Letting Go Of A Crisis Of Identity And Instead Feel The Love

What does letting Go Of A Crisis Of Identity And Instead Feel The Love mean to you?  Why do people lose faith? Why is our sense of identity based on what we perceive as threats? In order to really embody absolute love and live from a place of love, we must begin to look beyond our physical identity and form. What is self-love? What is love? How are we breathing? How are we moving? If we can move with more intention, then we start to live a life with more meaning.  We will learn about this and so much more in today's talk with author, yoga teacher, and social entrepreneur committed to authentic and vulnerable introspection surrounding all aspects of the human experience. …. Troy Hadeed!

Troy Hadeed was born in Trinidad, he got his first letter published aged 10 and has taught yoga internationally for over 15 years, and has founded several successful businesses, including a hemp store, a waste oil recycling business, and a yoga studio. He has walked coast-to-coast across central America, navigated the world on a ship, spent prolonged periods in silence, and is continuously seeking to make sense of the human experience. In all things, Troy hopes that his life will assist others in rediscovering a relationship with the God of their understanding while inspiring people to embody more compassion, understanding, and love.
Troy's contact details: https://linktr.ee/troyhadeed

"If loving and taking care of yourself, does not prepare you to be in service to others and be in service to something larger than that self love is actually selfish."

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Welcome to the gentle yoga warriors conscious conversations podcast, to help you grow and discover who you are to develop a deeper, more complete side of yourself via conscious talks, self love meditation. And by interviewing some of the most inspiring guests on the planet, many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transform their lives, overcoming pain and setbacks, and dark night of the soul followed by significant turning point, and hence a change outlook on life that was so profound that they wish to share it with other people. Our podcast is rich with deep talks, and we offer a way to have a more full and complete way of life. As well as being an indie alternative health and wellness podcast. We also offer personalised meditations, self help books and yoga and healing sessions. Just go to the gentle yoga warrior.com for more information.

Unknown Speaker  1:30  
Idea listeners, so I'm all wrapped up nice and warm, because I'm going to record this particular podcast today, it's a little bit chilly in the location that Matt, but fear not because it may be for autumn as I record this, and this may be the second last episode, which is all about letting go and finding the balance that brings simit new in. But we are going to bring some warmth in your heart today, for I have got an amazing guest on the show. So I am like I said, I am in that place between a little bit nervous and a little bit excited. And that is a really good place to be for I feel that's kind of where I grow. And also I can feel the energy of this next guest quite powerfully. And in an amazing way, I feel that this episode is going to be something really, really special. This guest has written a book. But not all books are equal. Everyone who writes a book is fantastic. And anyone that writes a book, I think, wow. What particularly touched me about this book is the author's ability to be authentic to show inspiration to share intimate moments of how they develop their yoga journey. And also it offers ideas on how you dear listener can't progress your journey. So I'll let this next guest explain everything to you. So shortly joining us from Trinidad, we are going to have the grace of having try Hadid. So try is massive. So try isn't over yoga teacher and social entrepreneur, committed to a frantic and vulnerable introspection surrounding all aspects of the human experience. And I think that is a perfect description of his work having observed what I have so far of his work. So Troy was born in Trinidad, and he managed to get his first bit of work published in the age of 10. As taught yoga internationally for 15 years, as far as several successful businesses, including a hemp store, a waste oil recycling studio. He is what coast to coast across Central America. Not only that he's navigated the world by a ship, while sprint prolonged periods and silence which is a big cert, we could all do it and is continually seeking to make sense of a human experience. And I feel by him continually seeking to make sense of that he is able to help other people. Today we will be talking about letting go of Christ the crisis of identity and instead feeling the love. So that's just kind of take a few deep breaths you're in to the moment know that each and every one of us is a gift to this planet. And then that is prepare for this absolutely fantastic guest, which I'm very humbled and honoured to have on the show. So without further ado, please welcome tri Hadid journalist all the way from Trinidad try. Welcome to the show.

Unknown Speaker  5:30  
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jean. It's a pleasure.

Unknown Speaker  5:33  
My pleasure. So thank you so much for taking your time out of your schedule to speak to us today. That So today is a autumn themed. Well, this is the second last episode of our autumn themed fall themed series, which has all been about letting go shedding things and making space for new new things to come in. So that's why I thought you'd be a fantastic guest for the show. And I was hoping that we could talk about letting go of crisis of identity and instead feeling the love. But firstly, try Would you explain a bit about your journey and your journey and anything else? Like that would be fantastic.

Unknown Speaker  6:15  
Yeah, sure. So I was born, let's go all the way back then. I was born in Trinidad. I pretty much lived there my entire life. But I've travelled quite a bit. I went to university in Florida, I travelled the world on a ship abroad worked across Central America. I've done quite a few things that have helped develop me as an individual, you know, my, my face real influence, I would have to say up yoga was at 14 years old, but I didn't even know what it was right. It was just me reading one or two books. And that when I graduated university, I people asked, well, what am I going to do in my life? I'll say, Well, I'm gonna teach yoga. And they'll be like, Well, do you do yoga? I know. But I knew I was going to teach yoga, right? And when I went to university, I told my dad, I was like, you know, my dad was paying for me to go to university. I told my dad, you know, I wasn't going to work in the family business. So if he didn't want to send me he didn't have to. He said he was going to send me regardless. And I said, alright, well, I want to do philosophy and writing. He's, I know, he said, You're gonna do business. So I came back when I graduated and came back home. I remember him asking me, you know, well, what are you going to do? I'd say, Well, I'm gonna open a hemp store. So I opened, Trinidad's first hemp store, we're all including and now this was not a head shop, it was a hemp shop. And I want to make that clear, it was all environmentally friendly hemp clothing, products, cosmetics, that kind of stuff. And I ran that for about seven years. And then I, I closed that down, I opened a recycling business that collected and recycled waste cooking oil, and exported for biofuel to Europe. And then I sold that, and I put everything I had into this amazing yoga community and studio. And so that is still very much alive. Right now. We don't have a physical space we reopen next year, that is very much alive. And I just finished writing my first book, which hopefully it's gonna come and T will very soon. And yeah, I would say in a nutshell for me, Jane, you know, I've been really close to God my whole life, even since I was a child. And I know I always challenge the confines of religion that tried to put a box around God. And I think in anything I do, what I hope is whether be teaching yoga, or writing or conversation or relationship. I hope that my life in some way will help us all remember what it means to love, and help reconnect people to their understanding of God, whatever that relationship to divinity looks like. So that's kind of like me in a nutshell.

