How To Not Let Your Thoughts Get In The Way Of Living

So today we're talking about how thoughts can get in the way of life.

And this is a really funny idea,

Because on the one hand,

Our thoughts create our life.

Literally,

Our brain interprets every single thing that happens.

Our brain decides what we're going to do,

Our brain figures out how to drive the car to get to wherever we want to go.

So on the one hand,

Our thoughts are central to our life.

And yet,

Our thoughts are the only thing,

Well,

Not the only thing,

But assuming you are a free person,

They are the only thing that gets in the way of us doing anything in life.

It reminds me a little bit of the difference between,

Say,

Alcoholics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous.

If alcohol is an addiction for you,

If that is a struggle,

It is possible just to give up alcohol.

I'm not saying that's easy on any count,

I'm just saying you can live without alcohol and then carve a new path in life.

But if your struggle is overeating,

That's harder,

Because food is necessary.

And it's a similar challenge with thinking,

That we do think,

We have to think.

And so therefore,

Our thoughts can actually trick us into thinking so much that we don't live at all.

This talk was inspired by Alan Watts.

Alan Watts is a philosopher that lived many years ago,

And he was really into combining the religions of the East,

Specifically Buddhism,

With Christianity,

With the East and the West.

A very,

Very interesting man,

And this was a huge part of his teaching,

Was how much our thoughts are actually nonsense,

Complete nonsense.

And that's a very scary thought sometimes,

To think that as I'm walking down the street,

The majority of what I am paying attention to is fiction.

And it's kind of sobering to think about how I am,

Say,

Chewing on something.

I'm chewing hard on this thing,

This topic,

This topic,

So important,

So important.

And I'm thinking about it,

And I'm thinking about it,

And I'm thinking about it,

And I've been thinking about it for months,

And it's just a fiction.

It's like talking about what happened on the soap opera last night,

Or what happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Can you believe this?

Can you believe he did that?

Can you believe she said that?

Oh my God.

It's nothing.

It's a complete fiction.

And how so much of our thoughts,

Even our memories,

And I know I can get into trouble saying this,

But for all intents and purposes,

Most of our memories are fiction,

And most of our fears for the future are fiction.

They're not real.

And what I mean about the memories in the past,

What we remember from the past is very selective.

People say,

Like,

Oh,

Well,

I don't remember anything from my childhood,

And they're concerned about it.

And I'm like,

I don't remember anything from my childhood.

All joking aside,

I have a hard time remembering yesterday,

Let alone what I did when I was five or eight or 10.

I don't remember anything.

The only thing I remember are fabricated memories based on the photo albums my parents had.

I don't remember anything at all.

So it's interesting when we think about,

You know,

I think of the stories I would tell from my marriage.

I was married for 20 years,

And there were probably about five stories I would tell over and over and over and over and over again.

What about the other 14,

000 things that happened?

What about the context around the story that I'm telling?

Why am I only telling the story from my perspective?

Why am I telling this story and not all the rest?

Sometimes I think of news stories,

And you sort of get the headline.

Most of the time,

We only get a headline.

And maybe we get a little bit of a story.

But no matter what they say,

It's not true.

Because it's almost like you take this tiny little piece that's maybe very shocking.

But if you actually dive deeper into the story,

There is an entire context.

There's maybe even a generational context.

There's an economic,

A political,

An environmental,

A social context.

But if you take this tiny slice out of the story without the proper context,

It is barely true.

Imagine if someone observed your life.

They took one conversation you had with them,

And they thought they understood you.

They think they know you,

Because even of a conversation that you had with them,

Is it true?

Is it complete?

No.

And yet,

We do this to ourselves.

We take these singular stories,

And then I said,

And then he said,

And then I said,

And then he said,

And then I said,

And then he said.

I would tell these stories 30 times as if they were true.

And so it's just very interesting.

Why am I retelling the story?

Why am I not living in this moment right now?

