55:14

86 Layers Of Awakening, Monkey Mind, Losing Awakening- Q & A

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

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Continuing the last Q & A podcast another great discussion about the experience of awakening including the awakening experience of one of the participants. Also about meditation and the monkey mind, layers of awakening, the experience of awakening and then "losing awakening", shadow work, Jesus's experience leading to awakening, worshiping God, cultural aspects of religion, etc.

AwakeningMeditationMonkey MindShadow WorkEgoIntuitionSelf LoveHealingTrustLightCommunitySelf InquiryJoyOnenessJesusGodReligionBoundless JoyEgo DissolutionEmotional HealingLightness ExperienceSpiritual GuidanceCommunity SupportAwakening ProcessSpiritual ExperiencesGuidedSpirits

Transcript

Hello everybody,

Welcome to our podcast Awakening Together.

I trust you're all doing well.

Good to see you.

Great.

So let's start.

Along the way maybe you'll have some questions,

Maybe you have some questions now about your path of awakening or anything related to your meditations,

Your awakening,

Really anything.

If you do just type it in the box and that will give us some direction to talk about today.

While you're thinking of things I will just pick up where we left last time.

Lynn had asked me what it was like to be awakened and awakening is a process,

That's how I experience it.

I talked a lot about it.

What has happened as different blocks have melted away,

I start to feel my being more fully and I feel creation around me more fully or the world around me more fully and it feels like joy.

So I feel constant joy.

I also at the same time feel any unresolved blocks that I haven't fully taken care of yet so I can feel joy and pain and suffering but there's always the fundamental joy at all times.

Joy and light and happiness,

Well-being.

When I look at things they strobe in and out of existence like a let's say a thousand times a million times a minute I just see it's like a strobe light and things come in and out of existence so fast you can hardly see it but I do see it all the time and I also see the light that everything else is made of all the time.

It glows,

It's all the same thing.

Your being is the same as my being is the same as the tree or the grass or anything else that's manifested because it's all made of consciousness.

So I don't mean it just the tree has consciousness I also mean it's made of consciousness and you can see it.

You're made of consciousness and you experience consciousness both things.

The creation is the flip side of the infinite.

Everything manifested is the infinite that's been slowed down and condensed into an object so you can see that.

You can experience that and I do all the time.

Somebody also asked way back about intuition what could they do to develop their intuition and what I said back then which I'll add right now is as you as your blocks or the things that are deluding you melt away there's just oneness and when you're one you feel everything and that's called intuition that's the word we use for intuition if the person next to me is feeling something I can feel it because we're the same to the degree that my separation is melted we're all one.

So what would be the a good practice for developing your intuition?

