Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
The Fan of Christ Who's Repairing Humanity Beyond Religious Labels
What would Jesus ask us today if he returned to a world divided by hatred, judgment, and religious dogma? Regina B. Cates, author of "The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have: A Call to Bravery, Peace, and Love," joins the Gentle Yoga Warrior to explore this profound question through her personal journey from religious persecution to spiritual awakening.
Regina shares her experience growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian environment in the American South during the 1960s—a background that led her to question religious teachings while maintaining deep respect for Christ's essential message of love. Now describing herself as a "fan of Christ" rather than Christian, Regina offers a perspective that transcends religious boundaries to focus on universal principles of compassion, inclusion, and integrity.
The conversation delves into why we must confront uncomfortable beliefs, heal through feeling our emotions fully, and recognize that "love has excellent vision" rather than being blind. Regina challenges listeners to consider how religious institutions have promoted the idea that humans are inherently sinful or worthless—creating psychological wounds that make it difficult to love ourselves or others authentically.
Perhaps most provocatively, Regina questions why many Christians passively wait for Jesus to return and "save" the world, rather than actively creating the heaven on earth his teachings promote. This perspective shifts responsibility back to humanity—challenging us to become our own saviors by overcoming personal wounds, treating others with dignity, and being stewards of our planet.
Though her book centers on Jesus, Regina emphasizes that her work speaks to universal principles that transcend specific religious identities. One reviewer even called it "a blueprint to repair humanity," addressing fundamental issues like women's rights, environmental stewardship, economic justice, and treating each person with dignity regardless of differences.
Join this transformative conversation about what it truly means to embody love in action. Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual-but-not-religious, or none of the above, this episode offers wisdom for anyone seeking to create more compassion in their life and in our world.
Regina's contact details:https://www.reginavcates.com
Regina's book can be find on Amazon and also in most book stores.
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Hello, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is Awakened Conscious Conversation Podcast and joining us very shortly. I have a very special guest on the show, regina B Cates, and I actually approached her publishers because I read her book and I really wanted to have Regina on the show. Regina describes herself as a author, activist, advisor and several college degrees, including a Masters in Leadership, which she has been a specialist in for over four decades, and she says on the website I could share my resume with you, but it doesn't show what I consider my greatest and most rewarding achievements Overcoming the physical and psychological abuse that left me feeling unworthy. Journey, I think, will help inspire you, dear listeners today, of how one can turn one's life around and what challenges we have. I feel we can use it as soil to grow into the amazing people that we are meant to be, and she also puts on her website we can choose to get the other side of life's challenges. We can learn what true strength really is by discovering how to love and respect ourselves. When we get that, our relationships become better, our communication clearer and our challenges fewer. Everything I offer is designed to help you create your best life, regina. Everything I offer is designed to help you create your best life.
Speaker 1:Regina and Regina's book, the Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to have, a Call to Bravery, peace and Love, is a refreshing book, all about conversations. Or rather I feel, having read it from front to back, that it inspires us to go beyond the lens of the labels that we call ourselves or other people and to see that love and kindness is the ultimate thing. And she highlights how, in certain religious groups, that they can be very judgmental and cruel and awful to people and that truly Jesus would not want people to be this way. And she describes herself as a fan of Christ, which I can relate to. I love Jesus, I love nature, I love trees, I have a great love of many things and I would suggest that if you a don't feel a deep connection with religion, I would say still listen. And if you do, still listen as well. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Regina B Kate, all the way from the USA. Welcome Regina.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you today.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here. Dear listeners, we had a few technical issues before, but we've managed to overcome it, so we're going to have this amazing interview, which I've been very excited about. So firstly, regina, we're going to talk about conversations that Jesus would want us to have, and I know that you recently published a book called the Real Conversation. Jesus wants us to have, a call to bravery, peace and love. Would you mind sharing your journey so far and what inspired you to write this book?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I hope we have a couple of days or weeks we can pull up a chair in a snug somewhere in the United Kingdom and all over the world and just talk about this. I was, and still am, jane Gay, and so when you are an outlier in an institution such as organized religion and you are indoctrinated into a belief system and you are different and you're outside the rules which I think most of us are because today we want to be put in one particular box male, white, heterosexual, whatever we can get into that. But I think when you're looking through the world and through your experience, through someone who has been persecuted as other whether a black, brown, woman doesn't matter, just really doesn't matter then you have a desire to think about this, because I was told I was going to hell from a very early age, and when you tell children that told I was going to hell from a very early age and when you tell children that, then that becomes a wounding and I think all of us are being wounded to some degree or another by organized religion. So the reason I wrote the book is because I wanted to put my story on paper and the story of other people that I have spoken with and who have provided their wisdom to me about what it means to be black, what it means to be to me, about what it means to be black, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.