Why am I telling a story that happened 15 years ago,

And yet I live here in 2024?

What's happening in 2024 right now?

It's just interesting how much of our thoughts are fabrications.

It's sort of funny,

Like when I used to do a lot of couples counseling,

How different the conversations would be if I spoke with each individual person versus the people together.

Sometimes,

Of course,

Obviously,

There's great benefit in talking to each person individually,

Because you find out really what's going on inside of them,

But sometimes it was actually very important to have both people sitting in the room,

Because one person actually couldn't tell the story the same with the other person there,

Not because they were afraid of them,

Because with the other person's presence,

They actually had to tell a slightly different story to make it more accurate.

Our thoughts are very curious.

It's kind of almost like the eating thing,

That there are thoughts that are nutritious and helpful,

And there's a lot of junk food,

And the junk food stops us from living.

It takes us out of the present moment,

And it stops us from progressing,

It stops us from growing,

It stops us from living at all.

So it's interesting when you imagine this idea of time,

And time is interesting,

That the only place we live is in this moment.

That's it.

Just in this moment right now.

This is the only reality.

There are times that thinking about the past,

Thoughts about the past are really great.

Sometimes we have to think about the past to understand the struggles we're having in the present.

We have to understand if I am right now in a negative pattern,

A pattern that's hurting me,

There is help in going back and saying,

Oh wait a minute,

I've done this here,

I've done this here,

I've done this here,

Okay,

This is a pattern.

We don't need to go back to those and relive them.

We just need to understand it's a pattern.

And then in this moment,

We have to take that circle that's making us spin around,

And straighten it out,

And take action.

We have to make a different choice in this moment,

And step forward.

Otherwise,

If we keep just going back and back and back,

Oh yeah,

I remember this time,

Oh I remember when I was a child,

And then there was this past life where I also did it,

And then my mother did it,

And da-da-da-da-da-da-da,

Everything I'm saying is nonsense.

So what?

Recognize it and go,

Aha,

Okay I got it,

It's a circle,

Okay I got it,

It's a circle,

It's a circle,

It's a circle,

Let's make it a straight line.

We get caught,

It's like caught in a whirlpool.

Our thoughts will keep going.

And the reason they can do this is that our brain,

Most of our brain,

Is there to interpret the outside world.

It's there to help us speak,

Listen,

Move our body,

Motor skills,

Things like that.

But we have this precious frontal cortex right here.

And in the front of our brain,

This frontal cortex is capable of abstract thought.

We're able to imagine,

We're able to create,

We're able to think,

Imagine if I could fly.

Well I would need to build wings,

I would need to have some place where I would get air under the wings.

What if I had wings and then I jumped off something high?

That's what the frontal cortex is for,

To imagine creation.

What if I did start my own business?

What would I need for that?

Interesting.

That's what the frontal cortex is for.

It's this magical holodeck from Star Trek where you can load in a program and see what could happen.

It's magical.

But our thoughts can also get in there and play endless loops.

Imagine a holodeck caught in a loop that it never goes forward.

Have you ever tried to play piano or something like that?

You're playing a piece and then all of a sudden you screw up in this one spot.

You always get it wrong.

Do you hear that?

You always get it wrong.

Every time you play it,

You play it wrong.

Even if you try to visualize it,

If you use like a visualization technique and you play it in your mind,

You're actually going to play it wrong in your head.

This is a vicious loop and then you swear and then you start over or then you try to drill it or whatever.

This is what thinking about the past can be.

So it's very important that we can look back in the past for understanding,

Understand the pattern and now in this moment,

Change it.

We can't change the past.

We can't change our childhood.

We can't change our past lives,

But we can straighten the line in this moment.

But how much of our mind is used circling in the past?

How often are we walking down the street and reliving something from the past?

And so in this moment,

If we ever find ourselves doing that,

The wildest thing about our brain,

It almost feels like we have two brains.

