151 Cosmic Jolt, Awakening Cycles, Centered, World Peace - Q & A

In this Q & A, questions and discussion covered how to experience a glimpse of awakening now for encouragement, How to remain in our core Being in difficult circumstances, How to be in touch with our guru nature and let problems go from there, Cycles and Awakening, Our Inner Light, Accension and Awakening, etc.

This is a recording of a Live Q & A which has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness.

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

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing Into Happiness. My name is William Cooper. Good to see you all. I trust your week or month has been going very well.

These are uncertain times, so I think a lot of people are feeling a lot of different things these days. Maybe we can talk about it as we go along. This is a good time for us to talk about anything that relates to your spiritual path, your life, your spiritual practice. So if you'd like, you can type in any questions or comments that you might have in the box below, and I'll see it and we'll talk about it. It'll help guide our discussion.

Hi, Alice. Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Patricia. Hey, everybody. While you're thinking about your questions or typing them in, I'd like to continue from the last podcast, podcast one fifty, with Therese's comment because the next day, more came to me to comment on what she had asked and hey, Therese.

We're going to pick up from last time. And what Therese wrote was, I'm feeling stuck hoping for a cosmic jolt to get a glimpse of why I'm doing the hard work. I think so many of us feel that way because when you're doing the hard works and spiritual practice is hard work because what you're doing is letting go of everything that has been troublesome and hurting and therefore repressed. You're letting that go while at the same time being in touch with who you are and your nervous system is open and flowing, yet it's bumping into all these submerged previously repressed, difficult things, difficult emotions, difficult perspectives, difficult experiences, traumas. And they wouldn't be repressed if they felt good.

So as they come up, we feel again why we repressed them in the first place, and that's because, wow, they hurt. And as they come up, they can expend their energy, release, they can relax, they can let go, and they can turn back into light and pure consciousness that they are made out of. Once we let the attitude that we put into them, such as hurt, fear, anger, a grudge, unforgiveness, and so on, to create these problems that we then repressed, as soon as we let that go, it melts back into light. And that's the spiritual practice. So that's a difficult thing to sit there and give it time to melt because you're feeling it.

You're feeling how difficult it feels the whole time. Now granted, as you sit still, you become more in tune with who you are, the light that you are, the love that you are, the well-being that you are, And some people actually feel that more prominently than they feel the stuff that's melting out. I think a lot of people feel the difficulties first, and then later, as more melts out, they feel the well-being that they are. Okay. Having said all that, back to Therese's comment.

Look, this is hard, and I'd like some encouragement. I'd like to feel this divinity that we're talking about, this radiant being. I'd like to feel it more so that I'm encouraged, that I am on the right track, that there is something to all of this. And yes, we talked about by reading different accounts or talking to different people or being in groups like a Sangha, you're encouraged by others because they're having good experiences, the ones that have been at it for a while. But what about me now?

What can I do now? Well, what I found to be very powerful in my life was to be around awakened teachers or gurus because they are just like you and me. They've just been at it in a more focused way for a longer period of time, typically. So we're getting a preview of what is going to happen within us because we're all humans, by sitting with them and looking at what is happening in them and feeling it. Because when you're in the presence of a very awakened person, you feel their awakening, you feel their radiance, you feel their love.

And I don't mean it's just a trickle, it's like a bomb, an atomic bomb. It's strong. And many of you have experienced this, so you know what I'm talking about. But many have not. And I didn't know before I experienced this.

I had no idea. It's a game changer. Because it's like you step into an entirely different reality. You experience what maybe you hoped was possible, but you didn't really know was possible. But when you sit with these gurus or powerfully awakened teachers, their light is so radiant that it pulls your being forward.

Light resonates with light. So your Being is just every bit as strong as theirs. It just might be under a lot of layers of yet to be released repressed stuff, pain and hurt and fear and so on. So maybe you don't experience yourself fully yet. And so what you're experiencing more of now is the stuff releasing that's painful and not so much of this radiant light that you are.

But in the presence of the guru, your light resonates with their light and it gains strength and it comes to the forefront. So you feel very radiant. You might feel very loving. Or depending on which chakra that you're awakening through, you might feel very silent or still, but it's powerful. It's like, what does infinity feel like?

It's that deep. It's not just, oh, silence. It's vibrant silence. You feel this in the presence of a guru. So you have a number of choices if you want to have this cosmic jolt, so to speak, to give yourself encouragement, Because it does encourage you.

So you have several choices. You could go to India or some place where there are a lot of these gurus. That's a lot to ask, especially right up front. I didn't do that. But what I did was find out where these different teachers were that were where I lived in The United States.

And I would take my vacations and I would travel to be near them in their presence. They're in every country. How do you find them? Well, if you live near a Hindu temple or a Buddhist temple, oftentimes they might be there. Or you could ask the Buddhists there or the Hindus there.

Where is a teacher that's very powerful where I can feel their presence? I want to feel them. I want to experience powerful presence. They'll know what you're talking about. And they can tell you, oh, we have somebody come through every six months.