Speaker 2:But I've asked people to address questions that I imagine a radically inclusive Jesus would ask Very hard questions. Jane, it's not just for Christians, it's for the entire world. In fact, recently, book review called it A Blueprint to Repair Humanity. So, even though the title is the real conversation Jesus wants us to have, it's about the enlightenment of Christ, consciousness, which never left the planet. But how do we get to that particular point? We ask ourselves hard questions and this book is filled with those.
Speaker 1:I'm so grateful that you asked those hard questions because I think people can have blind sides to. They can go to church or any religion and completely treat people in a terrible way. I've seen it in yoga studios where people will kind of being all they're, all spiritual and scream at someone in the juice bar because the juice wasn't made right, and it's just like this kindness and love is what makes the world go around, in my opinion. Why do you think it's so important to share your book with the world and who do you think is going to benefit from it?
Speaker 2:Well, I say this with deep humility, jane, I really do, because I am not in this business to become rich. You know people that write books unless you're Harry Potter or somebody like that write books like that Because I believe that this is now is a time in the whole world for us to have a conversation. I have a lot of Jewish people that are reading this book and thinking, wow, this is an incredible thing because of the questions that I asked and the perspective that I bring. One of the things that I address is that if you have a God that has always been put into the box of male, then that sets men up to believe themselves to be better than women. Let's look at that. Let's look at that historically.
Speaker 2:So I believe that there is something in this book for everyone and I know you're not supposed to say that, you're not supposed to target that, but everybody that has read this book so far has been moved in one way or another by it, because it is my story is universal just because I'm a gay woman that was persecuted by the church. We are all persecuted by organized religion in some fashion throughout the entire world, and so the questions that I ask, even though it is imagining. You know the real conversation jesus wants us to have. It's about all world religions in the way that we are to treat one another as we want to be treated, and if we don't ask ourselves hard questions, how do we know how to treat other people? How do we know how to treat ourselves?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's so true and and it's very important that we do ask ourselves these hard questions why do you think we need to confront our beliefs that cause us to be uncomfortable?
Speaker 2:Because history has proven time and time again that when you just jump on the boat of what someone else wants you to believe, and yet it goes against what you believe to be true and right, it's never going to end well. We do not have to have war, we do not have to have hunger and starvation and greed and corruption. We do not have to have these things. And until we actually ask ourselves some hard questions, then we were not going to be able to change human civilization for the better. And that's the whole reason for our existence, at least in my belief system is to awaken consciousness to a new level. We don't awaken our consciousness to the spiritual being that we are within by status quo. We have to ask ourselves hard questions why do we have misogyny? Why do we have rampant sexual abuse? Why are women treated as less? Why in the United States do we have the stuff that's going on now? So for all of your listeners throughout the world, believe me, the majority of us are not happy about what's going on over here.
Speaker 2:This guy does not represent us. This party does not represent us. We are absolutely, you know, just beyond belief. You know just beyond belief and yet, at the same time, jane, I am one of those people that believes that we are about to have an awakening, transformation in consciousness, and that also is a reason that I wrote this book, because these questions that I ask, the topics that I discuss, are things that will help grow human civilization as a whole, and I believe if the enlightened messenger, jesus came back today, he would ask these questions. It's not going to be just lovey-lovey, you know, kumbaya, let's sit around and forgive our neighbor for being a total ass. No, it's about how we prevent that in the first place. How do we love one another as he would love us or ask us to do, or any enlightened messenger from any religious faith?
Speaker 1:No, I completely agree with everything you're saying. I can really relate to it and how people can treat each other, even today. You'd think people would, but there's all these kind of blind spots that people have or I don't know. Maybe they're indoctrinated into their religion and they um it was very um sad. But also when I read the bit when you were in the lift and it was a Christian group that were in the lift and they were making these horrible comments about gay people and you decided in that instant to choose not to fight a battle because it you came to.
