138 Flow vs Tension, My Experience, Real Time Releasing Q & A

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness. We discussed that in the Awakening process there is only flow and tension. To the degree I am tense in any way I am blocking my innate and eternal Light which is flow.  Light, flow, and tension.  I described my process here and more deeply in all of these podcasts.  Since each podcast builds on those before, it is most powerful to start at 1 and work forward. Another asked if dissolving pain in meditation might reveal deeper pain.  Jesus appearing to me.  Most religions attempt to express the same truth but use different words and concepts.  And is listening to music while practicing the Awakening meditation ok? Best to not meditate at night? How to release tension and pain in real time as we go through our day so that we aren't repressing it. 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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Welcome everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. My name is William Cooper. Good to see you all. Good to see my friends. This live podcast is a time when you can type in, in that box, any questions that you have about your practice, whatever it might be, and that will help guide our discussion. While you're thinking about questions that you might want to ask, let me talk about something that I'm experiencing. First, here's a candle and you see the flame and the light coming out of it. How effortless that is. Light that flows. That's you. That's your being. It flows all the time. Nothing you have to do. Light flowing. Often in India and other places, they put candles under saints in front of their pictures, symbolizes the light that flows through them and through you. We're all the same. What stops the light? Nothing stops it. But what stops us from experiencing it? Tension. If you think about it, when something free flows, it exudes it. Well, it flows. When there's tension, there's contraction. And just as I contract my fist, it blocks. It's a blocking action. So when I contract in any way, I block my light, at least to some extent, maybe all the way. Now that your light is always burning inside, whether you feel it or not, it's always there. Nothing you have to do. Your light is perfect. The only thing that we look at and work with in all of our practices, whatever they might be, is to find ways to let go, to open back up. The more open we are, the more our flow is felt. What are the qualities of being? Love, joy, peace, well-being, happiness. The more relaxed you are, the more you flow, the more you feel your innate happiness, peace, well-being. When we block ourselves, like I put this paper in front of the light, the candle, and now you can't see the candle. It's there, but you can't see it. Inside of us, when we put thick thoughts and emotions, when we create them and then stick them in front of our light, we get so bogged down with our constructions that unless we deconstruct them, they continue to exist, maybe forever, and they block us. There's no problem with our light, only that we have created a tension. When our light is blocked, we feel fear, we feel hurt, we feel anger, and all these things are tensions. You don't feel more relaxed when you feel anger. You don't feel more relaxed when you feel fear or hurt. So, a quick thing to notice inside of you, is there any tension at all? If there is, that might be a good thing to release. In all of our podcasts, we talk about the how, how to release it, because that's an easy thing to say, just let go. But often, what is not said is how, how to let go. Now, can I share something with you? We'll get back to this light, but I'm going to use myself as an example today, and then we'll get to your questions. But just maybe three hours ago, I got a call, and I heard that a dear friend of mine, Sherry from Austin, was found on our kitchen floor, and she's now in the hospital, and she's got a lot of cancer going on. I don't know all the details, but it's difficult. I've known her for 30 years, and she's a being full of love and light. So, I feel a natural contraction, but always, always, I feel this too. I feel my light. I feel this light within me, my being, always. I didn't, I didn't used to feel it. I used to be so covered with thoughts and emotions, perspectives, hurts, fears, angers, anxiety, existential angst, everything you can imagine. I've felt it through the years. That was most of my life. But doing the things we've talked about in our podcasts, these thoughts and emotions have, over time, dissolved, dissolved, dissolved, let go, released, and relaxed. So, now, I always feel my light. I'm not blocked in that way. I do meditate every day. I do yoga every day. But my whole day is feeling my light whether I'm doing meditation or not, just going through my life. I feel light, my beingness. I say this because we're all the same. And I'm using myself as an example to say, if I can do it, you can. And if you're here, I know you're highly motivated. And motivation is more or less an outward sign of