Some would call it our witness mind.

Some would call it our soul.

Some might even call it Atman that lives in our heart,

Our divine self,

That's almost enjoying the ride of this human life.

But from that soul's perspective,

From that witness mind,

We can watch our brain thinking In the same way that I can watch my bicep curling,

I can watch myself dance,

I,

Some magical I,

Can actually watch my brain thinking.

Isn't that crazy when you think of that?

We think that I am thinking,

No,

I am I.

My brain is thinking.

My brain is caught in a loop.

It's caught in an electrical circuit.

So then I,

In this moment,

Simply choose to stop it.

And this is one of the most powerful tools we can ever develop.

To understand that we get to choose what we think about.

Back in 1999,

When I first met my teacher,

Jim,

He was very interesting because he'd had a restart,

Not intentionally,

But in 1987,

He was carrying an extension ladder,

A steel ladder over his shoulder,

And he hit a power line and he was electrocuted.

And he kind of did one of those dying and coming back things.

But when he came back,

It's like a lot of the veils that confuse us were gone.

And one of them was this illusion that our thoughts are in charge of us.

That I have no control over my thoughts.

So Jim,

One time I remember we were sitting there and he said,

You know,

I just don't get people.

He said,

You could be walking around all day long in a state of bliss,

In an orgasmic state of bliss.

That is your choice.

And yet most people walk around thinking the most horrible,

Negative thoughts.

And so to really think about that,

Do you believe that's true?

Do you believe that you can actually control your brain?

Do you believe that there is an I,

A soul,

That has the capacity to shut the muscle of the brain off in the same way that we choose to sit down in a chair?

It's really important to think about.

Because if we think we are a slave to our thoughts,

Then what chance do we have to ever live in the present moment?

How often are we thinking about the future?

How often are we worrying about the future?

This thing that hasn't even happened,

You talk about a fiction and a future that is created by our current thoughts,

Like the thoughts that we're having right now and the actions we take based on those thoughts,

100% create our future.

And I really mean that.

I don't mean 50%.

I don't mean,

Oh,

Well,

There's other people and oh,

But what about this?

I mean 100%.

Because this is really important.

In Tantric understanding,

In Hindu understanding,

In most spiritual systems,

Especially in the East,

We begin as oneness.

We begin as Shiva Shakti.

We begin as whatever.

And then we want to experience life here on earth.

And perhaps it's not even that we fell from grace and decided to go into duality.

Maybe we are actually all in oneness and we are in duality.

In order to have duality,

There is a creation of maya.

They call it the land of illusion or whatever this is,

But it doesn't mean it's not real.

It just means it's a creation.

So from that oneness,

We were given this sense of I.

We were given a sense of individuality within the collective because that way we each get to have a unique experience here.

Within that I,

We were given this brain and there are many levels of our brain,

But the brain interprets the world around us.

And then from this I space,

From this brain space,

We then come to earth and start having experiences.

From those experiences,

We learn about the world and it's all stored in our brain,

In our mind,

However we understand that.

From that space,

We then interpret everything that we see.

Every relationship you have is interpreted based on the mental constructs you've created from every other relationship you've ever had.

It's impossible to be objective if our brains are in charge because our brains are holding all the mental constructs that we have correctly created in our whole life.

Every relationship we have will be based on relationships we had with friends,

Relationships we had with our parents,

The relationships we witnessed through our parents,

Our grandparents,

Our uncles,

Our aunts,

Our family,

Our friends' parents,

Everything.

Every one of those will have created a pattern in our brain.

And then everything we see out there is then either created from that pattern or interpreted through that pattern if we rely on our brains alone.

So through yogic practice,

Through tantric practice,

What do we do?

We learn to connect with that higher self,

That sense of I.

And I don't mean the ego construct,

I mean the sense of I,

Our Atman,

Our truth,

Who we are.

