This video is about the difference in the Eastern and Western outlook.
I'm talking about it so that we Westerners can expand our worldview.
So somebody wise,
I can't remember who it was,
Said that the West really understands the inner logic of machines and the East really understands the inner logic of the spiritual journey.
So you know here in the West,
When I grew up,
I went to church at least a little,
Everybody's together singing songs,
You listen to somebody speak encouraging words for a bit and there's this group high that happens,
But in the East it's more,
You know,
You go to temple and you might,
It's more of an inner communication to the deity,
To who you're worshipping.
It's more from the private inside out.
And you know ours,
There is that,
You know,
The private,
You know,
Prayer time and everything,
But the church experience is quite extroverted.
And in the East there's this focus on a very private connection to the divine.
Some of this is hard to put into words a bit because it's like a pervading atmosphere in both the countries.
So you know as part of this we have our psychological development has been the focus on the ego,
Which you know many people know comes on about to really to try to protect us.
And that's our idea in the West,
That's been our I,
Our idea of the I.
Now in the East they don't talk about the ego so much,
They talk about mind.
Now in the East the concept of mind includes everything.
It includes the ego,
It includes the body of the person,
It includes how they see life.
I remember once having the experience of making a shift and suddenly Mother Nature felt closer to me,
I felt closer to Mother Nature.
Okay so that would be a shift out of mind.
And in the Western that would be a shift out of the ego in the sense of that if my ego got a little bit smaller I would be more able to feel my connection to all that is.
So there's it's like it kind of overlaps but they are quite different approaches.
So in the East they talk about that enlightenment occurs when the person grows beyond their mind,
Where the mind dissolves basically and that person is walking around in their soul energy.
They are totally at peace,
They totally have an inner silence,
They have no agenda,
They just basically are an instrument of their soul.
So they're walking around as a soul in human form.
Now in the West I mean we talk about self-actualization but we don't really talk about it very much.
We just say you know when the person is expressing their themselves,
Their talents,
Their true self.
But we don't go into anything like the detail the East goes into about what self-realization is.
And the other thing in the West we have no idea how to get there.
In the East they have thousands of years of spiritual traditions of people moving through you know their ego or mind to achieve self-realization and how this is done.
Now in the East they focus on the relationship between the student and the guru and you know the premise is the guru is enlightened.
And then the guru basically mothers or fathers that seeker until enlightenment is achieved.
It's a very close bond.
It's in fact the way the student moves into self-realization is they allow themselves to deeply love the guru.
They start noticing how much the guru loves and serves them is loving and serving their journey into enlightenment.
And as a result the defenses fall away and the student begins to feel the God within.
They stop they drop the defenses that we you know protect ourselves with.
You know both the East and West.
But in the West we're more extrovert.
We're more like focused on the outer.
So it's been it's been sort of hard for us to shift to focus on the inner.
There's quite a lot of confusion I feel and even confusion about how to teach people to do this.
Now in the in the East they've they've learned how to industrialize.
So it's really for us to learn how to go inward and to maybe pay attention to some of the wisdom that's there.
And you know hopefully more authentic teachers will surface in in the West because I feel we really need authentic teachers who really know what they're talking about because the spiritual journey is so difficult and it can be so confusing and it just makes it worse if your teachers confused too.
So you know that happened to me a few times so before I found really good quality teachers.
Anyway I hope all this makes sense sort of at least a bit.
OK bless your hearts.
