Ep65 - Anxiety & The Lies Your Mind Tells You

Welcome to OneMinding, in this episode we take a deep dive into the human experience.

We will be exploring a topic that touches the lives of so many: anxiety.
We'll unravel the intricate web of thoughts that cause us to feel anxious and look at the tricks our minds play on us.

We explain how anxiety is a temporary experience, not a definition of who you are.

So join us as it is time to see through the illusions our minds conjure and find freedom from the feelings that do not tell us anything and the lies that our minds tell us.

Enjoy the show.

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Disclaimer: OneMinding is intended for entertainment purposes only, and listeners are advised to seek the advice of qualified professionals for any specific concerns or questions they may have. The podcast disclaims all liability for any loss, injury, or damage resulting from the use of the information provided and may include guests who share personal experiences related to mental health that may be triggering to some listeners.

Transcript

Samantha 0:04

Welcome to OneMinding. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the human experience. We will be exploring a topic that touches the lives of so many: anxiety. We will unravel the intricate web of thoughts that cause us to feel anxious and look at the tricks our mind plays on us. We explain how anxiety is a temporary experience, not a definition of who you are. So join us as it is time to see through the illusions our minds conjure and find freedom from the feelings that do not tell us anything and the lies that our minds tell us. Enjoy the show.

Gemma 1:01

How are you? Very good. How are you?

Samantha 1:04

I'm very good considering I've been thinking about anxiety for the last couple of hours. I've had a couple of insights actually during this time. So it's yeah, quite amazing. Lovely to have all of you here and really looking forward to it today.

Gemma 1:22

Yeah, I think it'll be a good one. It's such a huge topic, and it's something that really most people can say has affected them at some point. You know, we've all had moments of fear. I mean, I suffered really bad with anxiety years ago, so I know how harsh it can be. But yeah, you hear you just hear so many people say, Oh, I've got anxiety, I've been anxiety. The people say things that you can do for anxiety, which I'll dig into a little bit during my talk, but it's a very huge subject.

Samantha 1:51

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've personally suffered with anxiety as well. And to be honest, I don't think there's anybody I know that hasn't at some point in their lives, whether it affects their life in a big way or just the, you know, nervous about doing everyday things. So I think there'll be a lot to explore. And as always, if anyone's got any questions, please just request. And if you don't want to speak, just message me and really looking forward to getting into it. And one thing I just want to start with, actually, that I heard earlier that I thought was amazing, is that you are the sky and everything else is just the weather. And I thought, wow, that is true. That's one of my favourite quotes. Oh, amazing. Love that quote. Wow, we're on the right path already. And just want to say thanks to our sponsors, Bemp, as always. And yeah, really excited. I've got some good questions. And as always, please just raise your hand or message me if you want to speak or ask anything.

