153 Toxic Society, Awakening, Miracles, Healing, Neuroplasticity, Reconciliation - Q & A

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

Wonderful discussions on Awakening and various traditions as all describing the Infinite as expressing through us, how neurobiology is affected by the path of growth and awakening, neurons that fire together wire together and when they don't they don't. the brain can always heal and change. One was concerned with living in an unkind world controlled by separation, astrological cycles affecting culture, awakening, healing, and miracles, why do people of light suffer with disease, how the rational mind can dismiss intuition, reconciling with an estranged previously toxic parent, 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

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing Into Happiness. I trust you've had a good week. It's been months, I think, since we've talked. It's so nice to see you all.

Thank you for being here. This is our time where you can ask any questions that you like about your spiritual path, about spirituality. Just ask whatever you like and we can discuss it. The way you do that is you type that in the box at the bottom, type in your question, and then I'll see them And I'll ask we'll talk about them along the way. Hi, Jennifer.

Hey, Jen. Yeah. I missed you so much too. I missed you all. Hello, Patricia.

Yeah. Everything's been doing well. It's been quite some time. You know, it was just good to sit quietly, and, also, there was a lot of stuff going on in our lives. Hey, Jules.

Welcome. First time. Therese, hi. It's so good to see you. Wow.

This is old homecoming. You know, you guys have been asking me such good questions. I might just pull one of your questions out. I know, Jules, you asked me one I haven't even gotten to yet. Therese has been asking me some good questions.

When you read the reviews, you'll see people do ask questions, and I attempt to answer them there, questions concerning the podcast or maybe something else they have on their mind. So those reviews can be very, very, very interesting and deepening. For anybody that's new, this series of podcasts, I did them with an intention of awakening. When I was in theological school back in 1979, I remember just being in such a dark place and really wishing for answers. What's going on in life and how to do things.

You would hear, don't be attached, but, and I didn't want to be attached or drop your baggage or, you know, things like that. But I I didn't really hear how. Psyche, don't be attached. Yeah. I don't want to be attached.

Okay. How? How not to be attached? Well, these podcasts are a step by step over the last fifty years. I've lived in India for years.

I've went through that four year masters of theology program. I am a licensed professional counselor, and I've been on the spiritual path just like so many of you for the last fifty years. So this series of podcasts is intentional on what I found to be helpful. It's the answer to how. They may not be perfect if if some of them don't resonate with you.

Just disregard those and listen to your heart, take what works, and leave the rest. But that's what these podcasts are about. They're all here. They're all free. They're best listened to if you start with podcast number one and work your way forward step by step because each podcast is built on the last.

However, each one is independent too. Somebody listening to this, it'll be fine all by itself, but they're very powerful. If your intention is awakening, I would listen to them from number one forward. Now if a title really grabs you, listen to that one out of order and then go back into your sequence if that suits you. If not, do it any way you want.

So, really, today is about your questions. But while you're thinking about your questions, I'd like to read some things about you and see what you think about this. This is who you are. According to Jesus, he says the kingdom of heaven is within you. So, I want to ask you, what does that feel like?

The kingdom of heaven is within you. What does that feel like? To me, it feels like I'm a light bulb. Feels like light. I feel like a light bulb.

Nothing I have to do. It's always there. Nothing you have to do. It's always there. But why don't we feel it all the time?

Well, we're clenched down and blocking ourselves sometime. Nothing we have to do to be the light. What we all we have to do is quit clenching. How? We'll talk about that.

We have talked about it in all the prior podcasts, but maybe we'll talk a little bit today more in a different way. How about this? By understanding the self, all the universe is known. By understanding the self, all the universe is known. That's the Upanishads, Hinduism.

God dwells within you from yoga. Yoga means union with God. All these are the same thing. Atman, which is the individual consciousness, and Brahman, which is the universal consciousness, are one. God is you.

That's the Vedanta, which is the core of the Vedas deep Hindu teachings. Look within. You are the Buddha. Buddhism. Heaven and Earth and human are of one body.

Neo Confucianism. Those who know themselves know their god, Islam. The soul is the embodiment of the divine within, Judaism. There is that, your inner light, of God in every person. Quakerism.

The father and I are one, Jesus. But he said, you're the same as him. That was his whole purpose. So the infinite is you. There's nothing you have to do.

This is what Ramanu, he was a saint in Southern India, and Jennifer and I go to his ashram. I've spent years at his ashram. He died in the 1950s. One of the most powerful saints of India, he's equivalent to Buddha. He says, the best way to experience yourself, says better than spells of meditation is one continuous current, steady as a stream or downward flow of oil.

That's how I feel it. It's just always there. Did I always feel that? No. I didn't feel it at all.

Or at least I didn't know I did. And I would say, do you ever feel happy for a moment? That's the continuous current. But why don't we feel happy all the time? We do something to cut it off, but it's always there.

