104 Awakening, Jesus, Healing Trauma: Q & A

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59:25

104 Awakening, Jesus, Healing Trauma: Q & A

by William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

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This recording of a live Q & A has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness. In it we discussed our path of Awakening, Suffering, Jesus' Love vs Christian guilt, Healing Trauma and PTSD, Awakening Books, Internal Family Systems, connection, letting go etc. These podcasts are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years. They are offered to support your path of awakening. I feel these podcasts are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. Since we are each a bit different, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All of my podcasts are here and free. Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

Meet your Teacher

William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

Tallahassee, FL, USA

Meet your Teacher

William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

Tallahassee, FL, USA

Transcript

Welcome, Everybody. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. Today is our day for you to ask any questions that relate to your path of awakening or anything to do with spirituality, Anything on your mind. It's your path. If I say something that's helpful, That's great. If I don't, Just disregard it. Bounce off anything that I say and just see if it resonates with you. Good morning, Everybody. It's so good to see you. Great to see you. Hello. Well, While you're thinking of something that perhaps you want to guide our conversation at least a little while with, I'll talk just for a minute or two or a few minutes. Okay, Anita's got a question. So let's just start with that. Anita asked, What are the best books you've read for spiritual awakening and overcoming trauma? Very good question. Very relevant and very to the point. Because that's really where all of us are, Whether we know it or not. Often the reason why we're stuck is because of our spiritual trauma. Really there's only two things. There's the light that we are, And then there's the mess that's inside, The clutter that's blocking the light. And that blocking is painful. And the fact that we can't release it easily, That's often due to trauma. So it is a very good question, Anita. I want to say that probably around podcast 90-ish, I have a podcast called Awakening Books and I go through a number of books, But I'm going to say some now. But if you want a little bit more detail, Go to that podcast. When you scroll through my podcasts, Which are on every platform, If you just search either my name, William Cooper podcasts or Awakening podcast, You'll get over a hundred of them. The actual title is Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. Monica says, Yes, She did listen to that podcast on the books, On Awakening Books, And it was very helpful. I try to make all these podcasts helpful because this is information that just like you, Step by step and little step, I've moved through life and I try to distill what was the most helpful to me, And maybe that would be helpful to others. So trauma, First, Let's talk about that. There are two major approaches to trauma. One has been pioneered by a PhD, Dr. Peter Levine. He's got a very good book called Healing Trauma. You can also look at him, Google YouTube, Peter Levine, And you'll get a lot of clips on healing trauma. Also on my website, Which is somewhere in every platform, You'll see my name under my biography and there'll be a website in there somewhere. If you go to the resources page on that website, I have two, I think, Very relevant YouTube videos through Peter Levine that I think kind of distill it down or at least give you a good start on working with trauma. His basic premise with trauma is, It's kind of like a muscle cramp inside of us where it's stuck. That's why a lot of our stuff just doesn't leave, No matter how long we've been meditating, No matter how many spiritual practices we've done. Maybe it's loosened it, Maybe it's helped it, But if it hasn't, It's probably stuck due to some kind of PTSD that really could just be lots of little traumas over a long period of time. I laughingly say, Well, Isn't that what childhood is called? PTSD over lots of little cuts and bruises emotionally for a long period of time. Or big traumas. Sometimes you're traumatized and you don't quite realize it, But you do realize because these things are stuck inside of you. So his two approaches are first, Go slowly whenever you work with this, With stuff that's just really painful because it wears you out. If you push yourself too fast, You'll close down, You'll shut down, You'll lock up. And now you're traumatizing yourself. And how do you know if you're traumatizing yourself? Because you feel it. You feel like, Wow, That's just too much. I got to take a break. Because often many of us are really wanting to resolve this stuff and we work, Work, Work, Work. But maybe it's counterproductive. We're working too hard, Too fast. So he says, Just take baby steps. Go very gently, Very easily. Step by step. Very tiny and then take breaks so that you don't lock up and go backwards. The second thing is connecting to the trauma. Wow, I'm hurting. I'm hurting. You don't necessarily just say, Wow, I have a part over here that hurts. You own it. I am hurting. I hurt. I'm hurting. So it feels