146 Holy Days And Light, Addicted to Spirituality?, Self Acceptance, Etc Q& A

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness. Topics discussed include: The Light of Holy Days represent your Light, seeing and dissolving assumptions, use of visualization to dissolve blocks, we exist on many levels, Is it possible to be addicted to spirituality, I love my life and it's issues, how to experience self acceptance, etc.

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

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

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

Transcript

0:00

Welcome everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. My name is William Cooper and I trust you're doing well. Happy holidays. This is a time for you to ask any questions to guide our discussion, any questions about your path, and you can type them in that box at the bottom and we'll address them. While you're thinking of your questions, I would like to just say happy holidays and reflect a moment on what the holidays mean. Holiday, as you know, means holy day, days of light. And in the West at this time of year, there are so many lights, Christmas lights, menorah lights, decorations, sparkles, lots of light. And slightly earlier in the year, Diwali, which is a Hindu holiday, holy day, is marked by lights on the end of Diwali. I think the last day of Diwali this year was October 31st and they light lots of candles and lamps. If it's a vigorous celebration, they throw colors on you and it's just an explosion, a celebration of light. All paths celebrate light. Some do it at different times of year. In the West, we choose this time of year particularly. I would like to talk about the subject of light. I think no better person to talk about it or one of the many good people to talk about it is Rumi. And Alice wrote in on one of her comments and she quoted Rumi and she said, if everything around you seems dark, look again, you might be the light. Another quote of Rumi is, the lamps are different, but the light is the same. And he's referring to all religions, all people. They all look a little bit different, but the light is the same. Often in these podcasts, those of you that have listened quite a bit know that what is most difficult for most of us is to free ourselves with those things that hurt, the pain, the suffering, how to extract ourselves from it, how to dissolve, how to awaken. And what we talk about so much is step by step, how to let these things go. Today, I would like to talk about the other side of the equation. There are two things that are going on in our lives. One is all the things that we've created, such as our depression or anxiety, if we have any of that, or fear or hurt or thoughts or ruminations or distractions. These are all things that we create that we can uncreate and dissolve. That's one side of the equation, the things that we create. The other side of the equation is who we always are. And that is light. It's actually deeper than light. In creation, we experience ourselves as light. But intuitively, which reaches beyond creation, we are complete silence, complete emptiness. And you can experience that. In awakening, you do experience that. You experience yourself as, it's beyond words because words are created things. So it's hard to describe, but you could call it an explosive silence, an explosive nothing, the potential of everything. Very vibrant, yet it doesn't vibrate. You can't describe it in creation words, but you can feel it. And we are a spectrum. We start there and we come into this world. And the first thing you see as you awaken is lots of light. I don't mean the moment that you awaken, that's the first thing that you see. I mean, as you become clearer and clearer, it's like a rainbow, a spectrum. And the first thing that you see in your spectrum, as you come into creation is a lot of light. In the awakening process, depending on what chakra you're awakening through, you might experience other things like you might experience lots of life force or radiance or connection. You also might experience lots of love or lots of light or all of the above. So you'll be experiencing whatever you experience. As you continue to awaken, you'll experience the full range. All the chakras will open very, very naturally, but you are light. There's nothing you have to do to become light. You don't have to do any exercises or any yoga or any practices to become light. You already are light. You are love. You are wellbeing. You are happiness. There's nothing you have to do. It's like the sun is always shining behind even a cloudy day, even when you can't see it. It's so foggy or cloudy. The sun is there inside right now. Even if you feel a little bit depressed or anxious or stressed, you are full of light. You are light. And you get different signs of it. Like if something happens, let's say you've been working real hard for a goal. We'll make it simplistic. Like I want to get a new car. And you get the car. Well, then your mind settles down and light shines through. Happiness shines through. Excitement shines through. That is you. That's like the sun shining through a tiny opening in the