Unknown Speaker  9:21  
Wow, what a journey and to kind of like pave your your way in that in that sense. I was, as I was looking through your work, because I was very lucky. I got to read a sample of your book. And yeah, so during that, thank you is like on another level, this book, I really think it's, it's something really, really, really special. You're welcome. So as I was reading it, I read a part that said, a hope of faith can't live in the same house. Kind of you probably put it a lot more eloquently but hopefully Faith can't live in the same house and that It really kind of got me thinking. Can you elaborate a bit more on that? If you will, if you don't mind? Try?

Unknown Speaker  10:05  
Yeah, you know, hope, you know. And writing that chapter would really, really I wouldn't say hard but very interesting for me. Because what the writing process for me, I had to go and this book is full of all his insights and teachings and philosophies. So in writing it, I had to pick my own perspectives apart. I had to pick apart everything I was saying and be like, Is this really what I believe? Look at the words, look at the shape of the words, look at it is this actually what I'm trying to say? And what I believe, and that chapter was actually really interesting. Because, you know, I, so in a nutshell, hope is a beautiful thing. I'm not trying to take anything away from hope. And, but hope and faith are not the same thing. They're not even close. They are not close. So they're on the same team. And they live in the same house, meaning that they they have the same attention, intention, right. They are not enemies, they are friends. But their roles and their characteristics are significantly different. And we need to acknowledge that hope is like a dream. Hopes, still leaves a lot of room for uncertainty, and doubt, to infiltrate our lives, right? Faith that's not. Faith has no doubt, and no uncertainty. Faith is fully committed no matter what, right? Now, somebody could say, All right, well, it's faith psychic, that's faith know what's going to happen in our lives. No. But faith commit regardless. You see, Faith knows that we are part of a larger intelligence, right. And faith is willing to commit 100% to manifesting our hopes and dreams, knowing that it might not happen the way we dream the way we hoped. But even when our hopes and our dreams don't come through, faith is still committed. Because faith knows that whatever we are experiencing, even if we are in the mud, even if life brings us to our knees, even we put everything in the manifest our dreams, and it doesn't work out and we end up with nothing. And we're on a floor, on our knees crying with knows that we need to experience that. So So faith and hope are very different. And I think if I recall, how I describe it in the book is like, if you talk about if I have mana manifestation, let's let's say that manifestation is a fire. Hope it is stacking of firewood by But that said, hope dies, then faith is the fire and faith is the fuel that makes that word burn. So So faith and hope are on the same team. But hope is just way dream begins. Who can never manifest? Who cannot create a reality who cannot bring growth and transformation? Hope just points us in the right direction. That makes sense. Absolutely. No sense. Yeah. You know, and I was talking to him, you know, like when a lot a time when we talk about faith. Faith. We think when we have faith, we think religion will thank God. And faith is God and religion. But faith is way bigger. We believe in a God or we believe in divinity because we have faith. Faith came first. Right? It was this feeling and this knowing that we are part of something greater than our individual identity. That is faith. It is because of that, that we believe in God. In order it's because of that, that we believe in anything bigger than ourselves. Faith is so much bigger. You know and whether someone believes in God or doesn't believe in God, or once I use the word God and not use the word God, irrelevant. Faith is that Faith is this knowing that we are part of a larger intelligence and that we are far more than our physical individual identities.

Unknown Speaker  15:08  
In if someone has difficulty having faith, because there can be times, I guess people have had trying times and they've kind of lost their connection with faith, which in a sense to me feels loss of connection, or veba, God higher intelligence or whatever it is that people connect with. What would you say to them? If if someone has lost their their kind of connection with faith and how they could regain that?