bad. I'm hurting. And then from the center of that hurt, You connect to something very gently that you trust or that feels good or is at least a little bit relaxing. And you soak up a drop or two of that. And slowly over a long period of time, Perhaps that knot releases, Relax and let's go. And once it lets go, It's just like you get a massage and you have a knot in your muscles When it gets really massaged and relaxed, That muscle, That knot is gone. It's just gone. So is the PTSD. Some of these videos on my website are very startling. I mean, They get the point across in a good way, In a good way. You'll see some major releases where people were really messed up and so quickly by releasing their life's change. They have these videos and one of them, He works with, He shows you an old National Geographic video of a polar bear that's traumatized, That just lets the trauma release out of his body and then he's fine. He just releases it. And on another podcast I have called free or low cost psychotherapy, Because sometimes some of these things we require psychotherapy or at least the principles so that we can work with ourselves. But in one portion of that, I talk about re-evaluation counseling and basically they have you just experience, Own your feelings, Shake it out like that polar bear, Just let it come out, The pain. And now that event really is over. That original trauma is over. So just make your peace and move on, Let it go. It's a little bit more deep than that, But anyway, You might check out that one too. Samuel asks, And I'm going to get, I just don't want to miss this question. I have a question. Is Tai Chi in conflict with Christianity? I find the meditative movements relaxing, But some say it's secular and needs to be avoided. I'll get, Short answer is absolutely not. But let me continue with this other answer. I just wanted to get yours in my, My head. So it didn't go scroll by and I miss it. The second approach to trauma is internal family systems. And in this case, They treat the traumatized part of us as a separate individual or separate voice inside of us and you dialogue with it. Do you feel alone? Yes. Do you feel hurting? Yes. Do you feel anxious? Yes. I am anxious. I'm very anxious. Do you even know that I exist? Me? The one asking me the big me. Do you know that I exist? You asked the traumatized part, No, Or kind of how old do you think I am? I don't know. Well, Did you know I'm so-and-so age old, I have a lot of experience I'd like to help you. Well, I don't want your help. So anyway, You dialogue until that part starts to trust and relax into you. And then it can relax just like that muscle release, Let go and disappear. So it's another approach on how to access these knots. So internal family systems, I think it Schwartz is the founder and he wrote a book more than the sum of our parts. That's very good. It's also on my research source page on my website. I talk about those books and some audio books, How to get those very inexpensively. You know, You join a club and you get it. You get the books you want and then enjoy. Anyway, There's some ways that if if any of you need some sort of attention, You don't have to worry about the finances of it. So I think it was Samuel said, Oh, And other books. If you're thinking about going to India or just want to have the experience of going to India without even going to India. I love the book In Search of a Secret India by Paul Brunton, B-R-U-N-T-O-N probably I'm spelling it wrong, Probably. But something like that. Very good. And I would just listen to my podcast because there's a lot of them and they're very good. I think I list maybe 10 of them that I think, Of course, There's Yogananda's Autobiography of the Yogi. That's a classic. Everybody's read that almost. If you haven't, That's a good thing. Anita asked, William, Do you see the benefit of doing IFS and somatic experience with Peter Levine together? Yes. Yes. Yes. What I would do is the audio books are really good. Get them on Audible Books, Join for like one month and you get them for a half price. And I think you get two books free or I don't know. Look on my website or just go to their site and look. The Audible Books are good because they're spoken by the author, You know, Who's invented the technique and he leads you through exercises. And so it's really pretty powerful and it's very compassionate because they're into it. So a lot comes across on the Audible Books, But a regular book would be great too. But if you get a chance for the Audible Books, I get it because, You know, These things hurt and you need some good attention. Finally, If these don't do the trick and for a lot of people they will, Find a therapist that is familiar with working with PTSD. A lot of them are not. You have to ask them, How many people have you worked with? Are you familiar with it? How long have you been doing it? Stuff like that. Okay. Samuel asked about Tai Chi. You know, I have a Master of Theology. I went four years to seminary. I've been a board president of a church, Given sermons, All that stuff. So I understand, I actually, Unfortunately, Got involved in a very conservative church that turned out to be a cult that got on 20-20 and Nightline or something, I don't know. So it was a mess. It got kicked out of the otherwise very conservative church that was housing it and that church kicked it out. So the original church, Which was Church of Christ, It was not, It's just very conservative, But it's okay. But