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The Many Minds Within: Understanding Different Levels of Consciousness

• Douglas James Cottrell PhD • Season 2 • Episode 15

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What if everything you've been told about consciousness only scratches the surface of a much deeper reality? Dr. Douglas James Cottrell takes us on a profound journey through the multiple dimensions of human awareness that science is only beginning to understand.

Through vivid metaphors and practical examples, Dr. Cottrell reveals how our everyday "monkey mind" consciousness represents merely the tip of an iceberg. Below lies the vast and powerful subconscious, which he likens to a bull being led by a small boy holding a rope - when the boy stops running, the bull's momentum carries forward with potentially overwhelming force. This explains why changing established patterns can be so challenging despite our conscious intentions.

Most fascinatingly, Dr. Cottrell illuminates the often-overlooked imagination as the critical bridge connecting our conscious awareness to the deeper "elephant mind" of soul consciousness. This superconscious awareness operates beyond emotion, beyond thinking, perceiving reality directly without the filters that typically distort our understanding.

"We don't think. We see," explains Dr. Cottrell, describing the nature of soul consciousness that manifests through prophetic dreams, intuitive knowings, and creative inspirations that seem to arrive fully formed. The evidence surrounds us - nearly everyone has experienced moments when they "just knew" something would happen before it did, revealing our innate connection to a consciousness that transcends time and space.

Dr. Cottrell's perspective bridges scientific inquiry with spiritual wisdom, suggesting that the greatest minds throughout history - from inventors to artists to scientists - accessed universal consciousness through this same pathway. By learning to quiet the emotional reactivity of our monkey minds and cultivate what he calls "disinterested awareness," we can tap into this deeper intelligence at will.

Ready to discover the extraordinary capacities of consciousness that exist within you? Subscribe now and join us for upcoming episodes exploring alien contact, pyramid mysteries, and discoveries on Mars that conventional science hasn't yet explained.

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Announcer:

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, Dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. And now here's your host, Dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Welcome to the Wake Up, the broadcast where curiosity leads to deeper understanding. I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell, and my good friend and co-host Les Hubert is here with me, along with editor Jack Bialik, as we delve into the fascinating realms of life, metaphysics, spirituality and the pressing questions that shape our world. Good morning, Les.

Les Hubert:

Hey, Doug, we have a lot of people tuning in, so it should be an interesting show for us. Coming up in the future, we're going to be talking about interesting things like possible happenings on Mars, what's going on beneath the pyramids, but tonight's question is a very interesting one. The latest research seems to be about consciousness. What are the differences between consciousness such as the conscious mind, the superconscious mind, the subconscious minds, and are there any other minds that make up the entire human being overall?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, yes, there is, and I don't know how many there are. There are different levels of consciousness. We have spiritually minded people, experts, gurus, saintly people, people who have studied the human mind and consciousness. And you know, what really struck me one day was, in my researches, was that there was no consensus as to what consciousness is. It's something. And so, you know, I think, therefore, I am was sort of the acronym for consciousness. You know, if you could, you know, think you became quote unquote self-aware, well then you were conscious. And if you were a sentient being who was self-aware, then you would possess at least a conscious mind that allows you to be aware of things in your environment.

Douglas James Cottrell:

You know, like animals, somehow, how do they do it? They're born and they're up walking in a very short period of time. They instinctively know how to do things that animals do. Babies, when they come into the world, human babies, they're kind of helpless, you know, like they're, just like you know, laying there, arms and legs, moving in an uncoordinated effect. So how is it that there's this level of coordination in animals? They know instinctively what to do, and humans -- well, there's at least the appearance that babies are helpless. However, in some researches it's found that babies talk, they grunt, they squeal, they make sounds. But the parents are completely oblivious of these communications that the babies are indicating, like when they're hungry, when they have to go, etc. And I think it was on the Oprah show. They had an expert on there who was saying the language of babies when a baby's hungry, it will do certain things. So the mothers who were in the audience were like taken aback because the woman was pointing out what the babies were trying to communicate in these subtle things that all babies do. They all have the same language, apparently. And the mothers were like, wow, I didn't know that. So they knew when the baby was hungry and when the baby wanted a nap, when the baby had to go, and things like that. So there's...