He's from India or he's from Bhutan or he's from Brazil or wherever. So you just ask them and they can guide you to where to go. Often groups of monks that are chanting, they emit this presence too. So it might just be locally. There's enough going on there that if you sit still in their presence, you start to feel something.

But you start with what you can do and where you can go. In some of my previous podcasts, I talked about different gurus that are very powerful that do travel. And I tell you how to locate them, how to go to their websites, how to find out what their travel schedule is. Many may come very close to where you live, wherever you live in the world. For instance, Amaji goes all over India, Europe, North America.

She goes all over the place. So you can look at her schedule and see. To give you an idea of how powerful this has been in my life, I saw Amaji where I got hugs from her, a hug, on a darshan. If you're lucky, you can get a hug, but you don't need to just being anywhere in her presence is very powerful. But when you get a hug, that's really powerful.

It jolts you, it transmits her energy through your body. I got 200 hugs from her, over 200 hugs. Shiva Shakti in India, I got between one and two thousand darshans with her. So, you know, when I started doing this, I didn't have so many people telling me what to do or how to do it. I was with my main guru for nine years.

So I just try to figure this stuff out on my own. And what I thought back then was the more that you were with a guru, and yes, you do get that cosmic jolt each and every time. But I thought the more that I was with that guru, that cosmic jolt would transmute me, transform me into an awakened being. I thought the more the better. As I talk about in some previous podcasts, I've come to now believe that that's not, mostly that's not the case.

I don't want to say that's entirely not the case because maybe somebody out there has had that experience. But the awakening experience, you do feel it in the presence of these gurus. And that's the cosmic jolt. You see, Oh, they're like me. This is what I have in store for my life.

If I continue on my spiritual path and continue to do my spiritual practices, I'll become like them. So you get encouragement. But by sitting with them doesn't make you them. It just gives you a glimpse of what it's like when you get awakened. Does it have value more than just giving you that glimpse?

Yes. You see different aspects of awakening because you begin to see it through their eyes. When I was with my guru for nine years, he transmitted his awakening energy through me for nine years straight. Finally, he said, just go out on your own and find your own center, find your own awakening. But for those nine years, mostly, I thought his awakening was my awakening.

And I learned a lot about the awakening life, the awakening experience. It was very powerful. So I have no doubt about it these days. But it wasn't my experience. So if you see one of these gurus or teachers, focus on getting in your encouragement, getting your cosmic jolt, seeing what it is like to be awake, but then go back to your spiritual practice.

I probably wouldn't suggest you hang around them as much as I did. Maybe hang around them as much as you'd like, get your experiences, get well grounded, and then go back to your practice. What often happens around these powerful gurus is maybe thousands of people gather around them. And they're of the opinion that the opinion that I had that if you stay around them, you'll become awake. And unfortunately, every time the guru leaves, the awakening leaves for everybody and everybody's crying and screaming and they want the Guru to come back and they can't wait to see the Guru again because the point is they're not experiencing this on their own.

They've gotten a glimpse, but they're not experiencing this on their own. And the other thing I'd like to say about gurus is they can be very awake, very powerful, full of light and love. Their teachings may not be the best and they may not be all the way awake. You might say, how can that be? They're so powerful and they're emitting so much love and light.

But at the same time, look at what happens at some of these ashrams. You hear of atrocious things. John of God, he got thrown in jail for the stuff he did. A number of them have, and because they're not fully awake. Some of the stuff that you're processing that's coming up, this difficult stuff, maybe they didn't let that stuff come up fully and they just stayed in the truth of their being, but they didn't process all the repressed stuff fully.

So later somebody says something or they get in a position of power and then some of this old dark repressed stuff comes up, and when it comes up, you might start living life through that a little bit. Point is, trust yourself, trust your heart, get your glimpse and then go back and just trust that life is guiding you. You're fine. So I'm now gonna give you some references to past podcasts where I spell out how to get in touch with a group of gurus. You might find your own.

Go to the Hindu temples or the Buddhist temples. But if you go to podcast one twelve, and they're all here on Insight Timer, go to podcast one twelve. I talk about a lot of these gurus and how to get in touch with their travel schedules so you can hang around them and see what they're like. Also in podcast 71, I talk about it some. So go to those two podcasts and I talk about those gurus.

Anyway, those are ways to have cosmic jolts. Let me see what you all have written in and and we'll go from there. Robin writes, I'm sorry. I have to leave. If anyone reads this, please pray for me.

I'm in so much pain. Thank you, William. For all of you that feel led to do it, perhaps you could say a silent prayer for Robin. As I said before, these are uncertain times, and lots of us are feeling pain. Blessings, Raman.

This too shall pass, I hope quickly. I really do. Myrial says, I would not expect a guru to do my work for me. I still don't know the topic. Yeah.