Atman,

As an example,

In say,

They call it Advaita Vedanta,

They see all the world as God,

They see all the world as Brahman,

Everything.

Every mountain,

Every rock,

Everything is God.

We too are a part of that and the Atman that lives in our heart center is our connection to that divinity.

So through all spiritual practice,

We connect with that Atman,

We connect with that truth within,

Who we are.

Then we start to have a chance to see the world through objective eyes.

We start to be able to set aside our patterns and actually notice what is happening right now.

Who is this person in front of me?

Without all my patterns laid on top of them.

I told a lot of you guys this story when I first saw the movie,

A Beautiful Mind,

I know lots of you guys have heard this story.

Beautiful Mind is a true story about a mathematician who Jonathan Nash,

I think his name was,

He had this ultimate life,

He had a beautiful wife,

He went to university,

Had a great friend in university,

The friend had a niece that he could really connect with because he didn't really connect with people,

He was a little bit awkward,

But he could really connect with this young girl because his sort of childlike self,

He had a great job,

He got a great job with the government,

Doing really cool mathematical stuff.

And then partway through the movie we find out,

Because of course in the first part of the movie we're seeing it all from his perspective,

And then partway through the movie his friends and family are trying to tell him that he's schizophrenic,

That none of this is real,

He didn't have a great job,

He didn't have a roommate in college,

None of it was real,

The only thing real was that he actually did have a wife,

And it took him some time to figure out that they were right,

That his brain,

His thoughts,

Were so powerful and so well collected that he was living in a complete illusion.

When I watched this movie,

It hit me so deeply inside.

I thought,

Have I lived in illusion all this time?

Have I created an ideal life in my mind,

And then found all the players that I needed?

Have I gone out and found humans?

Okay,

You're a man,

And I like you,

And you will fit into my role as husband.

Enter Wayne,

Now you are husband.

But I looked at him after I watched this movie and I thought,

Wait a minute,

You're a person outside of the illusion I have of the perfect husband.

Have I ever even met you?

Have I ever even considered that you are an entirely autonomous human being outside of what I want you to be,

Or what I think the ideal husband is?

And I realized that in that moment,

I couldn't tell the difference.

The programs in my head were so strong.

It's almost like when we're young,

At least when I was young,

I got this idea that you need to create the perfect life,

And then step into it.

Make the plan,

Work the plan.

Make your five-year plan,

Make your 10-year plan,

Make your 20-year plan.

Where do you want to be by the time you're 40?

Make that plan and make it happen.

Well,

I did it.

I got the dude,

I got the kids,

I got the education,

I got the job,

I got the everything.

And then I had to look at my kids and say,

Wait a minute,

Have I done it to you too?

Did I create a reality in my brain and then just impose it on you?

How often do we do that?

How often do we do it to our parents?

How often do we have an idea that we want our parents to be Ward and June Cleaver?

If you've never watched Leave it to Beaver,

It was a show back in the 70s,

Of the perfect home,

With the perfect mother,

And the perfect father,

And the perfect son.

Have we got an illusion in our brain that said that's what a mother should be,

That's what a father should be,

And we never even considered that our parents are autonomous beings.

They are human beings with whole piles of history,

Ancestral trauma,

All kinds of stuff.

And did they do things that messed us up,

Where they may be abusive,

Where they may be whatever?

Probably.

Because they're not Ward and June Cleaver.

They're people.

They're like,

They're people.

But how often we look at them and they failed.

They failed.

How could they have done that?

It's like,

What did they fail?

They're just people.

And then our brains,

How much time do we spend thinking about how different our parents should have been,

How different our childhood should have been,

How different our children should have been,

How different I should have been?

How could I have done this?

Why did I screw that up?

Why did I say that?

Why did I do that?

What is our brain doing?

Think about this brain.

The brain is like wild horses,

Out of control,

Just running amok in our life,

Causing us,

We can't sleep now,

And we're worried about this,

And we're worried about the future,

And we're worried about things that have nothing to do with us,

And we're stressed about this,

And our brain is out of control.