Douglas James Cottrell:

Consciousness is what? It's a recognition of what other people are trying to communicate to us on that level. Okay, we accept that. There are people who are savants. They are very limited in their intellectual understandings in most areas, but they have a masterful consciousness of perhaps how to play a musical instrument, a piano. They're two years old and they're playing like a master. There are people who are quote-unquote mechanically inclined, as people say. They just know how to operate tools. And of course, then there's the generation into, well Well, it's in their ., And and I've I put forward years ago about the soul DNA. So there's this consciousness in the DNA of the soul. There's a consciousness in the DNA of our physical bodies. Then there's the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, the super subconscious mind, the emotional mind, the physical mind versus the spiritual mind, the different minds that we have, like a life, body, energy mind, the nervous systems in the body. I mean, when you look at the subconscious, it runs the body. We don't think that we have to keep our heart beating or that we have to breathe. We just do it without thinking. There's that under-the-surface consciousness.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now I'm just giving the periphery of what might be considered consciousness, but for our viewers, they want to know: hey, you're awake, this is your conscious mind. What about going into alpha, or theta or delta, into the brainwaves? How do we get to the lower levels and touch upon that super subconscious mind or the soul mind? Well, the way to do that is through the subconscious mind and through the imagination mind. Not too many people consider imagination as an important thing, but it can be considered the edge of the bubble. Inside the balloon is the super subconscious mind. On the outside of the bubble is the subconscious mind, and that difference between those two is the thin layer that I'm going to call the imagination mind. The way to that is through the imagination. You know, people talk about meditations, guided meditations, incubating dreams, coming to some understanding of mindfulness and imagination, or, you know, if you can see it, you can believe it. What are they talking about? They're talking about that layer between the super subconscious mind and the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, that layer of the balloon. Now, the conscious mind is something that can be educated. It has memory, it knows how to discern, it has logic, and that particular mind is linear. You can't get ahead of things, you have to go step by step. But that other part of the mind, those lower levels of mind or inner minds, they just know what to instinctively do. Have you ever, Les, had something fell off the table and you reached over and grabbed it?

Les Hubert:

Yeah.

Douglas James Cottrell:

How did you know how to do that?

Les Hubert:

Good question. Reflex?

Douglas James Cottrell:

So that mind, and again, when we put names and labels on minds, we kind of limit them, don't we -- subconscious mind must be below the surface, it's in the basement, it's subterranean. No, it's not, it's the greater mind. This conscious mind is like ten percent of the subconscious mind. You ask any psychologist, they'll tell you that the subconscious mind is a more powerful, greater mind, and that the conscious mind is like well, it's like the little boy. It's got a rope in its hand and the rope is attached to a bull through the nostrils of the bull. And so the little boy represents the conscious mind. And when the little boy pulls on the rope, the bull's the subconscious mind. So the little boy starts pulling the rope through the processes, belief systems, habits that makes up the little boy's conscious mind. So the little boy gets running and starts pulling on the rope. What does the bull do? It starts walking, it starts running and then it starts really going fast. And then the little boy says okay, that's enough. You know what happens, right? The bull keeps on running and splat. So this is what our conscious mind is. It's kind of like the, I like to call it the monkey mind, so to speak. It's all over the place, random access, doesn't have a destination, doesn't have any structure to it. And the mind that we're trying to get to, to the super subconscious mind, is the elephant mind. Slow, methodical, step by step. However, if an elephant gets running and you're pulling it along and you stop, the elephant's going to run over you.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So what am I saying here? It's kind of like the conscious mind is the monkey mind and we're trying to keep that monkey mind in control, not trying to have random access, we're trying to discipline it, to be focused and to get in touch with that powerful, powerful mind that we call the subconscious mind and or the super subconscious mind. Now, because we can't really delineate what they are and we can't ascertain what the parameters of those minds are, we can give it these visualized effects like a bull running or a big elephant, and we can kind of grasp what's going on in the thinking process. But the conscious mind is triggered by emotion, it's triggered by memory, I guess you could say it's diluted by fear, has memory that's bothering it. So all these aspects that are around the conscious mind, as you can see, the conscious mind is kind of vulnerable to attack, suggestion, manipulation, you know, emotional inputs. That super subconscious mind, the elephant mind, is not. It's not affected by emotion at all. So that's the difference between, the conscious mind is the bridge between those two, the monkey mind- conscious mind and the elephant mind- the super subconscious mind is that there's a void of emotion. in