Gemma 2:53

Thank you, darling. Yeah, yeah, just thank you, everyone, for being here. We really appreciate you showing up every week. Son, I'd just like you to take a deep breath and just be here. You know, there's nothing that needs to come into this hour. You don't need to bring the tensions of the day. This space is about, you know, connection. It's about us all being together, it's about us sharing something that's true about the human experience. And we really hope that we create a quiet space and a place where you can really reflect on the deeper things, the deeper meanings of life, the deeper meaning of who we really are. And you know, it one-minding really is about connection. The information we give is great, but actually it's the connection and the understanding and what we open up to via the conversations, via us all being together and via what we're pointing to. So let go of your worries, let go of your distractions. And if you can, I know some of you might be listening while you're doing something, but if you can, please try to be fully present. You know, anxiety is a huge subject, as we said. You know, we can all have hits of it every now and then. It really becomes problematic when it becomes excessive or when it becomes persistent. You know, it's the feeling of fear, of apprehension, of worry, and it's the physical, you know, for me, it was the physical symptoms. And I know for when I work with people, it's the physical symptoms that really take hold, they really have a grip on us. You know, that racing heart, trembling, get sweaty, stomach issues can be a really huge thing with anxiety. Lots of people get bad stomachs with anxiety as well. So, you know, but it can manifest in all sorts of ways in the physical, but it really has a physical manifestation, doesn't it? It really can debilitate us within our bodies, and that's what's so interesting about anxiety and so powerful, and what really, really holds us back when we get it. So if you just think about going beyond that, if you just think about what's created that, that's what we're going to be looking at today. And there's something in the unraveling of what created the anxiety, and it's not what you think. Well, it is what you think, but it's not the outside world, it is literally what you think. It's looking towards that. We're looking towards something deeper. And actually, some people can have anxiety symptoms and be like, I've got no idea why. They haven't even associated it with something in their world, although the mind will often try and find a reason why, because that's what the mind does. So it can be generalized, as I said, and we have no idea what it's about, or it can actually be focused on actually like your child, your parents, your work, your money. We can fixate on a certain thing. And for everybody, that's a little bit different. You know, we all have different fixations, different things that we ruminate on, different things that are our areas where we can get really caught up. It could be a past event, also. It's thinking that seems to exacerbate feeling, you know, that's what we're talking about here. And what anxiety can also do, which is problematic, is it can send us into avoidant behavior. Okay, and that's where we stop living life, you know, and stopping living life really is the opposite of what we all want to be doing. So avoidance behaviors can also be addictions, they can be the things that we do that numb the feeling. Because if we don't like a feeling, what do we want to do? We want to get rid of it. If we don't understand what it is via an understanding like we teach, then can turn to drink, drugs, shopping, sex. I mean, there's lots and lots of different addictions that we can have, but that will be to avoid a feeling. And it's really, really interesting we start to uncover that because we see that as we go upstream, the cause of all of these things of anxiety, addiction, avoidance, all the behaviours that we don't want come from this one source, and this one source is thought that isn't true. And when we understand that, we can have a better handle on really gracefully going through those times when maybe feeling does creep up on us, you know. But for today, obviously, we are talking mainly about anxiety, and you know, it comes from our history, it comes from the fight or flight response. It's something that is actually part of our survival mechanisms. And I guess, well, for most of us, where we're not in survival mode in the actual world, you know, most of our needs are taken care of. It can come out in very odd ways. You know, the mind can create a threat, it can create a challenge, and it creates the physicality of anxiety when there's absolutely nothing there. Isn't that interesting how powerful the mind is that it can do that? So it's really beginning to see how anxiety works, how it can interfere with our life, you know, it can affect work, relationships, it can affect health. You know, chronic anxiety definitely affects health. I know when I was suffering really badly with it, I was ill all the time. You know, I can have clients when they first come to me and they'll have manifestations of it, and it could be a bad back, you know, it could be getting sick, it could be any number of things. But once they start to uncover the truth of who they are, once they begin to see through the thought system, those physical problems seem to melt away. They may come on occasionally, but they don't seem to be around in the same way. What I do want to point out before we really kind of dig in is that unfortunately, most treatments out there look at you trying to find the cause of the anxiety and fix it. And as far as I can see, that isn't helpful because what you're doing then is you're giving the anxiety more power by using more thought to try and find the source of the anxiety. Okay, and I see so many tweets from big accounts. I saw one today as a huge following, and it was like, you're anxious because you haven't got a purpose, you've got to go out and do more and find more to do and be more. And I was like, Oh god, you've got like halves a million followers, shut up. It's like it's really not helpful, and I know they mean well, but actually it's adding more thought. Can you see how having something to do for your anxiety is gonna add more to the anxiety? Because what we're talking about here is that thought creates the anxiety. So, what we