Designed To Be Awake - Episode 3 - Kingdom Of Heaven

You are listening to Designed to be Awake with Mick Kubiak.

Hey listeners,

Our episode today is called Kingdom of Heaven and in it I talk about a lot of different things.

I talk about the nervous system,

I talk about just don't do it,

Which is kind of my altering of the Nike slogan because just do it is actually fantastic advice,

But just don't do it is sometimes the better way to go.

And really,

You know,

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you is a fundamentally powerful statement for this show.

It fully aligns with what I believe and what I'm sharing.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Hello,

It is a rainy day where I am and I'm enjoying it because it's not normally rainy.

I was just listening to Eckhart Tolle on retreat and he started a session by saying,

As usual,

I don't know what to say.

And that gave me heart because I want to really encourage everyone to just be present and let whatever arises arise and fall and do whatever it's going to do.

So it was very,

Like I say,

Heartening just to hear him say that and to know that's how he's approaching a full on retreat with people just showing up and seeing what arises.

And some people might be like,

Well,

That sounds lazy.

Shouldn't you have like a PowerPoint or like at least a freaking outline?

I mean,

You're going to waste our time with your random thoughts.

But this is the idea.

It would be a waste of time if I was just delivering my random thoughts,

My personal random thoughts,

And I wasn't making the effort,

But intending simply to be present and speak from the moment,

Speak from the now.

I know that when I'm in sessions with people,

You're in psychology,

Right?

That the idea is like treatment planning and you're checking in and there's like all of this structure around sitting with clients.

And I've done that.

But for me,

By far,

What I find to be the most powerful tool is present moment awareness.

And generally,

If I'm there,

My clients are there or they at least get there.

And then I find that the things that come up between us are so unique.

They're a third thing.

It's not my thoughts.

It's this other kind of wisdom that is created and accessed in the space between me and them,

Me and you.

And it's so cool because it just it's very revelatory rather than here's what a client would say in this situation.

And then generally a therapist would advise one of these three things,

You know,

Because I'm like,

You can get that in a book.

I mean,

I feel like you can get a master's in clinical psychology on Instagram now and forget about tick tock voices and knowledge and information.

And I think that's fantastic.

Part of the reason I'm doing this podcast is to democratize access to psychotherapy,

Coaching,

Spirituality,

All of it,

Because I have benefited so much from the democratization of all of these things via publishing.

It used to be that to hear a teacher talk,

You had to go or people had to hand write what this person said,

And then somehow you had to get a hold of that information.

For a long time now,

You've just been able to buy a book and access the brilliance of,

You know,

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj or Michael Brown or Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche or actually the Buddha,

Right?

Because his works have been translated and now you can read them.

You can read multiple takes on Jesus and what he said.

That library is so deep.

I've gone down so many rabbit holes with that.

For example,

The Gnostic Gospels.

It changed my life and set me on a path that I'm still on.

So I saw clients today and had a couple of repeating themes that I thought would be useful to share,

And both of these clients have been working for some time on becoming more conscious of their thinking,

Their thoughts,

Their emotional states,

And their behavior.

That trio of I'm feeling something,

There's a thought or a series of thoughts associated with it,

And now I'm acting a certain way or I'm doing a certain thing.

So they're both becoming actually more conscious,

But they were both reporting things feeling worse today.

And that is because as you become conscious,

It's not that things are actually worse,

It's just that you notice it,

You know it,

You see it,

And it can feel kind of wild to be able to see it and not quite yet have the space around it to change it.

So I'm bringing that up just to shed light on that and to offer some ideas about how you can notice and how noticing is part of the process.

And it's not a failure.

You might feel worse.

You might feel more anxious.

You might feel more frustrated.

And you might feel freaked out that you can't stop it or control it even though you see it.

Now the reality is that you can shift in an instant and return to sanity and a deeply felt connection to reality with a capital R.

Byron Katie I think says that that's the name for God for her is reality with a capital R where there's just a tremendous amount of space and freedom and ease.

And I'm not going to put these words in her mouth,

But in my experience,

It's like being in the flow.

I sometimes use the metaphor of surfing.

You're surfing.

You're on a powerful wave and you're holding your own and you're with it.

There's not a ton of thinking that has to go on from that place and you might wipe out,

Fall off the board.

That doesn't feel great.

However,

All you have to do is get back on the board.

This is a wave.

This is a river of energy that's flowing,

That's always available.

It's yours for the taking.

So I want to be really good about pointing out in these episodes that it can be quite effortless.

