Interview: Amara ~ Beauty And The Beast Of Awakening!

Greetings,

Everyone,

And welcome back to a little bit delayed Midweek Miracle episode.

This time I'm introducing you to Amara Palmer.

And besides the fact that she lives on the edges of the world,

It seems,

In the Mojave Desert near the strikingly beautiful Joshua Tree National Park,

We had a really great conversation about permaculture,

About beauty,

About what it looks like to live where you kind of have to rely on yourself.

But truly,

What was spectacularly beautiful about our conversation was talking about Amara's 35 years of spiritual seeking.

And we talk about her miracle this week,

Of course.

And it's really difficult and challenging to get these inception points,

These awakenings,

These experiences of seeing the breathtaking beauty of the world into words.

But Amara tries,

I try.

And as a result,

I've got a podcast or an episode about beauty,

About awakening,

About what it looks like to have an experience that is so far beyond what you can describe and then try to incorporate it into your life.

Now Amara will tell you who she is in this podcast,

But she is a depth hypnosis practitioner,

Sound and light facilitator and spiritual counselor with a focus in supporting others on their unique path of awakening.

And she's also lovely.

She's a lovely human being.

So without further ado,

Here's my magical episode with the delightful Amara Palmer.

I was wracked,

Wracked with grief,

Just sobbing for hours on the floor because my system couldn't hold the beauty that we are.

What I saw could not be contained.

And it had its way,

Beauty had its way with my system.

So I could at least let it in more,

Let true beauty in more.

I am very excited to meet you because like a lot of my listeners,

I love to meet other humans.

I find them endlessly enchanting and so intriguing.

And so would you mind introducing yourself for my audience?

I'd love them,

You know,

If you had to go to a party or you were on a stage introducing yourself,

How would you do that?

So I agree with you.

I love humans as well.

We're endlessly fascinating.

Yeah.

So my name is Amara,

Amara Palmer.

Maybe the best way to introduce myself is to speak from what I'm passionate about.

And that is awakening.

This has been my focus for most of my adult life.

And I can go into,

Of course,

What what I see awakening as because we all have as many people as there are.

We all have our ideas about what that means.

Right.

But I can go into set and setting here.

I do live in the Mojave Desert.

It does play a large part in my life,

How I live.

I live off grid.

I have lived off grid since 2012.

My ex-husband and I built this tiny cabin in 2007,

And I've been in the desert for 25 years.

So I'm definitely a desert dweller and edge dweller.

Yeah.

So in that means I'm I'm close.

I live close to my needs.

I live close to my water needs and my electricity needs.

I provide or the sun provides my my power.

But I'll say that I'm responsible for it ultimately.

So that that speaks to my sense of independence.

I think my love of independence and my love for learning.

I'm constantly needing to address like real down to earth issues in in my life around things like water and electricity and waste and what I say waste.

Right.

Yeah.

So so that's an aspect that's here.

And I will say that this tiny cabin has been my hermitage really for the past.

Yeah.

Probably 11 11 years specifically post a very spiritually transformative experience,

We could say.

And I had I'm so grateful to be what I call embedded in nature in this way so I could integrate that that glimpse and subsequent.

There's been a series of shifts in in perception that have happened since then.

I was raised in the south and in in case somebody,

You know,

Here's that and there's a curiosity because there's sometimes is I was raised in Savannah,

Georgia.

Yeah.

You love Savannah.

I take it.

You're familiar.

Well,

You know,

Savannah has always been on my bucket list to live.

Oh,

I've always wanted to,

You know,

Just like when I was in Portland and I was living there and I felt the call of Santa Fe and people would say to me,

That is so random.

What?

What?

What?

I've never been there.

But it's like,

I already knew that I had an appointment in Santa Fe.

It was kind of this unconscious or subconscious working,

Reminding me that I would show up in Santa Fe at some point.

So,

You know,

Savannah is absolutely on my I just feel drawn there or called there.