want to do is take away thought, we want to subtract thought, we want to strip away all the things that look real that aren't. And if you think about where it comes from, it's like it's conditioning, it's beliefs, it's what the unconscious mind has taken in over the years to put pressure on you yourself to begin to create these feelings that you're not good enough, that you're not showing up in the world in the right way, you know, that they have guilt. There's lots of layers to the thinking that creates anxiety, move away from this old way of really trying to get rid of anxiety, like I really want people to move away to the fixing and the get rid of and the eliminating of it. And I'll explain a little bit more about that as we go along, but it's actually not helpful at all. And also, if the searching to fix it or eliminate it hasn't worked, which it clearly hasn't, otherwise, everybody would be cured by now. What have you got to lose by exploring what we're looking at here? Nothing because it's free, we're offering some information, and that information could turn into insight, and that insight will change how you see everything. So, anxiety comes from thought. So, if we go a bit deeper into what thought is, thought is the creative energy that creates every moment of your life, whatever moment that you are in, it has been created by thought, okay, and it's uncovering that, and it doesn't matter what the thought is saying, we don't need to look at that, we just need to see the power of thought in the moment. How thought, you know, we have a hundred thousand thoughts a day, and how they create everything that we experience, that it's all coming from us, it's not actually coming at us. Okay, and what this thought is is kind of an illusion. There isn't a fixed truth to any of our thinking. Thought comes and goes, and we experience it, you know, and that wherever that thought is is how we're seeing the world. Now, what we can begin to see about anxiety is the more thought we have, the more contracted that thought is, the more we believe that thought, the more anxiety we're going to have. Because what we're doing is we're piling thought on thought on thought on thought. We turn our own thinking into something that we go to war with. So if you think you're having this anxious thinking, and then you think, well, there's something wrong with me, well, I've got to fix it, I've got to find out where it comes from. Think about what you're piling on. You're piling on more and more and more salt. Now, I often say to clients, you know, if you want to put a fire out, you don't keep adding logs. And it's so interesting that we're living in this misunderstanding that we can cure salt with salt. So if your anxiety is a fire that's burning, you don't want to keep adding more logs. You want to see actually, if I leave it alone, it will begin to fade away. It will fade out. There isn't so much for me to do about it. It's just a case of seeing what it's really made of. And I've seen that in myself, and I've seen that in so many people and so many clients that when we begin to see that, it begins to fall away, it begins to ease off. We get some relief from this anxiety that we have. And while this information is great, it really is about your own insights, it's really about you beginning to see this for yourself. And again, don't get me wrong, I understand how awful and debilitating anxiety can be, but I can really assure you that if you begin to explore what we're talking about here, you will begin to get relief. So if you think again about think about thought, you know, it's not real, it's an illusion. That's why it changes, that's why you're having a moment-to-moment experience, it's why one thing that looks bad one day can look good the next day. Why we have different thoughts and feelings, our state of mind changes, it's all coming from this well of thought, and this thought is an energy, it's like again, I can only point to the fact that it's a deeper energy, a divine energy that when we get it, we personalize it and we create it and we apply it to the world. But the depth of what it really is, to me, is something spiritual, it's something more than the personal, it's the creative energy behind life, and what it creates is this amazing experience that we get to have, but it's not creating an actual reality, it's creating our version of what looks like a reality, and so then we turn this thought that is actually just coming and going, and we don't have to get so involved with when it's thinking that we don't like, that we kind of grab it and turn it into something real, and that's where a lot of our problems come in. It's it's taking thought and kind of solidifying it and saying, Well, that thought's real, that thought says something about me, that thought says something about my world, that thought, you know, is real that I'm not good enough, that I'm never gonna make anything of myself, that everyone's better than me. You know, we can have all of these really harsh thoughts about ourselves, and for some reason we just don't see it as the energy of thought, we personalize it, we say, that's true, that says something about me, or catastrophizing thinking. The end of the world, we're like all these bad things are gonna happen, and we believe that, and we turn then thought into an enemy that we're fighting, but you can't win a war against an enemy that does not exist. Think of the futility of what we're doing with that thinking and going to war with it and fighting it and trying to work it out when if we could just have a deeper sense of the true nature of who we are, we could observe that thinking and it would pass by. And whatever feeling came with it would pass by. Because anxiety is the pile up of salt on salt on salt, it's overwhelm. You know, we don't need to look for the reason to why we're feeling anxious, we just need to know that it's coming from salt in the moment, and whatever it is is irrelevant because it will change on its own. So the less attention we give it, the better. It is thought, it's not to be fixed. You know, the feelings in our body, they're a sensory reaction to that thinking. We are the space in which thought arises. There's something so much deeper to the human experience than we've noticed, or maybe you have noticed, and you just want to explore it a bit more. But that's the QR to anxiety. It's not more thought, it's not the analysis