20 - Noticing what's happening in your awakening

We discuss a combination of things that are or will happen in your awakening at this stage in our podcasts.  We will explore most parts of this combination much more deeply in future podcasts but are exploring the broad strokes now in this podcast.  
We are radiantly One with All.  It is only connection.  No you or me...only connection....Oneness.  Radiant Love, Peace, and Joy.  In our path to this normal state of connection or "awakening" we will usually experience a combination of things that melt our separation away.
First we are the only ones that are causing suffering inside of us.  We have to stop it or it will not stop.
Second, we have to stop the carrot stick approach many of us use.  "I will not relax until I complete my goal."  This blocking approach many of us employ is not true to our nature and is very harmful to our health and well being.  Third, Awareness is curative so we stop (meditate) and experience more deeply who we are (Being) and the qualities of our Being (Peace, joy, love).  We also see through our old structures and let these thoughts and emotions dissolve and dissipate under the bright light of our awareness.  Fourth, under these thoughts and emotions is tension felt as a block.  It is the block of separation.  This block only releases when we are both aware of it and let it "soak up" relaxation and update it's files.  It is stuck in a past time and place and will usually not release unless it soaks up the relaxation emanated from the Peace of your Being.  Finally, we work with energy meditations to open up the flow between us and all around us.  Separation dissolves and all is One.  "The Father and I are One.", Oneness, etc.

These podcasts are meant to supplement your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. They are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. I feel these podcasts 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.  Since we are each a bit different, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