The topic is type in whatever concerns you, and I just started because somebody wrote in last week, how to get a cosmic jolt. What is awakening like? And how can I experience it, at least some portion of it quickly just for encouragement? And that's what the topic is. Jennifer writes, not exactly the same.

However, being in the presence of masses of spiritual people and in powerful places can be amazing. Walking around Arunachala during the full moon with so many beautiful people of so many varied spiritual beliefs and a common practice? Thank you, Jennifer. Yes. Jennifer and I went to India A Couple Of Years ago, and the holy mountain in Tiruvannamalai is called Arunachala.

And maybe hundreds of thousands of people come to walk around Arunachala under the full moon. There are lots of temples, maybe a thousand temples all around Arunachala. I really don't know. There's lots of temples. And it's a very highly spiritual place.

And as in other parts of the world, another way to get a cosmic jolt is being around some spiritual place. You can feel some of that same energy you might feel through a guru, and Arunachala is one of those places. Also, you're right, Jennifer, when large groups of people come together and their hearts are all opening and they are in touch with themselves and their spirituality, that group energy is very powerful, like being with a guru. So when you're in a spiritual place with lots of like minded people, wow, it can be very powerful. And it's very natural, just like nature.

Places in nature can be very powerful, and they can give you that cosmic jolt. So thank you, Jennifer. There are many ways to go. Whatever you feel in nature, whatever you feel in these masses of people, whatever you feel in these holy sites, whatever you feel around gurus, What you're feeling is your being. It's all the same.

But sometimes we can feel it when the energy level gets so high. We start to resonate with it. Sometimes we can feel it before we can feel ourselves on our own. So that extra encouragement is nice. It can keep us going.

Being in a Sangha, a group of like minded people, can help keep us going and take us deeper and deeper and deeper. Nina writes my real sorry. I'm probably not pronouncing your name exactly right. William Cooper shares many podcasts for free here on Insight Timer, Relaxing Into Happiness Awakening Together. Thank you, Nina.

Yes. What these podcasts are about is to support and supplement your hard work, all that you've learned. We all are very clear in certain areas. There are certain areas that you are very clear on, clearer than me, certain areas that somebody else is clearer than both of us. So we share that.

When I was first starting out about fifty years ago, I didn't have so much to rely on, and I didn't have these podcasts. So I went to India Fourteen times. I've seen hundreds of gurus. I'm a psychotherapist, and I've done these things to try to sort it out. These podcasts are my attempt to give back and say what I found.

And what I wasn't finding is how to do certain things. Like somebody might say, don't be attached, but how not to be attached? Somebody might say, you are the light. Feel your light. Okay.

How? Or somebody might say, drop your baggage. Let things go. Just let go. Okay.

Yeah. But how? I want to, but how? So these podcasts are my last fifty years of finding out what worked for me. The how.

And I try to say it in a simple, clear way so that you can try it out and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, that's fine. There are lots of other good teachers out there. Sometimes you take a little here, a little there. But these podcasts are most powerful if you start at podcast one because I lay them out step by step and work your way forward.

On Insight Timer, they don't always come out in order. So if you're looking for a particular podcast of mine, let's say podcast number three, just type in William Cooper and the number three or William three or Cooper three, any of that under their search bar on Insight Timer will bring up that podcast. And then go listen to four, five, or six, so on and so forth. If you see one, a title that you just really want to listen to now, there's no harm done. Each podcast stands on its own.

Listen to it anytime you want. But then go back to your sequence. Am I saying every podcast will be some amazing thing you don't know? No. It might just be amazing thing you don't know?

No. It might just be supporting and deepening what you already are experiencing. So that's the best way to use these podcasts and that's what they're about. They are all free. And when anybody makes a donation on Insight Timer, my arrangement with them is my portion, goes straight to Take Care of Orphans in Timor.

So that's a good thing too. And I always appreciate that. And so do the orphans. Alice goes on to say, something you said about awakened people don't get pulled out of their core essence of being, even if somebody is being aggressive towards them. How do I get that centered that I know who I am at my core and others don't knock me off the balance all the time?

What a good observation and question, Alice. I heard a teacher once say, you know, awaken people the thing about them is they're always resting in their core. And that relates very much to your question, Alice. Well, what is going on with that and how you can be that way is well, let me tell one little story. You've heard of it before, I think, Alice, but I'll say it to illustrate the point that I'm about to make.

There was a guru in India. Somebody in the audience came up. He was very angry and he slapped that guru in the face. The guru also got very angry. And he had just been slapped in the face.

But then he realized what was going on and he thanked the man. He said thank you for slapping me in my face. It helped me realize that I still have anger inside. Otherwise, I would not have felt it. You brought that anger up.

You triggered it. So life is like that. Life triggers us and brings up stuff that's been hidden in the dark recesses of our unconscious, things that we've repressed and we don't want to look at. We don't want to feel it. Why?

Because, oh, it doesn't feel good. Who likes to feel anger or unforgiveness or hate or fear or who likes to feel anxiety or all these kind of things. We don't. So we choose to ignore these things often. The spiritual path is one, for instance, in meditation, you said still.