clouds. The clouds part a little bit in our personality because the personality doesn't have to work for a moment to get something. It just got it. It just got the car. So sometimes mistakenly it thinks, oh, happiness is happening because I got a car or the car is creating happiness or the relationship is creating happiness or some kind of thing that I wanted is creating happiness. But no, it's actually the mind just stops. It becomes very thin and opens. And so the happiness that you already are shines through. So we are happiness all the time. We are love all the time. We are peace all the time. At first, or at least for a long time, I found it very difficult to kind of find my true self because what happens is we become so attached to our thoughts and our emotions. We create little stories inside and they're quite compelling. We create our inner dramas and they're quite compelling. So all of our attention is sucked into the personality or into the thoughts or emotions that we create and we're distracted. So we don't know who we are. When somebody came to Ramana and they said, Ramana, what about my relationship or Ramana? What kind of job should I have or Ramana? What should my spiritual path be? Ramana would say, well, let's find out who you are first before you decide on what your job should be or your life should be or your relationship should be. Who are you? That's the starting point. So I found it difficult to see who I was, to understand who I was because I was so caught up in the personality. I thought, well, maybe I'm this, or maybe I'm the personality I've created, or maybe I just need to do positive thinking and have a better personality or meet more people and have this kind of personality or that kind of personality. But none of that is me. That's just thoughts and emotions and actions and habits. All those things can disappear one at a time and I'm still here. I still would observe, oh, that thought disappeared or I changed my mind about this and that old attitude disappeared, yet I'm still here. In fact, if all of my thoughts and emotions disappeared for a moment, I would still be here and I would notice, oh, they've all disappeared. So I found it very difficult to discover who I was because I was so attached to my personality. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but in sitting still long enough, suddenly one day it dawned on me. My intuition opened up and I realized the reason why I couldn't find who I was, and this does sound strange, is because on the highest level, I don't exist. I am beyond existence. My being, your being, we're beyond existence and you can only name or feel or experience those things that are in existence. So I could never get my hands on because I was using my mind. I was using my senses. I was trying to understand me just like I would understand other things, such as the personality, but you can't find yourself that way. You have to sit still and you start noticing what you aren't and eventually it reveals what's left is what you are. Now, as I started to say, we are a rainbow. So the first thing I might discover might not be beyond creation. Maybe my intuition isn't opened up enough to discover that at first, but instead I feel myself as light or happiness or joy or love. And that's fine. That's on the continuum of who I am. That is part of who I am. It's who I am in creation. I start off beyond creation as emptiness and then I come into creation, boom, as light. And as that slows down, it slows down into sounds, a low pitch sound I hear and I hear a high pitch sound. And then as that slows down, it slows down into happiness and joy and well-being and peace. And as that slows down, it starts turning into atoms and molecules and then body, personality, thoughts. Thoughts also are happening during this process and you can see yourself as the whole spectrum. So when we address spiritual issues, you can't answer it from one perspective because we encompass lots of realms at the same time, physically, emotionally, spiritually, different kinds of spirituality, light, astral body, causal body, a whole spectrum. We exist in different realities at the same time. So certain methods are very helpful for certain levels of reality that we exist in. Like cognitive restructuring could be very, where you change your thoughts so that you feel better, could be very helpful on the mental level. Western psychology has a whole array of practices to help you on the emotional levels, the mental levels. The East is very good at seeing clearly beyond those levels. So when you address issues, you may address them on say 10 different levels at the same time before you get to the bottom of it. Anyway, you are light. Happy holidays. You know, the first action in Genesis of God was let there be light. Before that, it was all emptiness that I'm talking about beyond creation. The first thing in creation was light. Let there be light. Jesus was said to come into this world to show us light. Buddha, light. You see those paintings of Buddha and their big auras around Buddha or the paintings of the Christian saints, big auras around them or the Hindu saints. In Islam, God is light. In Judaism, God is light and well beyond simply light. So in these holidays, you'll see lots of sparkles, lots of light. That's to remind you and to remind all of us that we are light. I want to say one other thing about light and then I'll address your questions. As light expands, if you shine a flashlight, why doesn't that light just go forever? Because it hits something. It'll hit a tree, a house, hit the atmosphere. It'll hit something and it will diffract that light. Well, inside, you are light. And as you expand, it will hit something. And what does it hit? It hits obstacles that you've created in the past. Fears, hurts, mental, emotional complexes, parts of the personality, anything that doesn't flow with light is very reactive and it will hit that and you will feel it and it will want to release. So somebody asked me the other day as they were expanding inside and feeling better and better and happier and happier, how come all of a sudden an old trauma came flying up? It's because that light expanded, expanded, expanded. And as you get stronger and clearer and clearer, your light expands deeper and farther and farther and deeper. And then boom, it hits something because now it's shining further than it ever had before. It hits something inside of you that had been repressed and stuck in the far reaches inside. And then that trauma comes up. And you do the same thing as we've talked about in all these podcasts that have preceded this. You allow that whatever pops up to dissipate, release, relax, breathe in the well-being that you are and let go. And it disappears into light. It turns back into what it was made of, which is free-flowing consciousness, which is light. By the way, if you're new to these podcasts, the best way to listen to them is to start at podcast number one and work your way forward because each podcast is built on the ones before. And these podcasts are a systematic approach on how, how to awaken, what's going on inside of you when you experience certain things, what is that? And then in the podcast, we talk about some things that may be going on inside you and you can look for yourself and you can determine is that what's happening or not? Maybe, maybe not, but it's a step-by-step process on how to realize yourself as light and beyond, as well as release anything that's been blocking you. Each podcast does stand on its own, so you can listen to any of them where the titles really speak to you. But for the best power, I would listen to them starting with podcast number one and working your way forward. Okay. Welcome everybody. It's good to see you. Hi, Jennifer. Jennifer says, hello all and happy holidays around the world. Yes. Happy holidays to everybody. Leanne says, hi William. It's nice to see you. Hi Leanne. It's been a while. Yes. So sorry for the long message. I like it. I was listening to your podcast and decided to stop listening sometime last year as it felt I was using you as some sort of distraction. When I stopped, boy, did a lot more come up and out. Your teachings really help. So thank you. I'm well on my way on the journey and spend most of my time meditating, journaling and doing yoga and just generally focused on my internal world feeling good. And it does. I've made so much progress. Sometimes I do wonder though, am I neglecting my external world? I know there is only one world, but do you think it's possible to become overly consumed by the spiritual path? I prefer solitude. If I don't meditate for too long, I don't feel right. And I'm reluctant to take on extra work and make more money as I don't want it, want it to take up too much of my time. I guess you could say my external world is stagnant. What a wonderful comment Leanne. And it is good to see you. Yes. I think a lot of people on the spiritual path have some form of that question that they wonder about. So let's look at it for a second. When you sit still and when you journal, what are you doing? You're allowing yourself to know better, both who you are and who you aren't. Before you know who you are and who you aren't, it's hard to live a conscious life. You can react because when you don't live a conscious life, you simply are left to react through your day. Stimulus response. When you're conscious of who you are, you begin to flow through your day. And as I started to say before, we exist on many, many different realities. So Leanne, you're going to go through different phases of all of this. At a certain time, it's just good to stop and see what's going on and release the things that are troubling and blocking and to enjoy the beauty of who you are. The more that you release that's obscuring the beauty of who you are, the more you experience who you are. Those things that block who we are are called different things on different paths. In Christianity, it's called sin. In Hinduism and Buddhism, it's called ignorance, delusion. They're the same things and they're blocking who we are. So as you release and dissolve these sins, ignorance, delusions, whatever you want to call them, choose your word. Those clouds dispel and you become illuminated, enlightened bit by bit by bit by bit. You feel it. You feel the beauty. You exude the beauty of who you are. And from that core of knowing who you are, you can better flow into the world and the world can flow with you rather than fighting the world, reacting to the world. I need to make things happen because nobody else will. I don't trust the universe to help me. Therefore I have to do it. Now in real life, in awakening, it's sort of a combination of both. The deeper the trust, the more grace or the more universe flows to meet you and things open up more easily. Yet you do apply energy and effort and focus. In the East, in India, there's a system where you go through various stages of your life. While you're more unawake, you go to school, you then form a relationship, you get married, you start a business, you have children. And then as you wrap up these worldly endeavors, you may even leave your family. You may go to a cave. You may just be in silence and solitude so that you can discover yourself more deeply. So I'm going to answer your question more directly now that I've sort of hit all around it. Is it possible to be overly consumed by the spiritual path? In clarity, I don't think so because the spiritual path is simply about being clear. You trust yourself and you trust this is what I need to do right now. If I don't do this, I'm going to be consumed by my inner distractions and my inner blocks and my inner pains and suffering. And that will be my life because if I don't work with it, it won't be worked with. So I'm going to sit still and stay on my path. Now, often it's a blend. We have to be in this world to earn a living and work with the circumstances that we find ourselves in. But we can also do our spiritual path every day too. We can meditate some, perhaps do a little bit of yoga, journaling, whatever we need to do. So often it's a blend. And the real issue is, what is the blend that works best for you? And on that you follow your heart. And personally, I think you're doing great. I think it's perfect what you're doing. I've given up lots of money because I've stayed on my spiritual path. But funny enough, lots of money came to me. So I don't know. I did it both. So I hope that answers your question. You know, also, as you listen to your intuition, part of awakening is connecting. And there is a podcast in the group that I've done on connection. Perhaps you've heard that one. And in connecting and deep connecting to the external world, what happens is because we all are one, connection is the natural state for all of us on the outside. But as we connect, sometimes we feel held back. We feel blocked. We feel fear. We feel hurt. We feel something. And it becomes difficult to connect fully. And we have to ask ourselves why. Well, it's that thing that is coaxed up that's blocking us. So that also reveals areas to let go of, to heal when we connect in the external world. So I would say you're going to follow your own rhythm. At times it will be more to go in and be on the internal world. Ramana was in a cave for 10 or 20 years. Then he went into the external world a bit more. You may be in your own internal cave for a while, but then your intuition might coax you to reach out into the external world more and more and more. That's a great question. I hope that answered some of it. If it didn't, just jump in and ask a little bit more, Leanne. It is good to see you. And I'm glad that you're following your heart. Leanne said, thank you, William. You're right. When I interact a little more with the external world, something else always comes up for healing. Yeah, because that's what I observed too, Leanne. And we are one. I think it's helpful. You know, I talk a lot about taking baby steps. And I think what you're doing is very helpful where you're sitting with yourself and you're getting to know yourself. You're journaling, you're meditating, you're doing yoga or a number of things, and you're letting go of piles of things that are going on on the inside. And then baby steps to connect to the outside also help things come up. And it's part of your path. As more gets cleared out on the inside, you're better able to connect on the outside. At least that's what I find for myself. So I like how you're doing it. Not to say some people connect mostly on the outside and they let that be their practice. So we're all a little bit different, but I do like what you're doing, Leanne. I would like to say that as more and more clears out inside, as more comes up, we sit still, we observe it. It begins to melt or unwind and release its energy and start to dissipate. There's more freedom inside. There's more space and there's more room. What I've noticed as that room expands and becomes more spacious and empty, thoughts slow down. And for times there are no thoughts until you need one, then you create one. Thoughts are really just simply hallucinations. We create them from consciousness. So we create thoughts as we need them, but mostly it's much more quiet inside. And as your light expands out, you may notice that on the peripheries are beyond thoughts in a way, yet they're related to thought. It's like attitudes. It's like your perceptions of the world. If you wake up and you have a negative perception or attitude, it might be first thing in the morning, you feel a little uncomfortable about going out into the world because you have an attitude or you may have an attitude of some other kind. And often those are unnoticed because it's just the way that we actually organize the thoughts that we do create. We organize them with this program of attitudes. It's like the very far reaches of the operating system. And when those come up, these attitudes and you see them and they can be simply habits, habits, attitudes, I think they're in a way can be closely related. But when they come up, you work with them in the same way that we've talked about in the other podcast. You just feel them, you watch them and you aren't captured by them, but you let them expend their energy and they might, as they expend their energy, whatever that operating system is made of. For instance, if you as a little child did not feel safe, somewhere on the far reaches of your personality might be a feeling of insecurity or unsafety way out on the far reaches. You hardly notice it because so many thoughts come up right in the front and center. But as those thoughts clear out, you start to notice there's a wariness, maybe an attitude of wariness or of unsafety. Or if you didn't feel love, you might feel, I don't know, an attitude of unlovingness that somehow guiding the thoughts themselves. When you get to that, when you see that, as I said, you release it the same way you do as the other thoughts that are more dominant. You let them come up, expend their energy, release, relax, breathe in well-being, breathe in the qualities of your being that you by now have discovered because you've been sitting still and putting your attention on the light that you are. You let it breathe that in and as it breathes it in, it dissolves. And you may simply want to have a mantra because that expresses a word or a feeling that you are feeling yourself as, for instance, your beingness, you might have discovered yourself primarily feeling as light or as love or as happiness might be coming through. So you might just repeat yourself the word happiness from time to time that keeps you connected to what you are experiencing, which is happiness, happiness or peace or well-being. And it's almost like you just, in a sense, you just stop using that old attitude, the old attitude of unhappiness or unlove, or you stop creating that attitude because in truth, there's nothing we have to do to be ourselves. We already are that. So, what sometimes feels like work on the spiritual path isn't work, it's stopping, maintaining a delusion. So, we stop creating the attitude of unhappiness or we stop creating whatever's on the periphery of our operating system. We stop creating insecurity, we stop creating daily anxiety. And sometimes we just say the word stop. That sounds like I'm doing something, but actually what I'm doing is stopping doing something. I'm stopping continually rebooting and creating this perspective of unhappiness or fear or anxiety. I don't know if that makes sense. And also in a related way, when I discover a block coming up, especially in this operating system out on the periphery, but any block will do, I could picture what it will turn into as it melts, which is light. So, rather than doing anything complicated, I give it a track to run on. I just picture light. Now, when something's frozen inside of me, when I take free flowing consciousness and light, and I apply my willpower to it, and I put an attitude into it, I manifest something. I create an emotion called anxiety or hurt or fear, and I create the thoughts that go with it. It's like, as we've talked about before, frozen ice cubes, like a frozen ice knife. I've created that. So, as it comes up to melt and it exudes what it's made of to help it facilitate its melting back into what it's truly made of, which is consciousness, I can just picture it as consciousness. Not vigorously, because if I do it with too much willpower, I get too involved in it and I keep it fixed and created as ice. Instead, I just relax and I let it become what it is. And I somehow, there's a knowing inside of me of what it is. This is consciousness. This is love. This is wellbeing. This is light. So, I let it melt back into light. I picture it. I picture it as melting back into light. By doing that in a relaxed fashion, it's almost like some part of me lets go. It doesn't, it's not invested in keeping it as ice anymore, as keeping it as anxiety, as keeping it as hurt. So, it's another flowing, another letting go, another way of letting go that can be very subtle, but very powerful in your awakening process. Jennifer, you speak of Eastern Western spiritual practices and daily life. Here, holidays can bring stress. Is it easier in the East in your experience? Well, holidays bring stress here in the West, often, because there's pressure to get presents and do Christmas cards, a lot of doing. In the East, holidays are often a time to stop, a lot of stopping and just smiling, seeing light, seeing myself as light. Like in Deepam, which is a holiday in Southern India and where Jennifer and I go is a place called Tara of Anomaly and there's a holy mountain called Arunachala. And they light the top of that mountain on fire with ghee, clarified butter, flames for, I think it's around, I'm not sure the number of days, but I'll say nine days. And there's a flame day and night coming out of the top of the holy mountain, Arunachala. And people look at the mountain far and wide and you just stop and you feel good because that represents you, who you are. Nothing you have to do. It just feels good. I am light. I can let everything else go and let my light shine. Let it come out. In Diwali, there's a lot of the festival of light. There's a lot of fireworks or lanterns. On various holidays, there's a lot of chalk, like mandala drawings people do on their front doorsteps. Just a lot of beauty everywhere. Flowing. You wake up smiling and you create something on your front doorstep. You color. You smile. You look at the mountain or you look at the lamps that you light and you know that's you. So I suppose they're gifts given in these holidays. You know what they do is they cook sweets or special food and they give it to their friends or anybody walking down the street. Come on, come, come. Have this. Have that. You're sharing. You're giving. So it doesn't seem stressful. It seems relaxed giving and stopping doing things and simply being. Enjoying who you are. Like you're doing Leanne. Enjoying who you are. That you're stopping and you're enjoying who you are. And our culture says that you should be doing. Creating cars and widgets and going to the factory and producing things. And what is, who's the most productive? Because that serves our industry. It serves our economy. But what you're serving Leanne and what you're pointing to Jennifer is our inner economy. Our well-being. So yes, in the West there's pressure to do a lot. In the sense of holidays, I don't get that in the East. I don't feel that. It seems very happy. There's a lot of music. Maybe walking around Arunachala, the holy mountain under the full moon. Stopping at hundreds of temples wherever you want to stop. Lots of good food everywhere being offered to you or you can buy or share. People smiling, talking to you. You don't even know them. Hi, where are you from? And you talk to them. Hi, where are you from? I love your country. Truly smiling, beaming, just beaming. The inner light. And that's that inner light. It's a very simple thing. All the spiritual leaders, all the awakened people, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, on and on and on. It's all about light. And there's no doing, nothing you have to do. It's simply smile. Simply stop. Trust. It's okay. Life will take care of you. Good question, Jennifer. Thank you. It is easier in the East, in my experience, in that way. Yes, people work quite hard in the East in their businesses and in life. But there's a fundamental mooring to understanding it's really about the light inside. And there's so many holidays in the East. There's holidays every other week. There's a big holiday. Stop. Remember. Feel. Enjoy. Jennifer says, beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. And April says, hello, just now joining also from Florida. Welcome, April. You know, I also like the Tao Te Ching, the way it's written. It speaks to you from an awakened place. The writer talks to you from an awakened plane, from a plane of light. And flow and everything. And this is a little bit to answer your question. Also, Leanne, the external and the internal blend together. Connection happens and it flows. Leanne, you might, you probably have already read the Tao Te Ching. It's something like it's a little over a hundred verses and you could just read one verse a day. It's quite profound on the blend of inner and outer. And as I was saying before, Leanne, your answer to your great question really exists on lots of planes of reality because you're a multidimensional being. So, you're going to find different bits and pieces and answers to your question because your question really is quite complex and deep. You know, all the lights that are going on around us, all the beauty with these holidays are a good reminder to stop and feel that beauty within us. April says, I'm trying to distract myself too, Leanne. I feel it's better for me to come here than contact someone who doesn't want to be contacted. Yeah, you all know the difference and that is a good point. Sometimes the spiritual path can be a distraction. It can be a healthy distraction. I mean, we could be distracting ourselves in more unhealthy ways, but sometimes it's a distraction. And April, sometimes sitting still for a little period of time, taking a breath and just seeing what's going on inside. If there's some thought that you should contact somebody and let things settle out until you know what to do. Maybe you know, yes, I should contact this person, but maybe your intuition is saying, and I don't know, but maybe it's saying, this isn't the perfect time. Wait until you get the go ahead. Or maybe the personality is pushing you to contact somebody when really that's not the thing for you to do. Now, hard to say, but when I don't know something, I like to sit still until I do know what the answer is. Let the dust settle until I can see clearly. And as my friend Bhagavan always said, to see is to be free. You can see, and then you know what to do. You flow. I think we all understand that feeling though, April, that we're in the gray zone. What do we do? Sometimes we feel, no, we really do need to contact somebody, but there's also about being kind to ourselves. Maybe I'm just not ready. Maybe both things are true. It is going to be good and necessary to contact somebody, but maybe I can give myself a little grace right now. Maybe it's just not time. Take a moment. I can tell you this, you will do what you need to do. And words are so funny because I don't want to use the word need, and I don't want to say you'll do the right thing because it's not about any of that. It's just from your heart, the right flow will happen. And again, we're using that word right, but your natural flow, I don't know what words to use. Thank you, April. Anything else you want to write, feel free. Jody, I generally love my life. Still have issues arise, but that's life. I try to be an example to the young people in my life, but they are always ahead teaching me. Yes. First of all, yes, Jody, I love that. I genuinely love my life. You are love. So that's clarity. That's wonderful. And in that clarity, yes, we're in creation and issues do arise. And that is life, as you say so well. Jesus had issues, big ones. And he said, be in the world, but not of it. And he had issues and he dealt with them as he needed to deal with them. Buddha had issues arise. Krishna had issues. Everybody has issues. And you are an example, just being just smiling and everybody's an example. It's wonderful that you can see the examples and the young people around you because we're all examples to each other. So thank you for that, Jen. Thank you so much, William. These words are powerful and your presence illuminating. Much love to everyone here. This is hard work and we're all doing it. Yes, Jen, as you know, in these past podcasts, and they're all here on this platform, we're at around 145 now. I try to have them be fairly simple and to the point. But a lot of it is about releasing this stuff. And when you release it, there's a reason why we repressed it and didn't want to look at it, because it exudes the same energy it was repressed with at the time. The reason why I don't want to look at it isn't because it's happiness. It's because it's something intense. So it is hard work to sit still and not jump into a distraction and let these things come up and release. And also, again, to the other side of the coin, sitting still and experiencing that which is watching all the stuff that's coming up. That's who I am. As all the stuff that's coming up dissolves, I'll still be here. The watching, the observing will still be there. And what is that? Who am I? For instance, if we were all looking at our hands, what does that feel like looking at our hands? Not much. It doesn't fit yet. Observing somebody's looking. What do I feel like? Not much. If I remove my hands and there's nothing, let's say all my emotions are removed, all the objects, hands, emotions, thoughts, everything disappears and looking still happens. What does that feel like? Not much at first because we're so desensitized to intuition. We're used to the excitement of a drama. We like movies, we like TV shows, we like our own dramas and they're exciting and they're intense even when they're horrible. We're desensitized to quiet, to silence, to infinite. But when we place our attention there as well, not only observing what dissolves and releases, which is what most of our work is, but we put our attention on that which is observing, after a time we start to feel light. I mean, illumination and joy and happiness, or maybe peace. Again, you'll feel what you feel because it depends on what chakra is opening at the moment. So sometimes people, oh, it feels like love or it feels like radiance or it feels like clarity or intuition. Well, it's all of those things because all of those things are pure. They're pure flow of who we are, our manifestation, our, I'm sorry, our being. So you're right, Jen, this is hard work in all of the release. And it's also hard work not to be totally engulfed and distracted in all the drama so that we don't experience who we are. And by experience, I mean, even beyond what can be experienced. Because oddly, again, words can't take you there, but intuition somehow does experience what can't be experienced. It's crazy, but it's hard work because to extract my attention from the drama, it's like turning off a good TV show. It's hard to do. But if I want to get on with the business of knowing who I am, sometimes I have to turn off the drama for a moment. It's okay. I can turn it back on later, baby steps, but good job, Jen. And it is hard. And all of you have so much courage and high blossom and high Alice and hi everybody. Alice asked, how do we learn self-acceptance? I think what I might suggest, see if this makes sense. As you sit still, you'll notice everything that's unloving about you, all of us. I don't mean you, Alice, I mean, in the practice, any roadblocks, any disparaging thoughts about ourselves, any, um, we all feel these things, any, um, numbness to our true self. We're somehow not experiencing ourselves fully, maybe only at arm's length, or maybe we're just experiencing ourselves as personality, or we found other ways to put ourselves off as we sit still these things that arise, discomfort, insecurity, anxiety, hurt, any version of all these things, unfulfillment. We let those go. And what is left is self. It's beauty. It's love. And there's no need to do anything to accept beautiful things to accept love, who you are, or the peace that you are, or the vibrant happiness that you are. That just flows. We all want, we are what we're looking for. We are that what we're looking for. We're that. And it's a vibrant energy or a very peaceful energy. And there's no, there's no need for self acceptance. The only need is if you want to use that word is to stop not accepting, stop the fear, stop creating anxiety, stop harboring hurt, stop harboring disconnect. And as Jen was alluding to, it's hard work, as you well know, Alice, we sit still and we let this stuff come up. When you sit still long enough, you can't repress stuff and it comes up and you see it. And as Jen says, that's the hard work because it starts to release what it's made up, the anxiety, the hurt, the attitude, all the reasons why we repressed it in the first place. It starts to release those things because short of doing that short of releasing our active habit of disparaging ourselves or feeling or creating insecurity about ourselves, just on this attitude or habit, that's sort of our operating system where we automatically shut ourselves down before we even think about it. We just automatically might do it before we let all that go. Before we quit creating that each and every moment, it has to be maintained to exist. We have to put our willpower into these things. I'm no good. I'm no good. And I know you're not saying it that way, Alice, but I'm just being a little extreme. I'm insecure. I'm this, I'm that I'm whatever. I have to keep doing that all day long. Now the thing is, it's unconscious. I've pushed it so far down. I don't realize I'm doing it. So in one of the podcasts or a number of the earlier podcasts, I've said own it, actually bring it so that way I can't do it without seeing that I'm doing it. Nobody's inside of me except for me. Everything that's happening in there, every bit of self except a lack of self acceptance, I'm actively doing so own it. And so when I see myself doing it, after I've sat still long enough, and it's arising, I might go through the day on purpose, owning it. I'm not good enough. I'm insecure. I saying it to myself like a mantra. I'm insecure. I'm insecure. I'm. So it connects me to what I'm doing. And when I can see what I'm doing, it is not in harmony with who I am, who I experienced myself as. And so I drop it. There was a pot, there's a podcast I did around number 10, that talks about coherence therapy. Again, they're better when you listen to them in order. But that's about putting these two things, the negativity next to the power of who you truly are, your wellbeing, and the weaker thing, the thing that's made of ignorance or delusion will melt when you put them together. So by owning it and seeing it and saying, I'm insecure, I'm insecure, I'm insecure. It's one of the many ways I can use to dissolve these, the active habit of holding myself in a diluted posture, putting myself down. Because when I can see I'm doing it, it doesn't make sense. And I just naturally go, Oh, take a breath. And I just stop. Now, habits have momentum. So I'm not saying it instantly stops, but it's a process, but it does stop. So if we try to learn something to cover something up, like for instance, I feel insecure. So then I try to learn security, or I don't feel self acceptance. So I try to learn it. I'm covering up the feeling of not being that it's just a feeling, but I'm covering it up with another thing, another thought, another emotion, I feel insecure, I haven't let it dissolve. So I'm always feeling it. Therefore, I'm going to cover it up with a positive thought. I am acceptance. I am acceptance. Well, now I've got two thoughts. I've got, I'm having to use my willpower to create. I am acceptance. I am acceptance. And then I unconsciously I'm continuing to create. Oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. So better to let the first one go the lack of self acceptance. Most people, all of us have that. And it's a process to let it go. It's so good to see you all. Happy holidays. Thanks for the great questions. And Alice says, that's a wonderful explanation and solution tool. I often tell myself I'm insecure. Yeah, your being is not insecure. You are not insecure. We are not the problems we create. When those problems disappear, we'll still be here. The problem will be gone. So process of elimination. We're not those things. We simply created them. So the awakening process is letting them discreate. And that's what all these podcasts are, or many of them are focused on the various ways you can discreate these things. So have a happy holiday. I've enjoyed it. And I look forward to talking to you next time. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.