A very big aloha.
I'm Reverend Cindy Paulus and I wanted to do a talk about how we integrate our inspiration and what we get in our meditations into our moments,
The moments of life.
Life is made up of many magical moments and we direct our attention away from the magic because we have to take care of business.
We have to drive a car,
We have to do this,
This to do,
I gotta go to work,
I got this to do,
I got an appointment here,
I got an appointment.
But all of that stuff you have to do needs to somehow be integrated into your awareness as well.
Now what I've found is very interesting is that once you have some or certain levels of an enlightenment experience,
You just change your way of viewing and seeing things.
So it's not like you have to even try if you have had that experience.
You just start to view everything differently.
And this is a very subtle hard thing to describe unless you've experienced it.
But basically in the first stages of higher illumination and insight,
You get to a point where you're seeing life in a different way.
But up to that point,
You try to reenact that experience in lots of ways.
And it can be effective.
It can work.
You use the basic precepts and concepts that have been given that you get in any teachings and in meditation and the major books.
And it helps you see things in the way that's kind of suggested in the teachings.
But once you get to the beginning stages and start to have illumination experiences,
It just becomes that that's the way it is.
That's it.
Very interesting difference there that a lot of people,
I don't see a lot of people talking about that.
But you know if you've had experiences that have changed your life.
And you know that that's something that you'll remember,
Right?
It's like having a life-changing dream that you always remember.
If you have a life-changing experience that may not even be in meditation.
Sometimes these enlightenment experiences come in different ways that could be just in a regular everyday life or when you're taking a walk or many different ways.
All of a sudden,
This illumination experience can happen.
And once it happens,
It changes the way you understand what your real life purpose is about and why you're here.
And you experience what I feel the most important thing.
You experience that love that is the greatest love of all.
And when you experience that love,
It's like being in love times a hundred times,
You know.
It's the most love you probably ever have felt.
And at that point,
You may have a vision similar to what would have if you were having a near-death experience or gone into a higher realm of leaving the body behind and seeing what your life is like.
I think that when we die,
From what I've experienced,
That that amazing love and that heavenly energy is at that point that it is so powerful and so in tune with the highest love and the highest light that you are there.
Now,
You can bring that energy into your everyday life.
Isn't that wonderful?
You can.
You can still function really well,
You know.
But it sometimes is something that you keep to yourself.
I've known people that have had some of these experiences and don't even talk about them because it's difficult to explain and you don't want to sound like you're crazy,
You know.
Not a lot of people talk about it,
But more now than ever before.
So how do you replicate,
How do you replicate this amazing light and love and put it into your everyday living?
I think here's a couple things that I believe about that.
I think having a regular every day meditation and taking the time to do that without interruption every day is really key.
I've been doing it every day of my life since I've been 14 years old.
And what amazes me is how there's never an end to what you get.
It's always more teaching,
More insight,
More illumination,
More of every inspiration.
It all comes from there as your base.
And everyone that is in practice can do this.
It's so,
So important.
Another thing is,
And I love this,
It's so basic,
But I go out in nature and take a walk.
And what you see in nature,
The beauty of the trees,
The beauty of the sky,
The beauty of life in its natural form is very conducive to lifting your spirit and feeling that bliss that is present always in life.
But we shut out because we're so busy.
The other thing is to learn how to recreate that while you're doing your everyday living.
Now,
There's a few ways you can do that.
You can take little breaks,
You know,
Could be when you go to the bathroom.
If you don't have time and energy at work to have peace to yourself,
You can do that.
You can go out and take a coffee break or do something at that time to take some breaths,
To get re-centered,
You know,
To remember,
To connect with yourself again.
It's so easy to get overwhelmed when you're working hard.
I know that,
You know.
So it's really valuable to make sure you stay in that centered place as clearly as you possibly can.
When you do this,
Certain things will happen.
You'll find yourself kind of expressing in unspoken ways sometimes that energy that is present there inside you.
And people may not want to talk about it,
But you might find people recognizing what's going on in you.
And they're very interested in how you are living and what you're doing.
And they may want to know some answers from you.
So I've had this happen,
Of course.
You know,
And then you can find also people of like mind and experiences and connect with them as well.
So that is an interesting sharing thing.
The hardest part is not to become a pain in trying to sell people on what you're experiencing and doing.
And I have seen this happen in people,
You know,
Usually in the beginning stages,
When you start to experience these higher levels of meditation.
And a lot of people don't want to hear what you're going through and how you've changed and what experiences is.
They don't care.
But you feel like it's so important to express,
Right?
So you have to really fine tune your intuition as to when and how to share what you have to share.
Or it might be that other people just start recognizing something in you and they want to talk to you about what they've experienced.
You'll become really an expert at this after a while.
You begin to become much better at understanding what's going on.
And there are places like Insight Timer where you can connect with other people who are also teaching and doing things that are of interest or that are interested in what you're doing.
This is a fine gift,
A fine art to living a spiritual life that you will find that's important to you.
But no matter how deep you go,
It always comes back to how much do you use it in your life?
How well do you live?
How kind are you?
How helpful are you?
You know,
How is it affecting your life?
Are you a better person for what you've got from meditation?
So you might want to do checks on that every now and then.
You know,
Just a little check is,
How's your day going?
How did it go?
Was your day valuable?
Was there things of use,
Of interest,
Of value in it?
And,
You know,
There's lots of ways to attract the time and energy to create what's important to you and allow that expression of what's important to be present in your life and to change your life.
That's the exciting part of what you do to create a spiritual life that's functional,
A spiritual life that is integrated into your way of being.
And I send you my deepest love and appreciation for your journey in this.
God bless you always.