Unknown Speaker  15:33  
Yeah, wow, well, this is actually tied into identity crisis as well. But let me say first, that, you know, and I talk about this and iFish, after my book, I believe in God, great, the whatever you want to call that God, whether it Form or Form this, whether it's blue, green, or white, or whatever, brown, whatever. Whether that has a name, or doesn't have a name, irrelevant to me. But I believe that we are part of some some much larger intelligence. So if someone is resistant to faith, or has moved away from faith, I first of all want to invite them to look at why is that because you have moved away for you associated with faith with religion, and you've moved away from that idea of religion, you need to identify that because that's not what faith is. Faith is bigger than religion, right? So I and with that said, I understand gene. One, I understand why someone might choose not believe in God. But that's a whole different conversation. I understand why someone might lose faith. I do. But it's tied to what I refer to as our identity crisis. And the whole world to me is in an identity crisis, including myself, we're all born into it. It's part of the human condition. Because the second we're born, I am told that this is my body. My name is Troy, and this is who I am. So a second, I'm told that there's so much that happened, right? If I am my body, and this is who I am, this could be six hours hygiene, but agreement, I'm gonna try to speed it up for you. If this is my body, and this is who I am, then the first thing that happens is it makes me and you separate. Me and you are now different people and we are separate. The other thing it does is that subconsciously, it makes me believe that if I am my body than when my body ceases to exist, then I cease to exist. For me, that is not a narrative I connect to. And I try to talk and really tangible things, right? I'm not about the woowoo New Age spiritual out there mumbo jumbo esoteric stuff, I try to talk on really tangible levels as much as I can. And even on a tangible level. The human experience for me means is meaning less. Unless I'm part of a larger identity, unless I'm part of a collective. That's what I choose to believe. That's what gives my life purpose. Now, if I believe that I am this physical body, and this is all that I am, then guess what, at some point, I'm gonna leave my body, I'm gonna cease to exist. And at some point beyond that, no one's gonna remember my name. No one's gonna remember what I did. No one's gonna remember anything about me or my life. And that makes my life meaningless. And some people might say, Well, alright, well, okay, then life is meaningless. Sure, if someone chooses to believe that, that's their choice. I moved to live then in forests among the depths of nature about eight years ago. And I've learned so much from nature and from living in the forest. And I can tell you, there's absolutely no way that human experience is an accident. There's no way and I don't expect someone to believe to hear what I'm saying and all of a sudden, believe what I'm saying. Because you have to experience something to know it. Right any world today, any world generationally, we've been told about God. And we've just chosen to repeat it and believe it, but you can't know God, you can't know divinity, you can't know something without actually experiencing it. I have experienced and felt, what I'm referring to whether you want to call it God or nature or whatever. And for me, there is no way that this human experience and everything that surrounds it is an accident. There's something much larger, a much larger purpose of why we are in a human body. And in this human experience. Now, I want to bring it back to your question before I go out on some random tangent, which I do sometimes, right. So why do people lose faith, I understand why. Because if for me they were born, we are told that this is our body, this is who we are, then we perceive anything that happens to this body, and anything we feel in this body that is negative, we perceive it as bad. We identify with it, and we are attached to it. So I understand why at times, we may experience things that are beyond agonising things that make us not want to live any longer. Things that are so heavy on a human experience that all we want to do is give up and Bill and it causes us to lose faith, I understand. But I want to invite the listener to shift their perspective. Because if we come to understand that this human body is not really who we are, it's just almost like a costume we're wearing at this point in time. That any negative experience or any experience we're having at any point in time, has a greater purpose. And that greater purpose is the bring on growth and transformation. Right. It's almost like a human experience is school, we've come to school, we've come to learn to love, we will come to learn and evolve in some way as spiritual beings. And I think once we can shift our perspective, I am not blowing flowers and rainbows and butterflies or anyone. The human experience is hard, it is painful, we experience suffering, and we have to feel it is part of the human experiences that we must feel it. But it is not who we are. There's something bigger happening. And I think if we can connect that something bigger, then that gives us faith to just keep going and seeing where we can learn where we can grow what there is for us to learn in all our all of our experiences. And I know one of my teachers Sean corn, she she said something to me many years ago. You know, it's easy to love. When everything is magic status and flowers and rainbows. It's easy to love when everything seems like it's in alignment. But we've come here to really learn to love and to learn to love we really learn to love when things don't go as we as we want them to go when things appear to be out of alignment. That's when we end the depth of lessons. That's when we any depth of learning. And we love them even when we're face to face with our darkness you know

Unknown Speaker  24:13  
yeah so we're kind of experiencing the wholeness of our life and and hence developing our spirit and our connection with one another and yeah, like is it kind of seen every experience as as a gift isn't it as a kind of sense of gratitude even the ones that aren't aren't if we put labels on aren't so as kind of nice as over over experiences. So this kind of brings you back to letting go of that crisis of identity to then correct me if I'm wrong is learning to feel love feel the connection and to kind of beyond even deeper than that to kind of work on work on ourselves. But taking the moment would you say or do you