So we meditate,

And we do yoga,

And we go for runs,

And we sit by the water,

And we try to calm the horses down,

And we're like,

Okay,

Okay,

Okay,

Okay,

Okay,

Shh,

Come on,

Come on,

Come on down.

And then we reconnect with the I,

We reconnect with who we truly are,

And we say,

Okay,

And we look at our brain,

And we say,

Wait a minute,

We need to do some training here.

You're not allowed to take me out of the present moment.

This is reality right here,

Right now.

I'm not going to spend my waking life thinking about the past,

And I'm not going to blow this moment worrying about some future that I am creating in this moment.

But this requires training.

This is why we meditate.

This is why we do pranayama,

Because we have to,

It's almost like we have to put salve or balm,

We have to calm the mind,

Because the truth is,

We've lived in a very difficult world,

And a lot of people have had very difficult lives.

And our brains have stored all of these traumatic circuits.

Sometimes we had one trauma,

And that one trauma freaked us out enough that it put massive protective walls around us,

So nothing can help hurt us again.

So now these walls are in our brain.

How much does that get in the way of our current life?

I'm not saying they're wrong.

I'm just saying we have to be aware that they are thought constructs.

They're not reality.

They're thought constructs put up from the past.

How often in the past did we have repetitive experiences over and over and over again that we are now repeating here in this life,

In this today?

And again,

We just have to look at them.

But it's really important to be able to take our brain and almost look at it like a piece of paper and say,

I see you.

But we have to have the eye,

We have to have the connection in us to be able to look at our brain and say,

Okay,

I see that we are really hurt here,

And we're really freaked out,

So we need something,

We need help.

What do we need?

Do we need a long bath?

Do we need a counselor?

Do we need to do yoga?

What do we need?

We need to do something here.

But the key is this foundational idea of understanding that we do have choice.

We have choice about what we think about.

We have choice about how those thoughts change our day.

Because if we don't believe that,

If we believe that our thoughts are our God,

That our thoughts,

Those horses that are out of control,

That they are impossible to calm down,

They're impossible to train,

Then we live as a victim.

We live as a victim to our past.

We live as a victim to everything.

And it's not true.

Like it isn't true.

Every one of us has the ability to think in this moment.

I remember,

And this has been a huge part of my journey,

Shutting the mind off,

Like a massive part of my journey.

Because when I was young,

I was very awkward.

I'm probably still a bit awkward.

But I was really good in school.

And my parents were teachers.

I was the first born.

Imagine the first born of two teachers,

Right?

I mean,

I learned to read when I was three years old,

Right?

I was all about it.

And I'm a people pleaser,

So I have to please my parents.

And so I got to school.

School was super easy.

I felt very awkward,

Very antisocial.

So I really thought my brain was all I had.

So I went off to university,

Studied mathematics,

Became a computer programmer.

But my brain was just that.

Like it wasn't,

Katrina wasn't even here.

You know what I mean?

Like Katrina didn't exist because my brain had created this life that I was now walking through.

It's like,

Okay,

You're smart enough,

You can do this,

Map it out,

Sort it out.

And Katrina didn't even have to play.

I could have been anyone inside that structure.

And then when I was 29,

I got sick.

And everything came to a crashing halt.

That house of cards I'd built,

That illusion I'd built,

Came crashing down.

And the number one thing that Jim,

My teacher,

Said to me,

He says,

You have got to learn to shut off your brain.

And I honestly,

First of all,

I thought he was crazy.

Because what are you talking about?

It's not even a thing.

That's like telling me to stop breathing.

We have to have a brain.

But then of course,

You know,

He didn't argue with me.

He would just show me things.

He would show me the perfection in the universe.

He at the time was creating all of these models of the platonic solids of the cube and the octahedrons and the tetrahedrons and duodecahedrons and all these beautiful shapes.