Why? Because when you said still, you can't repress stuff so much. That's called meditation and the stuff comes up. That's the hard part that Therese was referring to. It just comes up and it releases all the hurt, fear and anger that's within it.

And the thing about the hurt, fear, and anger that is being released is it also has another feeling in it, which is possibly even despair. Oh, I'll never get over this. This is endless. It will never go away. That's also an emotion.

But when the stuff, repressed stuff releases, we get caught in it sometimes. We don't just sit and observe it. We get caught in it and we get trapped by it momentarily at least. So how to stay in your core and not get caught in this stuff? How do awakened people do that?

First, by doing your spiritual practice, whatever it might be, let's say meditation and just sitting still and watching things come up, you practice not leaving your core. That's the first thing. It's easier not to leave your core when you've gotten used to what it is. By sitting still long enough, you start to realize the silence that you are. And as we talked about in the last podcast, 150, so often we're not used to the silence that we are because the drama of who we are not, the drama of our personality is so compelling and lively and dramatic that our attention goes there.

And we think that's who we are. We think we are our drama often, or at least momentarily we think we're our drama. So we miss the silence that we are. Even in meditation sometimes, we're so busy at work letting stuff go and trying not to get involved in the thoughts and emotions as they come up that we miss what the awareness is like that is actually aware of all of these thoughts and emotions. We miss it sometimes.

It took me years to know who I am. Years and years and years, probably decades. And I'm still learning. How deep is silence? How deep is infinity?

It's deep. And then depending on which chakra you awaken in, this awareness is felt as love or radiance or well-being or bliss or joy or deep interconnection or clarity or clairvoyance or all sorts of other things as well. It's all the same thing, but you're experiencing all the different facets of your being. Most of us will experience one facet more prominently than the other. So back to your question.

It's a long answer, Alice. It's a very good question. So how to feel this continuously? You are your core continuously. So the only issue is not getting caught, not getting distracted away from who you always are, not distracted by the drama.

That happens in a number of different ways. One way is you sit still long enough that you learn who you're not. You're not your personality. You get so clear about that. You don't dive into it.

You just let it keep releasing, releasing, releasing. And sometimes it's a lifetime of releasing stuff. It just keeps coming up and up and up. And if it's not one thing, then another thing releases and another thing and another thing. How much stuff have we repressed in our life and possibly in our past lives?

I don't know. But however much stuff that is, that's how long it's going to take to release it all. But by not taking the bait and not jumping into it, you can stay in your core. You can stay in your truth, your well-being. You can follow your heart.

You can be in your heart even while the stuff that you're not keeps coming up and releasing hurt, fear and anger. Will you still feel the hurt, fear and anger even though you stay in your core? Yes. For something repressed to release, it has to be felt and experienced. So it's not like the awakened person just ends up sitting on a satin pillow somewhere and you don't feel anything anymore.

You do feel things. Now the second way to stay in your core is you have released enough stuff that it doesn't come up so often. The flow gets lighter and lighter and less powerful and less powerful and less powerful. So by that time you've learned not to take the bait, not to jump into your distractions. You've learned that.

But also you are the light. That's all that there is. In fact, at some point, even the stuff that comes up is the light. It's just you see through it and it's just twisted into the shape of pain. There's only one building block in the cosmos.

There's only one substance and that's consciousness. Consciousness that's shaped it's like water that's frozen into different the shapes of different objects like knives or guns or dogs and cats, ice sculptures. Consciousness is like that. It can be frozen into different shapes, trees, cats, dogs, knives, but it's all consciousness. Even pain is simply love that's frozen into the shape of pain.

Who froze it? Oftentimes I froze it. Because we can manifest stuff and we take the only building block there is consciousness, love. We take our willpower and we stick through our willpower, we stick an attitude into the consciousness that freezes it. I could put the attitude of you offend me.

That's an attitude. I hate you. And I freeze it into a grudge. That grudge feels really bad. I was right and you were wrong, so I'm not going to let go of my grudge, but I sure don't want to feel it inside of me.

So I will stick it underneath. I'll repress it so I don't have to feel it, but I can keep it. It's a good compromise. I'll just stick it in deep. How did it get there?

I froze love into hate and stuck it down underneath the surface. When it comes up, it feels like hate. It releases the attitude that I put into it to freeze it. That's hate. Ah, that hurts.

I don't want to feel it, but I will. Now it melts back into love. And my aura, my energy field has more love. When I've done this enough times, when I've done it over and over and over, I just take myself as love. I experience myself as love.

And I even see the stuff that I've frozen as love. I see through it. I see it as love. Even though it's still frozen as hate. I see it as love.

I know it's love. I was talking to a monk, an Indian. I said, well, what's it like for you? Because he was very radiant and awake. And I said, do you still feel all that stuff coming up and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts?