Douglas James Cottrell:

In between between, the subconscious subconscious, think Think of it as a recording ., All all the things that happen to you from the moment you become aware in the womb or at ,. but But some moment you start recording what's going on in your environment. You hear language and you start to record and you begin understand to language. S o so that when a baby begins to talk, it's really bad to talk, Baby Talk to a ., You you know goo, goo, baa baa. Don't do that. You're mucking up that little kid's mind. Talk to that child as if it's an adult. Speak correctly, punctuate the words like you ought to, as if you were talking to your English teacher.

Douglas James Cottrell:

hink what you're doing is you're putting the proper recording in the mind of that child, that baby who's like a sponge for knowledge, right? So again you're looking for confirmation to the baby. Goo-goo-ga-ga, you know, and the baby's there, oh my God, you know, baby's kind of like, this is brand new. And I often say to parents when you bring the baby home, don't let any of your relatives go over to the baby carriage, the crib or the buggy and stick their face in front of that kid. You're going to scare the child because all of a sudden this big face coming down. Hello, how are you? Oh good, tickle, tickle.

Les Hubert:

You see how they react too. Yeah, you see how they react.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Yeah, and kids turn shy and they don't know why. Well, because they're terrified, if somebody comes over. Think of it, they're in the crib, they're vulnerable, they can't move, they can't get away. And so, hi, how are you? And they start squeezing, the kid's face, tickling. Oh my God, how embarrassing. But the parents, because it's in our race- mind, it's behavior that's happened to us, oh, that's perfectly OK. Yeah, but if you're out in the street and you're standing there with your baby and somebody comes over and sticks their face in the baby and starts talking, the baby starts screaming. What do you do? You push the person away, you walk away. So how does the baby know the difference? It doesn't. It just knows what happens to it. And so I'm using this and I'm elaborating on it, because I can see the audience out there going, oh yeah, that happened to me. I can remember that person at the store, you know, was scaring the heck out of me. And on and on and on.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So you understand that what has happened to you from day one is recorded, and that recording builds on all your life's experiences. They become your habits, they become your reference points, and so you build on this tape recorder of memory and of experiences. So you learn language, you know how to behave, you know what's expected of you and you grow up that way. And depending on your family environment, You will adopt permanently those aspects that happen to you in the house or in school as you grow up to about the age of seven. I say about, because it could be a little sooner or a little later and then that open subconscious mind kind of closes the door and then you have reached the age of reason, it's called. So you, as a now recording device, have enough information that you can make decisions. You know how to act and react in circumstances to just about everything based on your subconscious tendencies. It doesn't mean they're good or bad. Worst thing you can do is start screaming, oh my god, there's a spider, a spider, oh my God. You know what's going to happen to that child in the house when they hear spider. Well boogeyman, right? They don't know what the spider is. They don't see it. But mommy's on a chair. So they're afraid of spiders, or lightning, or something else, dogs barking. So that's how important that consciousness is, in understanding in the ingrams or what's going on at your lower level of consciousness. It's programming you..