And he would just sit there and talk to me.

He'd say,

You know,

Do you know that every single thing in the universe is created from these shapes,

These creations of energy?

And did you see this?

And did you know that when you look at a rainbow,

That the vibrations of the colors,

Basically,

That they match up with the vibrations of the sounds of a scale,

And that those colors are mapped out in our chakras.

And then he just kind of kept talking about the perfection in the universe.

And he said,

Why do you think you have to think so much?

What do you really think you're thinking about that's so important,

That is somehow changing the fabric of reality?

You can stop thinking,

Katrina.

You can stop and actually just live here.

Just be here.

Live in this moment.

Respond to this moment.

And I realized that I didn't know how to do that.

I didn't know how to actually just be here and live.

To just live.

Like just stop premeditating everything.

Stop thinking about what I'm going to say when that happens.

And stop thinking about what I'm going to do when that person does that thing.

And stop trying to be good and brave and right and sexy and perfect all the time.

Like stop it.

There's nothing you're supposed to do.

It's kind of like that you cannot screw this up.

You can't screw your life up.

You just live your life.

Whatever it is,

You just live.

There's no one giving you a grade.

Again,

We've been taught that there is that final day of judgment.

And you can decide whether you believe in that construct or not.

Or you just live.

Like we've had a lot of training that says you had better think a lot.

Think about your past.

Feel bad about it.

Think about the future.

Or else you're a loser.

You know,

Da da da.

We've been trained.

Heavily.

So it's a very interesting thing to think within and say,

I just choose to live right now only.

And so during that time,

My friend Nelda,

Who some of you guys have met,

She was just my practitioner then.

We weren't friends then.

And she would sit there and she would stare at me and she said,

You know,

You need to learn how to disengage your brain.

Open a drawer and put your brain in the drawer.

Close the drawer.

And then later when you need it,

Take it out.

But it's not always here.

So imagine that.

Imagine in your life right now that your brain,

All your thoughts,

Your worries,

Your concerns,

All the cycles and the patterns and the whatever,

The constructs you've been living within your whole life,

That you can all just put them together,

Turn it off,

Put it in a drawer.

Imagine in a drawer.

So now what's left?

Who's here now?

Our brains are all set aside and put into nice little drawers that we can get at any time we need to learn Spanish or learn how to drive a tractor or figure out how to get to the airport.

We can pull that brain out any time we want.

But for now it's in a drawer.

So what do I have?

I can feel.

I can hear sounds around me.

I can feel love.

I can hear my intuition.

I'm not dead.

I'm not brain dead.

But I can now hear,

Boy,

This would be fun.

Oh,

That would be fun.

I'd like to do that.

Hmm.

What about this?

Suddenly creativity flows in.

I can feel love.

I can hear.

Ooh,

I'd like to paint with purple today.

That'd be fun.

I can feel.

I can taste.

I live.

I can go for a walk.

Imagine,

Like imagine going for a walk without your brain.

Leave your brain at home and go for a walk.

Anytime your brain kicks in,

You go like,

Oh no,

No,

No,

No.

You just turn off the switch.

You don't have to get mad.

Just turn the switch off.

No,

Not right now.

It's kind of like if you've got children or if you've ever taken care of children,

They're like,

And it's almost dinner time,

They're like,

I really want a cookie.

You're like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

That's all.

It's not a conversation.

Just no.

How enjoyable would that walk be?

Imagine how rich that walk would be without your brain.

Imagine washing dishes without your brain.

What would that be like?

The warm water,

The smell of the dish soap,

Because you always buy the kind that you like the smell of.

The geometric satisfaction of stacking the dishes in the dish pan.

That's me.

Imagine putting your brain aside to make love.

Imagine.

What would that be like?

Imagine putting your brain aside to have an argument with someone.

And I mean that.

You're someone you love and you're really struggling and you don't see eye to eye on something.