However,

People often say the mosquitoes are as big as buses.

And I'm like,

I don't care.

I have plenty of blood.

So I'm jealous.

I love it.

Yeah.

Well,

There's a lot of beauty.

There are mosquitoes.

Yes.

And there's so much beauty.

Yes.

Natural beauty and another natural beauty,

Which is person made beauty,

Constructed beauty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a very old city.

You go to buy,

You know,

U.

S.

Standards.

Yeah.

1733.

I do have to say that,

You know,

I am one of the things I don't know what it is.

It has been my entire life.

Someone told me it's because I'm a Libra rising.

And so I actually am Venus.

I sort of embody the planet Venus.

And so but ever since I was young,

I have just been it's like I'm a glutton for beauty.

I can't get enough.

And every kind of beauty,

Whether it's other people or art or food,

I mean,

I would watch with my ex,

I would watch these beautiful cooking shows and people would be like creating these things.

And I would start weeping because the creativity that humans can bring into the world,

You know,

Just how their brains work.

And they put together these things and they create beauty for other people.

Even a street taco show.

I mean,

My God.

And I would just be so overwhelmed by the different ways people were creating beauty.

So you say beauty and I'm like,

Oh,

My God,

What?

Maybe Savannah's my next stop.

Yes.

Yes.

And beauty is that's one of those fundamental qualities of consciousness.

That's another passion is recognizing and turning toward the fundamental qualities that simply are they are eternal.

And beauty is one of those.

Yes.

Yes.

Along with.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

No,

I was going to ask when you were in Savannah as a kid,

And you were living there and experiencing the world.

Did you ever conceive that at some point you'd be living off grid?

You know,

I mean,

What did it look like for you as a kid to grow up?

What were your dreamings?

Great question.

And,

You know,

Absolutely not on one level.

And on another level,

I,

I aspired to live in California,

Even younger.

It I think California represented a freedom that I didn't experience in Savannah.

So Savannah's energy and I'm a I'm a very much by feel person.

I feel my way through everything.

And Savannah is old.

And,

You know,

The East Coast has this kind of old.

Like keep things as they are mentality as compared to the West Coast now as compared to Europe.

You know,

It's it's on the on the on the leading edge of daring.

But I saw California as well.

I'm calling for some qualities now and we're calling.

I don't know if I would have named it this way then,

But open and spacious.

You know,

I grew up with the ocean,

But felt I belonged in the mountains somehow.

Yeah.

So I just saw it as more free.

And of course,

Being I was born in 1961,

Raised,

You know,

Raised at the edge of the that,

You know,

I was very young when the when the whole hippie movement was happening.

And I felt like I was born just a little bit too late because I really resonated with those flower children.

I got it.

I got it.

But here I was in the 70s just after all of that and things were really turning.

And so,

Yeah,

I saw California also as that type of space where people are free to just free to be.

And of course,

That's what I where I ended up.

Of course,

I couldn't have imagined off grid living,

Growing up in the suburbs in the 70s.

You know,

That wasn't on my radar.

But the sense of things I did have a vision toward how I'm living now with regard to the qualities that I appreciate now.

Well,

And I wanted to ask,

Was it ever because I think about living off grid and was it intimidating to even consider at the I mean,

Was it overwhelming to think about it?

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh.

Living off grid.

Yes,

I eat.

Well,

Let's see.

In one way,

I ease myself in and the other I jumped in with both feet.

So this was back in 1998,

99.

I first started considering moving into a permaculture community.

Permaculture came on to my radar,

Which is it's short for permanent agriculture.

And it's a it's a it's a way it's a whole way of life and living in harmony and in concert with nature.

And so I ended up moving into a permaculture community in 1999 and 1988 or 1999.

I think I was there a couple of years.

Yeah.

And with my partner and oh,

My goodness,

We were we were there to help rehabilitate some land that had been clear cut.