I would say meditate every day sit still and let the silt melt out let the dirt melt out and by dirt I mean those things that are blocking you let them let them melt out of your system let them settle even if they don't melt out they can settle down on the ground because you know doesn't it make sense we are everything so your being is always there that's who you are if you let go of everything you would still be here that's your being so that's happiness well-being that's also intuition it's oneness it's deep trust because you are everything so of course you trust everything but at the same time anything that's unresolved is still there it's unresolved so you feel that too so in the process of awakening you feel all of it more and more and more you start blocking out things less and less and less you spend less energy blocking out stuff that you don't want to feel and you just start to feel more and more everything everything everything poof now you've got intuition poof now you're seeing light and you're experiencing love and well-being you just also experience that which is left to resolve and in this opening you connect to everything so I did a podcast on connection a while back and if any of you haven't listened to the podcast there they're on every platform under awakening together and they're on insight timer so you can listen to all of them and they're sequential although you can listen to any one all by itself Amanda says I keep thinking of questions but then I know the answer before I finish typing is this being awake yes yes Amanda that's one you know awakening is everything and as you melt more blocks away you'll find that you do know everything you really do I think I told you I was with my guru and I was also Jesus appeared to me and all these different things well I went through a long period I'd say started maybe ten years ago it still continues but for about ten years I didn't talk to any of them they told me not to talk to them they said don't talk to us even Jesus don't talk to us why because the answers are within and if I keep trying to reach and get it from somebody else maybe I don't listen to myself so there is a happy medium of course they only told me that after I'd asked a million and one questions already and I had advanced already far enough that I wasn't going to crash into a wall and burn it was very painful but all the questions are within me and they're within you Amanda so it's an interesting phenomena you get ready to ask a question and then suddenly the answer is in your head it appears you could still ask it if you want and just check out to see if triangulate say hey does this other person have the same experience as I do that doesn't mean everything but it is something but out more and more you you'll trust yourself and that is awakening awakening is full trust and full knowing because we're we're really in a hypnosis a hypnosis that we don't know that we have to rely on somebody else to tell us and for a time that is true we're so blocked we don't know but you know often the person that we ask they don't know either they just read more books than we have and although the answers may be in books what we talk about here is through direct experience yes I reference books but when I say that I can see the universe strobe in and out of existence that's not from a book I see it so when people ask me questions just like as they ask you questions Amanda and you open up more and more and more it's like you're looking at it you're experiencing the answer so they may have read some other book that was a little off-kilter and they might go well that book says this or that and that's wrong what you just said well it's like you're looking at it you're experiencing it so you go no I think the place where the book went off track might have been here or here or here and you can speak that way because you're actually seeing and experiencing the answers it's like looking at a tree somebody could say well the leaves on it are green and you could say no well they're green in the spring but right now they're yellow they're not green because I'm looking at that tree so yes you have the answers within you now another good reason to ask a question though is it gives us something to talk about and what else are we doing so any of you don't make what I just said as thank you Amanda Amanda says I like that and finish my sentence to don't don't let what I just said discourage you from asking questions like oh now I'm asking questions so that means I don't know or I'm cutting myself off no we're just playing we're having a good time we're talking right and if you don't ask questions you can't talk we can't talk so it's just the nature of what we're doing right now but when you're on your own before you ask a question to somebody else stop for a while trust that you know the answer and give it some time to appear because it will drop down from the sky that's an analogy of course or a metaphor I will tell you something strange the first time I went to India I had such profound experiences and when I got back a very strange thing started to happen for a while I would have a thought especially and it would have a word in it that I hadn't heard for like 20 years it was a very unusual word it wasn't one particular word it was just a variety of words and it felt like it wanted to come out of my mouth and for some reason I wouldn't say that word I just said no I'm not doing it it was like a weird word and when I wouldn't say it almost every time within five minutes somebody would have a sentence with that crazy word in it it was like it did drop out of the sky and it was gonna come out of somebody's mouth one way or the other it was very strange this went on for about two weeks I remember my little nephew we were sitting for dinner and I was not gonna say whatever this word was supercaliasticexpialidocious whatever some crazy word no real substance to it but just crazy so I didn't say it I just I'm not doing this suddenly my little nephew is at dinner and this crazy word comes out of his mouth over and over let's see Lin says hi William and everyone can you talk about how I can better release the monkey mind I have such a hard time following my thoughts yes then that's such a good question Lin you ask all of you ask great questions thank you first of all there is no quick answer to that question because what the monkey mind is let's look at it for a second it's a lot of thoughts going this way this way this way this way this way Amanda says in your last podcast you talked about making your own God is there a value in finding people with a similar view of God or does it just strengthen the delusion that your God is the right one okay that's another good question I'll finish with lens question the the prints real tiny here so that's why I jump in just to