Hello everybody.
Welcome to our live session.
I'm so glad that you're here.
The reason why I do these podcasts is to go along with the podcasts that are recorded on Inside Time or one of the other platforms.
You can find them on Inside Time or if you haven't already found them,
Just listed under my name,
William Cooper.
And if it's on another platform,
You could go to the title of the podcast and just go Awakening Together,
William Cooper,
Or just William Cooper Podcast or anything like that.
And it's on all the other platforms.
But whether you've heard these podcasts or not,
If you have heard them,
You might have some specific questions that you've been wondering about.
And this is a good time to just type them in and I can answer them.
Or if this is your first time,
You can ask whatever question you have.
And there's a diverse group,
So as we go along,
Some people will be very advanced meditators,
Some people just starting out.
And so whatever you are,
Your question will address part of the group anyway.
And I think I always like to hear answers about anything when I listen in to other people's sessions.
So it does everybody a service when you ask a question.
While you might be thinking about different questions to ask,
I'll just talk a little while and we'll just talk as we go along.
But if something comes up,
You ask a question.
I remember back around when I was 30 and I was exploring,
Is there any such thing to psychics?
And I was a board president of the Unity Church at the time,
And they would have all different kinds of people come,
But I was coming from a fundamentalist background and so I was all nervous about psychics and can you trust them and do you go astray if you listen to them and so on and so forth.
So I got the idea,
I was a financial planner at the time,
And I got the idea I'm going to talk to about four or five psychics and see if they answer similarly to different questions I have or just come up with some similar perspectives on life.
And a lot of them did and it was very powerful,
But I remember one of them was kind of telling me about myself.
We just met and then she was saying you're this way,
You're that way,
And so on and so forth.
And one of the things she said is you have strong willpower,
But the way she said it,
It sounded kind of funny and I asked her is that,
She was saying it like it was a compliment,
But her tone seemed a little reserved and I so I said is that a compliment,
Is that a good thing?
Did I have good willpower?
And she said oh yes,
You've achieved a lot of things,
You're board president of the Unity Church,
You're partner in the financial firm,
You have a Master of Theology,
You've done so many things.
They won't amount to anything,
But you've done a lot.
And you know that started off an inner turmoil and we discussed it.
But willpower is a good thing and you can accomplish a lot with your willpower and that's how we're taught in our society to motor through with our willpower,
Right?
We go to school,
Quit daydreaming,
Focus,
Willpower.
And I have accomplished a lot of things,
But if you think about it,
Notice within yourself,
I'll just give you this thought,
You might have already observed this.
In willpower,
We tend to focus and tense and we cut ourselves off from ourselves every time we use our willpower.
Think about it,
You're in school,
They say concentrate,
You know,
You tense and you focus.
Concentrate at work and you tense and you focus.
So we're not flowing,
We're more reacting and pushing.
So it's very important if you want to get certain things done in life,
But the question is,
What is life about?
What's it for?
If it's about awakening,
You know,
We're already perfect,
But for that we've tensed up so much and we cover ourselves up.
I mean every spiritual practice is about letting go and opening up,
So if we're in a state of affairs where we're constantly closing and then trying to open and then closing and trying to open,
That's a tough place to be and it's certainly not awakening.
So it's that balance.
We can flow through life,
I think the fear is if we awaken,
We won't get anything done,
But look at every awakened master.
They have thousands,
Perhaps hundreds of thousands of students,
Maybe millions.
They're building temples and doing all sorts of things,
Feeding the poor,
Opening schools.
They're getting a lot done,
A lot more than what we normally get done.
So opening and flowing is very,
Very powerful in our lives.
And as I mentioned,
Every spiritual practice,
Whether it's mantras or meditation or chanting,
It's all different ways of opening up,
Visualizing guided meditations,
But at the root of it all,
What is going on?
There's somewhere deep inside.
We have thoughts that cut ourselves off from ourselves.
If I don't get this done,
I won't be successful,
So I need to block everything out and go forward and I can't relax until I get this thing done,
Which means I have to be closed until I get this thing done.
And once it gets done,
I think of four other things I have to get done and it just goes on forever,
Right?
But even underneath that thought is an emotion,
Which is a 3D thought,
Basically.
It's where we store our energy and cut ourselves off from ourselves.
And we don't let ourselves get away from our thoughts because our emotions hold us there.
And if you sink down into the middle of that emotion finally and you let all that go,
Finally you'll notice a tension which is a strict block against yourself.
It cuts you off from yourself,
So there'll be a tension at the bottom of all that emotion.
And there's these layers that you'll notice as you sink down and connect to yourself in meditation or any other practice.
The trick is letting go to melt all these things.
And that's what awakening is called.
Awakening,
We're not achieving anything,
We're already perfect.
Our energy is already perfect,
Our aura is already radiant.
You know,
Our aura is always there and it's always very powerful,
The radiant light,
But part of our light,
If we don't feel it as radiant,
Part of it is simply being twisted off and used,
The energy that flows through us is being used to propagate and perpetuate blocks,
So-called blocks,
Like fear,
Hurt,
And anger.
So our aura is there and the intensity that you feel the hurt or the fear or the worry,
That is your brilliant light,
It's just that you've chosen to twist it off and use it in that way as hurt,
Fear,
Or anger.
But it's very powerful,
You can feel the emotions that we often feel,
The traumas,
They're very powerful.
That's how powerful that energy is that flows through us.
We've decided to spend it,
So to speak,
In that way.
It's like a budget and we spend it in these ways,
And as my teacher used to say,
We break off into a thousand different voices and personalities on the inside and sort of spend our energy that way.
So the process of awakening is just to see it and we have to sit still in order to see it,
That's why meditation is helpful,
Otherwise we'll keep distracting ourselves forever.
But when we see it,
It can start to unwind and it will do it on its own just by us seeing it,
And we've talked about this lots in the podcast,
So that's why the podcast,
I think there's 60 of them so far and I put out a new one every week,
But they cover every different part of all of this and you listen to the things that resonate to you and if they don't resonate,
Just forget them and go on,
Find what does.
But it's a point of departures for you to reflect on different aspects that my teachers have shown me or I've discovered on my own,
And you'll discover things on your own.
Okay,
Thank you.
Let me,
Vaishali,
Thanks for asking this question and I'll read it and let's see where we go with it.
How do I shift my focus from negative thoughts to positive ones while meditating or otherwise which are originating purely out of fear and anxiety?
That is,
Wow,
That is such a good question.
I guarantee you every single person including myself who's listening to this has had that,
Feels this continually,
At least on some level,
Because we have a lot of old habits and old ways of looking at things that we've built up through our lifetime or lifetimes,
And awakening is simply unraveling these old habits.
So here's the tricky thing.
In awakening there are many levels because we are made of many levels.
We have our mental level,
Our emotional level,
This tension level underneath.
We have a,
You know,
If you talk to gurus and they say,
Well,
You've got a cosmic body and a karmic body and a energy body and so many different nutrient body and there's so many different bodies,
A causal body,
It goes on.
So you let the best way I can answer this is the answer is going to shift around depending on where you are in your life.
And it will change,
The answer will change.
I'm going to answer this question in a few different ways right now,
But you'll discover others and what I've discovered in myself is that some things that teachers of mine have talked about take me only so far and then I have to look at myself and I discover things that even they wonder about.
I've had teachers tell me like you're deeper on some levels than even I am and it's true for you too.
So you really want to listen to yourself,
But let me just start the ball rolling from from my perspective.
How do I shift my focus from negative thoughts to positive ones while meditating or otherwise which are originally originating purely out of fear or anxiety?
Well to the degree that we're separated from ourselves we will have separation anxiety.
So everybody has it who's not totally awake,
Everybody has it.
And we will feel abandoned by the universe so we'll have hurt,
Somebody will say something and we'll feel our feelings tremendously hurt and or we'll have anger because we don't feel fulfilled because we're separated from our true self.
That's the plight of the unawakened person which to some degree and we're all in various stages of it,
We're experiencing all of us.
So let's just start in the beginning in a sense.
My friend Bob said that in order to progress you need to get out of the pounding surf.
You can't get batted around in the pounding surf.
So I'll just start very simply.
Depending on the person if they are really in the throes of negativity medication can help or acupuncture can help or massage can help or jogging can help or so many yoga.
So these are so many first steps.
Okay that's the first step and then the second step would be this brilliant beautiful light that you are is pure joy,
Love,
Peace and well-being and to the degree that you don't feel it you're blocking it out and that's a litmus test for all of us if we ever feel hurt,
Fear,
Anger,
Tension,
Stress that means we're blocking ourselves out on some level maybe not completely because we might feel a mixture of light and hurt and worry but we're blocking ourselves out.
How are we doing that?
We've developed a mindset which is what call a personality which is a collection of thoughts,
Emotions and tensions.
They all fit together as one unit and and habits the actions that flow from those and we've talked about these in other podcasts so those that want to know more deeply just start a podcast one and move yourself forward and we cover all this quite thoroughly but it's always good to review it and a lot of people are new.
So when we form these thoughts we will hallucinate a thought based on our level of separation.
If I'm separate I feel separation anxiety so I develop the emotion of worry that's agitation it's worry I feel like things aren't right I'm I'm anxious I'm cut off that's because I'm separated from myself that's the emotion from that emotion I'll develop a thought I will hallucinate a thought why what can make sense of this worry because I don't think it's well it's simply that I'm cut off from myself that I did this no I don't think it that way I think I look around outside me and think what's what's good well I might not get the right job or the job that I have might not come through I might not achieve the right things that I need to do for my boss or or my girlfriend or my whoever and so I hallucinate these thoughts and these thoughts are like a lens that I look through it projects my positive energy all this well-being this light projects through that lens and it's like a movie it makes a movie on the screen of my life that shows that you try as I might I'm gonna fail that's the movie I keep projecting because that's the lens I keep shining my light through so if that lens remains that negative hallucination and I simply put a positive thought on top of it like I start doing positive thinking I'm good I'm good I'm good in every way I'm but really underneath it is the main lens that says no I'm not no I'm not no I'm not you know you're not gonna get anywhere now you got two lenses you got the negative one that's just really pounding and you've got this kind of fake one on top of it that's trying to improve your attitude okay it's better than nothing to put a fake one on top of it at least it helps you get through the day it's better than nothing so it is a step forward let me say that I don't want to completely disregard but you want to really ultimately deconstruct the one underneath it the negative one how do you do that well when you meditate and you watch it it will both unwind and throw off all the negative energy that has first made it that it's made of now that'll feel very it won't feel good and your mind will spin and lots of thoughts will go on and that's why people think oh I can't meditate I'm no good at it it's not peaceful meditation is not supposed to be peaceful because it's deconstructing the unpeaceful stuff so as that releases it's very unpeaceful now once the stuff is released then it is peaceful but meditation is very difficult at first because we have all this built-up stuff that's deconstructing so that's how you deconstruct it meditation or a mantra perhaps and a mantra keeps you focused let's say you do feel the goodness in you the true goodness you also feel that because that is there all the time as well as your hallucinations what we the lenses that we have hallucinated they both are there the positive your energy is just your the nature of your being and that's with you forever because it's who you are and these hallucinations are temporary but they keep going until you deconstruct them they don't just on their own disappear they just go under the surface that's why meditation is helpful to just keep everything clean like brushing your teeth if you don't brush it everything starts clogging up on your teeth and they turn green and they fall out well that's what happens on the inside of us we turn green and we fall apart because we're not meditating or doing our spiritual practice but mantras connect you to your positivity when you really realize it like wow I feel good right here and then you say something to kind of keep reminding you to stay with that part of you like you might say you might go on the mash of aya if you feel connected to if you feel one with Shiva but more simply and just as effective you could just say whatever you feel light light light light could be your mantra or peace peace if you're feeling a part of you that feels peaceful to stay connected stay there and then you don't have to go up into the hallucination now you still have to deconstruct the hallucination or it will be waiting for you tomorrow so that's why you have to meditate so and I go through all that in the first five or six seven podcasts because that's pretty basic now there's another interim trick and that interim trick which is still kind of step two is okay there's this lens I hallucinated that's really negative even before I deconstruct it let's say I don't even know I don't even have the energy to deconstruct it something you could do is create another lens and look through that now it you still got a deconstruct the other one eventually but you could change your thought and that's the basis of a lot of therapies or it's the basis of watching a movie right you get your minds off of your hallucinations and you start hallucinating as if you're the hero of the movie so you start to see yourself as you have their problems which they resolve in the movie and so by the end of the movie you feel inspired because you're hallucinating as the movie would direct you or you listen to a guided meditation and in the meditation they'll have you hallucinate in a more positive way imagine that you're floating on a river and you're letting all of your tensions go and there's a little leaf and you put all your problems on the leaf and it floats down the river and now they're gone it's a hallucination your negativity will still be there after the guided meditation but you get a break during that meditation it's like medication but no side effects so that's very helpful but ultimately it's just a very simple thing we sit down and the reason we sit down it's hard to distract ourselves and we just watch the stuff that is going on automatically that we created in the past it's thoughts just thinking themselves emotions running all these things happening we just watch them now when you watch them that means you're not in them as I often say looking at a bottle of wine is quite different than drinking a bottle of wine looking at a hallucination or a thought is quite different than jumping into the middle of it and being in the 3d movie of this hologram that we're creating called our so-called life that we've hallucinated everything starts becoming very still and very healing when we sit still and just watch what's happening we don't get involved but it will spend its energy and thank you by Shali yes deconstruct I would listen to the first five ten podcasts if you haven't already and it will talk about deconstruction it's just old it took a lot of work to develop the hallucinations so it takes a little sitting still to let them undeveloped okay Karen you have asked this question can you say more about emotions being 3d thoughts holding our energy do you see this as an unconscious or a choice and what about emotions that have no concrete or conscious thought yes great question Karen again everybody experiences this because we all experience thoughts and emotions and thoughts and emotions are extremely helpful tools when used properly thoughts can be formed in a number of different ways I as well as so can emotions and I think I alluded to it in my last answer but I'll just say a few more words about it because you've really focused on a slightly different question and that is emotion in our pristine state when you're quiet when you've sat still long enough and like a glass of silty water all the silt sinks down and you're clear the way you'll experience yourself is you'll experience a part of you that you can only experience through your intuition and it's beyond this creation it's empty it's quiet but it's like bursting with potential so it doesn't necessarily feel empty but because it's not created yet you can't feel it with your five senses you can't see it you can't taste it you can't touch it feel it so on and so forth but you experience that and when that comes into comes into the world it's a burst of light you will experience tons of light that's you and as that slows down you'll hear the sounds of the universe deep and high pitches maybe you'll hear other pitches sometimes people think of ringing in the ears but they're actually hearing the universe these chants that monks do the very deep ones those are them imitating the sounds of the universe that you yourself will hear I remember walking down the beach and I thought there were monks behind me and it was too strange I whipped around and it was just I was hearing the sound of the universe which I can hear all the time if I want to and everybody can as we settle down that as it slows down turns into joy well-being love peace all of those kind of things and then as it slows down from there it turns into atoms and electrons and then dogs and cats and trees and things like that so that's who you are that's who we all are we're all that so in its own obstructed form it's just a brilliant radiant light that comes out of you but when we cut off that light and we hallucinate things we block ourselves to to create something in this world we have to use the energy that comes through us which is the energy of the world also the energy of creation that's the energy that we turn into objects so we turn this light into emotions that's why our rate our radiance decreases the more emotions we create and just leave kind of as little chunks of stuff we've created little objects like space junk floating around in our aura our aura decreases as we use our energy to make all these things so that's the energy from which emotions come now to do that you could look at it in two ways we could have been jolted as a child or in some other life through an experience and we cringed we cut off ourselves in that one area with this cringing and because we were cut off from ourselves we got separation anxiety or fear or hurt or anger or all of those and that became the emotion and then we hallucinated a thought based on those emotions and that traumatic experience and it could go the other way we could hallucinate thoughts that get us so wound up that we then from those thoughts create can create objects called emotions to go with the thoughts because if I just have a thought like oh I'm afraid but I don't have the emotion to go with it it's not very powerful that's called taking a psychotropic drug drug and you get rid of your feelings and so it's easy to just create your thoughts because you're they're not 3d anymore so they're not scary so they're easy to work with I can talk to you and who cares about my thoughts I'm more open because I'm not I don't have the 3d aspect but if I retain that 3d aspect it's freaking me out and I don't even want to talk about it don't even want to think about it I want to repress it so it can go both ways I can create it through my thoughts and my perspectives or it could be created through jolts and traumas and people talking to me or the society I'm living in or things like that does that make sense I don't know if I answered your question I I hope I did and so Nita yeah I see you say I separate I suffer with bad separation anxiety that so many people do I mean that's standard for most of us really and it comes out in many different ways it could come out as existential angst it could come out as me just scared of everybody it could come out as PTSD but it comes out in so many different ways the antidote is your spiritual practice let me see if I can find something here because let's see what is it Joseph Joseph Campbell I'm gonna see if I can just remember his quote he said the task of man is to the life task of man is to match his heartbeat with the heartbeat of nature and what does that mean it means that we are but it means that you know nature doesn't think it flows and back to what I started out with it nature doesn't work by willpower it just flows it's open the whole universe flows through you and it's very powerful and when I'm open I feel it and that then reassures me because I love myself which happens through meditation or therapy or whatever because we're often in the habit of cutting ourselves off from ourselves but as we notice that we are love itself we love ourselves and since that the universe is us we can take care of ourselves we don't have to solve every little thing personally the universe solves it for us and you get it that's where you get into movies like The Secret and this and that and the other sometimes though what they miss is that when we're not clear part of us is shooting ourselves in the foot while the other part is projecting the positivity and so hey do what you can with where you are you will move forward and as you move forward just be aware let these negativities go let them dissolve and you we have to do the work it never comes simply okay Steve let let's see you say the medication thing is weird bad in my mind I'm not against it but not totally I know what you mean I feel the same way but let me talk about it but not totally not for it just feels like a false fake promise or something because it's synthetic and taken from the outside rather than fix you from the inside absolutely true absolutely true that is my feeling and yet my friend Bob says get out of the pounding surf first like if sometimes you just need a little relief to be able to move forward I'm not suggesting that a person stick with meditation medication for their whole life if they don't need to I'm suggesting that they work with their spiritual practice they medic meditate and so on and so forth and I remember talking to Bob and another teacher about this 20 years ago and I remember Bob said hey you're not your body and mind so who cares who cares if you watch a movie and it helps you open up who cares if a friend talks to you and it helps you open up who cares if you take a medication and it helps you open up and it it's not the final thing I can't just do nothing and talk to a friend my whole life I can't do nothing and watch 800 movies I can't do but it might help get me out of the pounding surf I can't do nothing and just jog all the time to release tension just perpetually because I keep stressing myself out once I quit jogging no I want to just create the problem and the block so for some people medication really really helps I think the fear is most of us think oh it's a crutch and the person's gonna get addicted and it's a shortcut and then they'll just and yeah some people do that some people do that but not you guys you guys are on your spiritual path and you you trust yourself you might just say hey well let me just trust myself let me try let me if I need them if nothing else is working let me try this and see if it gets me out of the rain and then from there can I meditate can I do my spiritual practice can I do yoga maybe I can't get out of bed I need something to just get out of bed right so we got to give ourselves a break and there's only one thing and that's the inner the infinite where does medication come from the infinite it's all part of the infinite from my perspective there is no personal self it's I mean there is one we use it it's a tool but all too but really there's not so who's orchestrating all this isn't me no I don't exist it's like thoughts do not think they're just lenses it's like movies don't they don't feel anything a movie a DVD doesn't feel anything but yet it creates a movie on the screen our personalities create a movie of our life they don't feel anything thoughts don't think and emotions don't emote so who's doing all this it's the one that is you you created the medication and you have the sincerity to do it to use it in a correct way so trust yourself but if yeah there yes and Steve says there's such a line between humbling and humiliating I know it's tricky I'll tell you a story 20 years ago probably I talked to Bob and the reason a friend of mine said here's the thing I went to India I had a profound awakening awakening experience the energy that was coming through me was so powerful it was knocking people down I could see the future it wasn't that I could see it I was the future was me let's just say these experiences were so profound and I talked about it in one of my podcasts because I was my guru's energy was running through me it was so so so powerful and he gave me the experience of awakening everything was love and this didn't go on for one day it went on for ten years now I'm he said go out on your own and I'm experiencing it progressively through my being through my incarnation but back then it was through him and I didn't know any of this I was new I was just some guy that went to India and boom it was crazy that's a whole nother story everything you've imagined it's true about India can be India's everything you can get caught up and see whatever you want but if you're looking for this deep stuff it's there up to you but I talked to so I was one with everything everything was just radiating or all around me and through me and I wasn't and yet I was so depressed I didn't I couldn't understand it how how can I at the same time be the universe and I don't mean just philosophically I mean like I swallowed an atomic bomb and people are healing and all sorts of things around me and yet I was depressed a lot and in despair and worry so friend of mine said well have you considered any depressants and I said no way because it's humiliating and I was leading a big group I didn't mean to I started it but so much of this guru's energy was coming through me suddenly there was a hundred people paying to be around me so I became a teacher just because of this because of his energy I just as more and more people collected they all looked at me like I knew what I was doing so I started teaching so I finally I talked to Bob and he said no you're not your body and mind try it I did mixed results for me personally after a year I just stopped because I didn't want it to interfere with my awake I was going back to India and I was seeing my guru again I didn't want it to get in the way I don't know that it would have gotten in the way really but it since it wasn't doing that well for me or it was okay you know what it felt like to me the stuff I was taking it felt like I experienced everything I was experiencing before and I was experiencing it a hundred percent but I just didn't care I mean I it came through me and because I didn't get worried about being worried I could just be worried and then I could work on the worry and that was helpful so for that year it probably really did help me but I remember too so I had a hundred people and they were asking me somebody said well ask it what do you do about depression what can you if somebody I'm depressed what can I do and I said well you could use acupuncture you could do this you'll get this and then you know I couldn't control myself because just the infinites flowing through and I said oh you could take medication like I am the room went just deadly silent the lady doing the registration at the end said maybe you don't want to bring that up but I got so many people talking to me saying I'm so glad you brought that up but I was humbled I was humiliated but it was very opening Oh therapy I think I neglected the most important thing therapy medication can give you not everybody needs medication nor should everybody take medication if it if if it's indicated for you just trust yourself and do it trust yourself and stop it when you don't need it but it isn't designed to solve everything it's designed to give you a space where you can do therapy and you know there's lots of third people well therapy is too expensive I don't have health insurance you can find somebody that will work with you for very low cost or free if you search around enough there's a peer therapy and just I've never done it I've had friends they liked it so just from afar I'm gonna say it's called something like what is it I'll type it in the show notes for this I can't quite remember but it's available all over the world you can get therapy somehow this in India is the biggest weakness because we do have an emotional body and often in India they overlook that because they see right through it and they go to the infinite that's in the culture often I'm not saying all the time but often so therapy doesn't seem in my mind very well developed over there and a lot of times gurus fly off the handle lose their mind do crazy things that's why they never had therapy there but over in the West yeah we're kind of shallow in our own way often you guys are but often as a culture but in therapy it's very well developed over here so we have that advantage so I would utilize it let's see where in India would love to the Vaisali asked where in India would love to visit that the place or that ashram you know India has I've done four podcasts they have not been published yet they're still about two months off but but they will be coming I'm gonna just give you a couple hints right now not that I'm trying to hint around and we can talk the next live one more in depth if you guys asked me this question a little earlier on but just for time I'll say in my in India there are many places with powerful gurus and powerful places to go if I could only pick one and this is me other people have had experiences up in the north and the Himalayas around the Dalai Lama there's a lot of Buddhists up there obviously and they speak very highly there but for me it's in the south Tara of anomaly in the state of Tamil Nadu it's a small village but it is so loaded with gurus I mean you trip over awakened people they are everywhere and all the travelers I've traveled around India quite a bit 13 times an average of three months per time and I'm planning on going this fall I heard the winter I hope but I've never come across a place as that has so many so so rich of of gurus and even Western therapists and everything and it's a little village so you will get a lot in that look I would go to the Ramana Ashram on the website it says you can stay there for free or by donation for three nights ask for seven days or ten days and then they'll come back and say well how about five or seven they really let you stay longer if you want and I would read this book called in search of a secret India by Paul Brunton came out in the 1950s and it gives a very powerful account of a newspaper reporter that looked all over India and it's like my experience it's the good the bad the indifferent and he says what he finds and he ends up in terrible nominally but I would go with Tara of anomaly there's a real powerful ashram and Ponta cherry also down south it's it was a French protectorate very beautiful and Sri Aurobindo I would go to his but that's very powerful sit by the tomb it's very powerful unbelievably powerful but really Tara of anomaly would be where I would go you can google it T I R U V a N N a M a L I this will be recorded so you can listen to it next week if you want it'll probably come out Wednesday yes that is a great book a search a search what is it a search for a secret India is by Paul Brunton well you guys are asking such great questions I hope I've covered them any other questions that come to mind just in case if you're thinking of one I will say that yes it's a beautiful place Debu writes our Aurobindo ashram is in Ponta cherry it's a beautiful but it it's a beautiful place it is the architecture it's almost like Paris in an Indian way and the the ashram is in the very French part and lots of big trees and gorgeous and probably I guess about four or five blocks from the ocean and you sit under the trees and you're by this tomb and a friend of mine said I asked him when I first came to India a guy that I met at the at my guru's ashram and he said I said where's the most powerful place in India to go after this thing that we were doing there and he said go to Ponta cherry our Bendis ashram and I could not grasp that a tomb a dead person could be powerful like I just didn't believe it I wasn't gonna go there and somebody I got hooked in with a group of people and they ended up going to Ponta cherry so we went there and I really couldn't move for about five hours it was strong but if you can only go to one place go to Tiruvannamalai and Steve asks a good question what is resentment I mean what's my part in that thank you Steve again everybody here experiences resentment we all have here's the tricky part all spiritual practices are about letting go Jesus talks mostly about forgiveness what is that letting go he says if somebody sues you and they give him your cloak give him your staff give him everything just be done with it don't get involved let go somebody slaps you turn the cheek let go that's what he did that was his powerful practice letting go what happens when you totally let go the father and I are one he told everybody the father and I are one it's what all great saints say now he got killed because you're not really supposed to say so Yogananda said it's better to say God has become me because if you say I'm God that's the same thing but that gets you killed say it the other way maybe all right maybe just don't say it but this letting go now what is resentment resentment feels like somebody has crossed our boundaries they've betrayed us and we're trying to put every action we do is an action born of love for ourselves even though it might not seem like it later like I resent you why because I care about me I love me and you did something that was not nice to me so I resent you so that's my way of loving myself but now I've created this object of resentment I've created the separation because if I didn't separate here's what would happen I would just feel perpetually I love I'm well-being for any Christians out there is the fruits of the Spirit I think it's Galatians 3 23 or 4 23 something like that the fruits of the Spirit these are the qualities of your beings and that's what you'd feel all the time that's what you feel all the time if you were awake or if you were Jesus was awake you are awake but you cover it up but so here's what happens somebody does something to us and if we stayed in our Center we would look at them and just go wow I feel loved myself I feel peaceful I'm concerned about this person because they've done a very bad nasty thing what's wrong are they okay what can I do to help so I wouldn't get resentment if I was connected to myself where I make a mistake is when they do something I cut off from myself I don't trust myself that I'm okay anyway it's their problem and then I I kind of make attention and then I create an emotion which is a boundary I tense up and then I think about how bad you are and that's called resentment and I keep it forever because it's like my permanent boundary against you now Jesus said don't do that let it go how do you do that you meditate you just created where you do some other spiritual practice as you let go that's called awakening but all human beings don't know how to do this most none of us do Jesus like I said he got killed no people didn't go oh well that's a great idea we love you why don't you be our teacher they just said no we've had enough we are going to kill you we don't want to do that we don't want to do this forgiveness thing so I've done a podcast on forgetting all these things are very logical questions and through the 60 podcast replacing one every week doing a new one every week we cover these things because they are such good questions but our part in resentment is that we're the ones that disconnect from ourselves we're the ones that quit trusting ourselves that I'm okay anyway and it's at a very basic fundamental soul level we cut ourselves off so it's not like I cut myself off I feel resentful now let me think about a philosophy yeah I read the Bible and it sounds like a good idea I forgive you but deep inside I'm all tense I feel terrible that's because I haven't just created and reversed the cutoff that I did long ago you have to get way deep how do you do that you said still called meditation and it will come up or if you don't do that life feels the resonance that's going on inside of you and it feels the discord and that's an energy and you create a situation that will bring something to you that help you realize how resentful you are a friend will say something you'll go hi I resent you too well guess what now you can see that you're resentful so they're giving you a gift in that sense you created that response as odd as that sounds on another level you did not on another level they did it but on an ultimate level it serves you and I've got to trust that you know what you're doing and you are the universe so you orchestrated it on a deeper level okay thank you so much I've really enjoyed meeting and talking with you all we're going to have another life session like this on the 9th of July we'll get through the 4th of July and do it on the 9th which is a Saturday same time at 1030 a.
M.
Eastern Standard Time so you're all invited anybody's invited whether you've listened to the podcast or not but it's designed to put all this stuff together for the title of the podcast is awakening together and that's really what we are doing in real life really are doing it's not a philosophy it's a day by day opening and that's what these things are to support your opening your awakening and it's gonna happen anyway that's the that's the way the universe works you're going to awaken and the to the degree that we're separate that can be enjoyed in its own way and we could even talk about that some other time okay all is well thank you I've really enjoyed it