It was in the middle of Georgia.

We moved a bit away from Savannah.

It was closer to Macon,

Georgia,

Middle Georgia,

South of Atlanta.

And oh,

My goodness,

It was quite the lifestyle change.

But it was exciting and new.

And it really spoke to that.

That part of me that is really self wants to be self reliant.

You know,

I don't think any of us are are,

You know,

Islands.

We're not self.

There's a there's a there's another term that most people use independent or there's another term.

But I choose that.

I like the term self reliant,

But interdependent because other people are so important to us.

Right.

As humans.

So,

Yeah,

Jumped in with both feet.

We considered ourselves bush hippies.

So I got to live that hippie lifestyle and get in the dirt.

That's when I found pottery.

So from there,

Life took me on a journey,

Brought us to California,

Back to California.

I'd already lived not in the desert,

But in Southern California and Northern California several times.

I've had a I've had an interesting life with the with the moving and exploring.

So we brought that attitude,

Though,

Of living in a permaculture community into the desert and then just immediately went into pottery,

Not knowing much of anything about it.

And over over about 18 years,

We built up a business with employees and and we did shows and we had a showroom.

And,

Yeah,

Just self self-taught,

Just jumped.

I'm a I'm a jump in with both feet kind of kind of gal.

So that was the desert.

The desert really broad and literally figuratively broaden my horizons.

Coming from Georgia,

Where the trees are right in front of you.

Right.

And there's there isn't much of a view.

I'm sure you can appreciate the Santa Fe view having perspective.

And that just bowled me over that wide open vistas.

And there's it's still moving for me,

But it really opened up everything.

And I felt like I could do anything.

And so we did.

We just we did what we loved.

And that was diving into pottery,

Making pottery.

Amazing.

I do have to say sometimes when I'm out here in New Mexico and I'm looking at a vista,

I think this just doesn't even seem real because it's so massive.

Yes.

So huge and so beautiful.

And I just there's a part of me that just doesn't doesn't have the capacity even understand it.

It's I'm still wrestling with that.

You know,

One of the first times I drove through Montana,

I think I had to drive from northern Montana to southern Montana,

And I was so freaked out by the landscape.

And it was just so big and so massive that I just psychologically couldn't because I had come from cities.

I'd never seen anything like that.

And it was just so overwhelming to me.

So I appreciate what you've said about vistas.

I do want to tell you that I love permaculture.

I have a friend at the Oregon coast who she lives in this cute little house,

But she built this kind of I don't know,

You'd call it a mother in law like cabin right next to her house out of concrete.

And the roof is really thick and slanted.

And she's put her entire garden,

Her entire life on top of the garage.

And she was the first person that,

You know,

I was walking around and she has these big,

Massive,

Beautiful beds.

But she has so many beds of just is it straw or hay?

And she just plants the plants right in the straw.

And I've never seen anything like that before.

And I asked her and she explained permaculture very briefly because it's so much bigger of a topic.

But I thought to myself,

My God,

This is genius.

Because it is.

So right.

So many.

I mean,

Overall,

The philosophy of permaculture is just gorgeous.

And it is so full.

It is chock full of so many amazing,

Simple ideas that changed everything.

It's interesting.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

It's beautiful,

Too.

Right.

Because that's the thing.

It's beautiful because,

You know,

I feel like you're helping co-create the conversation between the plant and the straw.

You know,

You're you're encouraging them to become friends for a while.

And it just seems so much more gentle than,

You know,

Using pesticides and stripping the land of its nutrients and planting the same thing over and over.

There's no diversity.

I did want,

You know,

This this same person I was lamenting when I was in Portland.

And I think some bugs had gotten my one of my plants,

One of my vegetable plants.

And she's you know,

I was talking to her and she said,

Kirsten,

You know,

Consider this your your time to the world because,

You know,

You're getting vegetables from all these other plants.

You have to give something back.