And you both put your brains away and you sit with each other.

What happens?

Do you cry?

Do you tell the truth?

Do you share your feelings?

Do you hold each other?

Do you stroke each other's hands?

What do you do?

It's an amazing thing to think about what life is like when we're able to tuck our brain away.

And understand it to be the muscle that it is.

Understand it to be the trained muscle that it is.

In the same way that I can train my fingers to play the guitar.

It's just a mechanism.

And I can take this hand and close it and just set it on my lap.

It's up to me.

If I need the brain,

I pull it out.

And if I don't,

I set it aside.

Because life is incredibly rich when it's set aside.

And then maybe you're like,

I have an idea.

I'd like to contemplate some things.

So you fire up the holodeck and you put in some interesting ideas and you start to play out scenarios.

How joyful is that?

I'm going to put my glasses on and if you have any questions,

I would love to answer them.

Or if you have comments and you want to share,

I'd be happy to hear them.

But if I don't think into the future a bit,

I maybe won't do a lot of things I have to do,

Right?

How can I be in the present all the time and do the things I need to do to organize my life?

It's a great question.

Because I think that's one of our big fears.

Is that if I don't think into the future,

Something may happen.

But the crazy thing is,

If I don't think into the future,

I'm not going to do anything.

Everything works.

One time,

I've told some of you guys this story,

But I'm going to tell it slightly differently.

Because again,

Way back in the day,

One day I had gone to see Nelda for exhaustion,

Because I was always exhausted.

And she just looked at me and I had young children.

I had foster kids at the time.

We had a dairy farm.

I was run ragged,

Like I did not have a moment to myself.

And Nelda just looked at me,

And she lived alone in this cabin in the woods,

And she looked at me and she said,

I'm doing an experiment where I'm only doing things that bring me joy.

I don't even want to share with you guys right now the negative thoughts that went through my head when she said that.

But I just listened and laughed.

Well,

I just kind of smiled at her.

And then years later,

After I'd had my whole experience with the breast slumps,

After all that had shifted,

The foster kids had moved on,

And my kids were a little bit older,

I decided,

This came back to me,

This thing she'd said,

And I thought,

I'm going to do that.

So I told my husband,

I said,

I'm going to do an experiment,

And I am only going to do things that bring me joy for one week.

And realized that I was doing diapers and feeding the menfolk and working the farm,

And this was my life.

So I told my husband,

And I said,

That means that I may not want to cook.

It may mean I don't want to make anything.

I said,

You guys might have to live on toast for this whole week,

Just so you know.

And of course,

This was right after I was sick,

So my husband was more than happy to just do whatever crazy thing came into my head,

Because he just wanted me to be alive.

So I did.

And obviously,

There's basic things when you're a mother,

Right?

But I didn't do anything for like three days I swear,

I sat on the couch and read.

I just,

I didn't do anything except for bare minimum mom stuff.

And then one day,

I decided to,

I really wanted to clean the house,

And I put on some music,

And I enjoyed cleaning the house,

And then I felt like making muffins,

And then I started doing this,

And then I started,

Whatever.

By the end of the week,

My house was like snow white.

I was so,

Everyone was so happy,

And I was so happy,

And I was so happy.

The house,

Literally the energy in the house was so joyful,

And peaceful,

And everything got done.

So imagine,

For all intents and purposes,

I put my brain away,

And followed joy for a week,

And my life was never so wonderful,

And everything got done.

Do I have a meditation or a course on this?

I teach Kundalini Yoga,

And I love Kundalini Yoga,

Because it uses movement,

Breath,

Mantra.

It's an hour long,

And the point of the yoga is to bring up all those thought processes.

But the cool thing is,

You get to see them inside the yoga practice,

And this is where you cultivate your sense of self.

This is where,

Inside the yoga practice,

You see the stuff coming up,

And you see your angry thoughts,

Or maybe your arms are up in the air.