read it to make sure it's not what everybody's asking but Lin as far as the monkey mind if you look at your thoughts they're always fueled by an emotion I'm nervous I'm scared how do you know what the emotion is don't let yourself think the thought and I'm very quickly you'll feel the emotion that's behind the thought like I'm not gonna think then suddenly you might start to feel anxious like what do you mean I can't think I mean that's another thought you don't even have that just stop thinking by willpower you'll feel anxiety or something and if you sit still enough that thought is basically frozen anxiety or hurt or anger looking for a solution solution for what for the emotion underneath it so as you sit that thought can start to melt as it melts away it reveals the emotion underneath it anxiety or anger or fear or something anger hurt now as that melts away as you sit long enough and that melts away you're gonna find a tension underneath that it's actually in your body you'll find it you feel attention now that tension is where you started to separate from yourself and go up into your head your emotions remember our hallucinations so are your thoughts they're hallucinations we make them up that's how they can melt away and we're still there we we craft them so you'll find attention when you put your attention on that tension that just doesn't go away all by itself it releases lots of energy when you keep it in awareness and consciousness and that's good but it there's a second step that tension itself that's a part of you that's twisted off and put to the side it's like a repression and it itself needs to breathe in the qualities of your being which are the same as the qualities of creation and consciousness love peace well-being so you find that in yourself first and if you can't find it find it in nature you can't find it in yourself find it in nature if you can't find it in nature find it in a painting find it an art find it in music find it somewhere and let that tension and if you can't get to the tension let the emotion and if you can't get to the emotion let the thought breathe in that whole complex in other words let it begin to breathe in let it receive what it's looking for and that's peace and relaxation and resolution it doesn't have to have intellectual resolution necessarily although that can be helpful it wants infinite resolution coherence with the universe oneness a feeling of and an understanding that all is okay so when it breathes that in and it soaks it in it can start to dispel release and relax and when it does that whole complex of that portion of the monkey mind disappears now there may be still three or four they're like trees you know they have roots and branches and leaves but there might be three or four or five actual trunks and roots systems and as one melts away there still may be four more but then and as another one melts away there still now there's only three more and it starts to slow down and feel better the reason why it's difficult though is we get so captured just like we do with our TV programs we get so captured in the drama of our hallucinations we forget to just sit still and let them go and let them dissolve because we want to know how do they come out how do they resolve themselves what do they do we're interested we're on the edge of our seat if I think this if I do that if I do this if I change that happen if I do that well we get so captivated we don't let the thing melt and in that captivation we utilize it more fully and make it stronger so that's the what humans often do because we're so quote-unquote as they say in India diluted and they don't mean that in a bad way they just mean we're cut off from ourselves we're looking through a lens that is not accurate and therefore everything we see is not accurate like Einstein said the mind that creates the problem cannot solve it so the problems coming from a place that's created it which is coming from a place that's separated off from itself so the short answer is you have to sit still and let it settle out sure there are other practices and if sitting still doesn't work find another practice that does but the most powerful one is to sit still why because then you can see all the stuff that's trying to pull you away and you can let it dissolve you're not tempted to get so involved in the middle of it if you're if you're in the middle of life's drama walking around you're talking you're you're interacting with people there's no way you could you're captivated by it now you gotta wait until you can extract yourself and let this stuff melt away in the final analysis you've got to become more captivated with loving yourself than you love your thoughts I'm talking a lot about this land not because of you it's I mean you asked the question and this is a common human experience but everybody experiences this so that's why I'm spending so much time on it and for those of you that haven't again the podcast go through all of this a lot so just review those now I hope that answers or starts to answer your question Lynn if there's something I haven't touched on or a different angle just type that in and I'll get back to it Amanda you talked about you said in my last podcast I talked about making your own God is there a value to finding people with similar view or does that just strengthen the delusion that your God is the right one no that no problem with your typos Amanda Amanda said sorry for her typos phone and typing on the phone well here's the thing this is a bit of an unusual subject I did talk about it in my last podcast I told you all that as a child I used to pray every night to Jesus and to God and I was a child so I completely trusted that my prayers would be answered and they were because I had complete trust there was no blockage it was just the the power of a child a child's heart and you've all remember being a child in your heart and when you would connect to something very powerful or you connect to a child now very powerful so it moves the universe and then later I talked about in a recent podcast how Jesus came to me and talked to me and showed me so much love in real life but what Jesus knows and what you know and what every you don't get Jesus said the Father and I are one oneness that meant no Jesus he got killed because people thought he was blasphemy for me doing blasphemy like I am God he didn't say that what he meant is I have disappeared into God in complete devotion only God is left and he was such a clear channel that miracles happened this is true it wasn't special of him he said everybody after him will do what he did in greater or not everybody but those that there would be people that would do what he did in greater he was if somebody would give him a compliment and he's they say good teacher he said who I'm not good God is the good