That's part of permaculture,

Too.

Growing enough for every for for everyone around you,

Including the the crawlies and the.

Yes,

The winged ones and the.

Yeah,

I do have to say that a few years ago I had one year where I had an incredible garden up in White Rock,

New Mexico.

And the next year we went and got soil from the land reclamation,

Not knowing it was infested with squash bugs.

And so I brought that.

I mean,

Let me just tell you that I did not have a garden that second year.

I mean,

Those squash bugs for a second,

I thought I can win this battle.

And then I was,

You know,

After a week or two,

I was like,

I'm not going to win this battle.

I know they're just I mean,

They mate faster than I can even.

Right.

I mean,

You have to get intimately into their lifecycle.

And I mean,

It takes coming to know them in order to work with them to.

Oh,

Yeah,

It's an interesting thing.

Thank you for bringing permaculture.

And I think you're the first guest to do that.

But it is absolutely an exquisite way of being in relationship with the world.

And not only that,

The things that you're growing.

Well,

I'm intrigued.

Now,

When you were a kid,

My second question always is,

Did you grow up in a religious household?

And,

You know,

As a kid,

What did that look like?

And how has maybe that way of relationship to the divine to that we cannot see?

How has that evolved over time?

Yes.

Great question.

Thank you.

So I grew up until maybe age six with Catholic light Episcopal.

I was Episcopalian.

We lived around the corner from our church.

My I had a godfather and my grandfather was a deacon of the church and very,

Very connected in that way.

And when my parents divorced and then my mother remarried a few years later,

We moved we moved to Virginia for two years.

My my stepfather was a marine and he got stationed there.

My mother started working for our congressman,

Went to work for a congressman for two years in Washington.

We were in Arlington just south of the Beltway,

I guess.

So we moved away from that that experience and it didn't get picked up again.

I could say that I have lovely memories of of going to church and enjoying that and enjoying the community aspect of it at that young age.

I have a few a few scattered memories and the closeness I felt with my godfather.

Fast forward,

Perhaps to high school,

I was reading Alan Watts and and really finding it hard to relate to the people around me.

And I didn't realize this.

I think so.

I mean,

I was I was I was basically I grew up kind of checked out and clueless would be my way to describe.

I was not grounded at all.

My house was a bit disruptive.

My household was a bit disruptive and and like many are and just being so sensitive.

I consider myself highly sensitive.

Now I know this.

Then,

Of course,

I didn't.

It really affected me.

So I would just kind of dissolve in my life.

And then I would say in college was one of the first times maybe the first time in a philosophy class where I felt so so much belonging like,

Oh,

OK,

This is it.

I'm going to be seen here.

I mean,

Not that I would have processed it in this way.

I'm going to be seen here and I can say what I'm experiencing here.

Like,

It's not scary because in high school,

So many friends would walk away just shaking their heads going too deep for me.

You know,

I don't know what you're talking about.

But here in this philosophy class,

I was front and center.

Eyes locked on the professor.

I knew that this was this was important.

Felt important.

And I could say my first real like shattering awakening,

So to speak,

Happened when we were when we were going over empiricism,

Which is basically materialism from my perspective.

Now,

I don't know if I'm right about that,

But empiricism versus idealism and with idealism.

The the the professor explained or actually it was a pointing.

It was a true pointing because I was following his I was following his pointing.

And he pointed out that.

Nothing that you see here can be proved to exist outside of your mind.

This could be a hallucination,

Everything that's happening.

And I felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under me because I was hanging on.

I was with him.

I'm like,

Oh,

My God,

I can't prove it was as if my whole reality had been pulled out from under me.

And that I think that was the switch.

The seeking switch was turned was flipped.

Yeah.

My seeking switch was flipped.

Wow.

Wow.

Yes.

I mean,

I looked at your website and I've you know,

I had a guest come on,

I don't know,

Several months ago.

