Hello,
This is William Cooper.
Welcome to Awakening Together,
Relaxing into happiness.
I trust you're doing well.
The nature and quality of our unencumbered being,
Free,
Blissful,
Joyful,
Happy,
Calm,
Curious,
Compassionate,
Loving,
Clear,
Connected,
And one with all things,
One with the trees and nature,
One with the world,
One with the universe and beyond.
When we're unencumbered,
When we're free,
When we're not clouded by fear,
Hurt,
And anger,
Anxiety,
Troubles,
Tumultuous feelings,
And thoughts,
We're expansive and wide and open and peaceful.
We trust everything because we are everything.
When we're not blocked off,
We're connected to everything,
And therefore we trust because we are everything.
When our being gets caught in our history,
And I say our history because sometimes we perceive ourselves as separate,
So we twist off and form different personalities,
And we look through those personalities,
And it's like a virtual reality machine,
And we start to believe this delusion.
Personalities are only made of thoughts and emotions,
As we've discussed before,
So they're just stuff we make up,
But we look through them,
And we believe what we see every time we fall for it.
Well,
There are so many ways in our awakening process to dissolve these delusions,
These personalities,
And one of the ways that I'd like to talk about today is a system called internal family systems created by a family therapist,
Richard Schwartz.
What he noticed when he was working with very troubled individuals is that they had many voices inside,
Many personalities.
One part of me feels like this,
But the other part of me feels like that.
On the one hand,
I feel this way,
And on the other hand,
I feel that way.
I feel anxious sometimes,
But other times I feel confident and courageous.
I think we all identify with that.
Many voices,
Many parts within us,
And there have been a lot of different therapies that have noticed that and worked with that concept.
In fact,
Richard Schwartz says that when we have gotten under stress or had problems,
Parts of us have twisted off and formed a subpersonality,
And that's why we have these various voices going on inside of us,
These different perspectives.
Sometimes these perspectives fight with each other.
Sometimes they harmonize.
Sometimes we feel very divided.
I had a teacher in India who said that we had a hundred different personalities inside of us.
We fractured into a hundred or a thousand different personalities.
Well,
That's what Richard Schwartz believes also and has observed.
Maybe you observe it inside of yourself.
In spiritual practices,
Often they call that monkey mind,
Just a racing mind because everything is fighting or taking off or having its own opinion,
And it's very distracting.
So I've taken some of what is a very profound therapeutic system called internal family systems,
And I've modified it a little bit,
Simplified it,
And I'm going to talk about a couple things now that hopefully you'll find helpful tools for your awakening process.
If you want to know more about internal family systems,
You can read Richard Schwartz's book,
Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts,
And it will flesh it out in a much more precise way and unmodified way than I am.
You can find that information on the resource page of my website as well.
And remember that everything we do in these podcasts are to help support your awakening,
But if you get really triggered and you need more help and you want to see a therapist,
Then you should see a therapist.
None of my podcasts are a substitute,
Of course,
For psychotherapy.
If you're interested in internal family systems,
Ask the therapist specifically,
Have they been trained in that?
Because sometimes they have and sometimes they haven't.
It's a specific field.
One of the terms that I like a lot in internal family systems is the term blending or blended.
And what Richard Schwartz is referring to is when the clarity of your free and open being becomes blended with your personality,
It starts to look through and get caught in the thoughts and emotions of your personality.
It becomes blended.
And he looks for ways to come out of this blending.
And really,
Isn't that awakening when it's done in a deep,
Thorough way?
So how to come out of the hypnotic trance of being captured by these various personalities within you?
The first thing to do is to notice them.
When you connect to anything in the universe,
It opens up and you become one with it.
When you listen to somebody and you connect to them,
Heartfelt,
They open up and they melt into you in some sense.
Connecting opens and dissolves everything.
Listening deeply from the heart to another personality will open and dissolve that other personality.
You have to get to know it.
Awareness is curative.
So situations will bring up various personalities within you.
Life itself will bring them up.
Or you'll feel them emotionally inside of you,
Just ticking away and being there most of the time.
You may notice times that you,
Without being involved in these different personalities,
You yourself are blended with some personality that you didn't even realize.
How would you know that?
Well,
You don't feel free or blissful or joyful or calm.
Maybe you have tension or anger or hurt.
Maybe you're experiencing some of that.
Whenever you're experiencing anything but your pure self,
Your expansive self,
Then you're blended with some kind of personality.
That blending in with some kind of personality may itself try to relate to a second personality.
You might be tense,
For instance,
And then try to relate to part of you that just quote unquote got its feelings hurt or feels anxious or has PTSD or whatever it is.
The tense you,
The blended you,
Starts to relate to another personality,
The anxious one or the hurt one or the fearful one.
So what to do?
Well,
Just like in meditation,
Just watch what's going on.
Just notice.
