The World Doesn't Have To Change For Us To Be Masters

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The World Doesn't Have To Change For Us To Be Masters

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As we progress on our spiritual path, it is easy to look around and wish the world would change. It's so violent, so shallow, so unkind, and unconscious. But what if our mastery and journey have nothing to do with the outside world? Let's explore a new way of expanding and loving in this crazy world.

Change Karma Acceptance Courage Dharma Personal Growth Sobriety Spiritual Growth Karmic Patterns Mystery And Wonder Expansion Journeys Love Spiritual Teachers Spirits

Meet your Teacher

Toronto, ON, Canada

Meet your Teacher

Toronto, ON, Canada

Transcript

So today we're talking about how the outside world doesn't have to change for us to be masters. If you can hear random dog sounds in the background, It's because my puppy is wandering around and eating and chewing and drinking. We just have to imagine we're sitting on a couch together listening to random dog noises. So why do we want to talk about this? Why do we want to talk about the fact that being masters doesn't require anyone else to change? As we become more aware of the things that we've struggled with, As we become more aware of the challenges we've faced and the issues that we've lived with, We start to see them everywhere in the world. It's almost like you have an aha moment and you realize that, Oh my gosh, I've had all these issues when I was a kid and these are triggering me and these are causing me to kick in these karmic patterns. And then we have the realization and then we look out into the world and we're like, Oh my gosh, Look, You're doing it too and you're doing this too and you're doing this too. It's like we become so aware. And then the challenge becomes is we can start to obsess with everyone else trying to follow our path, Everyone else having all the same realizations that we've had. This is when the savior archetype kicks in. This is when we start looking around the world and going, Oh my God, I've got to fix you and I've got to fix you because we see the brokenness in other people that we've had inside of ourselves. But then what happens is we actually stop growing. It's like we learn this one thing and it's like, I'm not going to learn the next thing until everybody has the one thing. Well, That's impossible. If we want everyone else to catch up with us, That's just not going to happen because it's not the point. And this is where we have to really ask ourselves, Do we actually understand the nature of the world? Do we know why the world is the way it is right now? Do we understand why people suffer? Do we understand life and death? Do we understand why certain people are born to certain families? Do we? And this is the most interesting thing because as we journey on a spiritual path, We start to realize how important the hard times were. And we start to realize how important the people in our lives, Especially the hard ones, The difficult ones, The painful ones, The mean ones, How somehow we healed and we figured something out, Right? And we really start to own that. And we start to realize that, Wow, I've come to a new place. And then you wonder, Can another person get there without that really important path? Like we are very complex beings. And I don't know. I mean, As much as I do believe that we have multiple lifetimes, Whether they're past, Future, Whether they're all happening at the same time, Because there is no such thing as time, I don't know how it works. But it sure feels right that there's many, Many lifetimes inside of me right now. I don't know what experience I have to have in order to sort what needs to be sorted. So therefore, How could I possibly know what experiences you have to have to sort whatever it is that you're here to sort? I don't understand how any of it works. And so it's really interesting when we ask ourselves, Well, If I need the whole world to sort this thing out before I can move on, Is it actually just an excuse to not continue my own path? Because our own genuine journey, Like my actual path, Is challenging. And not challenging in a bad way, But challenging. It asks me to expand myself. It asks me to dig deep inside of myself, Find something inside and say, I'm going to grab that and I'm going to run with it. But I don't actually know where I'm running. Because the challenge of all of our spiritual paths for every single one of us is it is unknown. We can read books. We can talk to our friends. We can do all kinds of things. We can listen to teachers. We can watch movies. We can have all kinds of inputs. But in the end, Every one of us has an absolutely unique journey to take. And it is in mystery. And that's challenging. So very often, We turn away from mystery. We turn away from the unknown. And instead, We focus on what we do know. And what we do know are the things we've learned, Or the things that we can see. And we just stay on that. It's like, Okay, You know what, I'm not going to look at my world because that's too, It's too uncomfortable. So, But you know what, I can help