And he says, oh, it's still stuff still comes up, but mainly I just feel the radiant energy that I am, love, bliss, and happiness. And when something comes up, it's just, a momentary like flash. It just comes up kind of and it just goes into the energy field and flash. It just melts really fast because his energy field was really strong. So it was melting that stuff really fast.

So that's what it can feel like as we continue on our path. Now in my experience, that doesn't happen on the front end. It might happen by 1% today and then next month, 1% more, then 1% more, and 1% more. There was a guru, he's head of the international Kriya, Prasanna Nanda. And at the end of every time he meditates with you, he'll say notice what has changed today.

So he has you notice what you have released and how you have changed so that you can also begin to integrate that and take it into the world with you. So as we've talked about before, awakening happens on many many different realities where there's the reality of our psychological mind and our habits. So he moves that into our psychological mind by asking that question and we change habits. Which brings me to another thought. And Alice, that was a very good question.

I hope that answered it somewhat. If it didn't get exactly to what you're asking, please just ask it a little differently, and we'll pursue it more deeply. And, Tareus, thank you for the donation. And as I said before, that goes to take care of orphans in Timor. It's at Saint Joseph's orphanage in Timor.

Alice says yes. That answered her question. That was helpful. Thank you, Alice. So, you know, when you go get a massage, you've got tensions.

And I'm going to draw an analogy here. When you go get a massage, you have tensions. But when you talk about your massage to somebody who says, oh, I can't wait to get my massage. I feel so relaxed afterwards, so good. What you're focusing on and what you're knowing is after that massage, you're going to feel good.

The tension will disappear. Those knots in your muscles will be gone. There won't be anything to work with anymore because it will be gone when you get your massage. Now in the spiritual world, we're in a similar situation. Our being is free from any tension.

There is no hurt. There is no pain. There is no discord and, stress and tension in our body carrying that discord and stress. It doesn't exist. Yet, so often when we work with things, the way we might visualize it unconsciously is I'm going to work with this problem.

I have a problem and I'm going to work with it. Now, in order to work with the problem, I have to maintain that problem so that I have something to work with. I have to, in my consciousness, I have to visualize the problem, keep it as a problem so that I can work with it. And often that keeps it fixed in our body. We are forever working with that problem that we have to keep recreating because it was there the last time I looked and I want to make sure I work with it so that I can get rid of it.

Now with the massage, you don't do that. You don't keep visualizing that tension is never going to leave and I don't you know, you just visualize and you know relaxation, you know your true being relaxation, you know that and that's what you focus on. So in your spiritual world, that's how you want to look at yourself. When you sit still, you notice your awareness, that part that's aware of thoughts, aware of feelings, aware of all that's going on. And you notice how quiet that is, or how loving it is, or whatever you notice it to be.

You notice that. As you notice the problems, just give yourself the leeway to know that they're made of the same thing that the awareness is made of. Notice your awareness. Does it have a problem? The part that's looking at the problems?

The part that's looking at the problems, the awareness, the part that's aware of your problems. When your problems go away, it'll still be here. Problems won't be here, so you're not your problems. But the part that is you, that's looking at the problems, does it have a problem? No.

No. It's quiet. It's fine. It's just looking at problems that we've created and kept in our bodies and in our emotional makeup. So it doesn't have problems.

So the part of you that goes for the massage knows that you're going to be relaxed afterwards. It knows intuitively what relaxation is. It knows that you are relaxation, you are health. That's why it's getting the massage to release all the stuff that you're not. So in your spiritual practice coming from your center, when you look at a quote unquote problem, don't picture experiment.

See if you just can have a knowing of what it will feel like when it releases, just like you have a knowing of what it feels like when your muscle relaxes when you go for a massage. That same kind of knowing. It's a little different than a visualization, because when you go for a massage, you don't visualize, oh, before you walk in the door, you don't visualize, oh, let me visualize for a minute in the car that I'm real relaxed, I'm real you don't do that. You just know. Now with that knowing comes a picture, a picture might flow from that knowing of you being relaxed, but you don't use your willpower to visualize you being relaxed.

You just know that you're going to be relaxed. So in your spiritual practice, just know that all this troublesome stuff, the stuff that's hurting is going to melt. Just know that it's going to be the same quality as that which is watching it, your awareness. It's same. It's the same thing.

It's just been twisted and frozen. But when it melts, it's going to be the same as the awareness. Just know that. By that deep knowing that also helps keep you in the core because to know that you have to stay in your core. Because when you jump into a problem and you see life through the lens of the problem, nothing looks good.

Because as we mentioned before, embedded in the problem is usually something like despair. That is another emotion that's in that problem. I'll never get rid of this. I've had this all my life. Will it ever release?

I need encouragement because I don't think it ever will release. That's me thinking about it from the inside of a problem. From awareness, I just know it's melting. And let me give you a spiritual practice. And then Patricia, I'm going to get to your question too.

So here's a spiritual practice. In our prior podcasts, we have talked about many different ways to let these problems release and relax. They unwind and expend their energy like a rubber band and they go loose, limp, and relaxed, or you soak up well-being like a dry sponge and they relax. Many different ways. The how to's that I mentioned.