there is no me everything good comes from the infinite from God well in oneness when you connect to God there's only one God there's only one God and when you connect to that God it's beyond even God God is a manifestation in our creation let's I feel much more comfortable with the word infinite and I don't even feel fully comfortable with the word infinite because it's beyond everything in creation as well so that is nothing because only things exist that are in creation our limited minds can't comprehend what's beyond creation because we can only comprehend what we know so you can't comprehend something that doesn't exist yet everything comes from it how you know how do you describe that well it's the same with our conception of God because that's in creation so we go beyond even a conception of God but in my podcast I said you know you create your own God because you find because you need an entryway into the infinite and if you have a God if you're if you're afraid of a mean God one that hasn't learned to forgive people and will burn you in hell and fire and burn such stone and Scott an attitude don't worship that God because you'll be shut down and just like in first John John says perfect love casts out fear and then he goes on to say fear is to paraphrase him that's you shutting down and be separating from the love of God fear is you shutting down so do not worship a God an image of God that shuts you down if you've been abused by a man and you're scared of men do not worship a male God do not do that I don't see how that's gonna be helpful see the infinite doesn't care what our little minds it's just because what are we talking about oneness and that's connection it doesn't matter how you connect it all that matters is that you do connect fully and completely it doesn't hurt the infinite feelings which by the way is you that's awakening when you let your stuff go that's what Jesus did the father and I are one he wasn't quibbling around lamb me little Jesus I got my feelings heard and how you know I need to how did Jesus deal with the Bible of his time called the law and the prophets or the Tanakh which also included the wisdom literature they had a death penalty for adultery with the adulterous woman he just picked up a stone and said hey you without sin cast the first stone he said no he let it go so he was not bound to any kind of temporal thing Sabbath death penalty if you break the Sabbath he said how many of you would go out and save one of your sheep on the Sabbath if it was lost the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath he chucked all that out not because it was quote-unquote as we say these as Christians say the Old Testament no no he didn't know anything about a New Testament that happened minimally 40 years after he died yeah no he would it was the literature the religious scriptures of his time he just he stuck with himself his heart so Lin I'm get I mean Amanda I'm giving you a long answer but the answer is find a portal to the infinite that works for you whatever opens your heart don't get stuck in that place if you evolve past that portal just like Jesus evolved past his portal he was Jewish he evolved past it don't get stuck there but sure being with people of the same mind you know Buddha said Sangha was very important he said teachings right teachings right teachings were important knowing your Buddha nature was important and being with people that could support you was very important so be with people a support system very important it doesn't strengthen your delusions only if you get very mental about it like look deeper all religions only point to something deeper it's not the religion itself they're helpful just like all spiritual practices are helpful but they're not the experience of oneness they're just helpful avenues for you to experience oneness just like Buddha and Jesus and Krishna and everybody else okay I hope that helps type in a little bit more if I if I kind of skirted around and didn't answer I tried but maybe I didn't Marty says what helped me the most was struggling with the God question was having a profound experience and meditation yes I felt this love pour in to and out of every cell of my body yes words don't do it justice I was one with everyone and everything roots trees people yes I have come to believe God is infinite loving consciousness yes trouble is I can't get anyone to understand I understand it Marty we all walk our own path I guess and people have to get there on their own anyway it changed my life and opened my heart I finally love myself which is the best gift I've ever received well that's beautiful Marty enough said I mean that is the absolute truth of it I've been a lot of people here understand what you're saying what you experienced actually and that's the difference from talking and experiencing you experienced and that's so beautiful that's my experience too it's all of our experience if we just sit down long enough and let stuff settle out Angie gives thumbs up to Martin and Amanda says that's perfect it's the situation of looking at the hand instead of where it's pointing yes Amanda and we're back to talking about Amanda's question which is getting stuck with a concept of God yes God is an image that word is just a label right it's just a label if you stop at the label you stop you trust your heart and that's what Buddha and Jesus and everybody talked about that's what Marty's talking about Amanda says thank you Marty see Marty that I love it when you guys say stuff and I love your questions Len Amanda your comment Marty ah this is available to everyone I trust everybody listening in knows that and if you don't know I'll say it Marty just said it this is available to everyone nobody spent you don't worship Jesus to for him to take care of stuff you know back in the early days in the nomadic days the the hobby rue it was a tribe out in the desert we we later called them the Hebrews but they were called the hobby room and all the surrounding people they had a practice most of them that if they made a very bad mistake and they knew they had to pay for it but they didn't want to they would kill something else and say well that paid for it I will kill the fatted calf and that will atone for me I'm sorry but I don't want to die but we'll kill the the calf and we'll eat it too maybe we'll cook it up but we'll offer it to God other times they would also say no no no too sacred we just offer it to God we won't even eat it but they would atone and you know later they said well that's what Jesus did he got killed and he atoned for all of us well I don't know it was the practice Jesus it was the culture of the day and we do get locked into our viewpoints but Jesus did just what all of you are doing he had troubles he had the lost years I think there were about 18 years in the Bible