All you have to do sometimes is be like,

Oh yeah,

I'm tripping.

Stop.

Okay.

Return.

Return to open awareness,

Ease of breathing,

Radical acceptance of whatever is in front of you and that confident kind of patience to see what's in front of you,

To be with it,

To lean into it or embrace it and just go with it.

Like,

Oh,

This is happening now.

Great.

I got this.

And to have it with some ease because sometimes there's really truly nothing for us to do.

And the ego doesn't like that.

It gets confused.

It gets anxious.

Well,

Shouldn't I be doing something?

No,

Actually,

Just don't.

I drew in a book,

One of my sketchbooks,

A little redo of the Nike just do it.

And I just put one of those little arrows and wrote don't in between.

Just don't do it.

Don't do it.

Just don't.

So yeah,

That's one thing is to recognize this feeling like you should be doing something and there's a problem and you've got to solve it.

That is always the ego.

Start playing with,

If you're not already playing with it,

Like dropping your agenda and dropping the idea that you need an agenda,

That you've got to go into every situation with a plan.

And here's what I'm going to say,

And hopefully they'll say this.

You're not even present,

Right?

You're just showing up with your plan and then everything is evaluated in relation to that plan.

Well,

She seems like she might have a different plan.

How will I cut her off at the pass?

Oh,

That person's aligned with my plan.

Yeah,

I'll have to build that bridge as opposed to just going in,

Being completely open and knowing that you have no idea what the best plan is most of the time.

And that even if you have a really good plan and tons of reasons for it,

There's usually a more elegant version of how to get from here to there,

You know?

And that's because as human beings,

We are designed to have access to the vastness of the quantum field,

Or if you want to call it the unified field of consciousness,

Or if you want to call it God,

I call it all of those things.

And once you really understand that,

Oh my God,

The relief,

I don't have to have a strategy.

I don't have to be like tight and controlling in everything I do.

Or,

You know,

Maybe even if you've managed not to be that way in everything you do,

There are certain areas where you always show up with this like,

Oh God,

I can't just let things be how they are.

But actually,

That's exactly what you can do and should do.

Let it be what it is.

And from there,

This kind of wisdom will arise about what to do with it.

If you're open,

And if you're listening,

If you're receptive,

Surrendered.

And I'm not talking about like,

Oh,

And then you just don't speak or you don't take an action or make a choice.

It's just that all of the movement from whether it's speaking words or getting in your car or whatever,

It comes from a different place.

And I wouldn't be sharing this with you if I had not experimented with this quite thoroughly and discovered that every single time,

Whatever that wisdom is,

Is so superior to whatever was going on in my thinking,

Right?

My egoic mind,

My controlling,

Tiny,

Little ego that's terrified all the time,

That's just convinced its needs won't get met,

And it has to like,

Oh,

It's got to work so hard.

You know,

What's wrong with the ego?

Well,

You know,

There's nothing wrong with it,

Except that it's profoundly unconscious.

There was a time where it was needed.

And it made sense both the time in my personal timeline,

Where that was probably the case,

And a time in the history of mankind where it really needed to be there,

I'm guessing.

I think it's like part of the divine entering the human realm,

The formless entering the form.

And it's like a kink we're working out.

It is the part of ourselves that has forgotten that it belongs to something powerful,

Eternal.

It has forgotten that.

And the part of our psyches that we actually want to be living from and moving from,

If we're going to change the world,

If we're going to ease suffering,

Our own and that of others,

Is the part that knows who it is.

And again,

Once you got that down,

You really can shift in an instant,

Back into peace,

And joy,

And ease.

But sometimes that doesn't feel available.

And there are fortunately,

Many things you can do then as well.

I like to talk a lot about the nervous system,

Because it's a relatively tangible thing that we can sense in ourselves and measure ourselves.

You can feel when your nervous system is activated,

And you're in fight or flight.

And you can feel when it's regulated,

And it's just flowing.

And that's a really wonderful state.

When I first came to Somatic Experiencing as a client,

All that we were doing was,

You know,

Doing like a body scan,

And getting into my body,

And returning me to a regulated nervous system.

And what was shocking was like,

That felt so pleasurable.

It was as if I was doing something illicit,

Just to be regulated.

And it was beautiful,

Beautiful.

It was the best thing.

So now I strive to be there all the time.

And I mean,

Obviously,

I want to have a healthy nervous system so that if I do have to run away from a bear,

I can do it.