what's happening inside of you. You are on a deep path of awakening. And all of us are in different places on that path of awakening. Now, as I started to say, when I go through my day, and I'm not meditating, but I'm just going through my day, I experience myself as light. And I experience all of the remaining tensions, perhaps, coming up at the same time. I feel everything. Sometimes my body goes into spasms. I mean, just like my stomach might spasm or my shoulders or something. And it's okay, it's a release of this pent up blocking. You know, I've had a lifetime, perhaps lifetimes, of blocking things. And when we form an obstacle, you know, everything is consciousness. Everything that exists is consciousness. And consciousness is made of love, joy, and peace. So when I condense that and turn it into an object, I can turn it into an object that's painful, one that blocks me, I can turn it into fear, or anger or hurt. And then I can turn it into lots of hallucinations that we call thoughts that are frantically trying to solve the fear and the anger and the hurt that I'm feeling. And I can get more and more and more of those. So after a while, my body becomes loaded with these obstacles unless I dissolve them. Because I've dissolved so many or so many have dissolved. Now, I don't have to focus on maybe a few at one time. Now I'm feeling all the remaining ones all at the same time. So I experience myself as a light burning off old blocks. So when I heard about my friend Sherry, who has cancer now, it was shocking to me and very sad. So I just lay down and felt we're all suffering. I know many of you are and have. So we're all in the same boat. Buddha said life is suffering. I felt this and still feel it right now. But I also feel this light, this tremendous light, joy and peace and well-being. So it's kind of an odd thing, right? You feel sad for your friend and you feel immense joy and peace also. And the odd thing about it is I know it's okay. It doesn't look okay, but I know it is okay. One way or the other, it's perfect. Jesus said, be in the world, but not of it. Well, how did that work for him? When his friend Lazarus, when he heard that his friend Lazarus had died in John chapter 11, Jesus wept. That's the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. Now he was perhaps the most awakened being that's ever lived. And I'm a Hindu, I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Christian, I'm everything. But I acknowledge my friend Jesus, very awake. He wept. And the night before he was to be crucified, he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. And he was so anxious, he sweated blood. I'm saying this because you're on your path and you feel things, you feel suffering. And yet at the same time, it's okay to feel good because you are good. And the more you meditate or do your practice, the more you'll feel both things at the same time. If there is a reason to feel sad, you will feel sad fully. When Jesus was crucified, he said to God, or if you want to put it in Hindu or Buddhist language, maybe we'll say the infinite. He said, why have you forsaken me? Why am I completely cut off from you? Why have you left me? So he had a lot of doubt and anxiety, fear. Yet he felt the light within him. And he said, forgive them for they know not what they do. We are all that light. And that's what we're doing here, right? Awakening together, feeling our light. As I feel, as I feel all these tensions that I talked about come up and sadness now, as I feel them, it's as if I'm throwing, because they're in the light of my awareness, I'm feeling them and I'm aware of them. I am light aware of the suffering. It's as if I'm throwing logs into a fire and they're catching fire, they're burning. As they burn, they emit more light, but also as they break down and burn, they release what condense them into logs. Remember I said, we condense consciousness, which is love, joy, and peace into sometimes harmful things, hurt, fear, and pain, anger. When we throw those logs of hurt, fear, and anger on the fireplace and they start to burn and release back into love, peace, and joy, they release what condense them, what I did to condense them into logs. And what is that? That is they released the fear that I put into them to turn them into an emotion of fear and all the thoughts that come from it, or anger, or hurt. So, when you meditate and you sit still, you can't repress this stuff anymore and it comes out. And that's why meditation can be so painful at first. That's why the mind doesn't stop. There is no peace at first, because these logs are burning. After a time, like what I'm experiencing now, the light is more powerful than the logs. So, yes, I feel hurt. I feel pain. And it's affecting me, but I feel more light and more love and more peace and more joy than I feel pain. This is true for all of us. This is how we're all made or how we all function, how we all flow. You know, in all of the religions, and I'm not so much for religion, I'm more like the guidance that I find from awakened beings or embedded in religion. I listen