of thought. It's seeing thought, it's not the content of thought, it's the context of thought. No, thought can be amazing. I'm not saying all thought is bad, you know, we have amazing thinking, but it's when thought contracts, it's when it grips us, it's when it creates the feelings that we don't like, where this understanding just it just melts it away. Because we are part of this universal mind, and that is where all thought feeling comes from. So you don't have to worry about what's coming through, you don't have to analyze it. You know, I say to clients, and you're in analysis paralysis, we go into so much analysis, we kind of go, oh, you know, the body tenses, we shut down, we go into anxiety, and there's so much more to who we are. You are the one that's observing the anxiety. When we begin to explore that, when we begin to see that it has no choice but to fall away, it cannot stand up against the light of who we really are, it cannot stand up against the beauty of who we really are. You know, if you go back to an episode a few weeks ago, the psychological immune system, do nothing, and the mind heals itself. We have not been taught that. We have been taught to interfere with the mind so much that, in my opinion, the mental health crisis has been worsened or even is caused by this interference. Again, and if interfering with the mind was the answer, we would all be okay, and we're not. Humanity is in a mental health crisis and we're doing the wrong thing, we're going in the wrong direction. We're going into the personal thought, we're going into the mind, and we're looking within the mind that this mind that all it does is create stories that aren't true, and we're looking for truth. How can truth be in a mind that is transient and is constantly creating illusion upon illusion? The truth is before that, and the truth really can't be put into words. It's not a word thing, it's not a personal mind thing. It's just like we can point to it with these conversations, there's amazing teachers that point to it, we can have glimpses of it, but we know it's not really in the words. We know there's something deeper to the human experience. That is where the answer lies to anxiety, to depression, to the mental health crisis. It's within us already. You know, and bless the mind. The mind does believe the reality it's creating because that's the reality it's creating, and it wants to survive. But you're not going to find peace of mind in your mind. Peace is always behind thought, before thought. It's who we really are. So all this fighting of feeling, fighting thought, finding out what thought is saying, going into the illusion and the stories, we can begin to see when we step out and look at this that of course that's gonna make it worse. I'm adding more logs to the fire of a salt and expecting the fire to go out. We've been looking in the wrong direction. So what happens if we just allow a ceiling? Because surely if we could cure them by now, we would know how and we'd all be doing it. So what if we just allowed it? So for me, if I get an unhelpful unhelpful, actually, feelings are helpful for as far as I can see now. Because they're just telling me my thinking's off. If I get a feeling that maybe I don't like, an old feeling of anxiety comes up, don't analyze it and don't try to fix it. Don't try to do anything with it. When that feeling comes, I do my very best to get on with my day. I will see clients, I will go to the gym, I will cook food, I'll do whatever I need to do that's on the list of to-dos that day. But what I don't do, or if I do it, it's only momentarily, is look to why look to fix. It doesn't help. You know, it's really, really important that we begin to understand that when you see what the mind is creating, you see that it's unreal, but you need to believe it that starts to loosen, it starts to dissolve. Begin to see how creative the mind is. Actually, look at that, how creative it creates thoughts that aren't true, that create feelings that if we're not understanding, can absolutely rule our lives, and that can make us completely focus on ourselves and all that is unhelpful. That's how powerful it is. It's powerful enough that it will create thoughts that create feelings that can get you in the emergency room and say, I'm having a heart attack, and you're fine. That's anxiety, that's a panic attack. That's the power of what we're talking about. And what I love with this work is that to begin to get people to understand that and then use the power in a different way. Because as the unhelpful thinking falls away, as we learn not to take so much notice of the feelings and thoughts that we don't want, we make a lot more space for thinking that we do want or that we do. Like or that has created potential? That's it. It's like, wow, what can we create with that? If I'm a channel for infinite creative potential and thoughts and feelings, what happens when those thoughts and feelings are the ones that are gonna direct me into a new project or a new understanding or a deeper seeing or whatever it may be? It's all there. You know, it's been a misuse. We have misused the power of thought completely innocently, and then we begin to see what we've been doing, we begin to see the thought-feeling connection, two sides of a coin. You are only ever feeling your thinking in the moment that you're in, no matter what that thought is saying, it may look like the past, it may look like the future, it may look like a problem, whatever it is, it's literally created in the moment, it's a moment-to-moment experience. And when we're in low-level thinking and we're feeling not great, don't listen to it. When we're in high-level thinking and we're feeling amazing, listen to it. That's it, the simplicity. And it's awesome, doesn't matter what level. Then just notice that wow, look what thoughts created. So begin to uh see this, and you begin to wake up to the moment that you're in. You begin to see the illusion of anxiety and fear, and I'm not saying I don't ever feel it, of course I do. But then I'll wake up and I'm like, wow, look what thought created there. And actually, the question I ask myself, and I think it's a great question that we could all ask ourselves, is Am I okay right now? Are you okay right now? Because very often, in probably 99% of the time, we are we're not in a crisis, we're not in life falling apart. And even if we are, we could