Unknown Speaker  24:57  
so here's what I taught I how I talk about Are the identity crisis right? I wanted to eject repeater second, because I want listeners to understand what I'm referring to right. And I'll elaborate a little bit from a second number one, I am told I am Troy, they said my body, that is my very first identity pretty much outside of my grandfather and that kind of stuff. As we grew up, that identity begins to expand. Right? We start to identify with religion, with race, with the ethnic background, we start identify with our opinions. And our belief system, we start to identify with our emotions. Imagine we say things like, I am sad. Is that really who you are? No, that's just what you're experiencing Adam, or one moment in time. We say things like, I have phallic does that mean that I can't change my beliefs for the rest of my life? Is Catholic going to the Catholic belief system going to define who I am? For me? No. Then even more we identify with our careers, we say things like I am a yoga teacher. Does that mean that I can't be anything else. Because if I am a yoga teacher, then I am saying that that's all I can be. Right? I am also now an author, I am also now being interviewed, I am a speaker, I am a lot of things. Teaching, a yoga teacher is not what I am, is one of the things I do, it's very different. So So I want to, I want us to understand that our identity begins to expand as we live our lives. And we become attached to all these elements of identity. And if we don't have a relationship to them, they will lock us into a box. And they will limit our growth and who we can become if we become attached to our sense of identity. Now, our sense of identity also limits our ability to love one another. And that's really important. And it may not be conscious, it may be unconscious. But let me let me try and unravel that a little bit. Right? If I am my body, and my name is Troy and I have all these different aspects of my identity. And I say that I am these things than anything outside of that box or anything that threatens that box or is in resistance to that box, I am going to perceive as a threat. I am going to perceive that as other. And you know, a very, very relevant, very recent example of that is let's take vaccination and the pandemic. We saw this in the world, I might have said that I am probax. Listen to the words. I am not saying I am. But this is an example. I am probox Somebody comes up and says I am antivax. All of a sudden we're on different teams. All of a sudden, it's almost like where war simply because we have different beliefs. How can that be? Right? Whereas provox is not who I am is just what I believe at this point in time. But I have to leave space for my views to change. I have to leave space for growth and transformation in my life. So our sense of I here's what I'm getting at our sense of identity. If we are not in relationship to it, it creates separation. We defend it with all everything we have. Because if I am something then anything outside of that I'm going to perceive as a threat. If it comes close, and because I perceive it as a threat, I perceive it as separate or different or other. My priority is always self preservation. And as long as my priority is self preservation then that is going to limit my ability to love others. And one of my biggest teachers, Jane was a man that we know is Jesus Christ. Now, when I speak to Jesus and Christ, I am speaking way outside the box of religion. And like I tell people, whether that man ever walked out planet or not, to me is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. What matters to me is what he embodied. What matters to me is the story of his life and his teachings. That is the ultimate path of yoga. Because what he embodied is unconditional, limitless love. And that love was fierce, that love wasn't flowers, and rainbows and bunnies and teddy bears, that was a fierce and courageous love. He was a rebel. Right? Now one of one, there was a perspective, I read once about the life of Christ, I can't remember where I read it. But, and I maybe I should go back and read all the books, I could put my finger on it. But it implied that when Christ died on the cross, and rose again, it wasn't so much if someone connects the whole issue of sins and Lebanon sins and free in some sense, great. What I connect to, is that that was his demonstration, to show us that we are not our bodies, that we are way more than our physical bodies, and that when our bodies cease to exist, we will continue to live on. And whatever we can believe that, you know, we say a lot of things James, we say we believe in God, we say we believe in life after that. But do we really get that? Because if we do, why are we fighting so hard? The predictable sense of identity

Unknown Speaker  32:12  
and pretending to fight to preserve a certain sense of identity is what's what ends up dividing us and disconnects in it. So it's, it's blocking that connection. So really, we just need to drop all that I will say,

Unknown Speaker  32:25  
yeah, exactly. And you know, for for practitioners of yoga, get this, it's also something we say a lot. But we need to start connecting dots, something the very, the very foundation of yoga, of what it means to embody and live yoga is to understand that we are already united, that we are not separate, that there is no you and me. There is no sense of individual identity. That is not who we are. The mere word namaste is one that acknowledges that we are not separate, that a God lives within me lives within you that when I see every individual, I see the eyes of God. That is yoga, if we understood that we would live our lives a lot differently. Now get this and this is important. It doesn't mean we won't disagree. It doesn't mean we won't have conflict. It doesn't mean we won't have friction. It doesn't mean we won't stand up in the face of, of what's the word I'm looking forward in a phase of misalignment or darkness and shed light on it. But it means that when we do we will still be in the eyes of God, we will be in communion with God. Because God has brought us here divinity had brought us here to learn and grow. He will challenge us that intelligence will challenge us it will put it in darkness. But even when we stand up in that darkness to shed light, there's also an element of respect. There's an element of being able to see divinity and all of the human experience and then acting accordingly. So even when we disagree, and even when we challenge one another, there's still a love and respect that is present.

Unknown Speaker  34:49  
And that that comes from being really present I was saying kind of knowing knowing oneself and peeling off those layers of identity because we can we can sell thinking, I sometimes say, Oh, I can't do this or you know, like, even like the little things that can kind of start forming like the shell of identity, which isn't, you know, you can, you know, like, yeah, like we can kind of pull away them by being more present in the moment. And so how can we navigate more through to love even more in this day and age of all the chaos out there isn't the world which to me say it'd be perfect chaos in the sense that it's all a part of life, but how can we kind of navigate through the path of love on a daily basis?