Or if I do have to like,

Kick the ass of someone who's coming at me in a way I don't like,

That I could do that.

And even if I have to fawn,

Right?

I want to be able to do that.

So I have deep respect for all the various positions of the nervous system that made it so that I could survive this long.

However,

99% of the time in our lives,

It just makes so much sense to have a regulated nervous system,

And to be assessing our situation and making decisions from that place.

If you don't know what that is,

If that's new to you,

Totally recommend finding out starting to get into some sensory motor or some somatic experiencing or yoga.

Get into yoga nidra,

Do some shavasanas,

Maybe wear yourself out first,

And then do a yoga nidra.

Yeah,

So let's say you're having this experience where you're like,

I know,

I know all these things,

I know that I'm not in the right headspace.

And I can't snap back in.

First,

Always check.

Because sometimes you really can just suddenly be like,

Oh my god,

It is not that deep right now.

Like,

Whatever I've gotten all tangled up in,

It's not even really real.

And you can just drop it and return to a sane position in your psyche.

But if you can't,

If you have a dysregulated nervous system,

And you can see that,

There's only one thing for you to do in that moment.

Once you've assessed that you're not actually needing to fight,

Run away,

Play dead or,

Or whatever,

Right?

Once you recognize that no,

There's no immediate threat to your life,

The only next thing to do is to regulate your nervous system.

To sit down and see what can I do here to get myself out of this heightened state,

Out of fight or flight,

Out of black and white thinking.

That's one of the first things that I learned about the nervous system that was so meaningful to me was that when we're in fight or flight,

Which again,

I just want to keep saying over and over what a what a brilliant thing that is.

If you actually are in danger,

It saves lives.

It's the thing that,

You know,

A mom lifting a car off a baby,

That superhuman strength.

And it's wonderful.

The thing about it is,

Though,

It's designed for you to be able to like,

Take action very quickly.

It's not about thinking quickly,

It's about taking action very quickly.

It's about assessing your options,

Basically being in a binary position,

I'm either going to do this,

Or I'm going to do this,

And then you do it.

So it's great for again,

These emergency states.

But the rest of the time,

It's putting you into a mindset where you really think there's only one or two options for things.

When really in a regulated position,

With a regulated nervous system,

You will see that there's actually a lot of possibilities here almost all the time.

And there's also like a lot of help around.

And I don't mean just other people,

I mean,

Intuition and,

And all kinds of,

Yeah,

Surprising thoughts,

Hunches,

Feelings,

Energies.

So yeah,

Another really awesome way to engage with this work of returning to sanity when you find yourself caught up in the machinations of the conglomeration of your thinking mind,

Your emotions,

Your actions,

And having it all be really out of alignment.

I can feel the difference in my body when I am not in alignment,

When I'm not in the flow.

And all the different religions have different ways of talking about this.

Taoism is,

I love Taoism because really everything about it is so concise and so directive,

Just continually returning you to the great river,

The flow,

The way through the world,

This surrender and this trust in that force to provide everything you need.

It is nourishing.

It is nurturing.

It brings support.

It brings guidance.

It moves you through the world.

It moves with you through the world.

It's this beautiful relationship between you and the This is also in Christianity.

My personal favorite understanding of the second coming of Jesus is that it's within each individual.

It's within the individual.

You are already whole.

You already have infinite wisdom,

Infinite love,

Infinite joy.

It's wired in us.

It's right there.

Don't put it off until you do that retreat with whoever or learn how to meditate.

Don't put it off.

I think the reason to learn to meditate or go on a retreat or take ayahuasca or whatever you're doing,

All which I support,

Yeah,

Go ahead and do those things,

But don't be confused.

You already have it.

There's nothing for you to be looking for out there.

It's inside you.

To put it in Jesus' terms,

The kingdom of heaven is within you.

It's not out there somewhere.

You don't have to make it happen.

You're not looking for it,

Trying to create it.

You're not going to find it somewhere.

It is within you.

It's here now.

Cancel your plans.

Well,

Cancel any plans that you are making with the idea that's going to solve the problem.

Mastering the dating apps,

Getting married,

That's not it.

And again,

Once you understand,

Oh,

I already have it.

I don't need to find somebody to love me.

I am loved.

It is in me.

It is who I am.

It is what I am.

It could never be given or taken away ever.

If that's not an invitation to sit still for a second and stop meddling out there,

Trying to change the outer world,

Trying to get other people to do something so that you can be okay,

Get your boss to do something,

Change your financial situation so that you can be okay and instead be like,

Wait a second.