you. And I can help you. And I can help you. And I can fix you. And I can do this. And look at that over there that's wrong. So it actually is the opposite of the path of mastery. And that's curious, Right? That, Well, But aren't you supposed to help people? Isn't that the point? Aren't we supposed to be in service to other people? Isn't this the altruistic way of living? Is it? If someone comes before you and they need help, Of course you help them. Genuine help. That's different than looking out into the world and deciding that you need my help. Unasked, Unrequested. That's a very different thing. What if the world is just being the world and I just simply am not climbing my own mountain and I'm distracting myself from the people? And that's just one angle. And we're going to talk about a lot of different angles of this. So today's talk is going to have all kinds of pieces because it's a curious discussion, The life of mastery. So for me, I want to tell you my history and why mastery is interesting to me. Years ago, I read this book, This series of books called The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East by Baird Spalding. It's a series of six books and I read it a long time ago. I read all of them a long time ago. It's a story of these men in the 1800s who went to India to find the masters because they believed that there were masters living in the world. And they did find them and they went up into the Himalayas and they met these people who didn't age. It's like they were hundreds of years old, But they weren't living in time the way we live in time. So it's almost like they were living in this present moment for eternity or for as long as they wanted to. It's not that they were 300 years old, Even though their bodies might've been on the earth for 300 years, They were just living in this moment. And what was intriguing to me about them, Well, A million things were intriguing to me about them. This series of books has flown back into my life a few times, But what was interesting about them is they were masters regardless of the world. Predominantly, They lived alone. They lived in their own communities, But they also lived in the world and they did work and they helped people and they went to villages and they did all kinds of great things. True living mystics. And I remember reading it thinking, This is real. This is the human condition. And I remember reading this as a young person, As a teenager. And I remember thinking, I don't know what it is that we're doing, But what they're doing is our true human potential. And at some point in my life, I became very intrigued with a group of people called the White Brotherhood. And white doesn't mean skin color. It just means the color of light, Like white light. And the Brotherhood isn't just men. It was all genders, All nationalities. It was nothing like some weird white thing. And the White Brotherhood is sort of this secret society or mystery schools, Things like that. And again, Stories of this White Brotherhood would also sneak into my consciousness through various ways. And again, There was something about this that really struck me. And these people worked in the background through all kinds of world events. And again, There's something about it that says, I believe this is true. There's all kinds of stories that, Well, Nikola Tesla was part of that or who was the guy that wrote War and Peace? Tolstoy. Yeah, Thank you. They used to say that Tolstoy was also part of the White Brotherhood and different things like that, That really, Again, Struck me as truth. I can't prove it. I can't say anything like that. But there was something about it that it's like it resonated inside of me as, Hmm, That's important. And these people have lived for centuries among us. And I believe that as well. I remember the first time I ever read about George Gershchev. I actually read about him in the book. I don't know, I've lost the name of it. Written by P. D. Ouspensky, Who was a student of Gershchev. And he wasn't part of those as far as I understand. But he also lived his life amidst the people, But perpetually grew no matter what. And that intrigued me to no end. And especially, I mean, I come out of a line of preachers and teachers, And I'm a people pleaser, And I'm so empathic, It's almost painful sometimes. And so the idea of just growing and perpetually growing and perpetually coming into my own mastery, That that's okay. These beings, These people, Have always inspired me from the inside out, From a soul place outward. And when you think of all the teachers and gurus who have always just lived, They maintain their mastery regardless of what's going on around them. And that's intriguing to me. And that's really what the point of this talk is today. That how do we do that? You know, At this point, Perhaps we aren't enlightened masters. Maybe that's not exactly where we are, Maybe we're still caught in all kinds of drama triangles, And we're struggling with family, And there's all kinds of things that we're honestly struggling with. And it's important. It's important to struggle. It's important to go through whatever arena we're supposed to actually sort