to it. I don't take it all as mine, but if it does make sense, I use it. That's what I would urge everybody here to do. And I imagine that is what you're doing. And including if you listen to any of my podcasts, if I say something you don't like, okay, just disregard it. Trust your heart more than anybody else. But you keep an open mind and you listen. So, over time, I've been to India 14 times for multiple years, because I've averaged about three months per trip. And I am a psychotherapist and I did go through a four-year Master of Theology program. I've had various beings appear to me, including Jesus. In fact, this rug, if you listen to podcast 81, somebody asked me about that experience and I talk about it. And in that experience, first I had immense energy happening three times in a row where I passed out. And then a day later, Archangel Michael shows up and he tells me to get rid of a lot of furniture in my house and make one room a meditation room. I didn't have a meditation room. And he told me to get a maroon rug. He was very specific. And I'd never had any of this stuff happen to me before. I was just like anybody else that never had that happen. It was fairly shocking. And that's the rug, that maroon rug right there, right behind me. And then later Jesus appeared and we were good friends before, but I never met him like that. And after. But what I'm saying about all that is, all these religions, all these paths, they're the same. They use different language, you know, the word God, that's an old English word that comes from a German word, but the word God didn't exist before the sixth century AD. You know, we think, Oh God, that's an English word. Jesus didn't use the word God. He used the word Yahweh. And that wasn't even a word. It was just Y-H-W-H. And that means I am that I am or being. Now in Eastern experience, it's all about being. I mean, so you can say the infinite, or you can say God, the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, and peace, the qualities of being love, joy, and peace. So it's good not to get confused over the semantics. They all, it's all the same thing. Everybody's you, all of you, all of me. We discover the same thing. There's light. That's it. Anyway, if you're new to these podcasts, the way I recommend that you listen to them is each one stands on their own, but they're much more powerful if you start with podcast number one and work your way forward because each podcast also is built on the ones before. And the theme of these podcasts is awakening. And over all those trips to India and talking to all those hundreds of gurus, I had one very powerful guru for over 10 years. He's the one behind me in the yellow. And after I had been with him for around 10 years, he told me to go off on my own. All of his power coming through me ended so that I could find out about awakening on my own. That was a powerful experience. And I talk about that as well. But the point is, these podcasts are all the things I've found important step by step. And I try to say them simply and easily. You add them to what you're already doing. Most will resonate with what you're already experiencing. Some won't. And just disregard those. Follow your heart. Let it be your guide. That's how they work. So if you decide to listen to them and you haven't yet, start with number one and work your way forward. If you see a title you just really want to listen to, that's fine. Listen to that out of order, of course. On Insight Timer, they're not always in order. So just type my name under the search, William Cooper, and the number of the podcast you want, like William Cooper 1, William Cooper 2, like that. On every other platform, they're always in order. So they're on everywhere. And they're always free. Okay, so I mentioned that we are this beautiful light, always. Yet we block ourselves. Nobody else is inside of our body doing that but us. If we have a tension, we're the ones making that tension. Nobody else is. You could say, well, somebody's acting very badly. Yes. And I don't condone that, of course. However, it's our reaction to how they're acting that's creating the tension within us. You could just hold them in love and say, this person is really need some help. I'm sending them love. And that would be total relaxation. You don't have to be tense and pain because they did something. In fact, that's why Jesus went around so much saying, talking about forgive people or don't have judgment or let things go. And Buddha too. Buddha, take refuge in your Buddha nature. That's the light. That's your life. That's who you are. Stay there. Don't get all tangled up in what other people are doing. Okay, so we make these blocks, these thoughts and emotions and we block ourselves how to let them go. I'll say briefly, for anybody that's new, so I don't just leave you hanging. But again, I would go back to number one podcast and get the whole information. But there's a number of ways to release those things that block you from yourself. That you are doing. One way is when you sit down and do what I call an awakening