It's within me.

I am okay.

Fundamentally,

Like way more than okay.

And if you just start to even be curious,

If you're a skeptic and you're just like,

Oh,

I don't believe that,

Or you're a materialist,

I would just invite you to experiment with the possibility.

And that's really like my true religion is direct experience,

Direct application of ideas and experimentation with ideas that you come across.

So yeah,

I've been on this path for more than a minute,

Really experiencing firsthand the kind of deep suffering that was connected to my ego.

The ego is,

It's a hamster wheel,

You know,

And it just thinks it's going to go somewhere.

It's always like spinning and going and like,

I've got to do this and control that and let that person know whatever.

And then I'll go around here on the other side and get this thing done.

And like,

Everybody has to love me or I need someone to love me.

Like I need a Grammy.

I need a,

You know,

Whatever it is,

Right?

It's got a whole thing going.

And what I've noticed is even if you get that Grammy or that Oscar,

You get a mansion or you get a husband or you get a baby,

Whatever that thing is that your ego has been pursuing for you,

Because the story is,

That'll do it.

That'll fix it.

That'll fix me.

You know,

What I find over and over in my own life and in the lives of the people that I know and love and have as clients and have as friends and family members is like,

That's not it.

That's not it.

And that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a mansion,

Get a Grammy,

Own a dog,

Whatever your dream is,

Do it,

Do it.

But please understand that that's not going to solve any of your real problems.

It is not going to bring you permanent joy,

Satisfaction,

Self-knowing,

Security,

Actually.

And what I always notice is that when something is true,

And I learned this over time,

It feels good.

It feels good in my body.

I hear it.

Oh my God.

Yes,

That's true.

It feels like a relief.

And I'm talking about deep truths.

I'm not talking about surface facts or whatever.

But yeah,

Deep truths feel good to me.

And I used to not trust that because we kind of live in a culture that doesn't want us to feel good.

And I don't think there's some big conspiracy there.

I have many,

Many thoughts on how we evolved to a point where we don't trust good feelings.

And instead,

We trust actually almost the opposite.

Like,

That seems a little too easy.

That's really,

I believe,

Problematic.

It cuts us off from our bodies because for me,

This pleasure in my body is a compass.

And I'm not,

Again,

I'm not talking about a surface pleasure.

I'm talking about something deeper.

Joy.

I suppose it's joy or,

You know,

Bliss is a word that gets used.

And I like ecstasy is another great word.

But I really,

Really know the difference between sensual pleasure and what I'm talking about right now,

Which is the deep knowing that my body feels when something is true.

Experiment with this idea that there is a natural flow to the universe and that I can align myself with it and let go and trust and surrender to that flow.

Experiment with this idea that the kingdom of heaven is within you.

If you already know it,

Know it.

Let yourself know what you know and trust it.

And if and when it feels good in your body,

Go with it.

Go with it.

Notice the kinds of thoughts and emotions and stories that creep in.

They creep in and they start to dysregulate you.

You can feel it.

And yet all you're doing is sitting alone in a room.

There's nothing going on.

So what are these things,

Right?

They're old programming,

Malware on the computer that is you.

And you just need to notice it.

And,

You know,

Some people say you need to love it.

You need to shine a light on it.

I love that one because most times it disappears in the light.

You know,

That's what happens.

It's like,

Oh,

That wasn't even anything there.

And we can talk more about shining a light into the shadow,

Into the unconscious on other episodes.

But for the sake of this episode,

We're just noticing like,

Oh,

I was feeling really good.

I was sitting with the possibility that I am from the divine and that I'm infinitely resourced,

Infinitely loved,

Infinitely supported.

And I'm here to be that in the world.

So you just sit with that.

And again,

When things do come up,

Fear or anxiety or doubt,

How could that possibly be true?

You just notice them and you notice that they're separate from you.

And you stay anchored in this idea that you're experimenting with.

Let yourself feel it and see how things go.

Track the day.

See what happens.

See how your interactions are different.

See how everything you see looks a little different or a lot different.

Okay,

My beloveds,

Go forward,

Be free,

And I'll see you next time.

Thank you so much for listening today.

This episode and every episode would be impossible without my amazing team,

The brilliant Chase Coughlin,

Who not only edits every episode,

But also composed the music for the show.

Regina,

As well as Maya Young.

If you enjoyed listening,

Please leave us a review.

Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you next time.

And I will see you next time.