Unknown Speaker  35:39  
So, great question. Now, before I answer that, I'm gonna keep coming back to identity, even coming back to identity, because in order to really embody absolute love, and live from a place of love, we must begin to look beyond our physical identity and form and realise that this is not who we are. That the resonance and vibration of our words, our actions, our thoughts, that will live on far beyond our physical bodies. And that is what connects all of us right? Now. But again, to bring it back on into a really tangible way, human to human human experience has a purpose. The ego is not bad, it has a purpose. His sense of identity is not bad, it has a purpose, but we must be in relationship to it. And I understand that when we navigate the human experience in our relationships, and in our everyday life, it can be hard, we meet ignorance, we meet people that aren't in alignment with our perspectives and our views. And we meet people and situations that trigger us. And I think what we have to begin to understand is that everyone in human form, is a product of their conditioning. It is not really who we are. So as I'm looking at you, James, suppose me and you were in an argument, and you were telling me everything I didn't want to hear, and you were doing everything, and it will identify one to one i Then think of believed was right. beneath you, I have to be able to see divinity, I have to be able to see God and recognise that everything you believe and all your actions and everything you do, is a product of your experiences. You are your conditioning. And it's very easy to look at someone and say, well, that's wrong, or that's right, you know, better. But you know, what Jane, says that I always talk about the biggest privilege in our world that we take for granted, and no one speaking about it. We talk about the privilege of race, we talk about the privilege of money, we talk about the privilege of gender, we talk about the privilege of sexual orientation, handicapped physical abilities, we talk about all these privileges. What about the privilege of knowing what love is the privilege of having someone in your life to teach you what is right and what is wrong? A privilege of knowing what security is the privilege of knowing what it is to feel safe. Imagine that there are people in this world, millions of people in this world who have never felt safety and security. They've lived every day of their life under constant threat for their lives. Right. They've never had anyone to show them what is right and what is wrong. They've never had someone to teach them more than means the love or care for someone else. You can't expect them to know better because they've never been shown better. Right? So so it's important in our relationships. The move be to look beyond someone's conditioning. You know, I have a tattoo hair. I have two really important tattoos on my arm actually. Let me give you a look. One of them is from again, Sean Cohen, one of my teachers and it says And she got it from one of her teachers, a guy called Billy. And that's a really beautiful story too. So a teaching says, ignore the story, see the soul. Beneath every story is a soul and that soul is of God. See the soul beneath his story. And then there's another thing on my time, I only tattoo things on my body that I want to remember for the rest of my life constant reminders, right. And this one, it's an unknown author, I don't know who did oh, who said it. But it's a reminder, it says, I have not come to teach. I have come to love. And love will teach. And we get caught up in this ego all the time and wanting to teach everybody. We want to teach everybody and show what he wanted, right? We want to shake them up and be like, wake up, wake up. But sometimes we just need to love them. Because in order to love others, you need to know what it is what love actually is. And for a lot of people, we think we know what love is. But the love we've been shown and the love we've been taught is a conditional love. It's a circumstantial love

Unknown Speaker  41:21  
insane that would you say that also shocks knowing or showing love to oneself beyond the conditions that we've been kind of taught? So to be able to do that to people to be able to start with being able to do to oneself as well. I'd feel quite important because,

Unknown Speaker  41:42  
yeah, your arm, you're referring to the ever so common term self love.

Unknown Speaker  41:48  
Yeah. I just didn't want to kind of sit in that way. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  41:52  
Well, well, for me. For me, Jane is like, it's important to use these terms. Because even though they cliche, and they're, they're whatever, and they're being thrown around all over the place, it's important to use them, because how else are we going to bring light to them, too, because a lot of people are throwing them around without actually knowing what they mean, or what they are putting them into context. So for me, I like I encourage using them, but then let's break them apart. What does it actually mean? Right? Self love is really important. Because you can't love someone else and see God in someone else. If you can't love yourself and see got it within yourself. Right? That that's the very essence of it. But listen carefully to what I'm about to say. Because a lot of people in the world they using this term of self love as an excuse. And they're using it as avoidance as an excuse to avoid certain people or certain situations, or certain experiences they're using it as as an element of disassociation from the world. So listen to what I'm about to say, self love. If loving and taking care of yourself, does not prepare you to be in service to others and be in service to something larger than that self love is actually selfish. Correct, it only serves your identity. So you can you can take time away. You can take time away from people, you can love yourself. You can take your time you need to do whatever you need to do that serves you. But getting yourself in alignment and getting yourself grounded and centred must serve something bigger than yourself.

Unknown Speaker  44:11  
It's not spiritual bypassing, I guess if you're not doing that, of

Unknown Speaker  44:15  
course. Yeah. Yeah, it must. It must. And there's so much people using the term self love, but they aren't actually doing a work. You know, so self love is not all like love. It's not all flowers and rainbows. Loving yourself looking into your darkness and being able to look at all the aspects of your life in which you do not serve others in which you do not show up from a place of love in which you are governed by your trauma and you're you're conditioning. How can I unravel that? That's part of the work that's what self love actually is. You know, you know, it's so funny, Jane because We have all these things self love, Self Realisation, Self Realisation, all self awakening, all this self awakening, and self realisation only comes after you dissolve self completely. Right? There's, there's no, there is no to me, I cannot, as an individual be awakened or realised, unless everyone is awakened and realise I am part of a collective. And I'm not gonna leave anyone behind. I cannot feel okay, leaving anyone behind. Now everyone was more of a journey in their own time. And I'm respectful of that. And I understand that. But I must also understand that they are as much part of God as I am. They are as much part of this divine intelligence as I am. And I'm not willing to leave them behind. You know, it's important, you know, coming back to your question, your initial question, see what I mean, when I say I go off on tangents, sometimes valuable tangents, right, yeah, very valuable tangents. But it's important that we navigate the human experience, to see everyone's conditioning to love them. And in that loving of them, show them a different reality. show people that there is an alternative route, that is of love, and forgiveness, and understanding and patience, and compassion and empathy, that in loving people and showing them this alternate reality, we come to understand them, we come to accept them, and they on their own can find their way. We can't force somebody to find their way. But we can show them the wage and not by force. In on somebody, I was doing an amazing interview recently with a guy called Joe Dimino. And he asked me a really, really powerful question that I haven't really thought of. He said, If there was one person you could have lunch with, or spend time with that was alive, is alive right now, who would it be? And words, Putin came up my mouth. And the reason for that is that I want to understand his conditioning. If I want to change and impact his heart, and his perspective, I need to understand its conditioning, and love him and show him a different way. I don't have agree with what he's doing or love what he's doing. But I can see beyond that, because it's very clear to me that someone like Putin has never known love, never known love. And he sees himself as very separate. He sees himself as a as a indeed, individual. So in order to change his heart, in order to influence him on a heart level, I must approach him and understand his conditioning. So I would love to sit with him, to begin to understand that it might take more than one lunch, I think it might. But you know, and that I had to explain that why. And if we can see one another as these experiences and conditionings, and begin to understand one another, then being able to live every day, from a place of love in our relationships, it becomes a lot more accessible. Now, don't get me wrong, Jane. I speak of these things. But I am also in a human body as we all are. And I know it's difficult that hard, it's hard at times, it's difficult. But how dare we not at least try