meditation, where you sit still and simply watch what happens. You don't get involved. You watch and feel it. After a time, you can't repress emotions anymore. They start to come up. So you watch them. And as you watch them, they start to burn off. They start to melt. They start to spin wildly and release their energy. That they're like logs burning on a fireplace. And they are emitting the pain and the fear and the anger that they're made of. And they're calling you to jump into them and get involved with them. If you do, you will freeze them back again and they won't burn away. They'll just reform as logs. Because what condenses consciousness into objects such as thoughts and feelings or any other manifestation you want to create? It's your willpower. It's your focus. When you focus on something, you freeze it. You freeze consciousness into the form that you focus on. So that's why you want to just observe. You don't want to get re-involved, re-litigate the whole thing. Just let it go. Let it unwind. And as it has released a lot of energy and it's starting to relax, let it look around and breathe in the well-being that is all around you. The well-being of your light, your inner light. Or if you don't feel that, touch a tree and let it breathe in the well-being of the tree or feel the grass underneath your feet or the peacefulness of the wall that you're sitting next to or the love of your cat or dog or spouse or friend. Connect to goodness and let what is hurting breathe in that goodness because just like a massage, when attention breathes in well-being, it relaxes, it releases and it disappears out of your body. Same with these constructions that we've made and repressed years ago and they've piled up and now they're blocking us. That's how you release them. So meditation, like the one I described, there's a thousand different meditations and all of them are positive in different ways. This one is very powerful for releasing this stuff and dissolving it. I described that in podcast number four or five, something like that. Another way to release things is life. You walk through life. If you've got something repressed, have you noticed somebody's going to say something that will trigger you? What does that mean? Triggered? That means my repressed stuff is coming out and I am overreacting. Why? Because I've repressed so much stuff and it's coming out. Well, when it comes out, let it come out, feel it, but don't get involved in it. Just let it emote. Now that's going to feel very uncomfortable and it's hard to do. So do what you can. And another principle that we talk about early on in the podcast is baby steps. Don't overwhelm yourself because if you get so eager to release all your suffering and you push too hard, you'll get overwhelmed sometimes and you'll shut down. And that's the tension clamping down over the flame because you've just gone into a major contraction. So you want to take it easy. Do what you can do every day, but don't, you don't have to do more than what you can do or what feels good. So life and meditation are primary ways to release. And then there are a thousand other ways that perhaps you're doing a different practice that you're finding helpful. Well, do that. But just watch yourself and know what you're after, which is releasing all that blocks. And most importantly, as you sit still, start to experience what's observing everything, because that's who you are. When everything that you observe disappears, the observing will still be here. That's you because you'll still be here. So process of elimination, that's you. So get to know you. You're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions. So people used to come to Ramana and say, Ramana, what about my relationship? Ramana, what about my job? Ramana, what should I do about the politics of my time? Because he was during World War II. Ramana, what should I do about social action? Ramana, et cetera, et cetera. And Ramana said, whoa, find out first who you are. Let's start with that. Who are you? That's a good thing to know before you decide what you are going to do about this, that, or the other. Find out who you are. And then that will inform your trajectory into the world. Because this light that we really are, we're not the hurt. We're not the fear. We're not the anger and everything that comes from it. We're not our attitudes. We're not our habits. We're none of these things. If they disappeared, if one of them or all of them disappeared, we'd still be here. We're the light. And the qualities of the light is love, peace, joy. So when we flow from love, peace, and joy, our world looks quite different than when we react from fear, hurt, and anger. Those are our blocks. And because we can't feel ourselves, we don't flow. So we rather do the only thing that we're left to do, which is react. So Ramana would say, find out who you are first. That'll change everything. Okay. So again, we talk about all this in great detail. So step by step. So I'll read what some of you are thinking. And if you come up with some more questions or thoughts, just type them in. Jennifer is talking about my friend, Sherry. So sad to hear that. William, I'll be thinking warm thoughts of your friend. Thank you, Jennifer. Ru and Jennifer said love. And Ruth says, if meditation burns the logs of past pains frozen in the mind body, how does one better process the slew of present daily pains and grievances without them turning into logs? Rather, how do you real-time burn? That is such a good question, Ruth. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. It's so important. The way that you don't turn current traumas, pains into logs is you feel them fully. Now, when they happen, Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he was sweating blood. He was feeling stuff. He wept when his friend Lazarus died when he heard of that. So he wasn't holding on to anything. He was letting his hurts flow. Now you can do this as you're melting your old logs. You don't have to wait to melt all the old logs and then start doing this with current things. You do them all at the same time, of course. So if somebody cuts you off in traffic and you feel very irritated, maybe you don't have to yell. They can't hear you anyway. You just maybe keep your mouth shut and feel what you're feeling. All that anger that's coming up or frustration, that's old stuff. It's way more than what happened in traffic. Somebody driving poorly, that's their problem. Why do I have to feel angry? What's going on with that? It's just mild stuff coming up. So when I feel it fully and just feel it now, it's very uncomfortable. I want to yell. I want to do something. I was right and he was wrong. All of that. But just feel it. Let it flow through your body. Let it flow. When something flows, it doesn't get stuck. So for those of you that have listened or will listen to my earlier podcast, the ones on PTSD are especially important on this. Those are podcasts. I think it's 26 through 30, various ways of handling these emotions that can be stuck in our body. And in PTSD, we let things flow. That's how you melt the old stuff, but also new stuff. And in those podcasts, I refer you to my website, go to the resource page. And on that, there are some videos at the bottom of the page by Peter Levine, who's a pioneer in PTSD. And in one of them, they show a polar bear. And what happens the way Peter Levine explains it is in the wild animals, when they have a current trauma, they don't repress it. They feel it fully and they, it comes out of their body and then there's no trace of it. Same for us, but we're too smart. We just repress it because we don't want to feel any of it at all. So we just stick it under the surface. But he says, he suggests that when you feel something, just let it flow, let it flow. So when somebody cuts you off in traffic and anger goes through your body, let the anger go through your body, feel it, shudder, move around if that's what your body's called to do. And in that way, it's not repressed, but all that energy, because that's all it is, is energy. All that energy is released. I hope that helps Ruth. If you want me to talk about it a little bit more, let me know. Ru asks, would listening to music without vocals and awakening meditation be right or wrong? Well, I'll give you a number of answers. Nothing is ever wrong. If it helps relax and open you up, I would do that if it works for you. Now at later stages, really silence is so powerful and more can release. I feel in silence because in music, it does give me something to rest on or relax into or focus on. And because part of my attention is focused on something else, it takes away some of the attention from the actual thing that's coming up. The hurt, the fear, the anger, and all the thoughts that are associated with them. I, I'm just speaking for myself, would listen to music if I'm trying to get away from the hurt or the fear or the pain, but I'm trying to feel it actually, because that's how it releases. That's how it burns. So to the degree I get away from it, if that's what's happening, and I'm just speaking about me, I don't know for you Ru, but for me, it would take me away and it would give me a little relief. That's why I would do it because it just feels more comfortable. I would remove it so that I wouldn't feel more comfortable because even discomfort in any way, even if it was boredom or anything that itself is a feeling that is stuck in my body that needs to release because anything that's not love, joy, peace, well-being or happiness, which are the qualities of my being, anything other than that, such as boredom, fear, frustration, hurt, anger, tension, anything but love, peace and joy, happiness, etc. is not me. So I want it to release. I want to feel it and let it release with the caveat. And this may be the good place for music. If you do it too fast, you'll shut down and block your own releasing because you're overwhelmed. Your whole system has shut down. So you have to do this in baby steps. Ramana talked about half steps, like watching your breath or doing a mantra meditation or doing japa, repeating a mantra over and over and over, like with beads. You could do japa with an affirmation, I am love, I am love, I am love. But he said, after some time, start off saying it out loud if that helps you focus because you're so much in pain, you need something to help you focus. But slowly say it more and more softly and then silently. And then just don't say it at all, just rest in silence. But do this transition over a period of months or years and listen to yourself. Don't overwhelm yourself. Go very, very slowly. That's a wonderful question, both from Ruth and from Ru. Thank you. Ashley, exactly how I'm feeling about a relationship right now. Can't let it flow, but it's definitely on the chest. A lot of anger, frustration from the past. Yes, Ashley, this is the human condition. We're all feeling something. It almost, in some ways, doesn't matter what the content is. It's the feelings that are coming up to release because in the end, you let everything go and it's all joy. I mean, that's kind of what death is too. Hopefully, you let everything go. That's the goal. In Buddhism, they talk about having a peaceful death. I don't know that you can have a peaceful death unless you've already let everything go and you have discovered that you are peace. But it doesn't matter because the idea of past lives are you just pick up where you left off and keep going. There's no pari to any of this. Except that many of us are in suffering. I know I was in so much suffering that I wasn't eager to wait around. I just wanted to solve some of this. Ashley continues, what happens, say, in trauma if you've purposely repressed as to deal in pockets of flow? I feel I had to do that during my PTSD, which was so uncomfortable, but my body just wasn't allowing the flow. I'd like to reteach myself to feel now. What another good comment, Ashley, I actually did this in high school. I admired people that didn't feel because I felt so much and I froze myself. I didn't know anything. I'm a kid. And I just thought that was the way to be and not feel stuff. And it took me decades, I guess, to thaw out. I remember thinking decades later, wow, I feel this frozenness inside. And there is a protective aspect of freezing some of this stuff. Again, I'm not saying feel everything all at once for everybody all the time. I'm saying what I'm doing now. But I've worked on this for decades. And I've sat still and I've watched my, I'm aware of my thoughts and aware of my emotions. And I've had those logs burn and burn and burn and release pain and release pain. So as the pile goes down, I can feel more and more and more. I get clearer and clearer and clearer. But to do it all at once, not, I don't think a wise thing. So I think you've been very wise to purposely feel things in pockets, perhaps one at a time. But as more and more things are felt and you go very slowly from PTSD, you know that that's one of the hallmarks, go slowly so that you don't get overwhelmed. Just keep releasing, pendulate from feeling your hurt and fear and anger and pendulate, swing like a pendulum and touch, connect to something that feels good and connect to it and feel that in you. And then let the anger and fear and hurt breathe in a little of that, and then feel a little bit more of the anger, fear and hurt, and then pendulate back over to goodness. It's a process. So how to thaw everything out? I think you are. And that's just what the process looks like. That's what it looked like for me, pockets, thoughts, feelings, one by one. Sometimes there was so much repressed on a certain subject. It was like a giant iceberg. And it felt like even though I was experiencing lots of this iceberg and watching it, then nothing was happening. But something was happening, a little piece melted off, and then another little piece, and then another little piece. Over time, it melted. Yours will too. So I think you're doing the right thing. If you haven't listened to these podcasts, they're very focused and very powerful on this exact subject. Start with number one and work your way forward. It will supplement all the hard work you've already done and I'm not saying you haven't already done far more than what's in these podcasts. But whenever I listen to a person's podcast, if they're helpful, they deepen what I've already done. So see what you think if you haven't already. Alexandria, would you mind speaking a bit about how the painful feeling may move through the body as it un-cramps before it releases? Yes. Again, great questions, everybody. Well, for me, and this is, you know, I've been at this for so long that it has felt different ways through different times in my life. And I've noticed that we're made of many realities at the same time. So it's hard to speak about something as if there's only one reality. Sometimes pain comes in the form of tension caused by philosophical questions. So it has to be answered on the level of answering those philosophical questions before I can relax enough and drop down to the next level, which is the angst that started the philosophy in the first place. So other times it's in my body and there are cramps and physical