I could not believe how horrible the feelings were that I was absorbing from him. Yes, that's another thing, Gary. We do absorb energy from people around us. You know, somebody lights up a room and you feel love. When you're around a guru, a very powerful awake guru, you will feel so much love. I've said over and over. You can't get up off the floor. It is powerful. Conversely, when somebody walks into a room and they're very angry, you can feel it. In the situation that you're sharing, Gary, this person was very depressed and you could feel it. Just like all the other stuff that we've talked about today. Let that fog of depression move through your body. It might trigger some of your own old repressed depression. I don't know. And or it carries its own energy independent. You may not have any repressed depression, no obstacles. Nonetheless, it carries its own energy and just let it release. Feel it. You'll feel it. It'll feel horrible. Don't repress it. Don't try to push it away. Let it go through your system and it will be transmuted. It will turn into peace and well-being. Gary says it has affected me. Yeah, it's probably bumping against some of your old stuff. Gary, we're all humans. We all have stuff until we release it. And it's step at a time. And this energy all by itself doesn't feel good. So both things. Isn't it beautiful how life will bring you whatever you need to reveal what's down inside. That's the next thing that needs to be released. I had this awakened man live with me for a while for a month. I asked him of awesome. Should I work on stuff? Should I try to find stuff that's inside? I know I have things inside. Should I work real hard to find them and work on them? He said, no, let life bring them up in the proper order. Life will trigger the next thing that needs to be healed. And then the next thing that needs to be healed. And then the next thing that needs to be healed. It's very organic. Life knows what it's doing. All the intelligence in the universe came from life. As I said in a prior podcast, it's not like I'm the smart one and life is dumb. Any intelligence I have first was in life and still is in life and much more. So let life find what you need to have come out for you in the right order. We're going to have to bring it to the close. But Pamela says, tuned in late and hearing you for the first time from New York City. I have a master's in psychology and sober 17 years. So in a strong 12 step program, your thoughts and shares speak to me. So enlightened and intelligent for me. I recently heard that if you don't cry anymore, it means your body has gotten used to depression. Been thinking about that. Don't really get it. Beautiful, Pamela. Thank you for sharing that. You know, there are many truths that are, have contradictory perspectives and you have to always trust your heart, not what anybody else says. What they could be meaning is that somebody who's very depressed might go numb because the repressing so much stuff that they don't even cry anymore. On the other hand, if you clear out a lot of pain, you also don't cry so much anymore. So I would ask yourself the question, what does crying mean for you? And where are you in your life? And listen to that. And congratulations for your, your 12 step program and your background in psychology. Jennifer says, thank you, William and all. Terrific questions and comments. This was really delightful and helpful. Yes. Thank you, everybody.