Do you ever feel peace? That's the continuous current. That's your infinite. It's no different than that. Joy, happiness, love.

Ever feel any of these things? You're there. It's that simple. That's the infinite flowing through you. Well, why isn't it a continuous stream?

Why? We cut it off. Because I'm a psychotherapist every well, periodically I need to do continuing education. So I've just been going through a continuing education cycle, among other things. And I'm struck by what's going on in neurobiology study of the brain and what we've discussed in these podcasts, what ancient seers have experienced just by sitting still and noticing.

And what they've discovered or seen in neurobiology I'll tell you a saying that, doctor Hebbs, h e b b, a Canadian psychologist coined in 1949. You've heard this. Neurons that fire together wire together. If you focus your attention on something with intensity or even just over without intensity, but do it over a long period of time, your brain begins to hold that when it boots up in the morning. That's how you feel.

Maybe you wake up worried. Maybe you wake up angry or frustrated. Maybe if somebody says something, you get very reactive without even thinking you react. That's because your most basic part of your mind, the limbic system, the fight or flight or freeze system, is designed to act very rapidly and hold a position to protect you. It works on speed.

So if a tiger is after you, you don't think about it, you just run. Well, when you think about negative things over and over and over, and sometimes just being in our culture is negative over and over and over and over, your body clamps down, your neurons clamp down. And the way you deal with things will be reactive. You will just automatically worry. Somebody says something and you start to worry.

You get a panic attack. Or somebody says something and you feel very insecure. I'm not loved. I don't feel loved. Or I don't feel happy.

Or I'm depressed. We've talked about this in our past podcasts that we construct thought, emotion, objects in our psyche. They are things. There's only one building block in the universe and that's love. There's only one substance.

That's love. That's the infinite. And somebody once said, more than once, has said, you know, when you talk about things, it could just be a philosophy that you're talking about. You're talking about philosophy. And at one time, it was philosophy.

Back when I was 18 and 19 and 20 and went to theological school. I was cut off from myself. So, yes, it was philosophy, and that was helpful. But now I see it. I can touch an object, and I feel it as love.

It's my direct experience. It's not a thought. It's what I feel. It's what I see. I can see it in in the air, you might say, or the space.

I feel it. I feel myself as that. I feel you as that. We're all this light. It's it's there for all of us.

That did not happen quickly for me. It took I'm probably much slower than you. It probably took me a decade. I don't know. Once I started looking, I didn't know what to look for.

I remember I would hear teachers and they would say, Oh, you're the infinite. Or what would they say? They'd say, They would say, You don't even exist. Or things like this. You're not your personality.

It was like trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I could I could not experience this. I tried. I believed them, but I wasn't experiencing that. But when you sit still long enough, as you all are doing, it's right there.

It's right under our noses all the time. All the time. Like, if I look at my hand and my hand disappears, I'm still here. It's that awareness that's looking at that hand. That's who I am.

That's the infinite. If if I'm looking at a thought inside of me and the thought disappears, I'm still here. What is that awareness like? I know many of you already experienced this. But if you don't completely, it requires sitting still and putting your attention on the awareness, the awareness that you are.

Put your attention there. What's it like? See, I was so drawn into what was going on around me. I was captured by that that I couldn't see who I was. It's like watching TV at the beach all the time.

You don't experience the water. You don't experience the sand. You're back in the beach cottage watching TV. I'm watching the TV in my mind, my thoughts, my emotions I'm experiencing, but I'm not experiencing that which is aware of these thoughts and emotions. So it takes time.

You have to sit still. Another thing that confused me, and we're going to talk about the things that block us in just a second, just briefly, not like we have in other podcasts. But what confused me is I did not know this. Nobody told me this. We are like a rainbow of reality.

On the further stand is nothingness. The reason why it's nothing, and this is what nobody told you, you'd hear this, Oh, it's nothingness. You can't it can't be described. It cannot be talked about in words. Stuff like that.

That is true. But the reason why it's nothingness is it's beyond creation. And you can only know it not through your mind, which only knows the five senses, but through your intuition. So I was looking for something that my senses could not find. I didn't realize I had to see it through my intuition.

Now your intuition gets very sharp when you sit still. That's another thing that gets sharp. But it's a rainbow. It starts with nothingness and when it comes into creation, you can see it. It's light.

I said I feel like a light bulb. It's light. And then it slows down and it's a deep sound and a high pitched sound, at least for me. You see what it is for you. And then that slows down and it's love, peace, joy.

And then that slows down and it's atoms, and that slows down its molecules, and that slows down and it's dogs and cats and pigeons. It's a continuum. We're that all the time. I would not have known that unless I sat still, which brings me back to neurobiology. Neurons that fire together wire together.

If you're going to treat something like we'll take an extreme case. Let's say, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Did I leave the oven on? I need to check it. Later.

Did I leave the oven on? I better check it. Was I absolutely sure? Ten minutes later. Did I leave the oven?