Unknown Speaker  49:20  
exactly that. So it's going to actually ask you that if you've had times that were difficult, and you can kind of cover that up. Yeah, that's the human experience, I guess, isn't it but we're not it's not going to feel all nice all the time. That's kind of like the human experience in my Yeah, I was gonna ask you because this could talk to you for hours and hours. You've got so much fantastic, amazing information, but your book popcorn in my pocket, which I think links back to the crisis of identity because my feeling is when people read this book, it's going to kind of like help like be, I use the word shepherd of kind of helping them find the way cetera. But um, can you explain what popcorn in your in my pocket rather popcorn in my pocket is? And like how it came to be and, and and things thank you so much right?

Unknown Speaker  50:14  
Yeah, I would love to I first have to say Jean, this is a very recent happening in my life within the last few days you know the book is not available yet it doesn't have an agent yet doesn't have a publisher yet while a few people are interested, and I am entertaining self publishing and all the different options. What I'm getting at is through the team of friends and advisers of authors and publishers that I'm working with. It had recently come to light that the name of this manuscript might actually change. So when it's released, that may not actually be popcorn in my pocket, I will answer your question though. So I will take this opportunity to tell anyone listening, if they want this book when it comes out. Follow me on social media, follow me on Instagram, join my email list at Troy hardy.com. Because the name of the book might actually change, but I'm gonna answer your question now. I was in my early 20s. And I was with my girlfriend at the time, amazing woman we dated for five years. And we used to go to movies a lot. I remember one night we weren't at the movies. But I love popcorn. So I remember one night I put my hand in my jacket, and I found all popcorn. And I pull it out and I ate it. And after I ate it. I said, Wow. Popcorn in my pocket is going to be the name of my first book. And of course what what kind of book is that? What kind of name is that has a good ring to it. But what does it mean? So it took me 20 years. But when I wrote this book, and that's of course a genuine introduction to a book. Popcorn in my pocket is an analogy of sorts. It's a metaphor. And popcorn is equivalent to all the spiritual insights and revelations and realisations that we come to in our lives. And all of these teachings are as abundant as popcorn. A pocket is a spiritual pocket, no Hedgy thing. Every individual has their own pocket, their own individual pocket. But what's happening is that we're just taking everyone else's popcorn, we're taking all the abundance of popcorn, and we're throwing it around without actually putting it in our pocket. And when we put this popcorn in our pocket, what that means is that we actually work to embody it, we actually ask the question, how does this apply to my life? Where am I not embodying this. And like I reference with God and with everything else, you can only understand something, it only becomes knowledge, when we work, to embody it, and to apply it to our lives and more importantly, to see where we are not applying it to our lives. It's a lot easier to say, yes, preach love, power within my life that I live from a place of love. That's what we do. But do you have the courage to look at the places in our lives where you don't live from a place of love. Because that's really what really where your growth and transformation lives. So the analogy gene is through me sharing the popcorn and my pocket and referencing some of my own experiences in my life through storytelling. I then flip it on a reader. And I invite the reader to take these reflections and these teachings and see how it applies to their life. I want the reader to discover a popcorn in their own pockets.

Unknown Speaker  54:25  
Yeah, I got that from what I read read from it. I love is the bits at the end of the chapters, which has questions of like kind of how to kind of like, kind of ponder it's really looking at oneself. And this is like a map of how to kind of navigate our blind spots where we can kind of learn to see like you said places where we're not coming from love because we can sometimes put ourselves on these spiritual pedestals where we're like, Oh, yes, but I've done all the work and then like, you know the role of the Yoga mat up and then screamed at the girl in the juice bar because she didn't put the right amount of maca and drink, you know, like we've got, that's just a vague example. But that kind of that kind of thing. So I'm also with with your book, it will be out soon and our listeners can subscribe to your newsletter, and they'll be able to hear about it first once once it comes out. But also now at this precise moment in time, if they want to do some work on the thing on themselves, you have your own yoga yoga. How would I describe it? Yoga TV station, is that right?

Unknown Speaker  55:38  
Yeah, yoga platform yoga platform. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, so they can find my classes a few places online, I'm also on gaia.com. But that those have been fermenting recent with Gaia, even who I love, I would love to. But I we have our own platform. It's called Beyond the yoga tv.com. And I teach live classes on that platform about three or four times a week, which are just really Asana based stuff. But in a very intimate, you know, intimate, graceful way. It's how I teach Asana, at least I think so I'm a very good for way as well Devine for the way. So they can join that beyond yoga tv.com We face month it free, it also has a library of over 500 classes. So that is that. I also do private coaching and private sessions and stuff like that they do we put a lot of people one on one through Troy hadden.com. And they can drop me an email or message me on Instagram, we will make it happen. I am working on my website and make that all come together. But yeah, I would be happy to work with people on an individual basis, or they can find me at beyond yoga. tv.com

Unknown Speaker  56:57  
The fact that you to me you forensically teach yoga, not just like this kind of Bath past vinyasa style that's kind of really involved. You know, I'm sure there's some great teachers, but it kind of feels it's, again, I'm trying to not go through to the place of judgement. But free love still expresses it kind of feels like sometimes parts of yoga have been kind of diluted, you know, like when you can get juice, which is like syrup, and you put it in water and you've added too much water. So then it's kind of got it tastes a bit like the juice, but it's not the same kind of potency.