And one of her miracles,

She told a few stories of magic,

You know,

Because we all experience the world in different ways.

And I've ultimately realized that,

Honestly,

My podcast is really about how humans create meaning with these events in their lives that,

You know,

In some cases are through Western eyes or materialistic paradigm,

Like inexplicable.

And they don't make any sense.

But she talked about one of hers was her Kundalini awakening and the experience of the Kundalini awakening.

And,

You know,

I had a really interesting experience.

I've been seeing an orthobionomist here in Santa Fe.

She's actually really astonishing.

She was a midwife for almost 40 years.

She's very,

I don't know if you call her sensitive or psychic,

But the body talks to her when she has her hands on you and she heals people of all sorts of things.

But I just like to be around her and it's nice to just get on her table.

And there was one day she was working on me.

And I think she was working on my abdomen.

I really went to her for my knee,

But everything's connected.

I'm sure,

As you know,

She was working on my abdomen.

And all of the sudden I had this image in my mind's eye of this beautiful white shell.

And it wasn't a conch shell,

But it was white and it was,

You know,

Curved and going down into this curved point,

This beautiful small opening.

And it started,

I think,

At my throat or my chest and it was moving down my spinal column,

Rotating.

And while it was rotating and moving down my spinal column,

This white,

Well,

I would describe it as,

You know,

Because I've experienced in this,

A white piece of,

It's not measuring tape,

But it looks like it's the size and width of measuring tape.

This white was unfurling and going up towards the top of my head while the shell was rotating and going downwards.

And this white tape,

I guess you could say,

Was coming out of the shell.

And,

And I,

I mean,

I just thought,

What?

I mean,

I didn't have any attendant feelings or energy or,

You know,

I didn't have any,

A lot of times in Kundalini awakening.

You know,

People have all sorts of experiences,

But there's an energetic kind of buzzing or,

You know,

Maybe a sexual feeling or something.

Everybody has something different.

Mine was just very,

It was very peaceful.

It was very gentle.

And at the end,

I thought,

What just happened?

And she said,

I hope you're writing this stuff down.

You better be writing this down.

And so I don't think,

I don't know if it was a Kundalini awakening,

But it was just such a strange and interesting experience.

And so I'm so intrigued by Kundalini and,

You know,

What is this energy?

What does an awakening look like?

It looks like it's different for everybody,

But how did you get involved?

Like,

How did this happen for you?

Yeah.

So from that point in that philosophy class,

There was a shift in orientation.

I actually said,

There's a whole truth and I'm going to find it.

That was my quest from then on.

And I'm not saying there weren't cul-de-sacs and crazy upturns,

Okay?

Because I was in my 20s.

I mean,

This was college.

This was 1980 or something,

81.

And I'll just interject here by saying,

I can see now it wasn't Amara that determined,

That was determined to awaken.

I wouldn't have called it that.

I just wanted to know a truth that could not be taken away.

Like the one that just was,

Right?

I wanted something real.

I wanted to know what was real by God.

There's a greater force at work here and I will just call it the totality.

And the way I see it is the totality was ready and wanting to wake up to itself through and as this character.

Now that's funny languaging,

But as we go down this path,

It becomes more and more clear that we're not what we've taken ourselves to be.

Okay.

And I'm talking,

When I say awakening,

I'm speaking of our true nature,

Even prior to soul.

Okay.

Awakening can be looked at in a number of ways.

One of them is to say it is a shift in identity or actually really a shift away from identity completely and to come to rest as what we truly are and to live life from that.

We don't need to identify with things anymore.

Most of us live our lives identified with objects.

First,

It's the body.

Then it's thoughts.

From here,

Thoughts are even objects.

Okay.

So we can identify with thoughts.

We can identify with our beliefs.

We can identify with our community and our work.

And we've heard all this,

Right?

But what happens and what are we when all of these are set aside and seen through as ultimately not true?

