Good morning and welcome this morning to Soul Soup.
I'm Dr.
Jeanette Freeman here to dish up a little food for your soul and warmth for your heart.
As we dig in today on a topic that touches a lot of us and that is stress.
So today's topic is learning to align with our I am nature to live a more stress-free tranquil life.
How many of you have a little stress once in a while?
Yeah and have you ever considered really how important it is to just to learn a few mindfulness and meditation and stress management tools and how important that is to our spiritual health.
So today we're going to look at how we can how important it is to be able to learn to calm down the body mind system.
That system that our beautiful soul lives through.
So our beautiful I am presence,
Whole,
Our beautiful soul,
That unique part of us lives through this body mind system,
Conditioned brain,
Conditioned mind and there's so many things that are triggering stress.
And we also have what we call you know our ego self called the me.
We get the me and we are so concerned about me and about how what affects the body and what affects my life and what affects my money and what affects my relationship and what affects me.
And the invitation is to look at how all of our stress and all of our suffering is coming from the little me's perspective and that's normal.
We live on earth,
We live through a me,
We have a me.
Spiritual awakening means that we are waking up from realizing that me,
That little me is not my truest identity and it's not my only identity.
That there is something deeper and richer and we are waking up to be accessing that higher self and to live more from that higher self.
And a good symbol,
A good signal that we are not in the higher self is stress,
Is upset,
Is trigger,
Is fear,
Is anxiety and that's something that we all,
Myself included,
Deal with from time to time.
And a lot of times we get lost down there trying to solve the problems that are rising,
Solving the problems of the me at the level of the me.
And that is a never-ending treadmill because when one problem is solved at the level of the me,
There's another problem that takes its place because the me is constantly separate from the I.
So you have a me and you have an I and the I is your I am nature,
It is your,
It is the God self,
It is your higher self.
It is a part of you that is unmoved by this world of circumstances.
It is a part of you that is peace and harmony and even more.
So Thomas Merton wrote,
Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.
Spiritual insecurity and that makes a lot of sense because when we're in the me,
We feel separate from our spiritual nature.
We feel separate from safety,
We feel separate from love,
We feel separate from peace.
And so it's a sign that there's a spiritual insecurity.
In other words,
I am not secure right this moment.
It's like,
I heard this story recently that touched me.
Imagine you're a little child and you're walking through the amusement park holding the hand of your parent,
Father or mother.
You're holding the hand,
You feel so safe and you're traveling,
You're going on the rides and you're getting cotton candy and you're seeing lots of adventurous things and lots of excitement and it's so much fun.
And then something happens and you lose the hand of your parent and you get lost from your parent and you're afraid and you're alone.
And pretty soon you forget you had a parent and you as you just struggle along trying to get enough cotton candy or food to survive.
And that's a little bit like how life feels when we're separate and we don't have that spiritual connection.
It feels like we're doing life alone and we're afraid and who's taking care of us and we want someone to take care of us and we want to feel safe and we want to feel okay.
We want to know that we're loved and all the things that we naturally feel when we're holding the hand of the beloved parent.
And so life goes,
We go through life,
This little me seeking the parent in lots of different ways,
Right?
Not seeking the real parent,
Thy or self,
God,
The source,
But seeking that love,
That safety,
That security and all those things that only that presence can truly give us.
Seeking that in the form of others,
Circumstances,
Money,
Validation,
Career,
All the ways that we feel safe and secure and loved.
And so our spiritual practice is to remember that no matter how many ways we try to fill up the little me with the strategies to feel safe,
Secure and loved,
It will always come up short because innately the only place for that is through thy or self,
Through our I am nature,
Thy or self,
Through our I am nature,
Through the divine.
There's a great story,
Wayne Dyer talks about it in lots of his talks and I've shared it before and I know it originally came from I think the art of possibilities but,
And these two prime ministers were having a meeting and the hosting prime minister was talking to his colleague and pretty soon in crashing through the door comes one of the staff members and he's going on and on and his hair is rolling and he's screaming and he's yelling and he's so upset and the prime minister,
The home prime minister says,
Peter,
Calmly please remember rule number six and instantly Peter calms down,
Apologizes,
Walks out of the room.
It was quite stunning to the visiting prime minister and they continued,
He didn't say anything and they continued their meeting and pretty soon a woman comes in,
Same thing as she's ranting at him,
She says,
I'm pretty soon a woman comes in,
Same thing as she's ranting and raving,
Her hair's flying everywhere and she's going on and on about this horrible thing and the prime minister says,
Marie,
Kindly remember rule number six and again she's calm,
She says,
Oh I'm so sorry,
Thank you.