Unknown Speaker  57:35  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, it will love your bed. You know, Jane is very beautiful to me, and very meaningful to me. And many decades ago, I was what I can only call I very rigid, and visit what yoga words this is not yoga, and that's it yoga. And I understand now that everything has its place. Right? Everything has its place. For me, the depth of yoga is in relationship, the breath. So it's not enough just to breathe and move and rush in and out of postures. But how are we breathing? How are we moving? Because if we can move on practice with more intention on a man, then we start to live a life with more intention of a man. And the more we can live with more intention, the more chance that we can see God in all aspects of, of humanity and all aspects of our society and a world. And, you know, I always say, Chang, like if I did not believe that the practice of yoga increased our capacity to love one another and deepen someone's relationship to their understanding of spirit. I would walk away from it. I personally not that anything is wrong with a physical exercise or Zumba or Pilates or aerobics. It's not what I would spend my time doing. It doesn't feel right to me. And the practice of Asana is such a powerful tool. It is a spiritual, very intentional practice. But we have to look at how we are doing it. It's not about what we're doing. It's about how we are doing it, right. We talk about mindfulness, we talk about intention, we talk about breath. But look at asana practice. And I could ask, look at global asana practice, you have to ask, alright, well, where is that? Where is the mindfulness? Where is the relationship, the breath because we actually breathe 23 to 25,000 times a day. So don't just tell me to breathe. But where's the intimacy with breath? You know, and that is so important. Orton and you know, I love in the world of yoga now when I talk, you know, you hear people talking about traditional how something was traditionally taught or within the world of yoga. And Well traditionally postured when done at all. Go back, like, Why are we stopping halfway, go all the way back. Traditionally, yoga was about union with God. It was about setting, dissolving the layers of identity dissolving separation, and realisation that we are one with God. That is the absolute foundation of yoga. So if you want to go back, let's go all the way back. Now Asana can help us realise that, yes, but we need to bring the intention back to the practice, and stopped repeating what we've been taught and what we've been taught.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:03  
Bring a bit more heart into it a bit more. Yeah. There is a strong relationship with breath, I know that I found this for myself, sometimes if I'm, if something's worried me, or if I'm concentrate, I can like hold my breath. But I have that awareness. I'm like, like, Jane, like, you can let go. You don't need to hold on to the breath. It's just like a habit, like, you kind of picked up and I can see how in a yoga class, we can get into the inside kind of habits if we've kind of disconnected our relationship with our breath, because it isn't a relationship. You know, it's like if we're doing something quick, it would breathe differently. We normally when we're kind of deep sitting, meditate, believe the breath slows. And it's kind of like a gentle breeze in the background. I would say in different ways. So I always stress to our listeners to check out your your yoga platform. And also I've seen you've got videos as well, your tree house conversations. Conversations. Yeah, we should, we should really good and the 10 minutes long. 510 minutes long have lots of rich wisdom. But yeah, really good. My final question to you try. Is there anything else in this precise moment that you would like to share with our listeners that you think's important?

Unknown Speaker  1:02:25  
Yeah, you know, I think this would be an amazing place to end on this note, because we were just talking about breath. Right. And one of the most profound realisations to me is when I discovered that the word spirit actually means comes from a Latin word, spirit us. And it means to breathe. And so for me, what happened when I came to that realisation and understood the anatomy of breath, is that I realised that my yoga practice was a prayer. It was my intimate time with God with divinity, to create space in my body to receive that. And more. So. If spirit, a breath was in any way divine intelligence that that means that God is making love to me 23,000 times a day, even as I sit here talking to you. And, you know, we talk about manifestation all the time, especially in New Age, philosophy, manifestation, and it will it will nodes which we throw around, while manifestation is prayer. That's what it is. And I'm not surprised, right that we can manifest and create things. Because we are living in body moments of prayer, if God or spirit or whatever you refer to as divinity, is moving inside of you 23,000 times a day, more. So Jane, if the one thing that connects me and you forget Wi Fi, forget internet, but me and you share breath and we are in different parts of the world. And chances are that the air that was inside of me at one point in my life will be inside of you. And it's beyond. Beyond ancestry beyond DNA beyond physical form, beyond beliefs beyond anything, breath. It's one thing that connects every living being on the planet with everything else around them. It makes sense to me. That breath is an aspect of divine intelligence. So if we are living embodiments of prayer, then I would invite the listeners to understand that prayer is not something we do. Prayer is something we are manifestations It's not something we do consciously from time to time. We are always praying, we are always manifesting, we are always in relationship to God. So what we need to do is bring more awareness to the times in which we are praying unconsciously, in which we are manifesting unconsciously, when we are not in alignment. We're still praying, those are prayers. We're still praying. We're still manifesting, but we are manifesting misalignment, we are manifesting where we are manifesting, separateness otherness, judgement. So we now have to bring more intention to where we live our lives. So we can shed more light on what is unconscious prayer and make our lives more conscious prayer. We are living embodiment of prayer.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:01  
Wow, yes. I like that living embodiment of prayer. Try, you have been fantastic. I could talk to you for hours. And this consistent, so much rich wisdom that you shared with us today. And listeners, I will put try his contact details in the show notes as well. And I hope to speak to you again in the future. But thank you so much, Troy for taking your time today to speak to us today and enjoy the rest of your day and transact. I know you've got a class online today as we speak. So you've got on later on today. So