So my quest took me into areas,

Into this wanting to know what is true took me into a kind of a netty-netty experience.

And netty-netty is a term,

And I know it from Advaita Vedanta,

From an Eastern perspective,

Is not this,

Not this.

So to recognize what I'm not became very important.

And so that is a process that we can all go through.

We just set aside.

We recognize,

Okay,

If I can – and we have to come and see this for ourselves.

But I'll just say if we can touch it,

Taste it,

See it,

Smell it,

Hear it,

Even if we can imagine it,

It's not what we are.

We are truly ineffable.

We are truly unnameable.

And we can come to know this without doubt.

And that's what comes to be very liberating.

Most of us spend our lives walking around with this sense of I'm not doing it right.

I'm not enough.

I'm unlovable.

This sense that something's wrong,

Right?

And I know I did.

I took that sense to be just what it is to be human or what it is to be me.

I didn't know if everybody else felt this way until later.

As it turns out,

That's what actually brings the sense of separation and brings the sense of deeper suffering from that sense of separation.

And notice I say a sense of separation because that's all that it is.

And so awakening is when we awaken from that sense of separation or from that belief in separation and to what can never be separated,

Which is our true nature.

I love that.

I just have this gorgeous image of you since you were a kid being on this quest.

And,

You know,

Have you read the book The Alchemist?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Ages ago.

Yes.

And it's all about,

You know,

The young man,

The little boys on his quest to find,

You know,

Happiness,

His true love.

And I mean,

I don't think I'm going to ruin it by telling the end,

Because frankly,

Everybody who listens to this podcast should have read this book already.

You know,

He goes on this extensive quest.

And through his quest,

He gets closer to what the author calls the soul of the world.

And it's really when he starts dancing at the edge of the soul of the world that he starts to see the truth of things or get glimpses.

He gets glimpses and has suspicions of what is really out there.

But he ends up,

You know,

Through this quest and all the signs and people telling him where he has to go,

What direction he should go,

Back where he started at the very beginning of the book.

And he's in the exact same field when he was a shepherd,

Dreaming of this greater quest,

This greater treasure out in the world that he needed to find.

And it leads him right back to where he started.

And there is treasure,

You know,

Right there.

And I think it's such a perfect story for reminding us that,

You know,

The treasure is wherever we are.

We just need to learn how to see it.

And by the way,

We might be the treasure.

Sometimes it's uncomfortable to admit or even see or understand because it usually means big work and maybe work that might make us feel uncomfortable or awkward for a while.

But,

You know,

Viewing us,

Taking the time,

Stepping back from life,

And maybe beginning that conversation with your own self about how am I the treasure?

What am I here to bring to other people?

How can I show up for this world?

You know,

I think about you and what you're doing.

Permaculture,

Living off grid.

You're having this very gentle footprint on the earth.

Not only that,

But you're in collaboration and you're co-creating.

I loved the way you,

What did you call it?

The totality.

I mean,

You're in direct relationship with that totality,

With that energy.

I think totality is the perfect word.

I'm sure that energy is like,

I've been called so many things and some of them are not nice.

So totality is great.

It's just,

Thank you.

What a gorgeous story.

And in this image of you,

You know,

Just being on this quest and then in college you take this philosophy course and you are just captured.

Your attention is captured.

Your heart is captured.

And you're like,

Okay,

This is it.

It's so fun.

And I love that Robert Frost poem.

And he says,

And that has made all the difference because that's the road that you've chosen.

And it's led you to this beautiful place with this gorgeous plant all around you.

And you just look like you're in this Garden of Eden,

Speaking from the Garden of Eden.

Thank you for that.

That is so powerful.

All of it has just been such a great reminder that we don't have to go to Europe.

We don't have to walk the Camino.

We don't have to join some strange arcane book club or something.

The treasure is just inside us.

Right.

So part of our path may be all that.

And so it's not to deny that yearning.

And that's something else.