So this goes on and she leaves and the visiting prime minister says to his friend,
What is rule number six,
That's the most amazing thing that I have ever seen and he says,
Rule number six is simply do not take yourself so goddamn seriously.
Ah,
He says,
That is a very good rule,
What are the other rules may I ask?
And the prime minister says,
There are no other rules and if you think about it,
The source of our stress and our anxiety is me,
Is the ego self,
Is the small self,
Is the constant asking,
The constant looking at who and what and how does everything affect me,
Affect me.
Now I want to pull just a minute from the I am discourses,
I am discourses actually talks about this a lot and in,
Let's see,
19,
Volume 19,
Page 24,
The very first chapter,
Everything that is of doubt or fear or lack is body consciousness,
It concerns the body,
The self,
Everything that is of doubt or fear or lack is all body consciousness,
Something concerning the desires of the atomic structure and the mental and feeling world to have its own way and to do as it pleases.
In other words,
The actual physical body and the chemistry of the body and the mind and the mind trips and everything that is going on in the separate self,
Not that there is anything wrong with the body but it is constantly running the show.
And so it is saying we are constantly getting lost in stress about that and in the discourses it says again and again that the only way to peace is through your presence,
Is through the higher self.
It says the sun doesn't struggle when it spreads all over through the system of worlds,
It stands serene above all and shines its light and gives its life and enjoys its manifestations of perfection and you are the sun of your universe.
If you're not the sun of happiness and love to your world,
Your world will be filled with shadows and distortion and it does not need to be because that is not the divine way and that is not the divine place and plan for you.
So who struggles to find peace?
The little self,
The egoic self,
The small self.
And who is peace already?
I am.
I am.
So we get that.
The I am nature,
The higher self is already peace.
We don't have to go,
It doesn't have to go get it.
It's the sun is always shining upstairs.
The sun is always shining upstairs and we get locked in our mental,
Human,
Body consciousness looking at the,
Through the conditioned mind through to the past,
To the future,
To externals for our peace and we're simply retraining the nervous system.
We really are.
We're retraining the nervous system to come back to our center and to align with the higher self and to align with the loving of the higher self and devotion to the higher self and trusting to the higher self.
In other words,
We are like that little child that is reaching up and taking the hand of the great parent,
The source that created us.
The only place where we will find the peace,
The only place that we will find the love and the only place that we will find the true support that we seek.
So let's settle in for a little process and practice.
So one little easy teaching that has served me very well and many of my students in the mental health practice of teaching about stress management and living from the higher self is the practice of seeing and being and me.
See,
Be,
Me.
I see,
I see,
I see.
And then who is the me?
So allow yourself to first of all contemplate and see how it is that you experience stress or what it is that is your source of stress.
We usually know what this is.
It's habituated.
We know what it is.
Might be,
You know,
If we're in transition,
It might be like,
Where's my future?
It can be about relationships.
It can be about our health.
It can be a worry that we have about our future,
Our career,
Our family.
We have a habituated worry that can really become a program in our mind.
And so something is a program in our mind as long as it becomes,
As long as it is unconscious and we're unaware that it runs us.
So we first must see.
And the thing is,
Is that earlier we catch a trigger,
Earlier we catch stress producing thoughts,
The less chance they have to really take us out.
So we can notice them and treat them as a friend and notice that it's,
That it's coming through,
That we're seeing that.
We need to see it and we can see it by also just noticing our body and where we feel it in our body.
Is there a place where stress dwells in your body?
Yeah.
And then the next thing when we notice that is B E stands for breathe evenly or be present.
Anything that starts to take us into the present moment and into the breath.
Until we get relaxed,
Until we calm the nervous system,
Until we calm the body,
We will not be able to feel and access and go to the higher self because the body is in a triggered stressed response.
And we are totally in the little me.
We're unconscious.
So the first course of action to remember is we have to learn to relax.
Relaxation is key to spiritual awakening.
I have to learn to get out of the mind,
To disassociate from thinking,
To move into the body and into the breath.
That's right.
Just bringing the attention to the breath.
Feeling the gentle movement of the breath.
Feeling how the breath moves around the parts of your body that tense when you're under stress.
Just imagine that you can breathe and breathe in that beautiful healing air into the places of the body.
Just imagine that you can breathe and breathe in that beautiful healing air into the places of the body that hold on to tension.
Sometimes you can even offer compassionate touch to the part in your body that holds on to tension,
Like in your stomach,
Your neck,
Your chest.