I got involved in a very hard situation and I'm just saying I understand the fear that some of us have gone through and it's tough and I don't want to step on any toes, But I do want to say Jesus is love. He really is. If you listen to my podcast, Somebody asked me on one of these live sessions, What was it like when Jesus appeared to me? Because he did appear to me and he's my friend and he comes anytime I want, But this time it was before I knew what was going on and I fainted three times in a row, Fell in water, All this stuff. It's a long story. I won't go through it, But the big thing that, But it's on that podcast. You'll see it in the title, Maybe around, Let's say podcast 80. The big thing is he laughed so much. He laughed and there was no judgment. When my life flashed in front of my eyes, You know, It says on the last day, Everything is revealed. Well, With Jesus, Everything came up my whole life and flashed before my eyes and the good stuff, It was great and he enjoyed watching it so much. And then I had embarrassing stuff, Quote unquote, Bad stuff. And he just laughed and laughed and laughed. There was no judgment. He said, What were you thinking? What was that about? But there was not the judgment that I was taught about. It didn't exist. You know, Jesus was big on forgiveness. There's a reason for that. He didn't hold on to stuff. He just loved. So you want to approach, You know, If something opens you up and helps you flow, That's what Jesus did. And that's what he was teaching us to do. He said, I am the way. Was he a tense, Snarled up, Worried person? Is that why people followed him? No, He was relaxed, So radiant that thousands of people followed him, Even though they couldn't hear a word that he said, Because remember, They didn't have microphones back then. So if you're in a room of 25 people and there's one baby and somebody coughing, You can't hear what the person saying. What if there's 3000 5000 people, Goats, Mules, Lambs, You don't hear anything. Nobody knew anything. They just felt the power of Jesus's radiant light and love. That comes when you open up, Relax, And there are so many ways to let our burdens go. And by the way, What's another name for our burdens? That's sin. That's just being cut off from ourselves. In the East, They call that ignorance being cut off from ourselves. Different people have different names for it, But he wanted us to let that go, Right? Let sin go, Let it dissolve. If Tai Chi helps a little sin come out of your body, I think he'd be just real happy about that. Okay. Take what I say, Always bounce it off yourself. And I've been in situations where at one time in my life, A certain answer did not apply. It was not helpful. And later it became helpful or vice versa. So take everything I say with a grain of salt. Listen to your heart. Listen to yourself. Gary says, I do emotion code therapy and we get emotions released, But it seems like limiting beliefs or some other resistance piles the emotions back in. Yes, I have had a lot of trauma in my life. Is there any way you could reflect on my experiences? Yes, You're right on target, Gary. See we're all in the same boat. If you're on this earth, Everybody is experiencing some version of what you just said, Gary. What everybody here has just said. There's only two things, The light of who we are, Really who we are. That's already there. And then there's all the mess that we have on top of it. That's it. Now what releases mess? What releases that? Well, I try to go through that as thoroughly as I can in the last 100 podcasts. So if you haven't listened to those, Those are a resource for you. They're free. Start with number one and work your way forward. But I'm going to give you the summary. If you relaxed, Why is mess in there? What is the blockages? What are those? What are the traumas? Traumas are things, Some event happened or some thought happened or something happened and we reacted to it and it was overwhelming to us so we couldn't handle it and we pushed it away. And where did we push it? We pushed it into our body. Now if we just did that one time, That would be okay. If we did it two times, That would be okay. But how many times when somebody's cut us off in traffic or somebody's interrupted us or maybe we had a childhood and people were bullying us or something, How many little things were, We just couldn't handle and we just pushed it aside. We didn't want to think about it. We thought about it some, But then we pushed it to the side. For most of us, I don't want to say it's a million, But let's say a hundred thousand. I don't know. Who knows? A lot. Well, Those stay inside of us until they, Until we do the opposite thing, Which is to let them flow through, Let them continue on through our body, Let them release. Well, Why don't we do that? Because when they come up, They hurt, But they hurt. That's why we didn't want to feel them in the first place. And so when they come up, They're still hurting and we didn't want to feel it way back then. We don't want to feel it today. So we push it back down. So these thousands of things stay inside of us and they're little balls, Little vortexes of energy, And they're all piled up and they're obscuring our light. You know, In the Bible, Back to what Samuel was talking about or what I was talking about, That's called sin in the East. That's ignorance in the West. That's psychological trauma, You know, You call it whatever, But that's what it is. Thank you, Gary. As I've