still ask the question, am I okay right now? Because the okayness comes from us, the okayness doesn't come from the outside. We do not outsource our well-being once we begin to understand who we are. We don't have circumstantial well-being, we don't have circumstantial happiness, we begin to see it comes only and always from us. So as we begin to see that and we ask the question in the moment, Am I okay? We see that we truly are. Because it has to come from me. You know, and then we see through this illusion of anxiety, we see it's a temporary experience. It's not a definition. So many people define themselves by what they call their mental illness. I'm an anxious person, I'm a depressed person. So if thought feeling creates who we think we are, and beliefs are incredibly powerful, what happens when you identify with a mental illness? You're compounding it, you're making it more real, you're giving it more influence over you than it might have if you just saw that I'm having anxious thinking, I'm having depressed thinking, I'm having thinking that's creating not a nice experience for me right now. But I can see where that thinking comes from, and I know that I am not that thought. You know, back to what I said earlier, if you were thought, you won't be able to see thought. You can observe yourself, you can observe your thinking, you can see who you are. And when you see who you are, when you begin this exploration, you begin to see you're more powerful than you can ever imagine. That you are infinite creative potential taking form in the moment, and then what can you create from there? You know, and all your feelings are ever trying to tell you is that you're overthinking, they're not ever telling you about your world. Peace is within, peace is underneath thought, it's always us. So it's about going deeper, go deeper than the personal mind, go before the personal mind, see the divine mind, see the energy that creates life. Explore that. We don't have to know exactly what it is. This isn't what this is about. It's not like you don't need an answer, but the question is so important because it allows us to explore who we are, it allows us to expand our minds. You know, we don't want a closed mind. A closed mind, of course, is going to experience those unhelpful feelings and thoughts. An open mind is always gonna have the opportunity to see beyond them. Always, always without question, you know, an open mind is what you want, even if you're kind of oh, I'm really sure about that. But you have to have a little bit of wiggle room to maybe being wrong, because then you never know what you may see. So it's really this seeing deeper, that that seeing that circumstances do not affect our thinking feeling. That thinking feeling is a product of us, it's what's coming through us. It's our interpretation, our meaning, our narrative. It's us uh projecting our thinking onto the world, not the world projecting feeling into us. So you don't need to do anything about that personal thought, you just have to see it for what it is. In fact, personal thought is actually impersonal thought, it's the universal source of thought coming through, and we personalize it. Now, again, this isn't about just the information helping, this is about you guys being open to insight, you being open to have this experience for yourself to think that okay, let's just be open because I don't know what I may see within this. I don't know what could come through me. And insight is just new thought, insight, sight from within. And that's not a thought that you've had before. That's not old thought going round and round your head, which often anxiety is old thought going round and round your head, and too much thought going round and round your head. Fresh thought often gives us a fresh view. Fresh thought is like, wow, I hadn't seen it like that before. It's like a mini awakening, or it can be a huge awakening, and it's seeing that, it's like wow. No one, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't have the potential to have an insight. I could say that a bit better, Panai. Everybody has the potential to have an insight. Every human being has the potential to see things differently, to have new thought, and that's what we're pointing to. Yes, great to see that thought feeling is creating your experience and not the world. Great to take yourself off the hook and not have to work out why you're anxious, but amazing. The game changer is the insight, and another way to look at that is if I gave you a guidebook to Paris and you read the book, you'd have a kind of an idea of what Paris was like. That's the knowledge or the personal thought that you can have around the teachings that I share. The insight is standing in Paris, being in Paris, drinking the coffee, watching the people, seeing the art, drinking the wine, walking the streets. It's a different ball game. So if that can just explain to you a little bit the difference. Now, great to get it intellectually, but the deeper understanding is something that will be like, oh wow, this really is true. Oh my god, it really is also. And they can come in huge, big insights for some people, and then they can be small, incremental little insights for other people. We don't need to worry about that. Because actually, it's the product of the insight that's important, it's the seeing that, oh wow, I really understand how the human experience works now, I really see more deeply who I am. So I'm going to share a quote by Michael Neal. If you aren't aware of Michael Neal, please, please look him up and read his book, The Inside Out Revolution. He's got such a beautiful way of teaching the principles. And he says, Since we live in the feeling of our thinking, constantly dwelling on our darkest thoughts can lead to living in some pretty dark feelings. And innocently and unwittingly, that intensity of feeling can seem to indicate that we need to pay even more attention to those thoughts. But in the same way as the uncomfortable feeling of touching a hot stove lets us know to move our hand, the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and stress are telling us to remove our attention from our obsessive thinking and make way for something new to come to mind. So I hope that you've enjoyed that and you can take something from that. And if you have any questions, please come off and ask. And if not, you can message Jem but over to Jem.

