Hello,
This is William Cooper.
Welcome to Awakening Together,
Relaxing into Happiness.
I trust you're doing well today.
Let's talk about miracles or creating our world in a way that's harmonious with our deepest heartfelt self.
I love what Lao Tzu said,
Which is,
To the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
Lao Tzu was the author of the Tao Te Ching,
Which is,
In my mind,
Perhaps the most beautiful and clear expression of spirituality that I've ever seen.
Most of you are familiar with the Tao Te Ching,
But if you're not,
I would Google it and take a look.
There are 81 short verses that encapsulate most everything.
So,
Perhaps read a verse a day.
Very powerful.
Anyway,
Lao Tzu said,
To the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
What does that have to do with creation?
Well,
When the One is fully present,
That's just a bright clear light as it comes through creation.
Beautiful light.
And it melts every bit of cacophony or cross currents or hurt or fear or anger,
Turbulence,
All the things that are creating all of the mess around us.
This bright clear light is like a laser and it just cuts through it and a beautiful world forms around that bright light.
It flows from that bright light.
That bright light is you.
That's the oneness.
To the mind that is still,
This is a mind that's not clouding up your bright light and diffusing it and diffracting it and turning it into all sorts of like a fun house looking through a kaleidoscope,
All sorts of different crazy stuff.
It's not doing that.
The mind is still.
And to the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
It melts.
It opens up and it flows with this powerful light.
So beautiful.
That's awakening,
Awakening.
In our separation,
When we're not awakened,
Because we're separated from ourselves,
We create all sorts of thoughts and lenses and personalities.
We fracture inside from one bright laser beam focused light into a thousand little diffused lights going this way and that way,
Counteracting each other,
A thousand voices inside.
That's why when we sit down to meditate,
Our heads just spin.
There are all these voices inside.
Or as we go through the day,
We have so many voices.
We're divided inside because we're not still.
We're fractured.
Awakening is a healing of all that.
All of that fracture melts until there's just a oneness that flows through you.
It flows through our body and our mind and the world forms around it.
A beautiful world.
And just like an ice cube melts under a bright light,
Under the sunlight,
Our divided world melts under the sunlight of our clear awareness.
So as we've described in past podcasts,
Different ways for these lenses that divide us,
That separate us,
To melt as they do,
Our light becomes more focused and strong,
Which is what it is at the source.
Anyway,
We're always that way.
The oneness,
Which is you,
Is always that way.
It only gets divided when it shines through a kaleidoscope called our personality.
But it feels good to feel ourselves.
Now,
I know we like stories.
We've talked about that in past podcasts,
And therefore we have the power to create stories called Maya,
Create delusion.
And that's why we enjoy separation to the degree that we enjoy it.
But at some point it gets to be too much.
And we just want to be ourselves,
Our true selves,
Our happy self,
Our peaceful self,
Well-being,
Having abundance in our life and being able to flow and feel happy,
To express happiness.
Because we love this,
We love silence.
We love nature.
In the midst of all nature is silence.
Because nature doesn't think.
The oneness just flows down through nature very powerfully.
Even in the midst of rustling leaves in a forest,
There's a silence.
Or in the midst of the waves,
You can hear silence even in the midst of the roar of the waves,
Or in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Because nature doesn't cloud things up,
It just flows.
We love nature.
We love ourselves when we're quiet,
When we're harmonious,
When we're in the zone.
We don't have all these cross currents.
It feels so good.
Because that's our true self.
The point of following our dreams is to find our true self.
Our true self is always there,
But we cover it up,
As we've talked about in past podcasts.
So as we awaken,
Our mind is still.
And as our mind is still,
The bright light of oneness flows down through us,
And the whole universe surrenders.
It forms around us.
Because that's so unusual,
We're not used to that,
We'll often call it a miracle.
This sudden change,
Like things opening or changing or healing,
We'll call that a miracle.
Why not?
But really,
It's very natural.
It's just,
Remember,
Everything is made of the same thing.
It's made of the infinite.
Everything is made of love.
It's simply shaped by the Creator,
Which is the One.
And on an individual level,
The One flows down through each of our individual expressions,
And so creation happens through,
Quote unquote,
Us,
The seemingly individual expression of the infinite.
When we're clear,
Creation is clear and fulfilling and wholesome.
It feels good.
When we're confused and broken into a million pieces inside with a thousand voices,
What we create seems very disharmonious.
But we're creating all the time,
Aren't we?
All the time is a miracle.
When we look at the world around us right now,
We created that world.
The world that is around us,
We created it,
And those around us helped our community.
We created that world.
It's a miracle.
We just are used to it,
So we don't think of it as a miracle.
If we're sad and angry inside and fearful,
We might create violence and trouble and arguments with our neighbors and all sorts of problems.
That's a miracle.
It's just not one that we enjoy.
We get tired of these kind of miracles,
But it's being created because consciousness flows down through the lens of separation,
In this case,
And those lenses are made of fear,
Hurt,
And anger,
So it makes a picture or a creation of fear,
Hurt,
And anger.
The clear consciousness flows down through our lenses and creates a world of fear,
Hurt,
And anger.
As our lenses melt,
As we awaken,
Our mind becomes still.
And then the previously created universe,
Created by us,
Surrenders.
It opens.
It turns harmonious and lovely,
Beautiful.
So that's creation,
And that's how we create.
What I used to think at one time was,
Okay,
I get it.
I don't want to have negative things because they will create other negative things,
So I won't have them.
So I would make a decision.
Don't think negative things.
If you have a negative thing,
If I experience a negative thing,
Push it away.
Push it down.
But you know what?
All that was doing was repressing those negative things,
Putting them where I couldn't see them.
They weren't dissolving out of my system.
I just was not allowing them into my consciousness.
We have a cat named Nico.
And when Nico is upset with something or scared of something,
He likes to stick his head under a pillow or under a couch.
You see his body sticking out or at least his tail,
But in his mind,
If he doesn't see it,
It doesn't exist.
That's what we do,
Right?
If we have a thought in our mind,
We push it under,
And if we don't see it,
It doesn't exist.
I remember I spent probably a decade working hard with positive thinking.
I even met Zig Ziglar and was around a lot of positive thinking people.
And in my mind,
If I did not allow the negative,
Only the positive could happen.
I didn't dissolve the negative.
I just pushed it down where I couldn't see it,
Kind of like how Nico does.
The problem is that lens is still there.
It's just underneath the surface.
So as I created in my world,
I created both positive,
Which was flowing through the positive lenses,
And I was cultivating those.
And I also was simultaneously creating negative that was flowing down through the still existing negative lenses that I was simply choosing not to acknowledge.
I hadn't just created them,
So they still existed.
When you create something,
It exists until you de-create it,
Until it dissolves.
And again,
In our past podcasts,
We've talked about that plenty.
But you want to let things dissolve rather than hide them.
Let them dissolve.
Then they just don't exist in your system at all.
It's not something you have to work with because it doesn't exist anymore once it dissolves.
One of the primary ways things dissolve is to just let them be present.
Let them come into your consciousness,
Into your awareness.
And because they're pointed in a different direction,
They'll just sort of sit there and emote,
Expend the energy that they're made of.
And just like a tightly wound rubber band,
You don't give it more energy.
You just feel it.
And that might be quite painful because it's made of pain,
Usually.
It will just untwist,
Untwist,
Untwist,
Release its pain,
Release its energy,
And melt and turn back into pure consciousness,
Which is bliss,
Well-being,
And light,
Which then will merge with the light that you truly are.
And that becomes even more powerful.
Yes,
Another reason you don't want to hide or repress something is you're kind of shaving off part of your energy field,
Which once it melts and realigns with you,
Makes this powerful laser energy much more focused and strong,
Very bright.
You don't want to just lop off all of the parts that aren't in a configuration that you like right now,
Because that is part of your light.
You can't lop them off anyway.
So when I would try to create,
What would happen is I would send consciousness through clear lenses,
Those positive ones that I had been cultivating.
But at the same time,
There would always be seepage and energy would flow through the repressed lenses that I didn't like,
That I had been hiding from myself,
All of the hurt,
Fear,
And anger.
So I'd kind of cancel myself out to a degree.
And that happens often in the world.
That's the power again,
Back to this Lao Tzu quote,
To the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
To the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
It reforms around the beautiful light that is you.
This is true for all of us.
I remember one of my teachers,
A very powerful master,
Sri Shiva Rudra Bala Yogi,
Was talking about miracles.
And he said something that I had been experiencing.
I went through a period of time when really people would come up to me,
They would tell me their problems.
And then about a week later or a couple days later,
They'd say the strangest thing happened.
That thing I told you suddenly changed or suddenly dissolved.
And I would think,
Oh,
Well,
That's interesting.
Or that's nice.
Well,
That happened not 10 times,
Not 20 times,
Not 30 times,
But maybe 50 times,
Maybe 100 times.
It got so much more than just a sheer coincidence that I just gently thought,
Huh,
What's that about?
Well,
My teacher was talking about miracles.
And he said that awakened people will often have miracles happening around them and through them.
And they have completely no idea that these are happening because it's just the purity of the light going through them is all they experience.
They don't care or are not striving for miracles to happen most of the time.
It just does happen because clear light begets clarity.
And when somebody mixes with your clear light,
They get clarity and their life begins to reform around that clarity.
The whole universe surrenders.
And just like you,
We are ordinary people.
These miracles happen through all of us all of the time.
Maybe we notice them or maybe we don't.
I just had the advantage that I was leading a spiritual group at the time,
So people would come up and talk to me about all sorts of things.
So I started getting feedback.
But these things happen to you also.
And remember,
We are creating miracles,
Even if we're creating problems in our lives.
That's a miracle.
We created that problem.
The creation of something is a miracle.
It's just which lens are we using?
It may be a miracle we don't like,
But it's a miracle.
And simple things.
I've told you in past podcasts,
When I look at existence,
It strobes in and out of emptiness about a million times a second.
It's just like a strobe light going back and forth that comes from nothing.
It melts into nothing comes to nothing,
Melts into nothing.
Every time it comes out,
That's a miracle.
Every time creation is formed,
It's a miracle,
And it forms around our collective energy.
We hold this universe in place.
We make it how it is,
And that's a miracle.
Now,
Who is we?
We talked about it in past podcasts.
It's the one coming through all the different phases of us.
Well,
Why has it created the world the way it is?
And some of us might call the world a mess.
Why has it created that?
Why has it created pain?
Again,
We've talked about it in more depth in prior podcasts,
But you can't have a story unless you have separation,
And separation always has pain.
When you're separated,
You feel separation anxiety or abandonment,
Or you don't feel fulfilled because you're cut off.
So pain always comes with separation,
And all of creation is a story.
It's a story of triumph.
It's a story of sadness.
It's a story of beauty.
It's a story of so many things.
It's like a 3D evolving painting,
And every painting tells a story.
So in order to have creation,
In order to have the infinite creative expression we call creation,
There has to be separation,
And what we're talking about now is the one in the giant story has decided to come through you and through me in a more clear way.
That's why you're listening to this podcast.
There's something that's decided it's time for clarity in your life,
Right?
Because you remember times when you didn't have that clarity,
When you didn't care to listen to podcasts like these,
But now you do.
So the one has decided it's time for clarity,
And it's inevitable.
It will happen.
I like the quote that I've quoted at other times in other podcasts by Ramana Maharishi.
He talks about you,
The oneness,
Making a decision,
And that decision will happen.
It's like such clear light back to Lao Tzu who says,
To the mind that is still,
The whole universe surrenders.
Well,
Your world surrenders to that still light that is you,
That light that goes through the still mind that is you,
The oneness.
So another angle,
Another way to look at it is from the ground up,
And that has to do with Ramana's quote,
And what he said is,
Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen.
Try as you may.
Whatever is destined to happen will happen.
Do what you may to prevent it.
This is certain.
The best course,
Therefore,
Is to remain silent.
I like that quote,
And it kind of dovetails with what Bhagavan said,
That if he holds an image when somebody requests something,
And it won't stick in his mind,
He knows it won't happen no matter what he does,
And if it does stick in his mind,
He knows it will happen no matter what he does.
So you,
The one,
Is that powerful.
When you decide something,
It will happen no matter what,
And nobody can prevent it.
When you're coming from that deep clarity,
Sometimes when the clarity is so great,
And your light is flowing so clearly,
You can have radical shifts in the universe right before your eyes that will surprise even you.
On my website,
I wrote a piece called miracles,
And you might enjoy that writing because it talks about things that I have personally seen and experienced,
Either through others or through myself.
And you can read so many other people's accounts,
So miracles are these days pretty accepted,
I'd say,
By people who have been at this for a while.
But still,
It was very startling to me because I grew up in a world where miracles just didn't seem possible,
Or not these days.
Some of the miracles I allude to just are kind of crazy things like once I was standing in line at a coffee shop.
I had just done yoga.
When it came to be my turn,
The barista handed me a glass of coffee,
And it blew up in my hands.
Coffee went everywhere.
There was a long line.
People were screaming,
And we were all a little bit shocked,
But I thought,
Well,
It's a bad cup.
So he hands me another cup.
Oh,
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry,
He has a rag.
He cleans me off,
And he hands me a second cup.
Boom,
It blew up in my hands.
The third cup,
He gave it to me in a paper cup.
And I went back a couple years later,
And he recognized,
He said,
Aren't you the guy that all the coffee cups were blowing up in his hands?
Well,
That bright light was flowing through me.
I did not expect this to happen.
I did not even think about bright light flowing through me.
I'd just been doing my yoga.
I'd been doing my meditation every day,
Just like you,
Just an ordinary guy getting coffee,
And boom.
Another time I had a necklace I got from India.
It turned into ashes.
I had it on my bureau hanging over a picture of a guru,
And I thought,
I saw this dust,
And I thought,
Well,
That's strange.
I probably should dust more often,
Because I'm getting a pile of dust.
I came back some days later,
And there was just a pile of ashes.
Now,
What did that mean?
Was that a real miracle?
I don't,
You know,
My own mind.
I don't know.
Another time in India,
But it is strange.
All these things,
They add up.
It's like when all those people came up to me and said,
This happened,
And this happened,
And this happened.
Well,
After 50 or 100 of them do it,
You start thinking,
Well,
Any individual one of these things might be a coincidence,
But all of them put together,
Something's going on.
Same with these occurrences that have happened even in my life,
And I'm just an ordinary meditating person,
Just like you.
I'm no big guru or anything.
I'm you.
I'm like you.
This is true for all of us.
You know,
Jesus said those that come after him would do even greater miracles than he did.
He wasn't saying,
I'm the big shot Jesus.
He was saying,
This is happening through me.
I think he just was as surprised as anybody.
Just like my other teacher said,
These things just happen and you don't even know that they're happening.
And the world around us is created through us,
Whether it's created problems or created brilliance and beauty and life affirming what we would call miracles.
It's happening naturally,
And we don't think a thing of it because it flows through us naturally.
Another time I was in India and I was visiting Sai Baba up and put to party,
And I remember some friends,
I was at a restaurant and they had tofu scrambled,
Tofu scrambled eggs,
And that was rare to get.
And I had some good coffee and I was eating my breakfast and these friends came up and they said,
We're going to go down to this museum a couple of blocks away because it has a picture of Sai Baba and ashes come out of Sai Baba's picture endlessly and they periodically just sweep the ashes off and we just want to watch them come out of the picture.
And by that time I had seen so much stuff like that and seen so many quote unquote miracles that the bigger miracle was to get a tofu scramble in India that I said,
No,
I'm just staying here and eating my breakfast.
So when you go to these different environments,
You start,
The value of it is you start to see possibilities that here and where I live,
You would not believe would be possible.
Yet they do happen.
It is true to the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders and it will form in the way you desire,
Your heart's desire.
Because I can promise just like Ramana said,
Do what you might to make it happen or not happen.
The one that is you is the whole universe and it's made of love and it loves you because you're part of the whole.
And so your deepest dreams will manifest.
They will happen.
How do I know?
Because you will make it happen and you are the infinite all powerful one that's shining through your incarnation.
You will make it happen.
There may be a drama around it.
It may be a process.
It may take an instant or it may take a lifetime.
I don't know the time span because there's a drama that you've created that I've created that's fun to live,
Even though at sometimes we don't feel that it's fun.
It is fun to live and we will play out our drama.
That is part of the miracle,
Our drama that we've created.
So enjoy it.
But your heart's desire will be fulfilled.
Guaranteed.
Okay,
I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Take care.
Bye.