things out in. It's not about skipping it, But it is about holding in your heart to not get distracted by the fact that the world's not changing with us. All of us are on a journey. All of us are expanding into our mastery. But as soon as we get distracted by, Yeah, But what about that person? Like, Well, Look at that person, Look what they're doing over there. We're not on our journey anymore. We're distracting ourselves and everyone else. And this isn't about not going out and helping in the world. Maybe going out and helping in the world is exactly your path. And what you're going to learn in that fight, In that protective thing, Whatever it is you want to do in the world, It's part of your journey to mastery. But to understand that it's not about saving everybody else. If you see something wrong and you feel called to do something about it, This is still part of your journey to mastery. And so just to really, Whether we don't have to be masters to begin this release of what the rest of the world is doing so that we really can grow. You can almost feel that in you. If you imagine yourself fully enmeshed in the world, You're fully enmeshed in all the dramas and the issues and everyone's opinions and everyone's, I don't know, Anger and frustration and shame and guilt. You can feel that there's very little growth allowed for us. But if we allow them their world, We allow all the souls in the world to live whatever it is they have to live. We start looking at our own chalkboard again. What's my next step? What's the next thing I'm meant to do? And everyone else has nothing to do with it. And in fact, They start to help us. We start to get to practice what we preach genuinely, Not in a weird way. We did a series of talks based on David Hawkins' book, Power Versus Force. In that book, He talks about how we live at a certain level of consciousness. And whatever level of consciousness we live at, That's how we perceive the world. The world is the same, But where our mind is, That's almost those are the glasses we see the world through. And he talked about how the first level was shame. So if I feel shame right now, I will see shame everywhere around me. If I feel guilt right now, I will see guilt. I will interpret the world through a guilt lens. They should feel guilty for that. Why don't they see this? Why don't they see what they're doing wrong? If we see the world through an apathetic lens, It's like, I don't even care. It's not that Masters don't care. They're not apathetic. They just understand. They understand the human condition. They remember the human condition. They know that struggling is part of life. We struggled. It's just life. Maybe we live in a state of fear. Well, Then everything we see in the world, We're going to interpret in a fearful way. Oh my God, But then what's going to happen? Oh my God, What's good? Like what's coming? Like, What does this mean? Someone's got to do something about it. But that's our own fear lens. If we're angry, If we're personally angry, And it's important to be angry. I'm not saying these are incorrect ways of being. Sometimes if you've lived a life full of grief and guilt and shame, Anger is a very powerful way to be because at least you're engaged. You're in the playing field. You're in the arena. But while we're in that anger phase, We will be angry at everything. We see in the world because that's the phase we're in. That's the part of our path to mastery. It is to actually sort out what do I think and how do I see things? And that does piss me off. And that shouldn't have happened. But that's part of us, Like getting that passion inside and getting back on the planet that I matter, That I have an opinion. Maybe you have pride. And pride is a whole thing. And we look out the world like what's wrong with them? Why are they angry? And pride is a whole thing. And we look out the world like what's wrong with them? Why would they do that? Do they have any self-worth at all? Like why would they even think that? What are they thinking? And then for David Hawkins, The turning point, The watershed in our consciousness was when we moved into a state of courage. Because in a state of courage, Regardless of our circumstances, We walk forward in the choices we want to make. Courage means we act anyway. And that's a whole different world. So regardless of the people around us, Regardless of the things that have happened to be my past, I have the courage to step forward. So this is where we're starting to feel this idea of mastery. Because now we're not focused on other people anymore. The next level up is neutrality. Because at this point, We start to realize, Oh, I get it. I understand. I understand the challenge. I understand the importance of developing the muscles to fly, Kind of like the butterfly needing that time in the cocoon to wrestle itself out to get the strength to actually fly. This is important. After neutrality comes willingness. And so you sit down and so you sit in this willing place. So you sit in this neutral place. And then you are willing. If someone says, Would you do this? It's like, Yes, Or no. But you're willing. You're not caught in any kind of gravy