You just have to keep doing it because it wells up inside of you and you feel like it's so important to check the oven. One very effective therapy is the best that person could do rather than check that oven, say 10 times a day, maybe instead check it nine times instead of 10. And then the next week, check it eight times instead of nine and then seven times. Now that person not to check it that one time, that's excruciating. But what happens is those neurons are screaming, check the oven, check the oven.

But when the person doesn't, that wiring together breaks and those neurons unwire. So eventually, by doing that enough, you can treat obsessive compulsive disorder very well. The reason I bring this up is, isn't this in all of us? Do you fidget? And if you try not to fidget, you just your insides are screaming, I've gotta do it.

I've got to do it. That's obsessive. You don't have to fidget. Do you have to think certain thoughts? Do you have to ruminate?

Yes. I do. Yes. I do. Nope.

No, you don't. It's obsessive. We're addicted by our thoughts, by our emotions. That's what blocks us from our inner light. That's what contracts us.

Because how do you be open and flowing when you're worried? It's the opposite. We can't. Now how do I know this? I know this from all that you know, I'm a psychotherapist.

I know this. But I know it more deeply because that's my human state. Yes. I'm light. I experience that.

That's my direct experience. But I'm also in this body, in this personality, and every day I have to sit still. I walk in nature. I open back up because I experience the same things everybody does. Every human being experiences this, whether they tell you they do or not, they all do.

Jesus experienced it. Buddha experienced it. There is a thought that if you don't attend to things, neurons that fire together wire together. Well, if you don't put your attention there, the wiring together falls apart. And if you keep not putting your attention there, it atrophies.

It just completely falls apart. And that is true. But that's quite different than when you sit and it comes up and you watch it rather than getting involved in it. You just experience it, let it expend its energy like we've talked about, Let it expend its energy. Let it begin to melt like an ice cube, turning into water, into gas.

And then at some point when it feels right, let that part that's been so tense and tight, let it look around and take in that it's okay right now. Everything's okay. Let it figure that out. You know everything's okay, But this frozen part of you, was frozen when you were two years old or six months old or three months old. And it's in a time capsule and it has not updated its file.

That's why it's still tense. That's why it's still coming up. Even though you know everything's fine, it doesn't feel like it. And it feels helpless, like I'm overwhelmed. Have you ever gotten triggered and you feel like, Oh my, suddenly life is too much for me.

I can't I'm helpless. I'm just overwhelmed. Because that which got triggered comes up from an age when you were very small and helpless. And part of the complex of emotions that are coming up is one of helplessness, which you were at one years old. So it comes up and you feel helpless now, even though you're not really helpless.

So when you watch it, you let it expend its energy, you let it melt, you let it look around and breathe in that it's okay. Maybe you touch something around you. Maybe you move your eyes back and forth and just stay connected to the present. Look at this tree or that light or this bird or whatever is around you, stay connected and just don't jump back into the feeling because you don't want it to wire together again. Let it fall apart just like an obsessive compulsive disorder person would.

We all have this disorder in a sense. So do that and it melts and it disappears. Now if you don't do this, and this is what I'm getting to, there's this thought, well, okay, if you do that and you're not using that pathway, it does atrophy and die. It's expended its energy and it dissipates. But what if you don't do that?

What if you just say I'm not going to think about it? I'm just going to push it down, or I'm aware of it, but I'm not going to put my attention on it because I'm going to just let it atrophy and die. You don't let it come up and expend its energy. In my experience, and you check for yourself because I'm just telling you my experience. My experience is it stays alive because that energy is there.

And my theory is when you see one of those highly awakened gurus go off the deep end and do crazy stuff suddenly, I think it's because my theory is perhaps they push things to the side with the idea of letting it disappear, but it never expended its energy. So it eventually pops up. They get engulfed by it and they start doing crazy things. It wasn't integrated. Anyway, that contraction is what blocks us from the flow, our flow.

So your true self is a flow. It's not a contraction, but you can experience both at the same time. It's like often I do. When I say that I feel in the morning, I might have I always meditate. Every morning I do yoga, I meditate, and I walk in nature.

And things relax and release. And now I'm flowing again. Will I just get where I am flowing all the time like Ramana is talking about a continuous flow? I am, but I also have the contraction. Will it be where I'll never have that contraction?

I don't know. I can say through the years it's gotten less and less and less and less till now maybe it's only 20% of what it used to be. So that all by itself is wonderful. My life feels night and day different. And I feel the infinite in me all the time.

My goal is awakening. I want to be myself. How do you live life if you're not yourself? I want to be myself. That's another word for self realization or awakening.

So that all by itself is all I've ever wanted. However, as a side effect, as I get clearer and clearer, you do experience what other people might call miracles. They happen as a side effect. They're not the goal. They just happen.

You don't expect them to happen. They happen. Jesus had them happen all the time. And I don't know how intentional you can be with them. I think you can be.