Kundalini was famous for arms up in the air,

Because of course,

This stimulates these big meridians that go through the liver,

And things like that,

And the lungs.

So your arms are in the air,

And all of a sudden,

You're like,

Oh,

I hate this,

And I can't do this,

And you're like,

Okay,

Hold on a minute.

Is this a pattern?

Is this a loop?

Okay,

Hold on,

I'm going to come back to my breath.

I'm going to come back to my breath.

Is this a loop?

Okay,

Hold on,

I'm going to come back to my breath.

And what I just did is connected to myself,

My truth,

My I,

And I went,

Oh,

Wait a second,

I'm actually okay.

And you practice this,

You practice going from I to the mind,

The I,

And then the mind is stimulated again,

And it keeps going back and forth and back and forth,

Until eventually you recognize the pattern,

You recognize the relationship.

It's a very practical thing.

Whatever you do to help you see the patterns,

And then come back to self,

And maybe it's a different kind of meditation,

Whatever,

It's really,

Really important.

How can we not be trained to be in our heads all the time,

When most of us have been in an institution for 12 years that models this?

Another reason I'm so passionate about the unschooling movement,

Time and space to live in the richness of the moment and trust what emerges.

There is a huge unschooling needed for every single person.

It's an interesting thing you mention that,

Because normally people read books about unschooling when they're trying to unschool their children.

But I wonder if there's interesting books out there for unschooling for adults,

To help every single one of us undo this structure of judgment that we've learned,

The structure that you have to think and you have to plan ahead and you have to.

.

.

I wonder if that would be really worthy to look for some.

.

.

A Course of Love?

Is that book,

Gina?

Is that what it's called?

A Course of Love?

That sounds awesome.

I highly recommend,

If you struggle with this,

Look up books like that,

A Course of Love,

Unschooling,

Everything,

And allow yourself to identify with it and then let it go.

Like it's a huge deal to even just realize that.

How can we stop a critical,

Judgmental,

Unkind thought from being triggered,

Resulting in dissociating?

I would,

After the fact,

I would write it out.

I would write out your experience,

Whether you like to write or not,

To sit down and you write it.

So,

I was walking down the street and then I saw this person and then this person said this thing to me and that made me so frustrated and angry and suddenly I remembered this happening and then da-da-da-da and write it out,

Write every single thing,

Write it out,

All the way to the dissociation,

Everything.

And then,

The next day,

Write it out again and keep writing it out so that it's almost like some part of you wants to be witnessed.

It's like an inner child,

A wounding,

That has finally come out and said,

Please see me,

Please see my wounding.

And you are writing it out,

Writing it out,

I see you,

I feel you,

I feel everything.

And then eventually,

As you write it out,

It'll become shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter.

And you'll have realizations in there.

And then the next time someone says something,

You'll see it happening.

It's almost like,

You know in the movies,

Someone shoots a bullet and all of a sudden,

But now,

You actually see the bullet coming towards you,

Like this.

And you're like,

Huh.

And you might choose to take the bullet anyway.

You might repeat the pattern.

That's okay.

And then another time,

It's going to come and maybe you'll just actually turn it into flowers.

Or you'll just simply step aside and let it go by you.

But that's what happens as we become aware of these triggers and we honor them,

And we deal with them.

We can see them coming a mile away.

We can see them coming before the person opens their mouth.

And we just watch the bullet.

And then we decide what we're going to do with it.

How would this impact manifestation?

The thing is,

If you are caught in a negative loop,

If you're caught in any loop,

There's no positive loops.

If you're caught in any loop,

You don't manifest.

Because you're like a snake biting its tail.

There is no manifesting.

You have to find a hole in the circle and straighten it out and start walking.

It's the only way.

You have to actually walk forward.

And then we manifest.

And then it's easy.

Then we have all this energy that we were spending chasing our own tail,

And suddenly we're gone.

So thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.