Douglas James Cottrell:

There's a lot of therapists out there, there's a lot of people doing natal therapy and rebirthing therapies. What are they doing? Well, they're attempting to go down into those deep, dark caverns or reaches of your subconscious mind and erase those fears and unnecessary thoughts that are basically adulterating your thinking and causing you to act in behavioral ways that you don't want to act. You don't want to be afraid of spiders, you don't want to be afraid of the weather or something. I mean you keep telling the child you're not going to amount to anything, nobody loves you, you're terrible, you're stupid. What does the child do? If you criticize the child all the time, the child learns up to criticize all the time.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So those formative years in that level of consciousness, and I'm building on that, is what's in you as a person, multiplied by your emotions, your experiences, your frame of reference and your thinking. However, children remember before they were born. Sometimes they remember pre-existences, and there's a book out there with 25, 000 references of children remembering their previous existences. So that first few months or years, children see things. They see shiny lights around people, they see spiritual beings, they remember the greater consciousness and what was the pre-existence. That starts building and that's part of their soul consciousness. They don't forget that. But they can subdue it or they can suppress it. Because when a little child says, mommy, I see bright lights around you. Mommy says, don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing. Poof. The child says itself, Mommy says that those green and purple beautiful lights that are like a sea of light around Mommy don't exist, so therefore they can't be there and they block it out, only to have a conflict within themselves. And I've had clients say to me later, you know, I can remember seeing auras all the time, that is to say the energy fields around people's body, measurable by the way, you can measure that by sensitive equipment.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So that consciousness that's there, is subdued, suppressed, not forgotten. It's there. As you get older, things start happening to you where you have a dream and it comes true. I often say to people: can you see the future? I was in Poland one day, I think near Warsaw, and I said how many people can see, know the future and understand the future? And one person put their hand up. That was the local lady with the bangles and the earrings and gypsies...

Les Hubert:

Yeah, sounds like a friend of mine.

Douglas James Cottrell:

There you go. So I said to the one person, I said, I know you can, okay, just a minute, let's see what the other people say. And I asked them: do you ever feel or sense something was going to happen, and then it happened? Put your hand up. About a third of the people did. There was a third, about a thousand people or more. And then I said did you ever just know something was going to happen, and then it happened? And another third of the audience put their hand up. And then I said, did you ever have a dream, and then the dream came true? And the final third of the audience had their hand up. And so I said, remember, a few minutes ago you told me that you couldn't understand, see or perceive the future. How many of you, all put your hands up now that had a dream, had a feeling, just knew something was going to happen? And the whole audience, maybe there was one or two in the background, the whole audience would put their hand up. And I would say, how can that be? How can you say that you didn't see the future when you have? It's me addressing them and saying this in such a way that, yeah, I had a dream and it come true. Yeah, I had a feeling that this was going to happen, then it did. And I just knew, without any conscious connection, that something was going to happen. And I said how did you do that?

Douglas James Cottrell:

That is the soul consciousness, that's a spiritual experience and that's evidence of the soul mind, the awareness beyond your conscious mind, beyond your environment, beyond any rhyme and reason. No doubt. This is the thing about your soul mind. There's no doubt, it just is. And I like to see the soul mind because it understands, it's aware of everything. There's no doubt because there is no emotion. And since there's no emotion, there just is or there is not. And so when you're touching upon that soul consciousness, when you go to that Samadhi consciousness, I might be saying that incorrect in the Eastern way s. I call it the ever-present moment, I call it the ever-present consciousness. You're in that moment and things are happening in meditation or in that state. Sometimes you're driving a car and, and all of a sudden, sudden you look around and say, say how'd I get here? You drove for like a mile down the road and you don't have any recollection. Or you're walking down a beach and all of a sudden you realize you've been walking for a while. You look back and you see your footprints in the sand and you've come a long way, but you have no recollection of that walk or how you got there. That's called the ever-present moment.

Douglas James Cottrell:

That level of consciousness is touching upon the soul consciousness, which is outside of time; time and space, for that matter. So to understand where you're seeking to get to that soul level of consciousness, you come to a point where there's a bridge between the conscious mind, the monkey mind, that's all over the place trying to reason and figure out. The subconscious mind, which makes up a pattern of who and what you are, because all of the things that have happened to you. The imagination, that is the connecting consciousness. It's the key to get from one mind to the other; a bridge, if you will. Getting into that ever-present moment, when you're there, when you're in that state of mind, you can be asked questions and you know everything about something. But if you're not asked, that spiritual mind, that soul consciousness, if it's not asked a question, it doesn't respond or volunteer anything. It just sits there in the ever-present moment, waiting. But it's not even really waiting, it's just existing. So if it doesn't get asked a question, no problem. If you ask it a question, it responds with an answer like that, without hesitation, without doubt and without any adulteration of your subconscious feelings, values and beliefs, and without any fear or doubt, because it perceives.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Somebody once asked me when I was about meditation. They said, Douglas, you know, what do you think about this? And I was in that Quantum Meditation time and the answer that came out of me was, we don't think. We see. Now, when you're in that conscious mind, that deep state of meditation, there is that tendency to sound like we, which is in connection with all the consciousness around it. So it responds that way, not to sound vain or anything like that. But it was, when my son and I, when that came out, we discussed it later, and that was a profound moment. We don't think, we perceive. And so the soul, mind, the ever-present moment mind, the mind that everybody's spending years and years and years to meditate, to get in touch with, doesn't think. And you can't get there by reason, thought, any kind of inclination, any kind of activity in using your mind to think or perceive. However, it's an awareness, and that awareness is aware to the point when you know, you want to know something is going to be a rainy day on the picnic, and you're in your mind and you see rain coming down like crazy, you can think well, that's my imagination or that's my will, that's what I want to happen or that's what I'm afraid is going to happen. So, learning how to get away from that emotional, let's say, programming and quiet your mind so that you're disinterested, you're disinterested of the outcome, you will see the truth. What's causing the adulteration of the vision? Well, you're biased, you're prejudiced. Well, it hasn't rained in two weeks, you know, so it's going to rain on Sunday when we have the picnic. Okay, wish fulfillment. Sometimes people, you know, self-fulfilling prophecies. You, you can make it rain by fearing it's going to rain. Okay, that's a different question.

Douglas James Cottrell:

But let's stick to the point is that when you're disinterested, when you're just wanting to perceive the truth about anything, when you get to that level of consciousness where you're at ease. This is why, Edgar Cayce or Ross Peterson or Solomon or myself you go into a state of meditation. What you're really doing is flinging off all the influences around you, so that you're just there and you're almost at a point of sleep. And when you're at that point, you're in that bridge, you're in that zone, and then you can be asked questions and the knowledge from the universe is made available. But you have to reach out and grab it by asking a question. Otherwise, you're looking at the universe and you're saying, okay, I want to know an answer. And we, you know, like to what? So it needs to focus.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, in that state of meditation, you present a question, one question, and you can be given that information. But you have to train yourself to be disinterested. Whether you're right or wrong, doesn't matter. There just is. There is not or there is. So let's, in some sort of point of view, come back to the understanding that consciousness, again, this is where the great debate comes, from the scholars much more knowledgeable than I am. They really don't know what human consciousness is. I have an understanding because I'm looking at the mystical, spiritual, metaphysical aspects of the greater consciousness of the soul. Part of the problem is the experts don't have any tools to measure it. Right?

Les Hubert:

Oh, right, yeah.

Douglas James Cottrell:

In other ways of measuring, you know, they have rulers and compasses and volume and weight and movement or velocity, so they can measure all those things. But when you get into that super, super subconscious mind that is touching upon all knowledge, all dimensions, which is available because humans have done it before. If more than one person has done it, then everybody has the potential to do it. When you get to that mind, then you need some different measurements to prove it. And my measurement is this: it's in the faith measurement. The faith is built upon the belief, and the belief in that faith is built upon the evidence that you're given. So if you have a dream and you perceive something is about to happen, let's say an earthquake somewhere, and it happens, in the earlier stages, oh my God, how could I do that? How could I understand that? How did I know that? How did I perceive that? I, I, I, I. That's called the I disease, by the way. You say, just a minute, hold on. You were aware of it. Okay, you were aware of it. It's not I did it. It's like that combination of all those minds, from the monkey mind through to the elephant mind, with the imagination and all the other subconscious things in, set up in order. I had that dream and it came true. Then you have a vision which is different than a dream. Then you have a visitation from a deceased relative or a spiritual being. That's different than a dream and a vision. Then you find yourself going through the cosmos or the universe, zooming out in space. You're fully aware and awake. And as soon as you're aware that you're awake, what happens? You come flying back in the bed and, bang, your body jumps. That's evidence of your soul returning from this extensive movement, this mind projection, this soul traveling. That brings you back, that elastic band, by the way, is that tether between your physical body and the soul. That's how you get locked up in your body, as a soul.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So all these different things, and there's much more in the way of, you know, visiting times in historical times and going into the future and seeing future times and becoming aware of many things. I mean evidence of great inventors having a dream about an invention.