where you don't see what happened to him and he says I went out into the desert and I had all sorts of stuff come up he sat still he felt his junk it hurt it felt terrible and any of you that have meditated for any set period of time it's hard to sit still people would rather do anything but sit still mostly it's painful because you can't repress stuff when you sit still well he all of his stuff came up and you can read about it and it was horrible felt like Satan was attacking him but after that what happened to Marty is what happened to Jesus he could see clearly his stuff burnt away and it's true for every single one of you and me this is the human experience period we are one we're like the infinite comes through us and as we let go there's only the infinite just like Marty described the infinite around us and through us and we disappear don't be freaked out if that happens and then your mind comes back and it cuts you off again and you because often people will say oh I lost it I lost it no you didn't lose it what happened was there's still some unresolved stuff that is now coming forward to dissolve and while it's coming forward before it has dissolved it's so thick that it feels like I'm disconnected from myself in the infinite but it's just that there's still more to let go of what else y'all thinking about these days while you're thinking about maybe a thought or a comment you know all this for all of us is very strange right suddenly there's a miracle I bet Marty when you're sitting there meditating then boom you're like what the heck this is amazing I'm love and everything else around me is love Wow I'm experiencing that I bet you're like me I bet you were a little bit shocked in a good way I mean just like Wow just what they said just what I've read about just what I've heard it is true miracles when they happen in your life as they have for me and probably many of you you don't expect them you don't try to have them they just boom it happens and I say that because I had another strange thing that just started happening this week I like to get up early in the morning and walk on the beach I get up about five o'clock and it's pitch black so I'm walking down the beach and I walk for two or three hours every morning and it's pitch black and about I guess about three days ago suddenly I got hit with a beam of light there was light everywhere it was very bright and I turned around it like because sometimes there's another person out there and it's so dark they have a flashlight a high-powered flashlight and I thought somebody had hit me with their halogen light or maybe there was headlights because it's there's a road in the distance maybe powerful headlights and I looked around and it was pitch black there was nothing back there I kept walking and boom again bright light I turned around nothing black bright light today out this morning I'm walking nothing it's just black it's fine problem because I don't really focus on it but then suddenly booth flashes of bright light again we are light we talk about that it's true we're light as you sit down and meditate it's just not so strange in a way it both is strange and not strange to be who you are if you don't mean to you don't try to it's just that when you sit down long enough the stuff settles out and then you start to experience what's underneath all the crust Marty says from he typed this a little while back he said yeah all this stuff quote-unquote stuff is tough I had to do a lot of shadow work yes good for you oh my god I was crying profusely I had no idea that kind of love existed yes Wow I understand Marty I love that you did a lot of shadow work I've got a podcast coming up soon on psychotherapy psychotherapy isn't awakening but not good it doesn't help to overlook obvious things and let them go and however you do it it whether it's formal psychotherapy or any other way shadow work is very helpful and yes you are that infinite love and that crying profusely is you re not reuniting with that's just you experiencing yourself and you had no idea you were like that and as Jesus would say say what do you mean you are like that there is no you it's only God and that's what I mean to God as you pure love Gary says so you could feel a connection with God and then feel a disconnection again because of unresolved issues or emotions absolutely see there is only one and it's not a matter of you don't go away the one you're always there your being let's call it that you know it gets tricky when we're trying to compute converse as humans but there you're always there or we could say God is always there there is no you there's only God Yogananda says it's not right to say I am God better to say God is me God has become me there is no me but when you jump back it's like all things in life you do something starts to happen you don't necessary after like years and lifetimes of habits of looking the other way it's not suddenly after one experience they're all gone just because I awaken doesn't mean now I can speak German if I need to speak German I have to learn to speak German just because I'm awake and doesn't mean if I had a rock in my pocket the day before and I didn't take it out that the rock is gone to get the rock out I have to take it out just because I'm awake and if my psychology is like a rock in my pocket and it's blocking me just because I became awake doesn't mean my psychology is fixed I have to do something Gary I mean Marty went and did some shadow work probably still doing some because it's a matter of you just keep cleaning and cleaning and letting go and letting go and becoming what you are see there's a lag time the personality is just a shell it expresses what you are and when I thought I was hurt fear and anger it reflected that it takes a while like a large ship to turn around and to reflect love peace and well-being that I am so Amanda says Gary that has been my experience there's a story about a traveler who builds a raft to cross a lake then realizes he cannot keep it to climb the next mountain we need different things at different stages beautiful Amanda yes that's beautiful yeah all of our practices they help get us across the river our experiences give us glimpses our experiences aren't really a practice like our experience that Marty shared about experiencing the infinite love that's not a practice that's just that's a clear seeing of who he is but practices help get us to these clear seeings but we got to let him go and just like our concepts of God doesn't mean they're wrong or anything it's just they're a portal and we go beyond Jesus didn't stick at the Jewish conception of God he went he disappeared so completely God was him he experienced God he didn't think about God he experienced God big difference so yes Amanda that's a beautiful story Gary says I understand like layers