pit. You're not caught in any kind of drama that you're reacting to. And then the next level is acceptance. So not only am I neutral and willing, I accept that for some reason, This is the way the world is. This is the way humanity is. This is what's going on in the world. And again, It doesn't mean we're not growing. It's not like we're just sitting there going, Yeah, Well, I just accept it. This isn't apathy. This is, Ah, I see. Hmm. Okay. But then this gives us the freedom to now walk our path. Well, We've been walking our path the whole time. But again, Our talk is about the world doesn't have to change for us to be masters. When we come to a level of acceptance, You can feel it. Beyond acceptance is reason, This wisdom. This is the goal. If we want to be elders in our community, We have to have acceptance of people's lives. We have to understand and remember our own journey. And when we do that, We develop wisdom inside. And we don't give advice to people, Because people, We know that we had to live it. It's the point of being alive. So I'm not going to just tell you what to do, Because that wouldn't have helped me. If someone asks for advice, You can give your two cents if you want. And then it just continues on. And the next level is love, To just simply love. And again, This isn't saying that you like what's happening in the world. This isn't about judgment. It's just about love. And then it goes on to joy and peace and enlightenment. So it's a really interesting thing that none of those things have anything to do with changing other people. And in fact, What David Hawkins said was that when you actually can embrace a level of neutrality, Embrace a level of acceptance, Your vibration is high. It's literally high. And that actually vibrationally affects everyone and everything around you. So it is almost like those stories in the Bible when someone just touched the robes of Jesus and they were healed. And this isn't some weird Jesus complex. But this is just what I'm saying is, There are programs in us that might say, No, But if you're not actively helping people, You're not helping. But if you are really doing your inner work, And you are facing all those demons inside, The things that stand in the way of acceptance, The things that stand in the way of neutrality, The things that stand in the way of courage, When we battle those demons inside of us, What if we're battling them in everybody? Like, What if it's just an energy on the planet, Right? And that every time we shift, It shifts the whole. Just to be careful of that program that says that us growing doesn't help other people. So I want to say, What does it mean? When I say, What does it mean to be a master? So a master is someone who is fully self-aware. You don't have to be perfect to be a master, Whatever perfect is. But to be fully self-aware and to kind of say, Yeah, I have this thing I like to do. I'm not sure it's a good idea. And this isn't one of those things that if you're dating someone, You're there like, Hey, This is who I am. Just accept me for who I am. It's not some negative thing. It's just like, I'm just aware. I've faced the demons. I see them. We're hanging out on the couch. My friend has a t-shirt and it says, Sometimes I wrestle my demons and sometimes we just cuddle. So it's just a case of just, I know, I get it. It's all there. Everyone's at the table and we're having a discussion and I'm not pretending it's not there. I'm aware. That's all. I don't have to resolve everything today. It's all just present. The other interesting thing about living in mastery is in many ways, It's about living your dharma. And if you compare something like living in karma versus living in dharma, And there's a lot of different interpretations of this. My interpretation of this is that karma are all the patterns that we have unresolved. And maybe they're from multiple lifetimes or they're ancestral. Like who knows how that all works. But if we're living in a karmic way, That's when we struggle because we're repeating patterns and we don't quite know how to get out of them. And this isn't a bad thing. And it's not to be ignored. This is part of the journey and it's juicy and interesting and wonderful and awesome. But it just means that we have to be aware all the time that I seem to be stuck in a pattern. What is this pattern? Because the pattern, The karmic cycles just go around kind of horizontally. You don't get to really grow because you must keep meeting the demons until you sort them. And then you move on. And that's a really important part of our journey. But then at some point, Probably around that point of courage, We no longer fight with the demons anymore. We really start to say, Hold on a minute, What's my path? I get what my partner's path is and what my parents thought, What society thinks, But what's my path as a soul? And that's when courage makes sense. Because I have the courage to kind of pull myself out of the orbit of others and start to walk my journey. And that is our dharma. Our dharma is our life's purpose. We're not constantly battling. We've walked out the door and we're walking down the street. The other interesting thing