But in my experience, they just sort of happen. You think something and it happens, maybe. You can listen into past podcasts, but I talk about some of them. Glasses blowing up in my hand. I didn't I didn't I went to a coffee shop.

They're blowing up in my hand until they would only give me paper cups. I didn't expect that. Jesus appears to me. I didn't expect that. He's with me every day.

He's with me now. I can see him. We're one. I know this is outlandish. I know it.

To me, it would be out if somebody said this. But I'm saying this for encouragement. I think a lot of you already experienced this. But if you're not quite experiencing it, it's like you're under a half inch of water. You might think you're drowning, but you're so close.

If you're on the spiritual path, you're there. It's just letting these layers dissolve off, dissolve off, dissolve off, and you're there because you're already the light. I got a mala, one of these from Karuna Maya, who's she's a guru, And I put it on a picture of a guru, and I just had it turned to dust. Now I didn't say this has anything none of this am I saying has anything to do with me. When the when the glasses blew up, I was with my guru was sending energy through me.

When the Mala, turned into dust, I didn't know what to do about it for a month. I didn't even believe it. I brought friends over. You know, what happened here? Did a bug get it eat it somehow?

No. I won't talk about them all, but some of you have asked me about that. My guru for nine years and my friend, he said if you have miracles, tell other people because it maybe opens up the mind. Jennifer's reading this book now. It's called Awakened by Michael O'Callaghan.

I saw a guru, Ganapati Satchananda Swamiji, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at an ashram. He's got ashrams all over the world. This was probably twenty five years ago, I guess, before I went to India for the first time. And he appeared to this doctor that came with us, a medical doctor, the night before cut her chest open in this vision and ate her heart. I'm giving you the brief rundown.

The next day, we went to the ashram. We sat on the front row. He grabbed some flowers. Somebody gave him a mala, a wreath of flowers. He put it and they put it around his neck.

It's a way to honor gurus and, people. And he pulled off two roses and he started rubbing them and ashes exploded out of his hands flying. They stuck a tray under his hands and just mounds built up. People were screaming, there were probably 500 Indians there, and probably five of us Westerners on the front row. I was five feet away from him.

Trust me, I was looking for every possible thing, something up his sleeves, you know, or is this some kind of trick or some kind of I was highly skeptical, but it was amazing. Then he turns to the medical doctor and he says, so I cut your chest open and take your heart and eat it so that I can purify you. She we all turned completely white, and, it goes on and on and on. But Michael O'Callaghan in her book talks about that very same thing. I'm a character in the book, I'm between chapters twenty two and twenty eight.

And she goes through that very same thing. My name in the book is Christopher, but I was there with her. She's a psychologist. I was sitting right next to her between her and the medical doctor. She said it so accurately.

I say this because these things are unbelievable. It's like, no, that didn't happen. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So when you flow, we're back to that you are this light.

Sit still. Don't follow every urge. Don't let those neurons wire together that are distracting you. Apple knows how many times people use their iPhones. And some years ago, maybe four years ago, people were on average using their iPhones 30,000 times a year.

That amounts to on average a little over 80 times a day. Our minds, we get captured by the TV in our mind, by just nonsensical imaginations, hallucinations that we create, you know, that's what thoughts are, our hallucination. We get captured by those 50% of our life, minimum, 50% until you break that wiring. That's what sitting still is about. That's what meditation or whatever your spiritual practice is.

You break the wiring. And then what happens is your brain all through your life can actually heal and it can change. Neuroplasticity, your brain can change. And all through a lifetime. You're not stuck where you are today, or last year or the year before because the wiring changes as you change, but you have to resist that deep urge.

It's like somebody getting over an addiction. I have to have that drink. I have to have that drink. You don't do it. Well, after a while, you're not drinking.

I have to think that thought. I have to think that thought. No. After a while, you're not thinking that thought. You've broken the wiring.

Okay. Anyway, let's move on. You are the light. These podcasts, we go all through this in much more detail in the past. You're welcome to some people cycle through many times because every time you cycle through, you're a different person.

So far, if you're new, there's over 150 of these podcasts, so they're all here. Okay. Let me answer some of your questions. And if you think of some more, just write them down. AJ asks, how do you coexist with so many lost in their limited self in a state of separation from a place of truth?

Well, yes. It's hard. But I'm one of those people too. I'm everything. Now my guru, Bhagavan, said something very strange some years ago.

I think he told me this maybe fifteen years ago, told a group of us. He said, you know, what you're experiencing and what the world is experiencing now is because of the cycle we're in. It's simply cyclical. And in my podcast number 51, I talk about astrology and awakening. And I know this stuff makes no sense.

It doesn't make sense to me, but it seems to be true somehow, even though I can't give you a formula here. But the Mayan calendar was based on our orbit around the star, Cirrus. Our galaxy is headed towards Cirrus. That is our star, Cirrus. It's a fifty thousand year orbit and the Hindu calendar is based about this orbit just like the Mayan calendar is.