Samantha 31:28

My goodness, you made so many incredible points during that. I've written a few down to go back to, but definitely gonna have to listen back because well, the first thing that's come to my mind is anxiety, stress. So they're not actually real, they're not real in the world, they're all self-created. Which sounds simple, but that's the truth of it, isn't it? They feel real.

Gemma 31:52

Like, let's not discount how shit they feel. But if they were a real solid thing, you'd never be without them. So they are a temporary experience, you know. That's the truth of it. If my anxiety was a solid, real thing, I'd still have it. Well, I've had tiny glimpses of it in the last 10 years, but never ever gone back to that actual living in the state of anxiety, what felt like 24-7. So it had to be part of this illusion. Now, the other point from your question is that it cannot come from the world, otherwise, everybody would feel the same way about certain things. So, if you know, being late was the cause of anxiety, anytime anyone was late, they'll feel anxious. Well, I know people don't give a shit about being late, and other people that get caught up about being late. So it's beginning to see that it's always our creation. Now, the joy of that, the power of that is we cannot be a victim within this system. You know, I can't be a victim to the world, it has to be me. Well, okay then. You know, I can deal with that because actually there's something I can do about that. I can begin to explore things, I can begin to change things, I can begin to inquire more into who I am, I can begin to see things differently. When I'm in victim mode, it's like, well, you need to change for me to be okay. It's like that's bullshit. Like, how could that be true? Because then I'm gonna need other people to change for me to be okay, and I'm gonna need the world to change. I mean, I'm really pissed off with the world as it is right now. But it doesn't mean to say I'm not okay. That's what we're pointing to here. It's like I don't have to create misery for myself because I may not like the way the world is run. I cannot like the way the world is run, but wake up to who I am, spread more love and spread as much joy as I can and make the world a better place, and also in the moments that are right for me to do so, fight back against that. Again, it's not passive. It can sound sometimes the principles can sound passive and they're not. And a quote that I think about every single day is David Icke recently posted true spirituality comes with a backbone. And he was like, that created an insight for me. That was like, oh my god, yes, whatever your feelings about David Icke, he was spot on there. It's not a passive thing, we are energetic beings. Why should being spiritual mean being passive? That whole shit's mixed up. So actually, even what does spiritual mean? Well, we're all there, like you know, the man in the pub, other person sitting meditating are as spiritual as each other. Maybe one is experiencing, you know, looking within a bit more, but that's it. It's what's on the table is the experience, the true nature, the spiritual nature is who we are. So whoever it is, it's before the behavior, before the thinking. We're all spiritual. It's it's a word that's kind of lost its true meaning. And what all it means is that we're divine beings having a physical experience. It's like great, I can get on board with that, but it's like it's a bit like a lot of things around truth. They've been given names to ridicule them. So people say, Oh, it's a bit like, oh, yeah, I'm not, um, oh god, no, don't I'm not spiritual. So yes, you are, and it's like, oh, I'm not conspiracy theorists. What does that make? It's like words have been turned against their true meaning, and we have to be aware of that, we have to kind of own that who we really are, and begin to wake up to who we really are because it's again back to that power. Like, own it, like who are you? Look deeper, see how the mind arises. When you see how the mind arises, you see how anxiety arises, you see the system at work, and it's understanding the system that completely changes the experience of this being human.

Samantha 36:08

I mean, how much of anxiety is the ego? You know, I think we talk a lot about when you're in your true self, you don't have these feelings of doubt of low self-worth and things, you're just fine because you're in your zone. So, how much of that anxiety comes from the ego either trying to protect itself from you know past experiences and things like this?

Gemma 36:29

Oh, all of it, all of it's ego, ego, you know. Sid Bates, the founder of the principle, said, you know, all personal thought is ego. And at first, I was like, Oh, I don't really get that, but now I'm like, yeah. Because it's all about us. So it's beginning to see that the ego is, you know, the ego is a child fighting for survival. So if you think about that, it's always going to be lashing out, it's gonna be trying to protect itself and it's stamping its foot, and that's what it does. So ego isn't just like bravado and anger and look at me, it's like, oh my god, poor me. You know, it the whole thing is ego all the way down, and I think understanding that again, we simplify what the ego is, and it is really, really simple when we begin to see it, and we don't want to overcomplicate it by going, oh, oh, it's this section of the mind or that area of life, or you know, this area of psychology. It's like we come into this, like, oh wow, all opinion, all belief, all behavior, the past, the future, the moment that you're in right now. How cool, because it's one thing. Now, that thought can definitely appear as ego, you know, it's that personalization that is the ego. So, is that helpful? Because I want to try and keep it as simple as possible.

Samantha 37:49

Yeah, no, it definitely is. And save for somebody who experiences anxiety. I mean, a lot of the time when you notice your feelings, you can look at your thoughts and think, right, this is probably why I'm not feeling so great. But say people get waves of anxiety for no particular reason whatsoever, they can't put their finger on it, they're not trying to label it to put it into a box to solidify it. What advice would you give to somebody to help them just let that go and go through it? Someone that suffers with anxiety without really knowing why or wanting to know why.