listened to many of your podcasts, Love them. Thank you, Gary. And thank you for asking these questions. So the short answer to all this is if you just relax and feel everything as again, Whatever you can handle, Because like Peter Levine said, Baby steps, If you do too much, You'll shut down. You'll get so tense. Game over. You just lock up. So you stop before that happens, But just feel what you can. And in some of the later live sessions that let's say I'm going to guess around 100 and 102 or something like that, I talk some about PTSD and it's in the title and I go through this a little more thoroughly than now. But you want to let that trauma breathe in your being. Think of it this way. Let's say we all took a nice breath, Not a deep breath necessarily, But a nice breath, Just something that felt good. And notice at the top of the breath for just a moment, Everything disappears into nothing in a way. You feel that up there? It's just like, I don't know what to call that. Let's call it nothing. It's really being, But I'm trying to put this in words. So you breathe up. Now imagine if that there, There's no problem there up, Up above when we breathe up and it goes at the end of its apex, There's nothing that doesn't have a problem. That's you. You don't have a problem. It's only this, This psychological stuff inside that has, It's these old vortexes that are piled up. They're just a problem because they're in your body. It's like, You're not the car you drive. You're not the body you drive. But if your car, Like right now, My car has a, Uh, Worn, Um, Wheel bearing, I've got to take it in. Well, I don't want that wheel to lock up. So I'm going to take it in and get it fixed. We don't want us to lock up. We aren't the problems. I'm not the wheel bearing in my car, But yet I have to attend to it or I'm going to have a bumpy ride in my car. I've got to attend to my body mind or I'm going to have a bumpy ride in life. So when we breathe in, Just imagine you go up and we're fine. And then as we breathe out, Imagine what would happen if by some miracle, Every tension in your body was just filled with this, What you experienced at the apex of that, Um, Breath. If every tension was filled with that and just washed away, Just relaxed into it and it was gone. And that's all that was left. That's the awakening experience. That's what it feels. You without your tension, You without your traumas, You without your problems. Well, At first you say, Well, That just feels like nothing kind of, That's true. But after a while, By sitting there and putting your attention there, It starts to glow and hum and turn and it starts to be experienced as light and love and joy and wellbeing and happiness and peace. All of those qualities start to shine through your body and your body reorient, Your body mind reorients to that. That's the awakening process. So when you talked about thoughts and beliefs, Yes, Uh, You, There's different levels of release. You're working with somatic things that appears, Uh, The emotional code and I'm not familiar with that, But it probably releases emotions and locked up parts of our body. I suppose I'm just guessing, Uh, But you're right. If the beliefs don't also release, We just recreate them. For instance, Back when I was in the cult, I couldn't sleep at night because I always thought, You know, God was going to throw me in hell any minute. If I died, I'd be in hell for sure. And I was looking back pretty good. I mean, Doing good things and I was a good person, But I was so petrified cause it was such a cult that that was a belief. And so I was in a knot and no amount of emotional releasing, I would could release and release and release and release. But that belief, God's going to get me, God's going to get me, God's going to get me, Um, That would just not me up. I was nauseous at night. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of pain for years. I was twisted up in that pain. So yes, The beliefs are tough. So if you read Paul Brunton's book in search of a secret India or any stuff by Ramana, And he's not the only one you could read. Also in those books, There's one called I am that by Nisargadatta or pointers from Nisargadatta by Ramesh Balsakar. Um, Anything along those lines, Even a gentle way, Maybe some Tiknot Han or something like that. Well, Gary says, How do you get rid of the beliefs? And this is what I'm saying, Gary, The beliefs, They talk about that. And, But maybe in a little more of a obscure way, The beliefs, You want to treat them the same way you would an emotion. Beliefs are just frozen emotions, Really. When we feel distress, See, We think I'm anxious because of the beliefs, And that is true. But also what's true is because I'm anxious, I start to think because I want to solve I'm anxious. What's the point of living? What's the purpose of life? What's this? What's that? I feel anxious. It does my life amount to anything. What do I do? What do I do about this? What do I do about that? And I start thinking, Thinking, Thinking, Well, Uh, I'm thinking because I'm trying to solve my emotions. I'm trying to get away from my emotions. If I just sat with my emotions, No need to think. Because if my emotions all melted and I found myself in deep peace, What happens to my questions then? I am one with God. I don't have to wonder, Am I going to hell? God has become me. Why am I going to throw myself in hell? God isn't going to throw anybody in hell, By the way, But my opinion. And if there's