The closer you get to the star, the more light people are experiencing. When the Mayan calendar ended, I think in 2012, we just started heading back to the star. We were twenty five thousand years away in our orbit. Now we've got twenty five thousand years ahead of us to get back. So we're in a very dark age.

And my guru said, you know, this is all cyclical. And he told us probably twenty years ago, he said, or something like that. He said, things are going to get very dark and there's going to be complete chaos around you all and things are going to fall apart. That is because a little light's going to start to come back into the system, which is what happened when we started heading back to Cirrus. Think about it.

Daybreak is just a little tiny bit of light. It's pitch black and the sun's not even up, but you can start to see a little something. Dawn. Well, we're in a very dark dawn right now, but we can see some stuff. And he said, what you're seeing is how bad it's always been for a long time.

It's been this bad. You just couldn't see it, but you're going to be able to see it. You're going to be horrified. It's going to be chaos. Everything's going to be falling apart.

It's going to be terrible. But he says the system needs to fall apart. There needs to be chaos for it to reorder and release all of the energy that's been pent up and all of this dysfunctional system that has been going on for a long time. But how do I personally deal with it? It's good to have a perspective.

That's one. I'm not I'm not asking anybody to believe this. It kind of makes sense to me somehow, the big picture. But how do I deal with it? I sit still.

I find my inner light, which is always there now. But I let the part of me that the reptilian brain that's still wired together and it's less wired together, but still gets triggered. I let it breathe in the light that I am. The personality only reflects what it's given. The reason why we get a personality of separation, one of greed and lust and needing and grabbing and ambition and small thinking, it's because we're cut off from our true self and we think we don't have enough.

Because we don't. We're cut off. We're looking for love because we don't know that we are love. We're looking for peace because we don't know that we are peace. We're looking for fulfillment because we don't feel fulfilled.

So we develop a personality that's very separate and dismal. Okay, once you realize yourself, I am light and you feel it, it's your direct experience. Your personality is still wired together. It wired together way back when and it's still operating under the old wiring. So it's a long process for these wires to rewire, but when they do, they start to reorient back to the light that you have previously realized that you are, even though there was a lag time for the rewiring to happen.

Therese asked me once a while back, she says, Hey, I've been sitting with my stuff. I've been watching it. I've been experiencing it. I've been working with it. I've been, you know, doing my meditations.

But when the one thing releases, then I've got even more now I've got something difficult underneath it, or I still have something difficult. And what I told her is, yes, it's layers. One thing reveals the other. I I've probably already gone through a 100 layers, 500 layers. I don't know.

How much trauma have you had in your life? I had a lot. How much for you? How much trauma do we pick up, AJ, when we live in a world that's in a state of separateness just by being in it. I overheard Bhagavan once.

I wasn't supposed we Westerners weren't supposed to be listening, but I went to a a  hut. It was a big one by a hut. It was a building. And Indians were in there, like, probably a 100 of them. This was I was in India, and I was so taken with Bhagavan.

I just wanted to hear every word he would ever say. And he was the most powerful person I have ever met, the clearest, most powerful. Anyway, finally, he told me eventually, he told me to go out on my own after I'd been with him for over nine years, but this was somewhere in between. And I listened to the wall to what he was saying to the Indians, and he said, you know, when you go to The United States, that's good, But don't stay for over two years because the karma will get on you, and it will begin to hurt you and affect you. You need to come back to India and let that karma melt away, and then you can go back to The US.

But don't stay any longer than two years without taking a small break and coming back to India and releasing that negativity. So what does it do for us, AJ, when we live here all the time? I've been going to India a bunch. Or without going to India, sit still. Do your meditation.

The awareness that watches everything coming up, put your attention there sometimes. That's who you are. That's like going to India, just resting in that. Buddha would say rest in your Buddha nature. Well that is your Buddha nature, that which is watching everything.

So that's how you deal with it. Somebody asked Ramana, he's the guru down in South India, Tiruvannamalai, asked him, Ramana this was in the forties, I guess, during World War II. He died in 1950. Said, Ramana, why don't you're a powerful figure. Why don't you get up and speak against what's going on in the world?

The Nazi state, the dictators, speak out against it. Do some social action. What about that? And Ramana said, you know, that's fine. If that's your thing, you really should do it.

But he said, mine is to sit still and just be the light that I am. And he says, for me, that's going to do more to change the world than any running around yelling and protesting that I personally could do. That was more or less Jesus's viewpoint. People were asking him to run around being the Messiah and he, oh, no, he just was the light. But protest is good.

I went to the no kings protest. Yes. But more importantly, I sit still. And I experienced the light that I am. Both it is better for me, but it heals everybody around me somehow.

When Bhagavan's energy was coming through me for those nine years, It was so so powerful. People sometimes couldn't get up off of their chairs or they had to lie down on the ground because that energy was coming through me from him. It wasn't me. I thought it was me, but it was from him as I found out. These miracles would happen spontaneously around me and I noticed over a period of time, first I thought it was a coincidence, but people would ask me or they would confide in me.