about being in mastery is we have a very sober mind. Remember years ago, I used to go to Nelda, Some of you guys met Nelda, My intuitive friend, Because she was my holistic health practitioner. And I would be struggling with something. And I'd just be like, Oh, But then there's this, And then there's this, And then there's this, And you don't understand, And da, Da, Da, Da. And she'd say, You know, We'll have a better talk about this one day when you're sober. And I wasn't drunk or high or anything like that, But I was drunk on emotions. I was drunk on love. I was drunk on, I don't know, Hope and, I don't know, Expectations of others and drama. And this is the challenge when we get stuck in these drama triangles, The drama triangle of victim, Persecutor, Savior. We become intoxicated with it and we can't see clearly. But when we are of sober mind and we look at things, We aren't caught in any kind of drama. We're not caught in any emotional circuit. We're just, Oh, That's interesting. And it's not boring either. It's interesting, But there's no requirement for anything to go one way or the other. You know, This is part of the Patanjali Sutras. You know, When you, We did talks about non-grasping and not being attached to the outcome because you just watch the world and you go, Ah, That's interesting. Well, It'll go one way or the other. There's nothing, No, It has to happen. It has to happen. I can't live without it. I can't, I can't like that. That's a drunkenness and it's very powerful and it happens. It's not like it happens all the time, But when we're in our mastery, We have this sober mind. And the interesting journey to having a sober mind is to be able to have this sober mind. And the interesting journey to having a sober mind is just watching the dramas playing out in our minds, Watching the stories that we tell that really get our blood boiling, Looking at the people we're angry at and going, Why am I angry about this? Like what's going on? The other big piece for me about mastery and the journey is I've talked to you guys about my friend Norma, Who is, I think she's probably about 86 now. And when she turned 56, Her husband had died. And all of a sudden she started seeing these visions that she had to paint and she'd never painted before. And she started painting. What came of these paintings, Like she's still painting. There's over 400 paintings in her home. And one day it will all become public. One of the themes, So the paintings are all in three different sets. The first set is what's called the nine, Nine. And this is the set of evolution. This is the karma. This is our chewing and learning the growth of a human, Actually going from wherever we came from to really becoming what's possible as a human. And then the second set is the nine, Nine, Nine, Which is the time of mastery, Which is the time that we are stepping into now. And I have a tattoo of a feather on my arm. And it actually, Because a feather represents mastery to me. It's a whole other long story, But to remind myself that this is the time of mastery. All we have to do is step into who we are to step out of the dramas. It's not time for that anymore. Even though it feels comfortable, Even though it's what we've always done, That's not what this time is anymore. And then the next set is the nine, Nine, Nine, Nine, Which is the time, The name keeps changing on her, But sometimes she calls it the new world. Sometimes it's called the time of immortality. We don't know what that is yet. And so she has paintings in that set. There's all in all these different paintings. And so it's a really interesting journey to imagine ourselves living in mastery. What would that look like? What are our gifts? Who am I really? What am I passionate about? What is my dharma? What would my life look like if there were no dramas and I was just simply walking in my path? You know, Viktor Frankl, I love talking about Viktor Frankl. He was an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist, Psychologist. That's significant because he ended up in the death camps in the Second World War. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, Which I highly recommend if you've never read it. It's a very small book and it's about his time in the concentration camps, But it's not depressing. It's a very interesting look at humanity, Very formative in my life. And when he came up, He was writing a book all about what is man's purpose? What is our meaning? What gives meaning to our lives? And what he came to in the end was that what forms our lives is our response to every situation. So this is the same thing. So the topic today is that the outside world doesn't have to change for us to be masters because it is our response to the outside world that defines our life. It has nothing to do with the outside world. The outside world is it's raining, It's snowing, It's sunny. Someone was mean to me. Someone was nice to me. It's my response that defines my life. And that's what brings us meaning. Nobody has to change. We get to choose. That's what's empowering. That's what makes us feel alive. And that's a very interesting one, Especially say in relationships that we've