Speaker 2:Maybe you explain why to our listeners well, yeah, because I think that we it, that is, in the chapter of when we turn our cheek and when we don't. And I was surrounded by these christian kids on these kids, these college age kids on a christ retreat, and I got in just in time to listen to them bash gay people and immigrants. And so where are they learning this from? What is it? What is it about organized religion, and certainly in the United States at this particular time, where you're blaming some other for your problem instead of actually being aligned with what Christ consciousness would be?
Speaker 2:You know, the seven clobber verses in the Bible have been disproven over and over again, and yet they're taken today to persecute people like me.
Speaker 2:We're less than 5% of the whole world's population, and yet it seems this you know, everybody in this religion and many others are focused on me. Why I'm not that exciting, you know. So I didn't say anything in that moment, jane, because we have to pick the battles that we can, where we can influence change, and I have learned that reasoning, trying to reason with unreasonable people is just not going to happen. And so that's another reason that I wrote the book, because you know what, when you go into the privacy of your home. With this book, you can ask yourself those questions and you don't have to be confronted with anybody else until you want to join other people. People around the world are using this book for book discussion groups, but first they read it in private. Like you did, go out into the world and say, oh, let's talk about this all at once. You know you need to go out at first, before you go out and have a picnic.
Speaker 1:I feel people reason, it's going to kind of open their eyes, like where I am. To me it's common sense to treat people like this, but not I've understood that not everyone thinks like me and then and not to kind of judge people but also it's to me it feels very obvious to treat people this way, but I think people sometimes don't have that. I remember once I had a Christian landlady many years ago and she was dressed in a finery on her way to go to church and she was making horrible comments about gay people on her way to go to church and she was making horrible comments about gay people and I just thought how can you stand there like and dressed up and then to go to church and think that you're so much better than everyone and to to act this way and I? It sits in my mind and I think it's just so wrong in so many ways.
Speaker 1:As I was reading your book, I like the way you say that you're a fan of Christ, because I feel that's a category that I fall into. How did you come up with that to be a fan of Christ? I know you come from a Christian background, don't you? And how did you come to feel that?
Speaker 2:I do. But when I was really young, when you realize you're four, about four years old, and that you're gay and different, but you don't know the word for it, at that point you know you don't want to be married, you don't want to have it, it's just a biological thing, and around age four it started kicking in for me. And so I heard all of this hypocrisy and hate and I thought wait a minute. And I talk about in the book extensively, the hypocrisy of how can you believe this about Jesus and then twist it so everything has been twisted for an agenda. Did you know, jane, that until the 1500s it was illegal and punishable by death to have your own copy of the Bible? No, yes, wow. That way people can interpret what they want to interpret you know, and feed you information.
Speaker 2:So in my particular experience, I started hearing and I just came in as a weird kid.
Speaker 2:You know, just a weird kid. I'm going to ask every question that you can possibly think of and I'm going to make you as uncomfortable as possible because I genuinely want to know the answers. And I thought I am a fan of Christ. I am not comfortable certainly not now in the United States calling myself a Christian, because so many people have usurped that term to mean Christian, nationalist, white supremacist and all these other things that Jesus who was, by the way, not white, blonde, blue or Christian you know he was Jewish and dark skin. You know they just twisted this stuff but they've done it from the beginning of time into book groups is actually to unravel a whole lot of these things that we have been taught that were wrong from the beginning as far as what Jesus remember, what Jesus would tell us remember. Jesus didn't write the Bible, and so I'm not comfortable calling myself a Christian. However, I am a fan of what I believe this man stood for, and that is impeccability, love and integrity.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, and inclusion, and he wouldn't see things from the limited lens of prejudice. I feel like it's all about everyone getting on, but the world needs people like you to kind of help remind people of such matters. And why do you? Why do we need to feel to heal and why do you think so many of us avoid this?
Speaker 2:oh, my goodness. Yes, we need to feel, because we're feeling beings. We are emotional beings. We we're intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical. And I believe that the most important part of this to live as a spiritual being is our emotions, to have empathy, to have compassion.
Speaker 2:And if we cut that off which we are doing and that's the reason you see so much stress and craziness in the world today is that we're not feeling. Much stress and craziness in the world today is that we're not feeling. And if we cannot feel, if we prevent ourselves from feeling, we cannot love. And if we cannot love, we cannot treat our neighbor as we want to be treated. The problem with trying to love someone else if we don't love ourselves is that we can never be successful. We have to know what love is within us first before we can give it to someone else, and so we have to feel. We have to feel the good, we have to feel the bad, we have to be okay with a range of our emotions, and that's why it is so important that we work on the spiritual aspect of ourselves, asking ourselves hard questions, experiences my best friend is an atheist, as you read in the book.