This is going on or this is going on in my life. I'm also a therapist, so people would just tell me stuff. And then I would notice sometime later that they would say, oh, this thing cleared up. Oh, it just sort of isn't a problem anymore or it disappeared or something. This is the inner light that you are.

When you rest in your inner light, you heal the world. I didn't mean to. It just is a side effect. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with this transcendental meditation said that when one percent of people meditate, crime goes down in an area. Bhagavan said when one family was enlightened, it affected a 100,000 others.

So it's all good. We're a continuum. We're a lot of realities, like I was saying. We're a rainbow. Some part of us, maybe I'm grateful when people speak up.

I really am. But there's something about realizing yourself too which heals the world. Short of that, I'm in a state of separateness if I'm not completely healed. I'm the problem I'm trying to heal. It's me.

So I I try to work with that. I hope that answers your question or at least as a start. Jennifer says, intuition came up recently, and I shared that I have the ability to completely ignore my intuition. I have felt and experienced beautiful moments with grace, joy, and peace. Otherworldly, yet sometimes, I logic it away as a dream.

I do go back to these experiences and can still feel grace and light. Meditation and stillness is best when I am rejecting these experiences. What a good comment, Jennifer. What you said is exactly what my experience has been. The only reason Jesus appeared to me, it was a big I fainted three energy came through me three times.

I talked about it in a prior podcast. But the point is, I finally listened. And when you channel stuff or when your intuition comes, it's so easy to block it out. So the very fact that you're letting it in is huge. Because intuition is you've heard that saying a small quiet voice.

It's not as loud as the logic or we're captured by our thoughts, our emotions, our worries, our anxieties, our separation that hijacks our thoughts and attention. That's very loud. That's why when I said do you feel yourself as light? If not, what I noticed, it was because I was captured by all those neurons firing inappropriately, maladaptively. They're loud.

They tell me not to sit still. They tell me not to listen. I think everybody experiences that. And Jennifer says very powerful experiences. When we went to India, she says about how the, the roads started to disappear underneath her to move and undulate, and it was quite a new experience.

India can be like that. Thank you, Jennifer. What a great observation. Jen says, I have a question similar to AJ's. I still struggle with boundaries.

I'm trying to have boundaries that come from love with my mother who has abused me. Oh, yes. I'm going to take a breath because that's hard. I accept my soul, chose her as my parent. I thank her for my role in my life.

Yes. It's true. And helping me become the person I am. True. But I've also haven't had contact with her for a couple of years now.

I often have peace. I've rewired. Excellent. I know that comes from inside me, that I already have all that I seek, and I stop seeking. I feel the oneness.

Yes. Beautiful. And I know separation from my family hurts her. Lately, I've been feeling like reaching out to her that I can accept her. It's fear that she'll hurt me despite all the growth I've had that holds me back.

Is there some path I'm not seeing that's loving to her and loving to me? Thank you for any guidance and your light. Wow. Thank you, Jen. That's powerful.

I think so many of us identify. I'm getting a little teary. Sorry. Okay. I identify.

As usual, I have to answer this in many different ways because it's we're a multidimensional being, as you know, Jen. First of all, it's beautiful, all that you've realized. Your question itself is beautiful, and it's very insightful. As things rewire, it takes time. And it's like somebody that's an alcoholic, and in some sense, we all are, whether it be with our thoughts, our habits, whatever, emotions.

But if you drink one drink, it's tough. You restimulate everything that you've worked so hard. So your thoughts are accurate. Should you see your mother? I don't know.

Maybe. But it will likely throw you back. The old rewiring will scream like somebody who is not drinking anymore. It's screaming, have a drink, have a drink, have a drink. You just Al Anon and things like that are very healthy because at least you can get around other people.

Groups are healthy. Seeing a therapist is healthy. Having good friends is healthy. So you can talk to them and process some of this stuff. Remember, none of these podcasts are psychotherapy.

I'm not saying this for you, Jen, but just anybody that's listening in. Having deep support with these deep things can be very important. However, you can do it little baby steps if you decide to see her. Perhaps a telephone call first. I don't know.

I'm just making up stuff because I that could be too much. Perhaps a letter, a loving letter, or loving email these days. I'm from the old school. Baby steps. And then you take a breath.

You know, if you're ever in a situation, and we all are, where you're about to be overtaken with prior conditioning, it can be helpful to do this very simple thing. Just stop for a second. Stop in your tracks. Take a breath, and maybe sigh. And then take a moment and reflect on what's coming up.

See, this breaks the idea that you'll be reactive. Because when an old maladaptive habit wants to take over, it's typically reactive. It'll take you over quickly. Reaction. So rather than jump into the reaction, you can watch the reaction.