So again, these podcasts are most powerful when you start at number one and work your way forward. Because problems exist on many levels, sometimes therapy is a good thing to do. You'll know, depending on your problem and you, you'll know what works for you right now. But as that loosens one part of the knot, then you move on to the next way, the next level of reality, and perhaps you approach whatever's coming up in a different way, and then again in a different way in a different way. So here's another way that I'd like to add to your your way of working with things and you'll know when to use this and when not to.

When it's appropriate and when it's not. And that is one of the methods in India is you begin to see things from the perspective of an awakened being. And I think I showed you some of these pictures, maybe the last podcast or the podcast before. Here's a picture of Ammachi. Now you don't have to know Ammachi, but I'm just giving you illustrations.

Does she look tense? No. She looks just fine. That's you without your troubles. That's you without your troubles.

Here's a picture of Jesus, does he look tense? No, not at all. He looks pretty happy, laughing, happy guy. Here's Yogananda, Here's Sai Baba. There's Shiva.

There's Krishna. There's so many. There's Buddha. You can see Buddha over my shoulder there. There's Bhagavan in the yellow.

There's Ramana in the green over there. Here's how this practice works. Find your favorite guru or teacher or God. You could say, Well I love Jesus or I love Buddha or I love Krishna or Shiva or you know, Ammaji looks like a nice lady or I'm going to use that picture. But you get a picture in your mind and for a little while, just imagine yourself as Jesus, I am Jesus, as Ammaji, whoever you pick, it doesn't matter.

You can switch it around if one starts to resonate more than another. I am Amaji, this is how I feel. And you you picture how she looks and you see if you can feel that way inside. You you don't force yourself. This isn't a willpower thing.

You just kind of get in touch with the part of you that's already like that. See, that is your being. She's just exuding being. She's the same as you. But by doing this practice, what it does is it calls forth our being and we see, is she tense?

No. But within us, if we also experience tension, we call forth our being. I'm Amaji. I feel good. I feel radiant.

I feel happy. But wait a second. At the same time, I feel some pain. I feel some hurt. I feel anxiety.

Well, I know I'm not the anxiety. So I'm in the process of letting it go. And you just keep affirming. It's kind of like a mantra. I am Jesus.

I am Amaji. Whatever. I am Ramana. I am Krishna. I am Buddha.

I am whatever. That will keep you in your being. It's just a temporary spiritual practice. After a while you get used to that's who you are. You're not channeling these people.

I'm not asking you to channel like I'm calling on Amma to come through me. No. Or I'm calling on Jesus to come through me. No. That's not what we're doing.

We're feeling the aspects within us that they exude because we're the same as them. We're all the same. They've just been at it longer. So we call forth that and we support ourselves, we recognize ourselves as that. And then from that perspective, doesn't Jesus know if he has a minor trouble pop up that he's not that trouble?

Do you imagine him sitting around fretting all day and being worried or that monk in India that I talked to being worried all day? No, he says stuff just comes up and zap, it's gone. We'll start to have the knowing that we just previously talked about. Hey, I'm Jesus and this pain over here, this hurt or fear, just like in my massage, I have a knowing that I will be relaxed. Jesus also has a knowing, he is pure consciousness, he is pure consciousness.

Well, you have that knowing, because you're calling forth that aspect of you that does have that knowing. You're just using this device because so often we're locked in our habits of no, I'm not that way, I can't do that, Who am I? I can't. I'm just starting out. What do I know?

You find your own picture. Perhaps you already have one in your mind. I hope that makes some sense, but that is a powerful other tool to help you stay in your core and let everything else go through knowing and not through will power or anything else. Just seeing it as consciousness. Does that make sense?

I hope so. Thank you, Alice, for your question. Okay. Patricia, William, could you say something about the power of love? Just suppose that everybody in the world sent love to each and everyone else and especially to our world leaders.

Do you think that it would make a difference to world peace? Absolutely. What a good question and observation Patricia. Yes. So Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, his organization did a lot of research and I think if it's 1% of the population meditates, crime falls, people start feeling better all around you, society works better.

He found this in actual studies. They studied areas where they have high concentrations of meditators. So yes, the same with love. If everybody's sending love, that's going to affect the entire world. Ramana, when somebody he was alive during World War II.

He died in about 1950. He was a very powerful guru in Theravonamalai, India. He was equivalent to Buddha or somebody like that, very powerful. He was very silent. But somebody asked him, Ramana, why don't you get out and speak against all the bad things that are going on in the world?

All the corruption and the killing and the wars and do some social action. And he said, if you want to do social action, do it. If you feel called to do it, do it. But I feel the most powerful thing I can be is the most awake being that I can be. Because in the light that exudes from being deeply awake, that's gonna change the world more than anything.