Speaker 2:yeah, that was an eye-opener, you know it was great. But he is one of the most feeling, compassionate, lovely human beings and comes from Scotland. So that's exciting, just. He's just an incredible man and he taught me so much about how important it is to hold one another's heart safe. And that's what we do when we feel we hold one another's heart safe. But, jane, we have to do that for ourselves first, and I think I swear to whatever that power is, that organized religion has taught us that we're sinners from birth, that we're no good, that we're worms, that we're nothing. How in the world can we ever create the world that we're supposed to create if, from the beginning, we're taught that we're nothing and we're worthless? That is a load of CRAP.
Speaker 1:Yes, I absolutely 100% agree with that. It's like why would we want to do the work from a contracted place when you know how wonderful if we all realized the full spectrum of our feelings and allowed ourselves to feel that, and by doing that we can magnify love, not contract it. So that really relates to me a lot. So thank you for that, regina. I love that. I've got a question. If you could speak to Jesus right now, is there anything? What would it be that you'd like to ask?
Speaker 2:Oh, man, I tell you what. To be honest with you, my book is filled with questions that I ask Jesus, and imagine what you know, the entity that is Christ consciousness would say to me. I think one thing that I would want to discuss with him is why people believe that he is coming back to save the world, when his pretty much directive was love your neighbor as yourself in order to save ourselves. And so I think that I would ask him why do so many people believe in this particular faith that you are coming back one day and everything's going to be OK? Unless we create heaven on earth right here, how are we deserving of that in any other place? And I don't, I just don't believe that.
Speaker 2:So that would be my main question why is it that this was created, that you are going to come back as the savior of the world, when we are to be our own saviors, whether that's overcoming abuse, overcoming our childhood wounding, overcoming our wanting to stuff our emotions with food, anything that we do to abuse ourselves and other people or other forms of life or our planet we're supposed to overcome that. So I would ask him where did all of this start? Where? What was the origin. Do you believe? Because, again, he wasn't around when the Bible was written? What is the origin of this? You think and what kind of is that that you're going to descend someday from a cloud, and why is it that you think that we wouldn't just blow you away? We already crucified you once. Why would you come back and do this? See, it doesn't make any sense to me. So that's the conversation I would have.
Speaker 1:That would be a very wise conversation, because as I was listening to you, regina, I was thinking oh actually, if people believe that, then they take away the responsibility of working on themselves yes, yes, that's exactly it.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it, like I was told in. I was raised in a very conservative fundamentalist church in the southern part of the United States in the 1960s, jane, so that was like being hit from all sides. But if I have to go to confession and confess my sins, why isn't that I'm not working on stopping those? See, I believe sin and mistake is two different things. I believe we all make mistakes, and sometimes we make mistakes more than once, and we have to learn from those. But it's the learning that causes us to grow our spiritual being. If we continue to do the same thing over and over, knowing it's that it is going to hurt us and hurt someone else, that, to me, is a sin. So we've been told all of these sins, when they're really mistakes that we need to learn from and the sin is not learning from them.
Speaker 2:So, I unravel a whole bunch of stuff in this book. You know, I really am so radical that I say shut the Bible, put it off over here. Go over here, look at this, ask yourself some questions and then, if you want to pick that back up and see. But we have to remember the Bible was translated so many times. There's so many different versions, there's so many books that have been left out. King James version was written for King James Hello With an agenda. King James Version was written for King James Hello with an agenda. So we have to understand that the true teaching of Jesus love your neighbor as yourself is. It's huge. It's a huge thing. How do you deal with someone who's abusing his wife? You know, it's about teaching love so that we feel love, so that we don't do that. It's about economic parity, so that we don't have people that are living in poverty or hunger.
Speaker 1:It's about equal rights for women, so that we don't have men abusing the system that's what I address them here and it's done in such a way that I I sat and read it like over an evening and I just the pages. I just wanted to kind of turn. I just felt all these light bulb moments going off in my my head as I was reading it and I liked the way that you you were in Rome and you kind of first came up with the idea and you said you were sitting with your friend who's atheist, one of your friends Jewish, and they all agreed that in in the questions that you were, you were bringing up and that's what. So that it's only by listeners are listening and um are still thinking, oh, actually I'm not religious at all. Yeah, it doesn't matter, does it? Because it's about? It's about love ultimately. So I think it's still good for them well that it is.