And then you make a choice. One way to distance the reaction might be, and this is mindfulness, label it. Rather than jump into it and get lost in the hallucination that's begging you to jump into it, like a bottle is begging you to jump into and drink it rather than look at it, it helps you to just look at the emotion if you just label it emotion. You don't get into it. You don't even look into it.

You just label it emotion or a thought. You just label thought. And when the next thing comes up, which might be very rapidly, you might label it stomach sensation. Thought, emotion, sensation. So that you remain as awareness watching these things until they play themselves out.

This is if you're under heavy internal fire. So I don't know what to tell you, Jenna. You're not missing anything as far as I know. I would just start very small baby steps and then take a breath after you hear back. Be with it and let it go.

Honor your awareness and who you truly are rather than the story of what you experienced in the past. I'll tell you one other thing that might be helpful. Anytime you retrieve an old memory and you bring it to the present and in any way you contact the present say you touch the desk or you look at a tree and then you let it go or you don't. You change the chemical makeup of that memory, the way it's encoded in your brain. So it's no longer the same memory.

Now it is this takes a while, but now it's probably still the hurtful memory, but it's updated its files a tiny bit and it knows it's okay. Hurt plus knowing it's okay. Then it comes up again and maybe it's 95% as strong as it used to be. And then you talk to a friend about it. Well, now you have a different perspective.

Maybe at one time you had a perspective as I was so weak and fearful, and I'm not talking about this situation, but just a weak and fearful memory that anybody might have. Somebody might point out to you, well, actually, you were very courageous to attempt that thing at all, to get through it at all, took courage. So now when that memory goes back into your brain, it's encoded fear, feeling weak, but I was courageous also. It's different. So every time you process something, you change that wiring even more deeply.

So however that helps or maybe is just a beginning, I hope it helps, Jen. Thank you. That's pretty powerful. Therese says forgiveness in relation to Jen. And, yes, forgiveness is one layer and so important.

And it sounds like you've done a lot of that, Jen. And I think that's what Therese is referring to, but it's multilevel. Lots of things happening at the same time. AJ surrender. Yes.

Surrender is, I think, what you're already doing, Jen. But there's this involuntary retriggering that goes on that Jen is referring to, I believe. And that is a thing. It takes time to rewire. So, yes, surrendering is the backdrop and the core and so powerful and exactly what does happen.

The very first time I saw Bhagavan in India, 02/2004, I talked to him personally, and I told him that some people were doing sort of violent things to animals, and I would talk to them. They were fishermen on the beach, and they were just catching fish and killing them. They didn't even want to eat them. They would just knife them, cut their heads off, throw them away, where they had the option to just throw the fish back into the ocean. And they just would do it.

I don't know. People would run around the beach with baseball bats and hit kill crabs because it was fun. It bothered me so deeply. And I talked to Bhagavan and I said, I just have to talk to all these people, but it's very painful. And I keep trying to tell them, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

And he said, you know, in oneness where he is all the time and where I wasn't, he says, somehow you see it's all part of a whole and it's okay even though it's not. It is. But he says you you're not there now. That's not where you are. So you need to do what you need to do.

Go talk to the people if that's what you need to do Until you don't. He didn't tell me, just be in oneness just because I wasn't. Now, Jen, I take it I don't know because this is a limited forum but it feels like you've done all these things on all the levels and you're still aware of the reactivity that still looms a little bit at least in the reptilian brain. That's why I'm saying take baby steps, maybe a letter or an email or something, and then take time to process it. And then if if and when you're ready, the next step.

Or talk, you know, to a friend and get other perspectives. Therese, wish I had to heal my relationship with my mom. I was told to pray for her and get a picture of her as a baby and pray for that little innocent soul. It helped. Well, Therese, that is beautiful, and that does help.

So, Jen, you may have done that. But if not, thank you, Therese. That's at the core. See the person as a baby. Even if you're with her, see her as a baby who maybe had difficult parents.

I bet she did. I bet she did. Joe. Maybe mom had opportunity to do her own inner work because you were different. The interaction has to be different.

Yeah. Beautiful, Joe. Yeah. Maybe in the meantime, your mom has done some inner work too. Beautiful, Joe.

Thank you. Jen says, you're spot on. Thank you, William. Thank you, Jen. And all the rest of you also.

There's so many layer that's with spiritual stuff. You can't just make a pronouncement and say that's it. It's a lot of layers. You trust your heart. We're all the same here.

We're all awake. And Austin and I was at a little group and Lama Surya Das was there leading the group. And somebody asked him, Lama Surya Das, are you awake? And he said, I'm awake enough. What a beautiful answer.

Isn't that true for all of us? We see all the parts of us because we're clear. We see all the parts of us. Alexandria. Hi, William.

It must be time to cycle through again. So lovely to see and hear you. Hi, Alexandria. Lovely to see you. And, yes, cycling through is very powerful through these podcasts starting at one.