been in for a long time, Families and partners and things like that, Or even children and parents, Because they know, They expect a certain response from us, Which is why we feel like our hands are tied. So we wish that they would change because I feel like my hands are tied. But the reality is I get to choose my response. No one ties our hands. So those are often the most challenging places to stay, Which is probably why was it Ram Dass used to say, If you think you're enlightened, Just go home and visit your family for the weekend or something like that. And don't get me wrong, There are a lot of families that are really difficult, Really hard. But again, The world's a pretty tough place. How do we respond to it? How do we live? How do we spend our days? How do we spend these hours that we've been given? Do we spend them chewing in the drama? Or do we spend them walking in our own dharma and expanding ourselves? One way to do this is to embrace the mystery of life. In our world, We often look at all the things. We look at all the things that are happening. We look at all that what the people say, You know, It's the tangible things. That's what we think are important. Mastery doesn't, We don't move from thing to thing in mastery. We move in the spaces between the things. You know, We've often talked, We've done talks about the plenum, Which is something that David Bohm talked about, This great quantum physicist. And he saw the whole world as full, Plentiful, Plenum. You know, That if you were to look into the sky at night and see the stars, We focus on the stars, Because they are the tangible things. And he said, What if we have it backwards? What if the sky is a plenum? It is full, And the stars are just maybe the creations from that plenum, But they're not the significant part of our focus, Right? The significant focus is the place of possibility, The potential space. So to be a master, We want to play in the mysterious part. We want to play in the unknown, Which again is why we often focus on trying to fix the world, Because we can see that. That's the tangible thing. Our own mastery journey, Our own dharma is unknown. This is mystery. This is the plenum. This is where we sit and we close our eyes and we say to ourselves, I am open to discovery. What's next? And what's next is not already created. It's not in the tangible things. It's not in the things that have been created in the world. It's in the next thing. It's moving forward. So imagine how comfortable are we with mystery? How comfortable are we with stepping into the unknown? And this is a big thing about the courage piece, That if I have an idea, If I have an inkling, If I have something inside of me that says, This is the path, Am I okay to walk? Am I okay to step? There's the other saying that's in my head right now. I have no idea who said it, They said, I was afraid to fall and I jumped and I found that I could fly, Or something like that. That's courage. That's dharma. That's living in our mastery. And it has nothing to do with anyone else. I'm going to put my glasses on. If you guys have any questions or thoughts, I would love to answer them. How can we know the direction to take? Sometimes we know already, But we're kind of afraid of the answer and we feel stuck. That's the big question, Right? That's the journey of satya, The journey of truth. I did some talks on satya. That might be an interesting dive. The north node, South node thing is interesting also. I have a community called Raising Vibrations. It's in the profile, My profile here. And I actually posted a bunch of links about how to look at your north and south nodes. But if you just go on Google and you calculate your north node and then read some interpretations of it, That's often what your purpose is. And it's amazingly accurate. That is the path. Between stimulus and response, There is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor Frankl, Favorite quote. So just curious regarding the brotherhood, Would they be these great minds such as Bohm, Frankl as well? I don't think so, But I don't know because they've never mentioned it or I've never heard any association there, But I don't know. David Bohm was very hard on his sleeve, Kind of open guy, But I don't know. I mean, That's the whole thing, I guess, About secret societies. It's interesting how as I grow, I find myself wanting to share all these teachings. I forward a few of your talks to people, Then realize that maybe I'm giving unsolicited advice, But I feel I'm sharing the things that are helping set me free. You know what's interesting is there are people who have come to me because somebody forwarded a video of mine to them. So sometimes if you feel called to share something, You can share it, But we just don't have anything attached to it. It's like, You know, I watched this and it really touched me and I wonder if it would touch you too. That's really different than you really need this. So there's ways to do things that are still humble, That we're not playing God or we're not playing savior or something. Well, Thank you guys for being here today. Have a wonderful day or a wonderful evening. We shall see you soon.