So it gets back to what you're saying, Patricia, and what Maharishi Mehesh Yogi was saying, and what so many others have said, not just them, but so many, so many, so many others, that when we exude wellness, the world becomes well. Our external circumstances become well. Bhagavan, the guru in the yellow behind me, he said you can look at it in an opposite way. He said that when people are unhappy, no matter how hard they try to disguise it, they will make everybody around them unhappy. Because that vibe is going out into the world.

So the best thing you can do is not to be unhappy. Or turn it around. The best thing you can do is to be happy. The qualities of your being, of our being, is happiness. So the clearer we are, each individual and we experience, it's not just intellectual, yes, yes, we're happy.

No. I mean, we experience the radiance of our happiness. First, perhaps you go sit with a guru and you're just convinced you see that yes, that is how I am. And then you experience your own happiness by doing your spiritual work. Doing that will change the world.

That will change world peace. You have to ask yourself, if simply sending love to everybody will change the world, let's just do it. What's the big deal? Well, the problem is not everybody has sat still very long. Not everybody has sat with their repressed stuff and let it come up and experienced it and let it go, let it dissipate and turn back into love.

So for that reason, when they visualize something, when they put their attention on some goal, they might, and I'm just making this number up, maybe ninety percent of them is unresolved angst and trouble. And that's what they're radiating in the world. Like Bhagavan said, when somebody is unhappy, everybody around them becomes unhappy because they're radiating unhappiness. So yes, if we could all sit down and just send pure love out, perfect. And it's a good thing just to do it anyway, no matter where what level of love we have.

Any love we've got exuding, and we are pure love, but I mean any love that's peeking out from underneath the iceberg of anxiety and depression and all the other stuff we've built on top of it that obscures our love. Any bit that can shine out, yeah, let's send it out. It will do well in the world. It's just that also simultaneously we're radiating out all the unresolved stuff too. In the end, back to Alice's question, we stay in our core, which is love, which is awareness.

And it's there right now. You're aware of everything that's going on. You're aware of your pain. Well, the awareness, it's not pain. It is love.

It is silence, depending on which chakra you're experiencing it through. So you stay there and anything that's other than that, don't get involved in it. You will experience it. You'll feel it. So you're not repressing it anymore.

But just let it unwind. Let it release its energy and leave your body just like you let attention leave your body when you get a massage. You don't fight to hold on to that tension. Oh, I'm not gonna let it go. No, no, no.

No. That masseuse rubs it and you feel it. Ow, that hurts. Ouch. Ow.

Oh, now it feels better. Same with your spiritual practice. You're going through your day, you get triggered. Somebody says something or they look at you funny and you get triggered. It comes out.

You don't repress it again. Let it come out. Don't act on it, but let it exude its energy. Just let it leave your body. Just keep your mouth shut.

Don't do anything bad and just let it keep releasing, relaxing and letting go. As more and more of that happens, all that will be left is your beautiful self without all this other stuff that has embedded attitude that we put attitude into, hurt, fear and anger to make it problems. We wouldn't be troubled unless we trouble ourselves. So let our troubles go and we won't be troubled. Again, that's what all these prior podcasts are about step by step.

Jen says, Hi, William. I would love to know your thoughts on Ascension, transitioning to five d, etcetera, in the context of our current upheaval. I'm especially thinking about increased talk about this shift in one of your podcasts that talked about the timeline of ancient Indian theology and how we're at the end of a cycle, going from turning away from the light to towards the light. Yes. Thank you, Jen.

What Jen is referring to is in the Hindu calendar, Earth is on a 50,000 orbit around the star, Cirrus. We've just gotten to the end of twenty five thousand years of getting to the farthest distance away from the star Cirrus. So we've gotten into about as dark as you can get. The Mayan calendar also was built around the same cycle. So the end of the Mayan calendar, I think it was around 2012, was the end of that twenty five thousand years going away from the star, and now we're heading towards the star.

So just like in the darkest night, when even the tiniest bit of light comes in, it starts to illuminate. Maybe you can't see very well, but you can start to see a little. You see much better. It doesn't take much light to dispel darkness, just a little bit. Well, we're starting to head back to the light.

Now your inner light is always there, your being. That's always bright. It's always there. I did a very short and powerful podcast on letting your light shine. It's podcast one twenty five, and it's titled let your light shine.

It's about forty seven seconds. And I did a podcast on astrological cycles I just talked about, and that's podcast 51. And it's called Astrological Cycles and Awakening. I think you might enjoy both of those if you're interested in this topic of light. So because your inner being is so bright, by you doing your spiritual practice, you will become brighter and brighter and brighter, and you will start to illuminate the world around you.

You are the light that we're looking for. You are the light that you are looking for. I remember Bhagavan, the one in the yellow over my shoulder, he said a startling thing. He said, you know, a lot of this is just a result of the cycle that we're in. So there is, at least in Hindu thought, the cycle that we're in influences a lot as well.

So we are headed back to the light in the cycle and we're always free to sit still and get to know our own inner light anytime no matter where we are in this cycle. So by doing that, by sitting still and knowing who we are, we will naturally become a light being. Our vibration will naturally go up. Yes, as Therese says, it's good to have encouragement, be around a guru. But the guru is not going to awaken you.