any question about that, I did a podcast on that, Which is releasing Christian guilt. And it's based on my background. I don't know. It's a later podcast, Probably, Let's say in the nineties. None of this stuff is instant. None of it's instant. You kind of seesaw back and forth, Gary, Like your belief. If the first step is maybe you're having a belief, What if for a moment, You don't try to solve that belief. You don't even allow yourself to think it now, That's going to create a lot of discord inside of you. My contention is, Is that discord that's motivating that thought it won't seem that way. I promise you, It won't seem that way, But the thought will be screaming and you'll be screaming. I have to think this thought to solve this thing. I need to read some books and I need to do this, But just humor me and don't allow yourself to think it for some minutes and you'll feel horrible. And then just feel the emotions. If you can stay with it and let those things play out, Let them move through your body. Remember emotions gets the clutter inside of us is just stuck emotions. So if you can restore the flow and let them flow, Let them continue to flow by feeling them. They feel horrible. That's why people don't restore the flow because it feels horrible. Take what as long as you can take it, Let it flow. Don't force it to float it. Trust me, It'll hurt all by itself. Just let it run its course for as long as you can stand it. If that makes any sense, Doing that over a long period of time, What happens is you let that go. So then slowly your thoughts will loosen up because they are frozen emotions and you've already melted some of the foundation away. So there's not so much reason to think. Thinking is a good tool to use, But remember, Thinking is simply hallucinating. We make thoughts, We create them, We hallucinate them as problem solving tools. And when they're trying to solve wayward emotions, They're just sort of out of control. So you just go back and forth, You pendulate, Swing like a pendulum, You quit thinking, Drop into your feelings, Feel them, Feel them, Feel them, Feel them. And then if you have to think, You think, But then swing back into your emotions. And you let the whole thing be informed by the qualities of your being. This is what you feel when you meditate. The part of you that's watching the thoughts, Watching the emotions. You don't get involved with them, You watch them, You experience them. That part that's watching has no problems. That's you, There isn't a problem right there. You just keep pendulating, Letting it breathe in, Letting it absorb it. Because when the emotions or the thoughts absorb your being, They relax, Release and let go. When they relax, Release and let go, That reveals a little bit more light because there's a little less blockage. And the problem itself is really light that's been twisted into the form of a problem. Frozen into a problem. There's only one thing and that's consciousness. So every problem is consciousness, It is love. It's just been twisted, Hallucinated, Created into a problem. So by sitting there and observing it, It begins to melt and release its energy, The pent up energy, Which is your aura, Which is your, Your, Um, Uh, Well, Your aura. It's your light. So you don't want to get rid of your problems. That is your light. That is your consciousness. You don't want to get rid of them. You just want them to melt and radiate clearly and not in a twisted way. Okay. I hope that helps some. If it doesn't, You just circle back and ask me some in a different way. Okay. Blossom said, And hi Blossom. Blossom has some beautiful music. She produces and plays from an awakened state. And you can go to her on Insight Timer, Blossom, Violet, And look under teachers and you'll, You'll hear hers. They're quite beautiful. Anyway, She says, Just had an aha moment, A realization. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Blossom. Thank you. Yeah. That's how it works for all of us. Um, Oh, Monica says love Blossom's music. Yeah. It's beautiful. Um, Insight timer. Wow. They've got a lot of good stuff. Don't they? A lot of good stuff collected there. So what we're trying to do is restore the flow. And we do that by feeling what we could not feel before, What we would not feel before we start feeling it now. I remember, Uh, My guru, One of my main ones, Bhagavan in Andhra Pradesh, Uh, He said to us, I might've been my first visit there. He said, Do you know why you suffer? Now I'm a psychotherapist. So yeah. What? Tell me why. I think I know some reasons, But what do you got in mind? You're the guru. He says, You suffer, Uh, First of all, He says your garbage pits inside. You're like sewers. And it's really hard for me to sit with you all because I feel everything that you are. And what he meant was, Is we're all this unresolved mess inside that we haven't been able to feel or deal with. It's, It's like, You don't clean up your room for 40 years, A lot of socks and pizza boxes in there. It just is. It smells after a while. Well, We smell. So, Um, He said, The reason you suffer is because you do not experience life fully. You don't live life. And I was like, What, What do you mean by that? He said, Just what we've talked about, Something happens in the outside world. You can't handle it. So you, Uh, Push it away and it sticks inside of you somewhere. It turns into a little ball, A little vortex of energy of pain, And you push it out of your consciousness and you think it's gone. I have a cat, Nico, And when he doesn't like something, He sticks his head under a pillow. His whole body's sticking out, But his head's under a pillow and he can't see it. He thinks it's gone. Well, That's what we do. I mean, It's the same thing. We just do that inside. We, You know, How many times have you heard somebody said, Well, Just take your mind off of it. Go for a run. Get your mind off of it. Go out and do something. Get your mind off of it. Well, Where does that go? That vortex. Okay. We got our mind off of it. We think it's gone. Just like Nico thinks the problem's gone when he has his head under the pillow. It's not gone. It's just out of our consciousness and it comes coming up later, 10, 20, 30 years later when there's like a thousand of these things, 10, 000 of them, The way you discreate them is restore the flow, Restore the natural flow. That is let them feel, Feel what you did not feel before, Allow it to continue its process and it will melt out of you naturally. When you let it melt out naturally, Natural things start to happen. And we'll talk about that perhaps in a minute. But Laura says, I do that all the time. Grieving now something I couldn't grieve before. Yes, That's painful, Laura. It's this stuff is hard. I am not. And by the way, You know, Jesus would run around all the time saying, Forgive, Forgive, Forgive, Forgive. That is another word for letting go. Let your flow continue. Restore your flow. But it doesn't mean that what the person did wasn't horrible. It doesn't mean that. It just means that you're not going to die because of it. This horrible thing, Perhaps this person did is not going to end your life. You didn't do the thing you got. You were in the presence of this horrible thing. So why should you be suffering? You just let it go. You forgive it. It doesn't mean condone it. It just means forgive it. About this grief, Though, There's different kinds of grief and. You know, Some kinds of grief, For instance, If you're close to somebody and a relationship is over or somebody dies or you lose a pet. Something like that. You lose something that you were very connected to. That's partially biological for a while. It's like a phantom limb is gone and it just hurts for a while. And that's not something that you can spiritualize away. And I'm not saying this is the case for you, Laura, But I'm just saying in general, Because spiritual stuff has many levels and it's complex. It's just like working on your car that the tire is different from the seat or the seat belt or the rear view mirror or the wheel bearing or the, You know, Spirituality isn't just one thing. It's a very specific. So we connect and we slow down. We look and we know and we trust ourselves and we notice, Wow, There's no amount of changing thoughts or releasing emotions that's going to heal this pain right now. This is biological. It's just going to hurt. Just like if I hit my hand with a hammer, There's no amount of me reading a book that's going to help, You know, Or meditating. That's going to help. It hurts. It's biological. I broke my hand because of the hammer. So you have to look at where's this pain coming from? What's going on? It's different kinds of pain. Spirituality is very specific. There's so many in my podcasts I talk about, I experience myself like a rainbow. There's one end that's beyond all of creation and I can only know that part of me through intuition. But then the rest of me comes down through creation and different parts. There's bliss, There's love, There's peace, But there's also turmoil and PTSD and different layers. I have released a lot and discreated, But still, You know, We're in this world. Jesus had some bad days too. Every guru's had bad days. You have bad days. I don't care what they say in the books. It's very practical. Gary says, I thought my wonderful dog was dying this morning. It was an attack from pancreatic. I'm sorry. I'm mispronouncing that. It was so sad and afraid. Yes. Yes, Gary. Yes. Monica says, I'm so sorry, Gary. Yeah, Me too. That's scary. And that's biological too, You know, Your friend. So there's no spiritualizing, You know, Jesus wept, Lazarus died and Jesus wept. It was biological, You know? So there's just stuff that takes a while. It just takes a while. It sounds like your dog is better or getting better, Gary. I hope so. Yeah. Jesus, Gary said Jesus had the ultimate bad day. Yeah. For all of us. Yeah. Jesus, Jesus had a bad day. He said a lot of true things and people got mad when people don't heal their stuff. They get mad at other people and they want other people to be different so they don't have to work on their stuff. And Jesus said a lot of good stuff, Which brought up a lot of stuff for people and, You know, What do you do? You just have to kill them, Don't you? Laura says, Yes, This is really hurtful. I didn't know how to do it before. This coming after 20 years is amazing. It now hurts. Yeah, Laura, That's the thing, This stuff, It comes up in the order it needs to come up and the timing it needs to come up in so you can handle it now, But you have to still be gentle with yourself. Take time. You know, Watching TV isn't the biggest spirit. That's not what you hear you do for awakening. But sometimes you feel as much as you can feel, You stay present, And then you take a break. And that means sometimes that is the time to tune out for a moment, For a bit, Because it rests your system, Because this old stuff can be pretty intense sometimes. And I'm sorry you're going through it, But it's coming for your healing. It's coming to be released, And that's good. It just feels bad, And that doesn't, There's nothing good about that. Sorry. That's tough, And I think all of you out there can feel that on something in your life. So thank you for bringing that up, Laura. You know, We use the word PTSD, I'll use it in maybe a different way than what traditionally it's used. And I'll say it's stuff that doesn't seem to want to leave, That just has been hurting for a long time, Even though you've been feeling it, Even though you've been meditating. It just still hurts. I'll call that PTSD. And I would use those techniques we talked about earlier in this podcast, Or, And the same ones, But we've talked about it a different way, In the podcast around 100 and 102. And then I think I had a series of four of them around podcast 27. They kind of take a little while, I have four of them, And in the end, You're just getting to, You want to take, Go slowly and connect to something, Pendulate, Swing from the heart of the thing that hurts, Connect to something that feels good, And drink it in just a little bit. Don't force it to be too much, Because that's fairly worthless. You only want to take in what you can take in. And that might only be a drop because it could be hard inside and hurt. So you just take a drop of something good. You don't have to do anything miraculous. It's all the drops add up into something miraculous over a period of time. You soak those up like a dry sponge and just feel them. You know, You're soaking them up. If you just feel at least a drop of relief, Where could you get some connections to soak up some good things? Well, Nature, You could connect to nature. You could be a barefoot in the grass. You could walk on the beach. You could look at art. You could go to art and find something that you really connect with and just sit in front of it. You could connect with friends. Monica says, Sending you love and support, Laura. So yes, That's the best. Connect to people here or other friends, Music. And then as you baby step your way up the ladder, Even running or exercise, You know what it is when you take something in and it just starts, You start to be able to take in a little goodness. Touching your animal, Hugging your animal, Just something, Whatever it is for you. Your friend, Talking to a friend, Talking to a therapist, Whatever works. But as you go up the ladder, Little bit by little bit by little bit, Ultimately the deepest thing you can connect to is your being because that's infinite. But if you're not feeling it, You're not feeling it. So it's not a thing. And I'm not saying you're not feeling it, Any of you out there, But, Or Laura or anybody, But if in that moment you're not, It's not working. So don't, Don't push it. Connect to something, Recalibrate down, Connect to something that does feel good. Maybe just touch the wall. Feel how it feels solid and peaceful. Everything is consciousness and perhaps the peace that's in that wall, You can soak that up and that can begin to, Just one millionth of a drop of it can go into your grief, Maybe. Maybe there's a release, There's crying and all this. And I know you're already doing all this stuff. I'm just saying it for everybody, All of us, Me included. You stay with the moment and do what's, Do what life calls, Which I see that you did. Laura says, I ate a big bed of ice cream today. Thank you, Monica, Gary Blossom, William, Everybody. See, That's what I'm talking about. A little bit, Let's eat some ice cream. You know, That's funny that you said that because I kind of had that come into my head, But I didn't dare say it. Before you typed it, I kind of had that come in. I said, Ah, I better not put that in a podcast, You know, That's, Yeah. But thank you for, You did it, Laura, Thank you. Blossom says, Yes, Scientific proof that self-hugging is also amazing to our well-being. Yes, Hug yourself. When I was in seminary and, Oh, I felt the end of the world and I just, It was so dark for all, That's why I was there, Trying to figure things out. And I was just coming out of that cult. I just started hugging myself and I figured something out that might be helpful to at least one person. Monica says, I hug trees, Yes. Thank you for listening, Rob. What I came up with, See if this works at all for you. See if this makes any sense. Any bad feeling that you have, Any bad thought, Any bad feeling that you have, You either absorbed it or you created it in order, Only because you love yourself, Even if it's maladaptive. Think about this, I'll just make something up. What if you're a little kid and you have somebody you look up to that says, You're stupid, You're stupid, You're stupid. And so you agree, Yeah, I'm stupid, I'm stupid. Why would you do that? Because you want their love. Why do you want their love? Because you love yourself and you want their love, That you perceive that to be a good thing. It may not be in fact a good thing, But in that, As a little kid, You think that person's love is good. So you start hating yourself, You start agreeing with them so that, Hey, I'm just like you, You can love me. Every thought that you trace, Every pain that you trace inside of you, Just think about anything. You're doing it because you love yourself. It may be very maladaptive, But you love yourself. That's why you're doing it. So what I did in seminary, Once I realized that, I started thinking, Wow, I feel so bad that I'm going to feel good that I feel bad because that means I must love myself a lot. So I started hugging myself just like Blossom said, I started hugging myself because I couldn't figure all this out. It was too much for me at the time. So I just said, Well, Okay, If all this is a kind of a messed up way of loving myself, Let me just throw in a good way too and I'll hug myself because I love myself a lot because I sure do feel bad. Gary says, Laura, If you need a shoulder, You know how to reach me. There you go. Friends are the best. Human contacts. And by the way, That's what Peter Levine says in Healing Trauma. Human contact. He says, If you have a traumatic event and you make a human connection that helps release the PTSD, That helps it so that you don't lock up and it can continue to flow. You might start sobbing. You might start crying. You might start feeling things and releasing because you're being held by somebody or you're in their presence. He said, Maybe you just touch them lightly because maybe they can't take much. They're overwhelmed. Maybe you don't touch them at all, But just being there can help them flow. So awakening, You know, All this is the path of awakening. All this is, Monica says, Holding our pets is also therapeutic. Absolutely. That's so good because they are so loving. But awakening is letting all this stuff, Reestablishing the flow. The third Chinese patriarch of Zen, The Shenshen Ming said, The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. And now I'm going back to just letting things flow because it's only when we have a preference that we don't let things flow. Like, No, I don't like this. I'm going to block it out. No, No, No. Let it flow and it will heal. Even grief will heal. But Peter Levine would say, Just take it, The baby steps a little at a time. Don't let it flow all at once. Don't hurt yourself. Don't be brutal on yourself. Love yourself in the way that you're releasing. Alice says, My husband's last few days on this earth and his last few days on this earth said to me, I don't need you to do anything. I just need you to be where I can see you. Human connection. That's beautiful, Alice. Condolences about your husband and thank you for sharing. That is so powerful. Thank you. In those connections, We can relax, We can flow, And even at the time of death, We can let go because we're held. Even if it's just by seeing you, Just by being with you. Laura, Alice, That's so sweet, Gary, Alice, Oh my God, Blossom, Nice, Laura. Feeling sometimes is hard, Laura, Feeling always is hard. Do what you can, But it's not a grim duty. It's just you release and then eat some ice cream, You know, Go for a walk. See if you can get for one minute to a place where you could just feel whatever comes through you without stopping it for 30 seconds, Maybe. And then the week after, See if you could do 45 seconds. You want, When I say baby steps, I mean, Micro baby steps, Make it smaller than you think is reasonable. Why? Because all of us try to do too much too fast and we overwhelm ourselves. That's just what people do because we want to get out of the pain fast. Go slow and you'll connect to yourself faster. You'll heal faster, But see if the point is to let things flow. So see if you can let things flow for whatever the period of time for you is that works. If that's five minutes, If that's four minutes, If that's one hour, That's 10 minutes. I don't know, But don't overdo it and just breathe in or feel, Connect to something that feels good. So as you let go, You're with something that you can absorb goodness, Your pet, Your friend touching the wall, Touching the grass, Hugging the tree. Alice says, Thanks everyone. You have all made me feel held. Oh wow. Okay. Thank you, Alice, For helping us all feel held. Thank you. Okay. Well, It's so good to see you all and, Uh, Blossom says, I hope, I hope I can schedule some during your waking hours. Yeah, This is probably seven at night. I don't even know what time it is for you. Six in the morning or something, Something maybe in Australia, Sorry, But thank you for joining. I, Yeah, I get some people are working. I'm trying to do this as a first later time. And then I had earlier times. It's, It's complicated. Uh, Started at 8 30 AM. Okay. Well, Okay. That's early. Um, We'll experiment around. Um, But thank you all. If you like these podcasts, Let me just ask if they're good for you. Tell somebody, Just pass a link to somebody, Let them check them, Check them out. Maybe they hate them. Maybe they liked them. Maybe they're so-so, But, Uh, If they're helpful and opening to you, They might be helpful and opening to others in the world. And that has to be a good thing. We all work together. They're all free. There's no strings attached. You've listened to them. So, Um, Yes, I was, Laura says, Uh, Thank you, William. I felt everything just now you were speaking about getting all stuck. Your guru said to you, I felt that you were not living your life. Yes, That's so true. Thank you everybody. Um, I look forward to, I'll post the next time. I don't quite know what it is yet, But it'll be around two weeks. Uh, If you're on insight time or you'll just see it. If you're following me, They'll send you a little notice or you can see it if you look for it. Okay. Thanks so much. And I look forward to next time. Take care. Bye. Great questions. Thank you so much. So much sharing from the heart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everybody. Bye.