Les Hubert:

Oh sure, yeah.

Douglas James Cottrell:

It's there. Okay, how did they do that? Well, they went out in some dimension where that particular idea, solution, mechanism existed and they brought that thought process, that idea, that inventive notion, if you will, into the world. Of course we all know that some great inventions historically have been invented by a few people at the same time. The lawnmower, for instance, the power lawnmower, I was told by a patent attorney who was in Kentucky, that no fewer than 26 patents were applied for about the lawnmower when it came to be patented. Wow. The reason it failed was somebody, some handyman, took a board and took a motor, put it through the board, put a blade on the bottom and used it as the original, in the public consciousness, lawnmower. And so all those patent applications didn't go anywhere because the idea was in the public domain. But he was impressed. He said, how did all those no fewer than 26 applications all, at the same time, come into the world? That's because the cosmos sends us information. There's this super, super natural consciousness. Our Christian friends talk about the supernatural. People in spiritual, call them, think tanks are always attempting to explore the supernatural, the universal mind, the greater consciousness. That that is. You know, I am that, that I am. That consciousness. So there's this other consciousness that we can touch upon. Well, it's still part of us, because we're aware of it. You know, if a drop is in the ocean and you take a drop of water out and you put it in your hand, it's still part of the ocean in your hand. It is the ocean in your hand. And that's what our souls are like: a little drop of water in our hand that came from the greater consciousness, like the ocean.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So, in a basic understanding, as you can see, the amount of information I've just given our audience today has, in a very temporal way, touched upon the different levels of consciousness, or awareness. If you want to put it as to what is human consciousness? Well, yes, I think, therefore, I am. You're self-aware, but the awareness is reaching out like tentacles everywhere, strings attached everywhere. But coming back to yourself, you are a sentient being. You have a soul that has come into a physical body and has gone through the birthing process, which I had one person remember. When they were born, they were really . upset Why why did you make die, t hat That I had to come back and I can't control my and toes fingers. They were so angry that they had to go through this process of learning to get in touch with themselves. But they were thinking and they were aware. That awareness leads you to understand the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, in a very simple way, as I describe it, it the imagination mind, that bridge that connects us all, a super subconscious mind, the soul mind that is in contact with a super supernatural mind that we can liken to God Almighty, the God consciousness. So how does that make sense,? Les?

Les Hubert:

Well, what it seems you're alluding to, Doug, is that there is possibly one mind and we're kind of all tapping into it. Am I on the right track there?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, there's the, you know, the supernatural subconscious mind. Yeah, that's the awareness of God.

Les Hubert:

But why didn't the Creator just say, I'm just going to make it simple, because in the universe we see, as you said in many occasions, that we live in a universe of duality. So why not just say, okay, I'm going to make it easy on you guys and we'll just give you one mind with all the, you know, all the different levels are not there, just will and we'll hook into one mind. Why do they, why do you think it's all broken up into different levels?

Douglas James Cottrell:

The thought in my head is: boring! You know what it's like to have ten people who do the same thing and they're in the same family or the same whatever. They do the same thing all the time. They all like spaghetti, so they have spaghetti. Boring. So these are thoughts coming to my mind to answer your question. I'm not just responding, they're actually occurring to me. So what we want to do is we want to have a smorgasbord of life, and in order to do that, we can't be the same, we have to be opposite, that we have to be similar but different and all the other ranges in between, so that we can interact with each other. Think of it this way: there you are sitting around having a card game with all your friends and you have nothing to talk about, because all the things you know is what everybody else knows. And then somebody comes in and says hey, did you hear the latest from Timbuktu? And they go, no, tell us all about it, we haven't heard this before. And so then there's an evolution, then there's a development into this new random access information.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So why, if there's a super subconscious mind, why does God make it difficult? God does not make it difficult. We do. Because we have I disease; I, I, I. That ego part of us, not self-esteem, which is different. You'll have therapists and coaches trying to tell you, you've got to get rid of that ego, you got to kill it. That's not true. You don't kill your ego, because it's part of you. You learn to develop it to have a good self-esteem, to have pride in yourself, to have a sense of achievement and accomplishment. That's good, but ego doesn't need to die. Egotistical aspects -- I'm better than, I'm smarter than the smartest person in the room, blah, blah, blah... Really smart people know that they don't know everything. The really dumb people think they know it all. There you go, opposites, bang, you know. And so you'll find somebody that really doesn't know a lot, talks a lot, they tell everybody what it is. And the really wise person sits there: mm-hmm, you don't say, yes, okay. What's for lunch? Who cares?

Douglas James Cottrell:

So why does God make it certain ways? Remember, God doesn't make anything certain ways. God provides everything and we are the little tadpoles. We're swimming around in the consciousness, trying to figure it out. And as we develop into bigger fish, and bigger fish, and bigger fish, we gain knowledge and we understand our environment in a more fuller, concise way. So that when little minnows are swimming by, it doesn't bother us. When bigger fish swim by, it doesn't bother us. We are in our elephant mind. We are in control, we are at rest, we are fully aware, and then we know exactly when to do. Like we perceive a thunderstorm's coming, let's go inside. To all the golfers out there on the golf course, they see the dark clouds but they want to get one more swing in. And those are the guys, when the thunderstorm hits and the rains come down, they're the ones that come to the clubhouse all soaking wet. The smart ones saw the clouds and they drove there first. I mean, I've seen that several times. And you sit there and you look out the window and you say, oh my God, look at those guys. They're getting soaking wet, there's lightning out t here. That one's got his golf club up over their head. Well, they could be crispy chicken before they knew what happened.

Douglas James Cottrell:

hey that awareness is what the wise people go in, but there's a certain stubbornness about us. We are separate, we have this human ego that is defiant. And learning how to get past that is how to relate to one another so that you gain the awareness and you don't do dumb things anymore. But you have to do the dumb things to find out that they're dumb things. And then you know like, been there, done that, I'm not doing that again. That's wisdom. So God doesn't make us do anything. God doesn't want us to do anything. God doesn't make up rules and tells us what the rules are. Think of it. Does anybody know what God thinks? No, it's impossible. And if anybody tells you from my perspective, if anybody tells you they know what God is wanting you to do and what's right and what's wrong, by God's name, no matter how religious they are or how important they are, if they're a military leader or whatever, they cannot possibly know what's in the mind of God. They just can't. It's like a little grain of sand on the beach, knowing what the ocean is all about. Impossible.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now you can have divine inspiration. You can become aware and perceive what's out there. And that's what meditation is. That's what getting in touch with, getting that still small voice inside. Becoming in touch with that elephant mind, the greater mind, but in a very calm and controlled way. And then you become aware of everything. It's like trying to make a cake. You're watching TV and you're working on a crossword puzzle. You got the iPad going. You can't do that. You can't make a cake. You can do something that's going to be an abomination, but it's not going to be a cake. So, laser focus, calmness, thinking things through, taking that moment to become wise and aware. You will find a solution to anything because you're getting in touch with that greater consciousness and, if I can contradict myself, that's what God wants us to find. That peace, that center point of love, to become loving to the point of being able to express unconditional love to ourselves, to our neighbors and to everyone else in the world.

Les Hubert:

Well, thank you, Doug, for a great podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, if you like the show, please go to douglasjamescottrell. com and click on that big blue banner. You can support us anywhere from $3 to $20 a month. And a big shout out to Jack, Malutin and Larry for your great help with the podcast. We deeply appreciate your help and we will be talking about very interesting things coming up in the future, such as possible alien contact, mysteries beneath the pyramid and what's going on, on the planet Mars. Thank you.

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