You don't have to do anything at first.
Just feel,
Connect,
And notice.
Once you've begun to notice these various personalities,
Or at least some of them,
You've become familiar with the possibility or the reality of these various personalities.
Maybe start with the one that you're blended with.
Say if you feel tense.
And what you're going to do with all of these personalities,
Starting with the one that you are blended with the most,
Is focus on one of them.
In this case,
The one that you're blended with.
And just get to know it.
Ask it.
Why are you tense?
And listen.
Maybe it answers you or maybe it doesn't because it's new for this personality too to be related to in this way.
So give it time.
You could ask it,
Do you realize that I'm here talking to you?
You just go with your intuition.
And if you talk to it and it talks back,
You don't have to doubt it.
This is just an access point.
It's not a court of law.
It's just an access point.
So if you ask the tension,
Why are you here with me?
And it answers back after some time.
I don't know.
You could say,
Well,
Do you know that I'm here?
Maybe there's a pause.
Maybe it's hours later and it says,
Or even minutes or seconds,
It says,
Well,
Yeah.
You might say,
Well,
How old are you?
Getting to know it like a person.
Well,
I'm three years old.
Let's say that just spontaneously comes out.
You just take it at face value.
It's not any kind of arguing over it,
But okay,
Three years old.
Why are you here with me?
Well,
I feel that you're going to do something wrong and get into trouble.
Oh,
So you feel anxious and you're trying to be very careful and kind of coach me as I go through life.
Yes.
Yes,
I am.
Continuing the conversation,
You might ask that part.
Well,
You're three.
Do you know how old I am?
Now,
This might be a surprise to the part because it never thought of you as two different personalities itself.
It didn't think of that either.
So it doesn't know and it might say,
Are you three?
And you know,
I'm whatever your age is.
I'm 30,
I'm 40,
I'm 50,
I'm 60,
Whatever.
That might be a big revelation to that part.
Now,
As you get to know this part and you have your dialogue and you let it know about you and you know about it,
At some point it will be a good time to own that part,
To step into that part more fully.
You are the three-year-old now.
You are the three-year-old and you're looking around and you're feeling like three years old and you feel tense.
I'm going to make a mistake.
I'm going to get in trouble.
I have to make sure everything's okay.
You feel like that,
At least to some degree.
The older you can then talk to you,
Because you're really both of these parts.
You're a multiple personality after all.
The older part of you can talk to you and say,
Hey,
You're just a child and thank you so much for trying to protect me by not getting in trouble and you've been tense all of your life trying to make sure we do everything just right.
But do you know that I'm older than you?
I'm 40 years old,
50 years old,
Whatever.
So I have more skills than you do.
Would it be okay if you just relaxed and let me take over?
Or do you want to be tense all the time?
Because that's a lot to ask for a little three-year-old boy and the three-year-old might just sigh in relief and say,
Wow,
Yes,
Take over,
Please.
And let that three-year-old relax.
When a personality begins to relax and let go,
Its tension lets go and as that all lets go,
Slowly it dissolves.
It breathes deeply because you're breathing and you're being from that perspective of that three-year-old.
As it lets go,
It relaxes and disappears and it's gone.
Now you're unblended.
You're free and that part of your personality has left.
It's dissolved and when it's dissolved,
It no longer exists.
That's a better way of saying it just no longer exists.
So this is a good way to go through your various personalities and let them dissolve.
What are they dissolving into?
They're dissolving into your higher self,
Into the infinite because the infinite is joy,
It is relaxation,
It is well-being and a child,
When it lets go,
Just likes to be open-hearted and let go into peace,
Joy and well-being.
So at that point,
You're integrating with your whole self and you're going from a thousand different personalities to less personalities.
Now there's one less and you can go through the different personalities as life brings them up or as you see them in your meditation practice in the same way and let them dissolve.
But it's a way to get within you and own them and let them look around and update their files and let go of their burdens into the big you,
The whole you,
The oneness you.
Sometimes you might come across a personality that doesn't want you to work with the younger personality.
So get to know that protector personality just like you would the younger personality.
But get to know it first so that it can get to know you and trust you and you can listen to it and understand what its concerns are.
Once you know that personality better and you have an access point,
Step in and own that personality and look at life from that personality's perspective.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say there's a young personality that was created when you at a young age came under some trauma and you became afraid to be free and let go and be happy and you wanted to make sure everything was just right and you did it correctly.
Maybe this was at school the trauma occurred or at home or somewhere else.
Well,
A protector part formed to protect that innocent three-year-old that was frightened and was trying to make sure everything was okay because it was afraid that if that younger part actually relaxed and let go,
Maybe it would be happy but it didn't have the skills because it was only three years old to navigate through life.
It did not know every right solution or action.
So this protector part just didn't even want you to talk to that young part because if the young part relaxed and opened up,
It would not know what to do.
It would not know how to carry through the day and interact with people properly.
So that whole personality constellation was buried somewhere.
So as you got to know the protector part and you asked it what it was concerned about and then it told you that,
You might talk to that protector part and say,
You know,
How old do you think I am?
And it doesn't know when you tell it your age and let it know that,
Hey,
I'm much older than you and I've had some deep experiences on my spiritual path.
I used to think that when you connected to something,
You had to know what to do next.
Now through my practice,
I've discovered that connecting is everything.
In connection,
I am one with everything.
In total connection,
There's total oneness.
And in total oneness,
I am everything and there's total trust.
So I don't have to know what to do in every circumstance or any circumstance.
Life will show me because I am life itself.
You can feel this within me.
This is my experience.
So I have this experience now where connection is enough.
Often people stop themselves from connecting because they feel like they have to know what to do once they connect.
So they stop themselves and they never become one with the universe.
I've learned through my practice that connection is everything and everything flows from that connection so I don't really have to know anything to do.
It just happens.
So protector part,
You can feel that in me because we live in the same body and I want to ask you,
This is an experience you have not had but I have had.
Would you like to give up your protectiveness and your boundedness and all the pain that comes with it?
And just give it over to me.
Let me run this part of the show.
And because I can,
Relax into that.
And once the protector part does start to relax because we've developed a relationship,
It feels me,
I feel it and it's opened up,
I can feel its view of life from its perspective and it can feel my experience of life from my experience and my perspective and it can melt into that and let go and release and relax and dissolve and therefore allow me access to the other part.
And the other part can also feel that,
The young part and I can have another dialogue with it and I can ask it if it wants to continue to feel anxious or if it realizes that I'm older,
Have more experience and it also in turn can let go,
Relax and release into me.
All parts once they develop trust,
Do want to release and relax and let go of their pain,
Open up into joy and oneness.
And when they do,
They reintegrate and dissolve back into being.
They reintegrate and now there's another less painful personality in the system until everything is oneness.
All personalities are made of pain and when those personalities relax and let go,
Dissolve back into oneness,
They release an enormous amount of energy of joy,
Well-being,
Peace,
Happiness,
Love that's been pent up as the energy of these personalities has been used for pain,
Hurt and anger.
So there's an immense light and love and joy that's released in the reintegration of your personalities that will happen naturally over time.
So these are interactions any of us can do.
They're very simple in a way.
To summarize,
You find an emotion within you that's coming up where life has evoked and you treat what's going on over to the side like the anxiety or the hurt or the anger as a separate personality and you ask it,
Do you know that I'm here?
Do you mind if I sit with you?
Can I just be with you?
You're really upset and that's okay but I want to be your friend.
How old are you?
How long have you been around?
You ask it questions.
Make up your own questions.
Get to know it.
If it's helpful to you,
You could journal.
You could use a stuffed animal and let that be the personality.
Whatever helps you be in touch with these feelings,
Maybe even just in meditation.
But when that part of you reveals itself and you're talking and it's opened up,
Step into it because it is you.
It's a part of you and own it.
Look at life from its perspective which is now your perspective.
From that place,
Connect to the infinite you and notice that it's okay.
Have a dialogue.
Hey,
I'm older than you.
You're only three.
I'll take over for you.
Is that okay?
Do you really want to spend a lifetime in tension and pain or could I take that from you?
Well,
What was the burden for this three-year-old child isn't a burden for you.
You're fine now.
When you look around the room,
Everything's safe and good.
That three-year-old was trapped in a world where things weren't good and that's what it remembers.
When it hands that over to you,
It can be relieved,
Relaxed,
It can breathe,
Maybe it can do a mantra or make sounds or stretch.
Whatever comes natural and is relaxing and as you feel more and more relaxing and relief,
That personality can begin to let go and as it lets go,
It disappears and reintegrates back into the whole.
So you can do that.
The only reason I brought up protector parts is in case you find yourself blocked or you find two different personalities at war with each other,
Just treat them as two different personalities and work with the one that's most up front and is blocking the whole situation the most.
Work with it first and when it relaxes and lets go,
Then you'll have access to the second one.
That's it.
The advantage of adding this process to your toolkit is formally maybe we're in meditation and we're watching things come up and letting them dissolve in the heat of our awareness or the light of our awareness and possibly that's enough.
But sometimes when things just don't dissolve,
We need another tool.
They need to breathe and they're not being accessed.
Awareness is curative but sometimes that awareness needs to be within the thought complex or the emotional complex.
It just needs to be more aware,
More thorough,
One with it.
When awareness becomes one with everything,
Then everything dissolves into it.
But sometimes we're a little too distant and this helps you to have another entryway and to become one with everything around you in a sense,
Especially with the personality and the thoughts.
Okay,
I hope that was helpful and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Take care.
Bye.