yes it's like layers that's how I experience it too and as one layer goes as it dissolves another layer comes up the next deeper layer comes up but I start to feel myself more and more and more more and more consistently through the day as more and more layers are gone just like you Gary Marty says and let's not forget the ego it can cause a lot of suffering if you are unaware of it yeah yes Marty so true the ego how we view ourselves that's where we get trapped it's just a hallucination it's like I used to work a lot with hypnosis as a psychotherapist and if somebody let's say they I did a stage show and that's not typically what I did I did working with anxiety and stuff like that with my hypnosis but let's say I was doing a stage show and I told somebody there were a chicken and they believed they were a chicken it would create a lot of suffering for them you know as they walk through life they were they'd be afraid people would want to eat them and cook them and this be terrible it's true with any viewpoint it's just a hypnosis now in in real hypnosis people do believe they are chickens at time at the end of the hypnotic experience you just dissolve their hypnosis you say you ask them to let it go Stephen Walensky wrote a book the trances people live he's a psychologist and he says when people come into my office as a psychologist I don't hypnotize them they're already hypnotized I de-hypnotized them well that's what the ego is it's a hypnosis right so we deep hypnotize ourselves and there earlier in the series there I have podcasts on that so if you haven't listened to those podcasts you might consider it Angie says many many layers Gary our true nature is buried under a lifetime of learned behaviors possibly trauma social conditioning etc so true Angie so many layers just like Gary said and which is interesting there is a place in the awakening process where it might not seem very spiritual or elegant but after you've done a lot of work you do have some of these conditionings and habits you work on it you dissolve it you see through it you do a lot of things but at some point when it gets thin enough and you're ready you just have to say stop no I'm not doing this anymore no stop that's not you know it's not elegant it's but it's true it's an old habit it's an old momentum and when it doesn't suit your being anymore at some point you say stop you don't do that early on probably because maybe there's a lot of shadow work that still has to be done or a lot of underlying issues that still need to be resolved and just saying stop would be basically like repressing it but you'll know the difference when you've done the work and it's just a wisp but it's still controlling a little bit of your life your thoughts you just stop you let it go so Angie yes a lot of conditioning you just stop it Marty says yes spot-on Gary I'm peeling off the skin of the onion and it can be very painful emotionally yes because the skin is made of pain and it does not dissolve it wouldn't be skin it wouldn't be repressed if it was happiness right we don't repress happiness we only repress pain so when it comes to the surface it's what the same reason why we were arrested is still there it hurts that's why we got rid of it in the first place so again go back to earlier podcasts everybody if this is of interest to you we talked about that Amanda I second the amazing results of shadow work yes decades of being stuck melted away on a couple of weeks of consistent work yes yes Amanda very good Wow you guys Wow Marty Gary it's a very painful process but the payoff is amazing more joy peace and love in your life oh my goodness yes you guys so that's the bottom line we're all teaching each other that's the why the name of this podcast is awakening together you are far more awake than I am on certain levels on some levels maybe I've had an experience or two that is helpful for you to hear but nobody's ahead of anybody you're all great teachers Gary says Marty that will be awesome yeah I agree with Marty Gary that the payoff is amazing and really when I was more into my ego because as you noted its layers a lot has melted off for me it was so painful before still got some left I couldn't have imagined the difference of what life really is compared to my deluded view of what I thought it was that was reinforced as Amanda said by society because every what is society what is culture it's a cult it's a lot of people thinking the same thing and why are they thinking the same thing and reinforcing each other because they're all cut off they're all addicted to their thoughts none of them are seeing their ego and some are some some are you are more and more people are it's been a huge change have you noticed one of my teachers Bhagavan used to say he said you know it's gonna get really bad when the light comes into the world more because everybody's gonna see how bad it always has been for a long time and it's gonna appear like chaos but it needs to be chaos for the whole thing to break down and release the innate energy that's in society but it's gonna look real bad it'll get better but it's gonna look real bad and it will be real bad so yes to you all and it is a painful process but the payoff is amazing both on our personal level and on the level of society our families now in family therapy the first thing you learn is if somebody changes and they want to get better the rest of the family unconsciously they're used to how you used to be so they fight to keep you from getting well that doesn't make them bad or mean it's just a hundred percent of the time that's what happens because they're used to when they say something you say something back in a certain way and when you quit doing that it throws them they don't know is something wrong is something wrong so they try to push you back into your own way of being same with society our families everything but if you stay centered what happens is the structures around you start to change your family starts to change and heal so stay centered Angie says we're waking up and those awake are walking each other home absolutely Ram Dass used to say that a lot Marty says yes Angie Ram Dass was right that's what we are here for yeah Ram Dass what if you all haven't listened to Ram Dass I've met him and he's passed away and Krishna Dass and Bhagavan Dass and beautiful people there they're guru Neem Karoli Baba but listen to Ram Dass his podcast he's so articulate you can get them on the be here now network for free or just maybe Google Ram Dass podcasts or something like that and he's probably got 200 of them really beautiful really beautiful he's so articulate Marty says thanks for all of you being here and thank you William much love everyone Wow thank you so much everybody thank you for such good questions and all of your heart take care everybody bye

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William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional CounselorTallahassee, FL, USA

4.7 (11)

Recent Reviews

Alice

March 5, 2025

always great talks. i’m noticing the more awake i become the more people are drawn to me. one girlfriend that i’ve know several years has said to me several times in the last year, I just wanna hang out with you. i just want to be around you. and yet other people that are toxic or energy drainers move away from me. it seems like the more awake i become the more i attract positive or high vibrations and i repel or push away low vibration. does that seem right to you? 🌞✨💛🌞✨💛🌞✨💛🌞✨💛🌞

Thérèse

November 3, 2024

Soo much good stuff, cumulatively with all of these podcasts and Q&As. Are you still doing them? I'm listening 2 years out from them I think. The breathing suggestions you gave for me in one of your replies is helping. [I am mentioning it here b/c I don't see a way to reply to your replies of reviews lol I love the idea that awakening is "Me without my problems" My ego still wonders about where the "Thérèse" part goes? Will I miss her? Or do I feel like Thérèse without her problems. I guess more will be revealed. Also interested in what "Shadow work" actually is? It was mentioned 2x on this podcast and I've heard of it before, but not clear on what it is and when/if it is necessary. Continuing to put one baby foot in front of the other..

Alexandria

October 22, 2024

Wow, good questions and comments along the way. I just try to remember that for whatever reason, I chose to be here now- in my skin- and I chose to have this experience of life and some day I may understand the “why”. Time is relative to this experience and releasing my pain may be helping my ancestors, my family, my friends or helping release us, as a collective, right? I don’t need to know why at the moment … I am trying to take one day at a time and some days and thoughts and feelings are harder than others. Thank you William for speaking this out.

Michelle

December 15, 2022

Wonderful. Thank you 🙏

Jennifer

December 14, 2022

William, I love this so much! Thank you for your insights. Very powerful! Be Well My Friend! ~ Jennifer

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