Touching yourself like that brings compassion.
And it's a message,
It's a signal to the nervous system that I'm okay.
I'm loved.
I'm calm.
All that we can do to calm the nervous system,
To calm the body system,
To calm the little me,
To allow it to feel safe.
You can imagine this little parent,
Or this little child looking for their parent lost.
You can imagine that the parent would grab the child's hand or hold a child to calm its fears and to let the child know that it's loved and safe.
And every time that we can connect to our higher self,
We have the capacity to allow that loving,
Compassionate touch of the higher self,
The higher parent to the scared part,
The little me.
We don't move out of the little me through criticizing it,
But through a deeper compassionate loving of that scared,
Insecure child self.
We just offer that love and that compassion through that breath right here,
Allowing the present moment to be exactly as it is.
As we simply breathe,
Compassionate breath,
And love to all those parts of the nervous system or the little me that have been at dis-ease separation.
That's right.
It's allowing yourself to just feel that compassion,
That relaxation.
I invite you to imagine that moment of peace,
And I invite you to imagine that you could simply reach up just in your imagination,
Like that little child that wants to reach up and take the hand of the parent,
The higher self.
We surrender the little self.
We must surrender the little self to ask the higher self to take over.
So in this moment and in your own way,
Make that connection,
Invite that higher self,
That I am presence,
That Lord,
That divine,
Whatever words resonate with your own path.
Reach up and make that connection.
I surrender all my little worries.
I see how I have just become so concerned with the things of this world and what my body needs.
I let go of that right now and ask and surrender to this,
To your presence,
To your divine light,
To your source.
I call upon the ascended masters and the brilliant love of the source to take over,
To take away all these things that I think are so important and to assist me in living freer and living in alignment with thee.
That's right.
And in your own way,
Just reaching up and taking that hand and feel yourself be lifted up,
Lifted up,
Lifted beyond the body,
Moving up,
Up,
Up into the light,
Move up into that higher cord,
Through that higher cord up into the light,
Seeing the light all around you and the love all around you.
Moving higher and higher and higher until you can just feel yourself surrounded in the light,
Surrounded in love.
Asking who is there and just hearing I am.
I am.
I am.
Invoking the energy and the light of peace from the I am presence,
The light from the I am presence,
The supply from the I am presence,
The love from the I am presence,
The joy from the I am presence.
Inviting and asking that to be more fully integrated into all aspects of the body mind system.
And just declaring it so,
The discourse of a text,
Just give the power to the presence and just declare,
Mighty I am presence,
You are my life,
You are my source.
Let all fear be gone and let me remember that the presence is the source of my truth,
My love,
My security and always.
And I've let go of all the ways that I've looked outside of myself for the peace.
And I come back to you,
Mighty I am presence,
I surrender to you,
I am that I am.
I allow you to fill me with peace and light and love and a tranquil life in thee.
That's right.
And we just take a moment to declare that,
To align the little mind with that higher mind,
Let the higher mind win and choose,
I am,
I am at peace,
I am loved,
I am safe,
I am secure,
This moment is all I need,
I accept this moment fully.
I know that the presence is right here,
Holding my hand,
Guiding me through life,
Taking care of everything.
I trust in this presence.
I am this I am presence right here,
Right now,
And it is joy.
And I am intending right now to live this week with in more peace and tranquility.
And I'm aware when I'm out of it,
Because I have gotten into my busy mind.
When that happens,
I see it,
I take a few breaths,
I come back into my center.
And then I choose the new me.
I choose to know I am peace.
I am holding the hand of my beloved.
My beloved is guiding,
Providing and taking care.
I choose that reality now.
Allowing all of this to integrate and even more,
Whatever it is that each one that is listening to this right in this moment,
Just tapping into your own I am presence and really making that deep intention that will support you fully right now,
This week,
Today.
Your intention for peace,
Tranquility,
And living from the higher self.
So,
Taking a deep breath,
Bringing all of that right back to this moment,
In deep and holy gratitude for the presence which is continuing to bless us.
In deep and holy gratitude,
Our remembrance of holding hands to the beloved parent,
To the unconditional love of the source.
And so it is.
And then gently,
Ever so gently just coming back,
Right here,
Right now.
So thank you so much for joining us on Soul Soup today.
I'm Jeanette Freeman.
I'm glad you stopped in and watched this video or listened to this podcast.
And I hope that you got something out of it today.
I hope you'll stay in touch,
Give me a thumbs up,
Comment.