Unknown Speaker  1:06:38  
yeah, and thank you, Jane, for having me. And I let your listeners know. If they go and sign up for my newsletter, Troy hardy.com, they will get a few free classes and their email so they can go and check it out. And if they have any questions, I am open, they can reach out to me via email via Instagram. If I forget and I don't reply, let them message me again and again and again. Because life gets busy, but I am here for them no matter what they need. You and I hope you'll have me back on

Unknown Speaker  1:07:16  
back on the show. And thank you and my listeners love freebie. So that's fantastic. Thank you. So thank you so much. And then you take care and blessings. Take care. Thank you

Unknown Speaker  1:07:25  
too, Jane, love you have a good day.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:28  
Bye bye. Take care, bye. But as promised, here is your meditation. Inspired by today's show. Top Tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross legged on the floor of a nice strip back. Always nice to sit on a block or a cushion. Or that's not available for you. You sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching. And if you're doing something that requires you concentration are you to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation that's begging as you inhale. feel as if you're inhaling and you're drawing in the most magnificent energy of the most magnificent place or thing, whatever pops into your mind. And then as you exhale, you're surrendering. And as you inhale, you're feeling that breath as it comes into your being. And as you exhale, you feel that breath as it goes away. So inhale, breath into that being x hell breath goes away. Inhale, drawing that oxygen rich breath into your being exhale as you allow it to flow away. And I kind of see breath is that this kind of rhythm of life, in and out. And do close your eyes. And as much as possible, initiate the breath and lower down. So resist the temptation just to breathe into the chest, you want to use the whole of the lung capacity. And there's many technical ways that you can be taught this. But we are in the process of coming into meditation. So for the for the point of today. Just try and breathe as deeply as you can but without strain and as you exhale, allow that breath to come back into your being and then run that breath. You've got that wonderful rhythm in and out through the nostrils. Just imagine that you're on a normal cliff. It can be anywhere in the world, like, whatever it feels to you. But as you stand at the top of this clip below, you can see a beach. And you can see the waves coming in towards that beach as you face it. And as you exhale, you feel all that that no longer serves as gently drawn back into the ocean, but not in a way that you're littering but energy will then be transformed into different energy as it comes back towards you. But I am to have hailing. And in this meditation, you are standing on the top of the enormous clip the ground underneath the soft, but you're standing on the edge of the high cliff. But as you look down, you can see a beach. And from that high clip, you can see into horizon. So you can almost see as if someone has drawn a line, this is all in your imagination has drawn a line for where the sky meets this ocean. And you are connected to that, in the sense that as you inhale, you feel that energy of the horizon by the sea come into your bed. And as you exhale, you feel that that that no longer serves you gently disperses and this reaches the horizontal line of horizon where rue the energy of presence is transformed. And you can continue that rhythm. So keep the eyes closed. Just imagine the sound of the ocean as it goes out. Imagine the sound of the ocean as it comes in. As you feel like connection with life.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:21  
All else seems to feel like it's overwhelming. Or when all else feels like it's a bit too much. The consistency that you can offer yourself is a deep, loving and spiritual connection with your breath. And that is why in this visualisation meditation, you are seeing things from a height or you are seeing the big picture, the connection in many ways of all of us. So imagine lots of other people standing out and looking to an imaginary sea from a height so they can see the big picture the connection and the way that we are all interconnected. We are all interconnected with nature with everything everything breathes the trees brief.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:19  
Little insects bring beautiful flowers need oxygen. Our pets need oxygen. But beyond oxygen, the breath is lifeforce. Prana is it's so often called in the yoga world.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:49  
She is what puts the spirit into matter. Breathing an air is love. And as you stand on this fictional cliff, looking to arise, see that horizon is a symbol of the endless love, the love that you have for yourself that the love that you have for your fellow citizens of this planet. How can we all learn to see and be in perfect harmony whilst respecting our differences? But if we all felt the same fault the same life would not be learning. Someone can have a completely different viewpoint to you. It does not mean one person is good or one person is bad. It is the lens of how they see life. So as you stand on this cliff face, you're in the rhythm of the breath in and out, in and out, in and out. How can you dear listener, how can you see light through a clearer lens, a clearer lens is to drop our identity. Drop the labels, I can't do this, I'm rubbish. I'm this, I'm that drop all that embody who you are. We are here to lift, elevate, and love. And love means getting into the bits that we don't always want to be in. Someone might be doing something, in a sense, they might trigger us they might be acting in a way that doesn't make her day when said makes us sad. Or on the other end, someone might make us feel glad to be alive. My thing to say to you is can you see things from a broader lens that you're on this big click, allow the space it creates. But remember the connection with the breath. If you're ever feeling anxious, and feeling angry, any emotion, take a pause and think how am I doing that? I'm breathing in a place that's love. But if I breathe from a place of love, I extend that love to others. And they are to learn how to love. And it's not a selfish love, but a love that is about connecting a lifting and feeling feeling being humans being in this world

Unknown Speaker  1:17:01  
helping focus to drop the stories that limit them. And this can be done by the breadth. So what has commenced this a little bit longer, but by all means, come back to this as many times as you want. But as you stand there on that, on that edge safely of this imaginary cliff. As you look out to the horizon, you can see here the rhythm of the see below which is in tune with your breath. As you look out, feel in your body is the one that I can do today to help cleanse my vision of who I am and hence help the world and whatever pops into your head allow it to be

Unknown Speaker  1:18:01  
and invite you after this meditation to write that down and perhaps journal about it for a few days. So come back into the moment come back into the room allow that breath to flow to grow to grow to grow and flow as you do one comeback into the present. So thank you so much, dear listeners for taking the time to listen and support our show today. And if you want any more information on what we have to offer, check out the gentle yoga warrior.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai