139 Intensity Without the Attitude is Your Awakened Radiance

We have all experienced intensity.  Unfortunately, often times it is because of layers of stress, problems, and difficulties.  Yet it is that same intensity that is the intensity of Love, Peace, and Joy in Awakening....in experiencing our true Selves.  There is only one intensity.  Consciousness is like life giving water. It can be frozen into sharp edges such as an ice knife that can hurt.  When it melts back into the healing flow of water it gives life.  Likewise, Intensity without the attitude is Awakened Radiance flowing with its qualities of peace, love, joy and happiness.  The overwhelming intensity one feels emanating through an awakened Being is the same intensity that we feel.  Its just that ours is often twisted with an attitude of stress and theirs is not. Our spiritual practices are ways to let our maladaptive attitudes go.  We keep the intensity and radiance and let the attitude go as we awaken.  This podcast details deep letting go which is not recommended until you are ready. Our spiritual practices help us let go a little at a time in manageable ways.

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, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together Relaxing into Happiness. Boom! That's the experience of your radiant, radiant light. And it's odd that I say that because I know a lot of us have been experiencing a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, fear, anger, hurt. Sometimes we're overwhelmed with life's problems and it sure doesn't feel like boom, radiant light and love and well-being. And we've been on the path for a long time. So I want to give you some encouragement today. I know it's difficult for so many of us out there. I myself have been layered and layered with lots of stresses. A friend with stage four cancer, two hurricanes, evacuating my 95-year-old mother, on and on and on, all at the same time. And I've been on this path for quite some time. And I have experienced everything I talk about in these podcasts deeply. And as I've laid these podcasts out, by the way, I feel like the most powerful if you start at podcast number one and work your way forward, because it's a series on the most direct way that I found to awakening through years in India and Brazil and Bhutan and being a psychotherapist and four years in seminary and being working hard on this therapy. I've tried to streamline the process and explain why I feel this is the most direct approach. And I like to stay open to every approach because we're all different. And some things will resonate more with you than they do with me or where you are in life right now. So please use whatever works for you. And anything that I say that doesn't resonate, please disregard. Each of these podcasts also stands on its own. So you can listen to them out of order. I just feel that they're most powerful when you listen to them in order. I say all that to say what we've done in the prior podcast is we've experienced lots of ways to release what we are not and to realize the radiance of who we are. And we've done this step by step by step. We've learned to let go of, to dissolve, to release particular obstacles or groups of obstacles. And we've learned many different methods to do that. I'm saying all that to say this, what I'm about to say may be way too overwhelming for you to practice right now. It would have been way overwhelming for me to have practiced in the past. So please listen to yourself. Do not push yourself. Go at your own pace because you are unfolding perfectly in the perfect timing and order that you need to unfold. And even if it doesn't seem like it, even if you're impatient, even if you're in pain, even if you're suffering, please take baby steps and go easily so that you don't shut down or hurt yourself or go backwards by overloading your system too heavily. So remember, get all the support that you need. We exist on so many levels. Perhaps at times you need the support of a psychotherapist or a different approach or friends or nature, whatever it might be for you, listen and follow your heart, follow your tempo, follow your rhythm. So have you ever experienced a fully awakened being? Their light is so radiant that it physically and actually literally can take your breath away. You might have to lie down on the ground. You're so overwhelmed with a deep feeling of love or peace or wellbeing or just intense radiance. It knocks you off your feet, or at least it can. Have you experienced that before? It's profound. If you haven't, I'm just letting you know that that is who you are. You are so powerful, but why don't you feel that all the time? This explosion, boom. Instead, we often feel depressed or anxious or very intense, negative feelings, feelings that don't feel good. Right? And we're striving, we're trying, but we don't feel what I'm describing. Well, I have experienced lots of these awakened beings as I have described in prior podcasts. I had one particular guru who actually channeled a good bit of his energy through me for over 10 years. So I got the experience of living a life with this energy pouring through me. It wasn't my energy. It was his, but I got the experience of what it was like to live life that way. When he told me to go off on my own, he took the energy with him. Now it was for me to open up on my own, but I did know what it was like to experience such things. But it also felt like I had to start over because now I was walking my path, not being guided through his path as healing and opening as that was for me. So just like you, I continued to do my meditations daily, do my yoga, watch my problems, watch my thoughts, let them unwind, let them spin around and release their energy, relax, breathe in well-being and dissolve. And then the next and the next and the next and releasing pain and suffering in my body by doing my yoga. So thoughts, emotions, habits, behaviors, physical releases. I would do all of these things year by year by year by year. And through the years I could feel what first felt to be an impenetrable amount of heaviness and hurt and suffering that you couldn't even see or feel through. I begin to feel it lighten and lighten and lighten and lighten until it just felt to be random chunks floating around rather than just a wall of icebergs that you really couldn't see any light through. Slowly over time, these things melted away. I would experience myself as light and radiance, but not to the degree and power that I felt both around my guru and through me because of my guru. And I wondered, although I was not in any hurry and that wasn't my goal to feel that, I just knew that that is a part of who we are. We are radiant light. That is who we are and beyond. So why wasn't I experiencing myself as radiant light? Just a curiosity. I was just going through the motions and doing what I needed to do to let those things go that I could let go. Then I had a period of time that I described earlier in this particular podcast, hurricanes and evacuation and driving three days to sit with a friend who has stage four cancer and family issues and on and on and on all at the same time. You've had days like that, right? Weeks like that, months like that, years like that. Well, some things you can handle just fine, but then you get another layer on top of that and then another layer and then another life just keeps pouring it on, pouring it on, pouring it on until suddenly you're about to burst with so much coming through you. That's difficult. That's very difficult. That's what I experienced. So difficult. And then at night I couldn't sleep. I felt so much stress and anxiety and these problems swirling and what were the solutions? What action did I need to take? I didn't know the unknown, very thick darkness, but radiant. You could feel it. It was palpable anxiety and fear and hurt and so much anger, some anger too. Radiant, explosive. But I just was lying there. But you've felt that, haven't you? Just so much going through your body, so much intensity. Well, I just let go because I've been at this so long now that I suppose intuitively as well as rationally, I know there's only one energy and it's consciousness. And my energy had been twisted and twisted and twisted into hurtful shapes, just like you can freeze life-giving water that normally flows and is liquid. You can freeze it into a shape, a knife, and that knife can cut and jab and hurt. But when it melts, it melts back into water. Well, my consciousness was cutting and hurting. It had been frozen. Now, because of all my prior work, it wasn't as oppressive and overwhelming as it could have been, but it was all that I could take because it was all that was happening all at once, layers and layers and layers. It almost knocked the wind out of me. So I lie there and intuitively I knew this intensity is the intensity of my radiance. That is the light of my radiance that I was wondering about. It just had been twisted into this shape of hurt, various shapes of hurt, all piled one on top of the other. So I just lay there and I just lay there and it hurt and it hurt. And it was overwhelming. And then I changed the perspective intuitively. I just let go. And I also let one thought form go. The thought form that it was all hurtful, that life was difficult, that I was having a hard time. I didn't force anything. I didn't positive think anything. I just simply let it be what it intuitively I knew it was. I knew it was the beauty of consciousness twisted into a harmful shape. I could see it for what it truly was. And I let it unwind until it flowed into what it truly was. I let the hurt, pain and fear and anxiety and anger all release and twirl and relax and boom into infinite radiance. And suddenly just in a blink of an eye, I went from overwhelming pain and stress to boom, that same intensity, but now it was joy and love and peace. And most of all, radiance, radiant beyond all description. And after a time, the wall started to vibrate with radiance. I could feel all of the objects around me, the walls, the bed, everything bursting into flames of joy. Now I have had experiences of this in little bites and chunks as I've been on my spiritual path. What was different about this last experience was that it was everything all at once, everything, including the kitchen sink, everything all at once. There was no blocks anywhere. Everything inside of me that wanted to release was releasing at the same time. And I was able to let it. That's why I say this is not something to do when you first start on the path, because I would have been overwhelmed. I couldn't have handled it. I probably would have exploded. So I'm not recommending this. I'm just saying it as encouragement. This is what is going to happen for you. You will burst into permanent radiance, permanent light, permanent wellbeing. But what's happening now as you're on your path, whatever it might be, the fog is burning off. All that you are not is releasing. All that you are is beginning to shine through. Maybe it peeks through little thin spots or little holes in the, what has formerly been one giant block, but now it's radiating through and then it will be more and more and more. And if you have one of those days where you are overwhelmed with intensity of stress and things that do not feel good, anxiety, take note that that intensity that you feel is the intensity of your light. That is the intensity that you would feel around a clear being a guru, an awakened person. You have that same intensity. That light is always there within you. And it's burning so brightly. It just has been utilized and shaped into the form of problems and anxiety. It's been siphoned off and used to freeze into the form of knives and destructive things that we have been hurting ourselves with. Not because we're mean, but at some time in our life that made sense. And it was a way to love ourselves as odd as that feels. It was very maladaptive, but it might be things like, I won't relax until I get the job done. When I get the job done, then I'll relax. I'll be happy once this thing happens. So immediately I'm, I'm doing it because I think, and I've been taught that I need to be productive and I need to get certain things accomplished in certain times, or I need to get my schoolwork done or whatever the thing is. So it's an act of love to treat myself that way. But later you look at it and go, wow, that's harmful. It's like jabbing myself with a knife or whipping myself to achieve a goal because I am relaxation itself. That's who I am. I am the relaxation is really just the letting go of tension and receiving finally, or again, who you truly are, which is wellbeing. That's what relaxation is. I have tension. I relax it. I let it open and now I feel, ah, good, but that's who I am. Is that, ah, good. That's who I always am. So for me to block myself in the first place, that's maladaptive, but I did it because I thought it was the loving thing to do. Well, our life, our culture, so much has been ordered in this maladaptive way that now we are coming back to ourselves. Intensity without the attitude is joy. It's radiance. It's wellbeing. It's peace. When we do our meditations and spiritual practices, we're simply letting the attitude melt out, dissolve, relax away. So it's a process and you're on it. Somebody asked a Zen master once, they said, do you have to meditate in order to awaken? And the Zen master said, no, but I've never known somebody to awaken who didn't meditate. The reason I bring this up now is the very fact that you're listening to these podcasts is an outward sign of an inward grace that's happening within you. Because as you see through your personality, which is an arrangement of thoughts and emotions that none of them are you, they're just expressions that you have created. As those melt away, you start to see, well, I'm not my personality. So all the things that my personality is doing in order for me to awaken is not what's truly guiding this whole thing. It's something deeper. It's something bigger. It's my true self. It's so vast. It's the oneness of the universe that's guiding you. So you're in good hands. Ramana, an awakened being who passed away in the 1950s, I go to his ashram often in India down in Theravadamalai, but he said, whatever is destined not to happen will not happen. Try as you may, whatever is destined to happen will happen. Do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course therefore is to remain silent. Now he's saying this from the standpoint of the personality. I think I can make things happen, but the personality doesn't really, it's not who we are. It's a fiction. So a fiction can't make anything happen. Just like thoughts can't think and emotions can't feel. They're just objects. We create their lenses. The true light is our being. The true light that shines through our personality is the infinite. That's what makes things happen. That's what guides your life. So the very fact that you're listening to these podcasts is an outward sign of an inward grace that you're on a deep road to awakening. I'm saying that by way of encouragement. You're in good hands. You're, and you can choose the word that you'd like. You're in God's hands or you are one with the universe. The universe is you, as Yogananda would say it. Therefore you're going to take care of yourself or grace is guiding you. Whatever works for you, whatever resonates with your heart, you're in those good hands. So all is well. I hope this podcast was encouraging to you. It's all going to work out. It is working out. Everything you're going through is a cleansing. As you've heard in prior podcasts, the whole iceberg doesn't have to melt at once. You take baby steps and just let a few drops melt off every day. And that iceberg will get smaller and smaller and smaller until it's an ice cube. And then it disappears altogether. You're going through your cleansing, your clearing, and you will shine through the clouds and the clouds will disappear altogether until all there is, is this radiant light. Boom, a continual boom. Thank you so much for all the consistent daily baby steps that you take, even though it can be very difficult just to show up. Thank you for that. I've enjoyed talking with you. Take care.