Speaker 2:I know it might be hard to get past the, the title, the real conversation Jesus wants us to have, but if people look at this from an enlightened, conscious viewpoint and I'm using him as an example throughout history of what we believe the very best of us can be yeah. So if someone's turned off by that title I hope that they're not and they will dive into the pages of this, because one book reviewer recently called it a blueprint to repair humanity. These are things that we have needed to address for a very long period of time, and I think that these would be the things that Jesus would talk about. So it's about women's rights. It's about saving our planet. It's about why, in the United States, it's easier to have a gun than I mean. Why do we have that? Well, it's terrifying to be a citizen in the United States. It really is. It's terrifying and it shouldn't be this way why money and fame equals power. That's not it. It doesn't mean that you're smart.
Speaker 2:I asked so many different questions that I believe that he would ask, but it's from an enlightened consciousness standpoint, not necessarily Christ. Okay, so anybody can learn from this. What is it that I actually think about women's rights. Why would I think this? Why should I think this? What about God being male? Why don't we just call God God throughout all the world, through the world? How far would that treat us? How far would that go in treating women as equal citizens? Why was Eve made the scapegoat for all the crap? You know, I mean? I ask that question because to me, this is common sense, but it's not necessarily, jane, common sense that we sit down and ask ourselves. So anybody can benefit from this book if they want to expand their idea of what it means to treat other people as you want to be treated, and how they can learn to love themselves more fully so that they can love other people absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that goes on to think um, by you saying that love is an excellent vision within in in your book. So maybe you want to elaborate a bit more on why you think that is oh yeah, love has excellent vision.
Speaker 2:You, a lot of people think love is blind. It's not blind. I even quote Shakespeare in there about no, it's not blind, love sees. Because for me, love is integrity, love is caring and an affection that is always displayed as positive action, even if someone who is subjected to a boundary doesn't see it that way, because love is always positive.
Speaker 2:But if you think about it, love is behaving with integrity, and that's what we think Jesus did. You know, I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the stories that we get about him are of someone who behaved at the height of their integrity. They cared for the sick, they cared for the poor, they cared for women, they cared for whatever he did. And so if we did all these things, that's behaving with integrity and that's what I believe that is lacking. It's this what is the ultimate of what we can achieve as a human being on this planet? It's not money, fame and all of these other things. It's behaving aligned with integrity, because when you do that, whatever else you leave is fine, as long as it's good and profitable for everybody on the planet but, if you behave with integrity, there is no greater achievement than any human being can have.
Speaker 2:So that's what that means love has excellent vision because love behaves with integrity at all times absolutely, absolutely, and it's it's love.
Speaker 1:I think I see, love is, like you know, like a cloth to clean your windows. It kind of cleans the windows of like how we are, perception and and see, see things and and it's a case of like taking the theory of all religions and actually practicing it and they're kind of looking to be a big blind spot. Um, with regards to that, people might read, um, some of the theory and some of it might be good, some of it might not be, but then they don't practice it. They'll kind of go out and just think they're kind of good and act really cruelly to people who don't deserve it. And why should they? So is there something that you wish that every person knew in the world?
Speaker 2:they are absolutely worthy of being loved and of loving, when they know exactly what that means. It's not control, it's not abuse, it's not forcing someone to be like you, it's not forcing someone to believe as you believe, but it's behaving with integrity, to treat everyone in all life as you want to be treated, and that's very difficult to do at times. However, unless we are in physical danger, I believe it is always doable if we choose to do that. So that's what I would like for everybody on the planet to know Be responsible stewards of the earth. Be responsible stewards of one another's hearts. Hold them safe. Put yourself in the position of someone else instead of judging and being a bigot against someone.
Speaker 1:Actually get to know that person yes, yes, do the work on the work on oneself and and then, rather than pointing the finger because that can be a way to escape, I think is when we're feeling bad about ourselves. It's quite easy to then kind of start pointing other people. Then that lifts one up and that's not the way to kind of go about doing it. So if I'm a reader and I want to get hold of your wonderful book I'm guessing it's on Amazon worldwide and other book and other book platforms- yeah, it's available wherever books are sold.