things like yoga can be helpful. But let me address your question the way that I'm feeling now. So I meditate every day, consistent baby steps every day I've found to be helpful, whether it be an exercise or spiritual exercise or whatever, because I can handle something every day and it adds up. It's like if you have a room full of dirty socks and it's, they've been piled up for decades, old pizza boxes and old furniture and dirty socks, and they've been piling up for decades, you know, and you want to have a clean room, you've got to go in that room and pick up a sock one day. Well, you don't want to pick them all up. It's too much. So go in every day and pick up a sock. One day the room will be clean. Same for us. So I show up, I do my meditation. I also am in nature a lot. I also do yoga and I feel things coming forth. You might say, maybe they're loosening, maybe they're relaxing, but often I'll feel pain that may be repressed way down deep. It comes up and I've taken, I've started now being able to stay with it and just feel it all. And I kind of welcome it. And I know it's my light. I know it's my radiance. In one of my prior podcasts, I said, being around awakened beings, you feel so much light that sometimes you have to lie down on the floor or sit down in a chair. It takes the breath out of you. It's so powerful. Now we're not used to this in our daily life. So for that reason, it's good to see a guru. I think at least one day, you don't have to follow them or anything like that, but just feel what I'm talking about. And then you'll know how powerful you are. And then you'll know what the level of blockage you have between you and your inner light. Because if you're, if you're not feeling that radiance that knocks the breath, the wind out of yourself, or it could be depending on what chakra it's coming through, it could be felt as deep silence or peace or deep love. So I don't want to put it any one way. But if you're not feeling that to the degree or not, you know, that's where your block. So I welcome all the blocks to come up all the pains. And often the way I feel it is I get muscle cramps, I get cramps in my stomach. And it's like spasms. Sometimes I just have to lie there. It's so painful. But I know this is my light. As I said before, we turn consciousness, which is love, joy and peace into objects. But that consciousness is my light. Consciousness comes from light, love, joy and peace are the qualities of light. So that's all I am is light. But some of that light I've twisted into hurtful things. It's still light, but just like water, frozen into the shape of an ice cube is still water. It could be frozen into a rough and sharp edge. It's still water. So I know that all of these hurts are my light. So I welcome it and I just feel the light as it is, as I've made it, nobody else has as I've made it. And then I, and it will often spasm through my body as pain. But as it does, and it's experienced, it will, nowadays, within hours, maybe, turn into light. I get more of a direct, it used to be before it might take months. Now, it might be hours. It's still hours, but sometimes I just feel light. To talk about what you're talking about, stuff, painful things moving through. That's how it feels. It feels like muscle cramps. My body feels cramped. I feel cramps. I don't have so many thoughts these days or emotions. I mean, I have emotions, but not so many thoughts. And the emotions are more free flowing. Anyway, I hope that helps. But I wouldn't have, I wouldn't be in a place where I just feel stuff all the time. If I didn't sit down and do the meditation and feel things one thing at a time. That's how it was when I started. And somebody mentioned that they wanted to feel again. I think it was Ashley and things in pockets. Well, I would focus on one pocket at a time. And then maybe a little bit of that would melt. And then if another pocket needed to come up, I didn't have to find that pocket. It just comes up. Wow. And now I'm feeling something else. Ooh, this hurts. It goes to the forefront. So you don't have to micromanage anything. It knows what it's doing. And maybe you melt a little of this one and then a little of that one, or maybe you stick with one for a long time. It'll tell you, you just watch and feel what happens. I hope that helps. If you want more fine tuning, let me know. Ruth says, thank you. That helps from his question before about listening to music while doing the awakening meditation. And I explained that awakening meditation, I think in podcasts around five or seven or something like that. Ruth, have you found any challenges with practicing awakening meditation in evening or nighttime hours? I realized that the philosophy with awakening is just to lean into whatever feels right. But curious if there's a common point of view, such as with transcendental meditation, where nighttime meditating is contraindicated. I did start with transcendental meditation, by the way. First I flopped around. I got a book and I tried to meditate on my own. And wow, was that a mistake? Then I learned transcendental