I would recommend that folks lean into that is uncomfortable.

Is a yearning to know either what's true.

Perhaps you have a yearning for freedom.

Perhaps you have a yearning to know true beauty.

Any of these qualities can serve us as we're moving towards them because they're pointing us back to our true nature.

All of these qualities point to what we truly are.

Again,

It's,

You know,

What we are is prior,

Believe it or not,

Prior even to energy.

We are what is even prior to space,

Time.

We're always here right now.

Always and ever here right now.

We can't help but be this very awaring presence that cannot be touched or grasped.

That is hearing these words right now,

That very awaring points back to our infinitude.

That is really beautiful.

That is just part of the beauty I'm going to experience today.

So thank you.

Well,

I would love to ask you the main question of the podcast,

Which is,

You know,

The intention is to bring beauty into the world.

And so I ask guests to share a story or stories,

Just depending on how your heart feels of something magical,

Miraculous or mysterious that you might have experienced.

I'd love to hear whatever you'd like to share.

Sure.

Okay.

So as I mentioned,

You know,

There were there were there have been several profound awakenings leading up to this time.

But one of one of my favorites,

And it is it does speak directly to beauty.

I was I was coming out of meditation,

Coming out of meditation once.

It was just a simple meditation.

But somehow,

Somehow,

In coming out of meditation,

I glimpsed beauty,

The quality of beauty.

And I wouldn't have said that.

Let me see how I beauty overtook me.

I could see that if all the beauty in all the worlds could somehow be gathered up,

It would be like a grain of sand compared to the beauty that we are.

Okay,

That we truly are,

We are beauty expressing,

Doing its best,

Doing its best to express and form.

So here we are,

Beauty again,

Prior to form,

Doing its best to express and form.

And the tragedy that I saw was that it will never,

Ever,

Ever be able to express the fullness of beauty that we are.

And that turned me inside out with grief.

You know,

Awakening isn't always rainbows and butterflies.

It it can be very challenging.

And that's why I hold the space for others.

I hold space for others in this process because it can it can be wrenching and turn us inside out.

But oh,

My goodness,

The rewards are so exponential.

All all we're doing is walking through a tiny wall of fear.

It may be eight feet wide.

You know,

Picture a picture,

A wall of fire that's eight feet wide.

And you're expected to walk through that wall of fire and you're like,

I don't think so.

Eight feet wide equals eight feet deep.

But no,

It's millimeters.

It's millimeters thick.

So I,

I support people in walking up to that wall and I hold their hand and walking through it and getting the other side.

It's like,

Yes.

Oh,

My goodness.

It's such there's so much more openness on this side of that wall of fire.

So getting getting back to the story of beauty.

I was wrapped,

Wrapped with grief,

Just sobbing for hours on the floor because my system couldn't hold the beauty that we are.

What I saw could not be contained.

And and it had its way.

Beauty had its way with my system.

So I could at least let it in.

More let true beauty and more.

I'll say.

Also.

A fun pointer is to imagine going to a museum and you have your favorite painting there and it makes you just light up and you really get to experience beauty through this painting.

So the question is,

I use a lot of inquiry.

The question is,

Is the painting beautiful or is the painting pointing us back to the beauty that we are and we're glimpsing our true nature as we're experiencing beauty?

So beauty in the world is kind of in a way just a pointer back to what we are.

And it's one of my favorite qualities.

One of my favorites.

So interesting.

Someone just came on the podcast and said that Neil deGrasse Tyson had made this observation or voiced his suspicion that we are the universe experiencing.

Itself or ourselves so that we are the universe personified having all these experiences because the universe is sentient and wants to have a lot of diverse,

I don't know,

Experiences.

And it makes me think,

You know,

Here I am on the couch watching this show about taco trucks and the beautiful tacos that are made or the different ways that humans bring beauty into the world,

Like your pottery or your permaculture or your off-grid house.