Gemma 38:23

Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, it it's bless us because you know, we've all you know, well, I've definitely been there. And it's like we really want an answer, we really want well. If you do A, B, and C, then that's what you need to do, and then your anxiety will be gone and you'll be fine. And it's literally sitting with it, it's not the analysis of it, it's not the avoidance of it, it's very often just sitting in the discomfort. Because at some point we come out of the other side. When we come out of the other side, we see it for what it is, and it's definitely listening to you know the three principles or what other teaching that points you home, nothing that points to doing, okay? Anything that points to being, just listen to that, because that will allow the ego, the monkey mind to just begin to let go, just to begin to loosen up to not have to create the suffering that it's creating. And it's really hard because the very thing that we want to do is run away from it, and that's the very worst thing that we can do. If you just be it, just allow it and don't fight it, it does fall away. And I know how hard that can be to see, but it's so true. Now, avoiding discomfort negates us learning it, negates us seeing it, and what we really need to do is see it for what it is, and if we expand the mind out of me, me, me into these deeper questions, questions that look at the source of experience, the source of the universe, the source of who we are, that lessens the ego. The ego can't do anything with that thinking because it hasn't got an answer, so it kind of quietens down, and in that, that's when, as far as I can see, that this new thinking, this piece is revealed. So it's going from the conceptual mind, it's going from, you know, I'm pointing to my head as I'm saying this, it's going from up here, the conceptual mind, and all that it says, and then it's coming into your heart, you know. Say, I've got my hand and my heart is coming to there, it's trying to see who I am from there. We've made the personal mind the master and we forgot who we are. And it's in these deeper understandings of who we are, of seeing who we are before thought that we begin to expand our understanding and the things the mind says don't have that weight. They don't they don't grip us, they don't take hold of us in the same way that they used to. You know, as I said earlier, the ego is the child fighting for survival. When we see that, okay, we can love it. We can say, oh bless, look what it's doing now. And it doesn't get that grip, it doesn't get that hold on us. It's seeing that thought, whatever it's saying, isn't saying truth, it's just creating experience. You are not the voice in your head, you are something so much more. You are the one seeing, you are the one listening, you are the formless energy behind life. It's like, wow, anxiety can't stand up against that. It just has to dissolve. And again, and this isn't me just sitting here saying it without experiencing it. I've experienced it for myself, I experience it with clients all the time. I have clients sometimes that have had panic attacks for years and and like a couple of sessions in, they're not having them, and they can't work it out. And I was like, no, your mind will never be able to work it out because your mind has created reality where that isn't possible. But now you know it's possible because you've experienced it. That's when I'll, you know, when I said earlier that to the mind that is reality, but there's a deeper space of seeing that we can observe the mind and see that it's not. The witness, where we leave thought alone, where we stop buying into what the mind's trying to sell us. You know, that's where we come home, that's where we have a deeper experience of being alive, a richer, a much richer experience with nothing changing, but just how we see it, just how we experience it. That's so powerful. So that's what I'm talking about. And it's about just being able to say to the mind, you know, we don't need a technique, we don't need a tool. It's like just quiet and down and let me explore this and let me see what I see when I look within, because that's where everything that we're looking for lives.

Samantha 42:52

Yeah, it was really being able to observe it brings you out of it straight away. I mean, it's quite paradoxical though, because most things in life, if things go wrong, we our automatic reaction is to try and fix them, isn't it? So this is a completely different model, and you say a lot, you know, the less attention you give it, the better. And it's like anything. If you had a plant that you didn't want to grow, you'd just stop feeding it. You wouldn't give it what it needs to stay alive by giving it that attention. And I think just reminding ourselves of that is so important because I don't know about anyone else, but naturally it felt like it was natural before. But when I'm having thoughts that make me sad or I'm uncomfortable with, I try and question them. And it's having to snap myself out of it and say, no, that is not the way. But I was never taught that. And I think for many people, they don't understand that. So that's why this conversation is so important because we actually have to do the opposite of what we're either taught or what feels natural to us, and it's such a paradox, it's quite. Shocking actually when you think about it, that it's the only way. The mind hates it.

Gemma 44:06

Of course the mind hates it, you know. It because it feels like it's gonna die if we look in this direction. And but it doesn't, we just have a different relationship with it. You know, that fundamentally is what changes our relationship to our thinking. It's not that thought needs to change, it's your relationship to thought that needs to change. That is what freedom is, that's who we really are. And to begin to see that is the beginning of opening the keys to the jaw that the mind can lock us in. That's the truth of who we are. That's that's what we point to every you know, we point to the same thing every week, always. You know, Eckhart Tole says it's you have a treasure within you that is infinitely greater than anything that the world can offer you. It's like that, that's it. You know, it's who we are before thought, it's who we really are. And we've been taught to overlook it. And it's like we need to wake up to it again, we need to experience it. We need to be able to see that even in our darkest moments, we're only ever one thought away from insight, from relief, from a new experience, from love, from all the things that we're looking for. Because if that's true, and and as far as I can see, and from my teachings that it really is true, is that well then I don't have to do anything. I've just got to wait for that new thought to come through, that new feeling to come through. Because if I and this was a recent insight, and it was through my friend Garrett Kramer, who's a lovely teacher, and he said that actually why do we even have to wait for it to pass? Because we are the power before it that's its creation. So we're more powerful than the experience anyway. So whatever, just get on with life. Again, waking up to who we are is an incredible thing, and we see that we're we're intuitive, we're wise, we're messy, we're wonderful, we're perfect, we're imperfect, we're all the things. But we have this amazing resilience to bounce back out of anxiety, out of depression, out of mental illness. And again, it comes from seeing who we are. Resilience isn't a product of being a human. Resilience is the truth of who we are before that humanity came into existence. I hope that makes sense. It's like we're resilient by nature, by our eternal nature. It's the screen that is unharmed by any movie that's playing on it. You can have the worst, most traumatic movie in the world playing, but you turn it off and the screen is untouched. That's who we really are. That's the divine nature that I was talking about earlier. It's the screen. The human experience is the movie. Now it's all one. You know, the whole thing is one, but we separate it. But it's that the more we come back to oneness, the more we see who we are, the more we see that it's just a divine dream, the happier we are, the more peaceful we are, the more at home we are, and the freer we are in our everyday lives.