Speaker 2:It's on amazon in india and in the united states and throughout the entire world. It's on barnes and noble also, but you can go to your local bookseller and ask them, and if they don't have it, they can certainly order it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant, and I'll put links in in the show notes as well. So we've got to the point in the podcast. Is there something that you wish we covered today and what you'd like to speak about? Because I know you'll answer questions, but then there might be something that you really want to share and I can ask you about.
Speaker 2:Well, I am a work in progress. I think we're all a work in progress. No-transcript. Could I have been nice to someone nicer? I've gotten to the point now where I don't have to ask myself about that a lot, but I think that when we really focus on ourselves I think that when we really focus on ourselves instead of focusing on someone else, like you said, then we grow, and when we grow, the world will grow. So I believe that this book was written so that we could each focus on ourselves and the privacy of our home, and then we go out and we talk with other people about it, and we talk about these questions and we seek the help that we need in order to evolve. So I'm still doing that every day. I believe life is a journey and I'm blessed to be here and I'm blessed to share it with wonderful people. I also want the world to know there are a whole lot more good people on this planet that do choose to behave with integrity, and it's time that we took over.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that absolutely. Yes, because there's so much focus on what's wrong but there is.
Speaker 2:I think most people are generally good and you know, and kind and and yeah, maybe we should try and notice that a bit more on each other and as well absolutely, because right now, certainly in my country, everybody's addicted to the negative, and if you focus what you focus on, you create, and so I want folks to know let's turn off all of the noise. Let's turn that off and let's just look around, because every day I am greeted by wonderful, happy, content, kind people, and there are more of us. So let's bring our voices forward. Let's stop doing this abuse. Let's stop comparing ourselves to one another. Let's stop gossiping. Our children bully one another because we bully. They learn it from us. Let's stop that immediately and see what kind of world we can create. This book will help you do that.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Okay, so, listeners, I'll put details in the show notes, but I felt really inspired and it's reminded me of a few things, and I want a wonderful world where my nieces grow up and they feel they can be who they want and accepted. So I'm sure, dear listeners, that you feel the same about your relatives and about everyone else on this planet. So let's all do be kind to do better, but also send compassion to ourselves as we go along this journey. So, Regina Vickates, thank you so much for joining us today from the USA and your wonderful book, the Real Conversation. Jesus wants us to have a call to bravery. Jesus Wants Us to have A Call to Bravery, Peace and Love. Thank you, Regina.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1:This is a section of the podcast where we do a meditation. I always say this, but, like with all forms of meditation, obviously do it somewhere where you're sitting, peaceful, so obviously not in the middle of doing operating machinery or driving. Just pause it and just wait till you get home. So I thought let's find a meditation that we can do today that will help us bring some stillness. And I thought, why not today, do a staring meditation? So quite often I say to do meditation with the eyes closed, but let's have a go at the staring meditation. So maybe you don't have a rose, maybe there's some sort of object in your house that you would like to focus on today and what you can do is sit up super tall and just hold the object in front of you so in my case, I've got a beautiful rose and take some slow, calm, deep breaths as we embody this five-minute meditation. So take some slow, calm, deep breaths. So just allow your eyes to be totally focused on the object in front of you, using the breath as you inhale, as you exhale, can you just allow the moment to be, can you allow the breath to be long, calm, deep and even, and can you allow your focus, to be completely onto that object a flower, or maybe it's a book, something that really feels like it inspires you to be right here, in this present moment. And as you stare at that object, can you connect with the divinity within it, can you allow the possibility of just being here right now, right this moment, no place to go, no way to go back into the past or project into the future. Instead, whatever you have to do before or whatever you have to do after doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Right now, we are in the present, here and now. Let the breath be, let the joy come, let yourself be. Allow, allow, allow, open yourself to the divinity within. Don't run from the present moment and our thoughts may try to entice us, but instead, instead, just come back to that object, just come back and back and back and back and back to that object. Just be, be, be, allow yourself to be free, free, free, full of joy, full of happiness, full of presence. And if any external noises, just allow them to be. Your vision is staring completely on that object. Allow, allow, allow Through silence, through being, through that dedication, dedication. Allow the space, allow the space A nice deep inhalation, a nice deep exhalation, and then just start to gently move the eyes around the room, take a nice, deep, big breath, come back into the present, come back into the now. See, just a few moments of presence.