Not going to happen in my experience. As I said with Bhagavan, his energy came through me for nine straight years. People felt like I was awake. I thought I was awake. It was his energy coming to me.

It was extremely powerful. You could just sit with me back then, but it was his energy. I didn't become awake. I had awakening experiences. They were very helpful, but I wasn't awake.

He told me, now you have to do it yourself. You just have to go do it yourself. So the answer to all these questions, if you'll notice, is we just have to stick with our spiritual practice. Just show up daily. Don't do more than what you can do.

Consistent daily baby steps. Do what works for you. Follow your heart. If I guide you to do something and it's not working, then don't do it. If another teacher guides you to do something and it's not working, don't do it.

Listen to it. Check it out. Give it a good shot. But if it's not working for you, listen to yourself. That will have the deepest and quickest results.

You will end up staying in your core. World peace will be quicker to come because you will be more clear. It's very powerful that way. Okay. Therese says, great question.

I'm also very interested in this ascension too. Is it the same as awakening or is it different? Thanks, Therese. I have to say that this terminology of ascension and fifth dimension is not my area of expertise, and people might use it in different ways. The way that I understand it and the way that I'm taking it is that it's the same as awakening.

Before awakening, when we're separated from ourselves and operating through our delusions, we create a lot of problems both in our life and in the world. When you get a whole society doing that, you have a mess. As you awaken, you affect hundreds, if not thousands of people around you, and they begin to awaken. They begin to see more clearly. And as they awaken, as they let their separation go, and they become more clear, then society becomes more clear.

As we just talked about, awakening can happen both by me sitting still, letting go of my separations, my delusions, and being in touch with who I am until eventually all that's left is who I am. But also, my existence in this world and universe can be influenced by astrological cycles. So as we get closer to the light, separations naturally start to dissolve within me, and I can become awakened that way. But when you're waiting for a fifty thousand year cycle, even though we are headed back to the star cirrus, it's gonna be a bit more of a wait, I think. We've got the wind at our back now, but me sitting still and doing my practice, I think is the quickest way back to the light.

The paradox, of course, is my being is totally awake. All that's happening is I'm letting go of my delusions that would say otherwise. So letting go of my delusions is a temporal activity, it happens in time, but my being is timeless, and it's awake right now. So, I'm both awake right now, and in existence, in my body, in my personality, it feels like I'm awakening through time. And that can feel like a movement into ascension and fifth dimension.

Jen says, I guess it's hard for me not to think about cataclysmic change. And on a personal And on a personal level, I know about my ascension. But on a global level, what are your thoughts? And yes, I will do my part with my baby steps of love and light. That's all you can do, Jen.

That's what you can do. Do your work and you don't wait for ascension. You are ascended. You are one. Right now.

The idea that we're not one, that's a delusion. That's what we're letting go of. We're one already. We're one right now. There is nowhere to ascend to.

We're there. But for my delusions, when somebody asked Ramana about awakening, Ramana said, you wanna know about awakening. He said, the only difference between we're the same. The only difference between me and you is I know that I'm awake, and you think that you're not. I could retranslate that and say I'm not deluded any longer.

I know I am awake. He was in a cave for decades. He sat still. He'd walk around too. There's no shortcuts.

I can't just like start my spiritual practice and be there. And I know you guys have been working for decades. It's still a little bit more. The last thing is drowning under two inches of water feels just as bad as drowning under 10,000 feet. But two inches, you're right there at the surface.

So don't trust if you don't feel good, don't trust that. That's part of the delusion. If you've been at your spiritual practice for a while, you may just be a half inch underneath the edge of the water the surface of the water. So you're doing great work. You all have great courage.

Just keep it up. I admire you all really. I admire me because this is hard these days. Nina says all signs aligned to a star. In this awakening, as I trust and surrender the one, why is my body still hesitant?

Well, good question, Nina. Our body holds habits. It's not hesitant. It's just the dumping site of my old hesitations that I have not released yet, my old delusions. So I sit with it.

What's the problem? I just sit with my body. What's the hurry? Why is everybody in a hurry? We've got eternity.

Just sit with it. And it speaks for itself. Your body feels better. It feels lighter. It feels better.

It feels better. But the reason we don't like to sit with our body because it doesn't feel good right now. So I don't want to sit with it. That means it's kind of like repression again. I'm avoiding it.

Sit with it, but do it in baby steps so you don't shut down. Nina says, hit on something, feeling your words. Thanks for being an inspiration. Thank you. Love you, she says.

I love you all too. And Claire, sending love, William. Thank you, everybody. It's my honor. Thanks for your great questions.

We meet together. It helps us all. Thank you so so so much. Thank you so much, Jen. Jen donated.

Thank you, Jen. Okay. I trust that you have good spiritual practices and you have good weeks ahead. We'll talk soon. Take care.

Bye.