Samantha 47:20

Does feel like the more joy, the more love. Generally, everything seems to be okay. And that's pretty wonderful. And just being in the conversation, having these connections, it's really incredible, especially with what's going on in the world at the moment. You know, I always go back to that quote where it's like worrying, it's just like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain. It's a completely useless emotion feeling, but it does happen. So understanding it and not paying attention to it, I think, is the best way. God, yeah.

Gemma 47:56

I think it it's just seeing beyond our own thinking and the kind of the nonsense that it makes up a lot of the time. You know, and as we begin to see this, it's like our mental health starts to awaken. It doesn't matter, you know, what you've been through, if you wake up to the moment, it falls away. Without question. None of it can stand up in the true presence of the now. It's like the now is so powerful that the thought will just dissolve, the past dissolves, the future dissolves, they don't even become concepts at that point because they don't even exist in true presence. There's just this and in this everything is perfect. And again, that's uh something that is pointed to in the this understanding in many spiritual teachings that's absolutely amazing. It's like when you see it for yourself as true, it's like, wow. Look what I'm missing by never being here now. You know, I've got someone in my life that just can never be present. If I point it out to them, it pisses them off. Because I just don't say it anymore, but I just see this it's like life is always in the next moment. I'm like, no, life can't be in the next moment, it can only be here. And it's beginning to see that. And again, it's seeing through the illusion that thought was created to see who we really are. When we see who we really are, that's when we really connect with life. And that's when we really experience the peace of mind that we've been looking for outside of ourselves. Now, do I experience it all the time? Absolutely not. You know, I say that every week, but it's there and it comes through and it's beautiful. And there's another eckhart, which is don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And I love that. How cool is that!

Samantha 49:57

And it's like if our mind is so powerful that you know the anxiety can create us to sweat, have panic attacks, and that's just from thought. Imagine what we can create when we're in a good place. It's those physical emotions, they feel so strong, and it's just thought, it's quite incredible. Yeah, it is incredible.

Gemma 50:18

It again, that power, it's like it's like, wow, look how powerful that is. And it's just seeing that, and and it again, it's like anxiety is not who you are, it's just a temporary feeling. It doesn't say anything about you, no mental illness says anything about you, you do not have to identify with it. I remember when I found that out 10 years ago, it's like, oh my god, I'm not broken, and I'm not my mental illness. It was like, holy shit, that's really that's great, that's a relief. And it's like from there, everything just began to unfold into me beginning to see this deeper experience of and have this deeper experience of who we really are. And all I can ask is for you to stay in the conversation, keep listening, keep pointing back to who you are before thought and something that will emerge, you will see something. And when you do, it will be like, oh, that's cool. And then you'll keep inquiring and you'll see something else, and it it's not about like there's anywhere actually to get to. It's just this wonderful experience of exploration. And for me that exploration never ends because there's always more to see. And there's always there's always insights, you know, and and those insights may be the same thing, but seen more deeply. Yeah, I just I really have hope that this understanding you know spreads more widely, that more people hear it, that more people wake up and more people find the truth within themselves and have a better experience of being alive. Again, you know, this is rebellion. It's an inner rebellion. You know, we've got the outer rebellion, which is brilliant, but have the inner one to begin to challenge your mind, begin to challenge the lies that it tells, and begin to wake up to who you really are. That's a true rebel.

Samantha 52:15

Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. And what the most beautiful thing is, is that there's so much to see, but there's nowhere to go, which is really quite wow. And it kind of takes you off the hook. It's like, wow, I was kind of doing that all to myself, and I had the power to let it go, to just be have joy, have happiness, have love.

Gemma 52:41

You are you don't have them, but you are them.

Samantha 52:45

Amazing. Oh, just had a big shot of happiness there. Thank you.

Gemma 52:52

Oh, well, thank you. That's lovely. Thank you everyone for being here. I've really enjoyed it. It's such a great topic because you know it encompasses so much of the human experience. So thank you all. And please, if you're not on the podcast, please go to the podcast One Minding on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, and please follow us, please subscribe, and please share it with anyone that you can.

Samantha 53:17

Yeah, thank you, everybody. It's really great to see so many of you here, all our cult family. And there were so many good points in tonight's talk that if you've heard something that has moved you or has made you think, please share it with anybody and everybody because you don't know who it's going to help. And just really thank you for all being here and all being part of the journey. And thank you as always to our sponsors, Vem. Yeah, thank you, everyone. We love you very much.