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

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

Transcript

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Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together. I trust you're doing well. There's an old Zen saying that goes something like this, Before awakening, chop wood and carry water. After awakening, chop wood and carry water. Awakening is very normal, but yet it's very extraordinary as well. So let's talk about that for a second and the combination of things that will happen in your journey to awakening. Well, the ordinary you, the natural you when it's not mucked up is a radiant being. There are no borders. You are joy, love, and peace. And everything around you is joy, love, and peace. When you're awakened, this is not a philosophy. It's an explosion that you experience every moment. There's no border between you and what's around you. Like Jesus said, the Father and I are one. He wasn't kidding. There are no borders. And the personality you, in my case, the William me still remains as a functional tool, but it's not a reference. In other words, I don't refer back to it. The borders are gone. So when I'm in front of a wall, I am the wall. When I'm in front of a tree, I am the tree. There is no William. It's only one. As Yogananda said, it's not quite right to say that I am God. Better to say that God has become me. I have disappeared. In Christian jargon, the sinful me is gone. That which separates is gone. Buddhism and Hinduism pretty much say the same thing. So it's a radiant explosion of love, joy, and peace, which by the way, are the fruits of the spirit or the first three for Christians. But again, same for Hindus, same for Buddhists. And though I'm not versed in Islam, I suspect the same there too, because it's a universal truth and truth is truth for everybody. In the journey to become our normal self again, certain things happen. The first thing is as you sit still and start to observe what's really going on, you notice there's a combination of things. Your being is there all the time. Always your love, joy, and peace. Always. But at the same time, in your consciousness is a mixture of structures that you've created or absorbed in the past. Those are painful ones. Generally, they're blocking and they cause hurt and anger and fear in your life. They're artificial. They're made up, but we believe them because when we look through our thoughts and emotions, it's like we're in a movie, a horror movie, perhaps, but it's very 3D and real. Like we have 3D goggles on in a sense, and it colors our reality. So we think it's real. So in this combination of things that will happen as we awaken, the first thing is that we take responsibility. Nobody's causing hurt inside of my body, except for me, because I'm the only one in there, right? Nobody's creating fear, except I'm somehow creating that fear for myself or anger. I'm creating it. Nobody else. Or perhaps I've absorbed it from somewhere else and I'm maintaining it. Maybe I didn't create it, but I absorbed the structure and I'm willing to maintain it. So I need to take responsibility and say, if this is going to stop, I've got to stop. I have to do that. There's no other way around it. Nobody can do that for you. We're creating the pain. We have to stop it. Nobody else can do it because nobody else is creating it for us, but us. Our reaction to other people is just that. Our reaction to other people. Another common way that we block ourselves is we use a carrot stick approach. I won't feel good until I get my project done. I won't relax until I do this and that, and it becomes habitual. But there's a fundamental problem there. In order to convey that information to ourselves, I will not relax until this happens. I have to clamp myself down. I have to stress myself out. I have to block myself. And that's just not truthful to my being because I'm not this block. I'm not pain. I'm not a delay. I'm not anxiously waiting. I'm none of these things. So I've got to stop it. It is possible to be happy and complete my task. I have to stop these blocking behaviors. I have to see them and I have to stop them. I can't have my foot on the gas and the brake at the same time. These are very practical things, but they must happen. We'll talk about them more in a later podcast. We've already talked about the fact that awareness is curative. And as we've meditated and as we've seen in a prior podcast, we're not our thoughts and our emotions. And as we are aware of them, they melt. They melt away these old structures in the awakened state. You rarely have a thought because you're one with everything around you. You're more feeling energy. There's an energy exchange or just an energy flow going through your body onto everything else and back kind of like breathing. It's radiant and it's very powerful, but you're not thinking. There's no real need for it. You think when you need to think, but not just all the time thinking. So awareness is curative and we let our awareness melt our thoughts and emotions away. As they melt away, you're going to notice a fundamental tension, a fundamental block underneath them all. This is the block of separation. This is where I separate myself from myself and I create a personality. So even after the emotions and thoughts melt away, the tension often remains, you'll feel tense in your muscles. You'll feel a block inside of you and it'll be very persistent. At least it is most of the time for many people. You might be different, but most people it's very, very persistent. Awareness is curative for this block, but it needs something deeper. Awareness melts it from the outside, but it will not release from the inside until it soaks up your beingness. It's like a dry sponge and it has an old agenda. It feels alone and isolated and it needs to soak up your love, your peace, your wellbeing, the qualities of being that you already are. It needs to soak them up. So as it soaks them up, it dissolves. It lets go into the peace, wellbeing, joy, and love. That's really what it wants. And that's why it was formed. This is extremely important and is often overlooked in most systems. I used it a lot as a therapist and it's very, very powerful and necessary. I will have another podcast just on that, but I want to make you aware of it in this podcast. Now there are many spiritual practices which are designed to do just that, to help you to relax and let go. But often they're not taught correctly or learned correctly, perhaps I should say. Maybe both are correct. I'm not sure. You tell me. When somebody teaches you to breathe, for instance, often it's turned into a grim practice. I have to do it this way. Or when they talk about chakras, it's like the chakras are in these certain places or yoga. I need to do the asana or the move in just the right way. But remember, this is about you and your awakening. So listen to you, stay connected to you. For instance, in breathing, only breathe as deeply as actually begins to open up the area that you're breathing into. And only breathe out as deeply as feels connecting and comfortable to you. Because if you go beyond your comfort limit, you'll get tense. And if you get tense, you'll reinforce the blocks. And if you reinforce the blocks, you're back to the unawakened state again, right? Okay, it's good to listen to your teachers. And if they show you the quote unquote correct way to do that, you may gently aspire to do it that way. But it's not that important. What's important is your awakening. So listen to what they say. But more important, listen to yourself. When you have a traumatized part of you, maybe it can only open up just a half an inch. It can hardly take anything in. So don't push it beyond where it needs to go. Listen. And that's another important thing. Listen to yourself. Take guidance from others, but listen to yourself. As I said before, sure, Buddha was awakened. Great for Buddha. But what about me? What about you? Listen to you. So soak it up, but do it in a way that opens you and relaxes you. Remember what relaxation is anyway. You start off with tension and then you soak up beingness. As somebody maybe rubs your back, you relax. But what are you relaxing into? It's beingness. It's peace and love and joy. Your muscles feel it. Your being feels it. Your mind body mechanism feels it. You soak it up. That's what you do in all areas. When you awaken, when you soak something up, what happens to the tension? It disappears. It dissipates and then it disappears. It's not like a fixed structure that you push over to one side or the other. No, you receive so that it can disappear. So often we use our willpower to push our emotions to one side or our thoughts to one side, squelch them or push them or manage them or something like this, but they're still there afterwards. What you want to do in awakening is let them breathe, let them soak up the wellness so that they disappear just like your tension disappears in a massage. Your tension dissipates, expends its energy, relaxes into the peace and well-being of your being and disappears. Your thoughts do the same. Your emotions do the same. And finally, in your practice, connect to everything around you. You already are in reality, but perhaps you've constructed blocks that make it seem like you're here and the things outside you are there. As you awaken, though, it's good to rest in the truth and start to feel the connection. Feel the connection in the ground as you walk. Feel the tree next to you as you sit in the park. Feel the wall as it's in front of you. It's made of vibrating atoms. You want to connect so that your energy doesn't stop at an artificial barrier called your body because that's the unawakened state. So we're coming back to our natural state I realize that I'm going to need to speak more about each of these things more deeply as well as so many others. So I will in future podcasts. One more thing I'd like to say when tension won't leave when you're frozen inside there's often some post-traumatic stress going on and we're going to talk about that. I'm going to devote a podcast or two to that as well. It's very important because post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't usually respond well to spiritual practices. Remember this is not psychotherapy these podcasts. If you need to see a therapist, see one. However, I'm giving you some ideas and we'll explore this more in future podcasts. I do write about it under my resource page on my website. So that's an option for you in the meantime. All right, take care. I look forward to exploring this and so much more trust me as we talk again. Take care. Bye.