meditation and it was very, very wonderful for me. Well, now I've been in meditation a lot. It's just a natural thing. I mean, it's not an artificial thing. You sit down, you meditate. Although I do that every day. I do sit down and meditate every day. But I like to do my meditations, the formal ones, in the morning. You're right. Because when I get tired, it's just harder to do. Because a lot of energy goes to stick with it and focus on pain and allow yourself to feel pain and all this burning of logs and emotions. And it requires a lot of energy and focus, concentration, just to stay there. I mean, awareness doesn't need concentration. What needs concentration is in the body not to flee, not to shut down. It's a body issue. It's a thought emotion issue, not an awareness issue. But the body gets tired and the emotions get tired. The nervous system gets tired. And I talked about pain, but then there's also the immense light and power and joy that comes through the body. And that can be expansive for the nervous system to be able to carry that kind of voltage. And that can be tiring as well. So I think morning is better for me, but anytime you can is the right answer. But morning, I think I have more energy. Follow your heart and your rhythms would be my ultimate answer. Ashley says, sorry, I came in late. Where can I find the podcast? Well, on any platform, if you Google William Cooper awakening, they'll come up on any, any platform out there on insight timer, put in the search bar, William Cooper, and it'll pull all my page up and all my tracks and everything. So far, there's 137 of them, but they're not always in exact order. So if you find that disruptive in insight timer, just type in William Cooper one, if you're looking for podcast one, and that one will come up. William Cooper two, that one will come up. So those are a couple of ways, Alexandria. So sitting with it, sitting with pain may bring up another level of pain. It is okay that we have faith that it will work out. Yes. Sitting with pain often will bring up another level of pain. Yep. But after a while it does turn into light, joy, peace, and wellbeing. That's why we do it. But yes, pain, because it already is pain. And until it unwinds and relaxes and dissolves into what it truly is free flowing consciousness, which is love, joy, and peace, it's felt as frozen pain. And as you sit with it, it can reveal deeper pain. The key is you really, I can't emphasize this enough. You want to take baby steps. You don't want to do it all in one day. You couldn't, if you wanted, but you don't want to do that. It will work out. Yes. It's good to have faith that it will work out, but I'm telling you it will work out. It just doesn't seem like it because when you're releasing, for instance, depression, what do you feel? You feel depressed. You don't feel hope. You don't feel faith because that is overwhelming. It's all around you. So you have to take care of yourself, exercise, take breaks. Don't do it all at once because sometimes people do harm to themselves. If they feel too much depression and you don't, I'm not talking about you, Alexandria, but others take care of yourself. And if by sitting still and bringing stuff up, you get harmful thoughts and things, just stop them. Take this in baby steps. And if anybody is overwhelmed and it would be good to have support from a psychotherapist, get psychotherapy because that's a place that can help one level. And as that level in you is helped, it helps your whole awakening process. I'm not saying everybody needs psychotherapy or should have it, but I'm just saying, if you feel that you do get it. None of my podcasts are psychotherapy. That's with a person talking with the person. Friends are good. So connect. Connection is good. But yes, after one level of pain dissolves or as it's dissolving, you may feel a deeper level. Yes. The key is you wouldn't feel it if it wasn't already in you. So it's good that it's releasing. It's not a bad thing. It's a thing oddly enough to be joyous about, but it's hard to be joyous when you're hurt. So, but it's true. And Yvonne says, you just spoke the words I needed to hear. Perfect. Okay. Everybody, thank you so much. We're all in the same boat. And by the way, you can heal people as far as you've healed and everybody can heal somebody. You'll have a friend or a partner or somebody you bump into on the street. Your hard work will heal them. Just being near them will heal them. The energy that you have, you might not feel that you have much energy coming out of you, but to the degree that you've worked on yourself, it is coming out. It is going through their nervous system. My former guru, Bhagavan, used to say the energy that comes through a person who has healed a certain thing in them is most powerful to heal that same thing in another person. So all of your hard work is good for you, but it's also good for the world. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you for the wonderful questions and perspectives and thoughts. Thank you so much. Take care. Look forward to talking next time. Bye.