And,

You know,

If Neil deGrasse Tyson's suspicions are correct,

Then the universe is also getting to experience beauty through us and how beauty can be created.

But also maybe trying or maybe figuring out that the universe has all this beauty already and that we are the little creatures and the birds are the creatures and the plants and the rocks.

We're all in this to create beauty and bring it out into the world so that others can,

You know,

Remember why we're here.

Maybe just slow down and not work an 80-hour work week and appreciate the painting or the amazing vegetables you're growing in your garden or what have you.

That is so beautiful.

There's that word again.

And I really appreciate you explaining that awakenings can be maybe less than ideal or painful.

Maybe give you a revelation that shocks or upends your worldview or your place in the world.

Because that's by definition,

I would say that's what an awakening is.

Yes.

And then,

You know,

Sometimes it takes time,

You know,

Maybe weeks or months or years.

Integration.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And that's another thing that I work with others on because so many,

Especially now with so many psychedelics and access to medicine journeys have had spiritually transformative experiences they don't know what to do with.

And,

You know,

They go into their community,

They go to their friends,

They go to their family,

And the family doesn't understand.

They're not going to be able to meet them in it.

But for someone who's walked that,

Who's seen,

I really needed that.

I know I needed that when my first shattering experience happened back in 2014.

I needed to be met.

And that in itself is grounding and integrating and normalizing.

And I'll say if I do want to offer,

If I had one message to offer the world,

It would be that awakening is for everyone.

It is our birthright.

It is the end of suffering.

It truly is the end of suffering.

It's not the end of pain,

But it's the end of suffering,

Personal suffering.

And in the words of the Buddha,

Every living being has the holds the potential to awaken in this lifetime.

So that right there,

Every living being holds the potential to awaken in this lifetime.

That right there for some people can be the only belief that is blocking them from really moving,

Moving forward on their path.

So because the mind wants to say,

No,

Next lifetime,

Not for you.

That's a big one.

That's for other people.

It's not for you.

It is for you.

This freedom is for you.

This sense of separation is for you.

I know.

And maybe if we stopped working 60 hour weeks and filling our lives with screens and social media.

Just meditation,

Just simply meditating and noticing where the mind goes,

You know,

Getting a perspective.

Resting is awareness.

Resting is this spacious,

Awaring presence.

Noticing thoughts.

And disidentifying from those thoughts,

Knowing,

Am I those thoughts or am I what's knowing the thoughts?

There's a really good inquiry right there.

That inquiry right there will take you back to resting as your true nature,

Noticing all that's appearing.

And so just to take breaks,

20 minutes of sitting and noticing and resting is that awaring presence can work wonders.

All right,

Everyone.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Amara and this midweek miracle episode.

I think all of us are searching.

I think all of us are looking for our very next steps in this life.

And sometimes when we're searching,

These profound and utterly gorgeous openings,

Awakenings,

Steal upon us.

And sometimes,

Well,

Oftentimes,

They're very hard to integrate.

So that's why we have people like Amara in the world.

So we can meet with them,

Talk to them about what happened and try to understand the magical glimpses that the universe has shown us.

I want to thank each and every one of you who listens.

And please do remember,

Ratings and reviews help so very much.

So please do consider leaving a rating or writing a little review.

You'll never know how happy it makes my heart.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Amara.

You know,

Be open to the mystery.

And then when that mystery visits you,

When it shows you behind the curtain of the universe,

When you get a glimpse of what's happening in that magical place,

Be brave.

Know that you're being shown something that is so beautiful and so spectacular and so revelatory and maybe so confusing.

But you've got the chops to handle it.

You can go back to your regular life and understand that you've been shown a little bit of the magic.

And then try over the years to maybe understand a little bit of it.

To maybe understand that there is more to this universe than we can ever know.

And that our true selves and the true nature of the universe is much more mysterious,

Is much more magical than we can ever hope to understand.