So thank you for even saying that, Alexandria. I'm going to and I'm going to read maybe one other question. I hope it's so good to see you. And this one, I don't know. I'm going to this will be too fast of an answer for this question, but somebody wrote in.

I was and this is in one of the reviews. Like I said, this is so the reviews are beautiful, so you might look at them if you haven't already. I was brought up in a religion that believed prayer would heal sickness. I struggle to hear all the illnesses people experience. You spoke of your dear friend called Sherry who was found unconscious and seriously ill with cancer, which I did speak about in a previous podcast.

I think you spoke of her as a shining light. I did. Why would she have such a negative experience? Deep down, I think I understand the answer, but it would be helpful to have further clarity. Thank you.

Holding you in my thoughts and love and gratitude. That's such a deep question. When you're separated and cut off from yourself and full of stress and hurt and separation, anger, fear, That clinically has been proven to cause health issues. We all know that. So we know that.

That's not Sherry. I'm not talking about her. I'm just saying I'm starting with the opposite thing. So what if you're not? What if you're full of light and it's flowing through you?

That's very healing and opening and you're flowing. And your body is doing much better than it would have. However, we're in the middle of this world. And as AJ was saying, we're affected by all these people around us. That affects us.

Bhagavan was telling the Indians, don't stay in The United States for more than two years in a row. It'll affect you. One word for that could be karma. There's city karma, there's individual karma, there's country karma, there's world karma, there's continent karma. We're influenced by the water we swim in.

We live in The United States. We're influenced by it. The very first time I was with Bhagavan, a lot of stuff happened telepathically. And you could ask him, he was just showing us stuff, just trying to teach us, but you could ask him for for things you wanted, like miracles. I was wearing glasses at the time, and I asked him, I'd like you to heal my eyesight.

And telepathically, I heard him say no. I met him in person for the first time face to face in a small group for the first time. There was probably eight of us. And I asked him, I said, Bhagavan, can you heal my eyesight? Because he was in person, I was talking to him then.

Before it was telepathic and like Jennifer said, you know, part of your mind goes, yeah, am I making this up? I don't know your logic. You want to believe it, but you screen a lot of it out. So I asked him in person, can you hear my eyesight? He said, didn't you ask me this before?

I said, yes. I was kind of shocked he said that. I said yes. And he said, and what did I say? I you said no.

He says, so. So he couldn't or he would have. At another time, he told us all, he said, somebody will ask me for something and I will picture it in my mind. And if it stays there, I know it will happen. And if it disappears, I know it will not.

Remember, there is ultimately no individual us. It just feels like there is because we're seeing through the lens of our personality. But I also, in the spectrum, feel myself as oneness. I experience myself that way too. And as an individual, all of it.

When I look through my personality, it's like putting on a pair of sunglasses, I experience life colored by those glasses. I experience myself as an individual. When I let go and I feel intuitively, I experience myself as oneness. So we're on a lot of different levels. But ultimately there's only oneness.

That's the core. And oneness means everything fits together perfectly. There's a reason for everything. And it can't be everybody is not designed to live forever. There's a purpose.

Now Sherry, I went and stayed with her for about three weeks and every I would sit with her. She lives in lived in she did pass away. She lived in Austin, where I lived for thirty years. Jennifer and I are here in Tallahassee. I went there for about three weeks, and I stayed there, and I just would be with her.

And she was not upset about passing away. That might be my story that she would be upset, but she was not. She was ready to go. So there are many layers to this. She processed everything with such equanimity, peace, love, and light.

If anything, she was a little impatient to move on to something deeper. I guess because she is so much light as are all of you. So it's a very complex answer to a very complex question and a very good one, Jules. So thank you for asking it. I'm answering it here because it's harder in the reviews to answer these very good questions, but I try my best.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your questions. I hope we can do this again relatively soon, and thank you. It's so good to see you all. You all are doing great.

I don't even know what to say. It's just you're perfect, and anything that would say otherwise, watch it, begin to let it open up, Relax, release, and let go. Sometimes it takes its own time, you know, or always it takes its own time. So this is not something that can be done by willpower. You're fine whether it goes or not.

It took me a long time to get used to centering in my awareness that which is aware of everything. So if you're not completely centered there, practice that. The part that's watching everything. Just label everything so you don't have to deal with it. Emotions, thought comes up thought, sensation, emotion, another one comes up emotion.

And it just takes your mind off of it. It's like a mantra and keep your attention on awareness a bit. Now if your insides scream, no, it's too much. No, I don't I want to.... do something else. I'm too jumpy.

I'm too fidgety or something. Remember that's your old personality wired together. Neurons that fire together wire together. So you want to break that. So if you could just like they ask people with obsessive compulsive disorder, if you could just resist that for a moment longer before you jump into some other thing, just for a moment.

No. Maybe a few neurons or definitely a bunches of them will start to unwire. Next time it'll be a little easier. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Jools, Therese, Jody, Jennifer, everybody.

Thank you. Love to you all. I look forward to next time. Take care. Bye.