100 Ego dissolution, Awakening, PTSD - Q & A

First live session since India.  Discussion around awakening, experiencing yourself as Light, Love, Peace, etc and letting go of the rest.  How to gently dissolve the ego.  What is awakening like?  Dissolving PTSD and other emotional blocks that just do not release.  Why Baby steps and how?  How and what melts exiled emotions?  Etc.

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

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Welcome everybody to our live session Awakening Together Relaxing into Happiness. Good to see you all. Good to see you, Kate. Good to see everybody else here. This is our first live session since Jennifer and I were in India. We just got back March 1st, a little bit early because unfortunately my father took a sudden turn and he passed away. We came back early. So we're still working with all of that. But I will tell you, thank you Kate and thank you everybody. What I would like to do on this podcast, on this talk, is this one by the way is number 100. So if you've listened to other ones, you've got a good background in what we talk about, which is awakening. And regardless if you've listened to this podcast or not, perhaps you have questions about your path or your process or anything like that. So this would be a good time to ask questions and we could discuss them. If I say something that is helpful, great. And if I don't, then just disregard it and trust yourself mostly. Well, completely trust yourself. This is an opportunity for me to say a few things and just bounce them off of you and see what feels right to you, really. When something comes to you, just type it in and that will guide some of our discussion as we go along. But what comes to me today is really light, is awakening. And awakening is centering in yourself. You always are yourself, right? We're here right now. We're always here. And as we sit still long enough in the body, the highest level of experiencing ourself through our senses is through light. We just feel ourselves to be a brilliant light, which has the qualities of joy, happiness, love, well-being, peace. So you might experience yourself as any of those things. It's all really light. And through your intuition, you could follow the light deeper than this creation. And it's infinite. It's infinite potential for everything. And you can, I don't know, want to use the word feel because it's not through the senses, but you can experience yourself as the infinite as well. But in this creation, when we come down in this creation, we experience ourselves as light and all these other experiences as well, including our emotions. Awakening is very simple in one sense. You experience yourself as light or joy or peace or well-being, and you let everything else go. Or it's not always so easy to just snap your finger and let everything else go. In our other podcasts, we talk about some ways to do that, but it's also maybe more balanced to experience your center and also at the same time, experience all these things that you've created your life. And those things that you've created could be various emotions, could be hurt, could be sadness, could be anxiety, all these things that we create when we feel cut off from ourselves. Those are still part of our human experience. And yeah, they're painful, but staying in our center, it's okay. And really, to experience all of us, we have to inhabit all these feelings as well. I don't mean take them as the truth of who we are, because they're not the truth of who we are. They're things that we've made. We make emotions, we make thoughts, we hallucinate a thought, we hallucinate an emotion. If we don't like them, maybe we just let them go. Or maybe we see a therapist and work on it and then let it go. But they're not us, because let's say we do see a therapist and we let it go. We're still here. We're just not burdened by these constructions that we've made, these emotions and these habits and these parts of our personality. We just let them go. Awakening starts with realizing who we are. We're light. And I mean experiencing that. And how do you do that? You just sit still. It's simple. You sit still for a while and let things settle out. That's called meditation. And as things settle out, you experience yourself as light. But what confuses people sometimes is when they sit still. When you sit still, it's hard to repress things. So all these objects that we've created in the past, our hurt, our fear, our depression, our negative thinking, all the thinking that we no longer agree with, but we created it long ago. If we haven't discreated it, it pops up too. So we might feel peace, which is who we are, or joy or happiness. And at the same time, because we're not repressing them, we feel some of these emotions, hurt, fear, anger. Some of these thoughts come out also, and we feel a whole bunch of discordant thoughts. So when we meditate, it can often be very, hmm, doesn't feel good. Often, because the mind is racing and the feelings are coming up. But why is that happening? Because they're attempting to expend their energy, unwind, relax, and melt back into what they originally were, which is love, peace, well-being. There's only one energy, that energy of light. That's all there is. So if you're going to have hurt, you've got to take light and turn it into hurt, which we can do. We have the ability to create things, and we do that. When we don't feel safe, we'll often create hurt. You know, we don't feel safe because things happen outside of us, even within us. But basically on the deepest level, we don't feel safe because we've cut ourselves off from ourselves, and therefore we don't trust. In ultimate trust, there is no unsafety. There is no, there's only peace because we trust. So the key to discreating or dissolving these things, it's kind of a back and forth. And on some of the podcasts I talked about on post-traumatic stress disorder that I think all of us have on some level, life is stressful. And you can have PTSD when you go through repetitive low-level stresses over and over and over, but that's called life, right? So sometimes we meditate for years and we still have that anxiety, or we still have that hurt, or we still have that anger. And we wonder why. Well, because it's locked into our system. And in the podcasts I did on PTSD, which they're on all of the platforms, you can listen to them, everything's free, so you can go back. And these podcasts aren't designed to be the last word on anything, but they point you in a good direction, I think, and you can take it from there. But on PTSD, as well as any emotion that's locked into your system, how do you let it go? Well, if you push it too hard and too fast, nobody likes to be pushed. So they lock up. It's very important to take baby steps. Go slowly. Just go slowly. Be with your emotions. Don't repress them. Be with them. Love them. But you go slowly. And getting back to trust, you, what Peter Levine says, you pendulate or you swing towards something you can trust. A tree, maybe nature, trees, or an animal, your cat or your dog, even a good memory. You swing towards that and you let that part of you that's locked up just receive a little bit, whatever it wants. You don't demand, oh, you have to be fixed right now because I don't like you. You're painful. No, then it'll lock up. You own the pain. I am anxious. Not that I'm a person that's working with anxiety. Not that. It is I am anxious. Me, I'm anxious. Now I know on the deepest level, we're all way beyond that. We're not anxiety. I know that. But as a device, you own it because it's something you've created that you've locked into your system. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to work with it now. So, you own it. I am anxiety. And the anxious part, you let it breathe in what it feels like breathing in. When, if it connects to a tree, for instance, maybe it's only able to receive just a little bit of nature, a little bit of peace today. I had a guru or a teacher, Prajnananda, and he would always say at the end of the Kriya practice, he's head of the international Kriya. His teacher's teacher was Yogananda. But anyway, and it was one of the lines that I worked with, but he at the end of every practice would say, notice what's changed today. In other words, you're not going to fix it all at once, but yet do something tangible to open today. What is it? What did you notice? What did you do? Feel it. Because what dissolves these blocks, quote unquote blocks, or anxiety or PTSD is receiving. That means feeling something, experience something, experience some nature, experience some music, experience some art, experience some love, experience some niceness towards yourself. We can start. Have you noticed sometimes some of the voices in our heads, I'll speak for myself, can be very harsh. I mean, I was trained to be a good student, a good worker, a good this and that. So I was good, but I pushed myself hard. And I would criticize myself if I wasn't quick and if I wasn't sharp. Well, those tools were good to make widgets fast, but not so good on the inside to take care of myself. So I can start to let that go. That part of me can start to receive nature or love. I can receive my own love. So what's the bigger picture? As we let go a little bit on the inside, we can trust a little bit more on the outside. And as we trust a little bit more on the outside, we can let go a little more deeply on the inside. And back and forth, we pendulate. Ultimately, in awakening, you experience the complete beauty of everything. Of oneness. You are everything. The world is you. The universe is you. You experience that. We all experience that because we're all one. It's like the one comes through. I had an Indian man once say, I said, well, how can we be one? There are all these individual people. How can that be? He said, well, think of it like a hand, your hand. You have individual fingers that sense different sensations, but they all unite in the hand and it all goes up into you. You can experience all of them. Well, the infinite can experience all of life through all these different fingers. You are the infinite coming through a particular finger. And as you get clearer, you can often experience the other fingers, what they're experiencing. We get more and more psychic or more and more clairvoyant as our unclarity melts away. So about India. And again, if any of you have any questions about anything, and it could be on a completely different topic, just bring them up. We'll talk. But as far as India, why do I've been there 14 times now, average of about three months per visit. And why so long? Why so often? For me, I'll say coming from the West, the United States. When I go to India, I feel so much light. There's less clutter in the air, less mental constructions floating around in the air, in the atmosphere, in the vibration. Because that's true, it's so easy to let go and melt into the light that's always there. And what do I mean by melt? I mean, the parts of me that are blocking myself, it's easy to melt into that. And Kate asks a very good question that goes exactly with this topic. Kate says, how to gently tame the ego. And I'm going to discuss that, but I want to read Frida's comment also so that I can just know what we've got before us. Frida says, you are speaking to my experience in this moment. When I started the path of awakening, there was an initial joy and lightness. I became very aware of my sensitivity. For some years now, my past traumas come up in feelings and memories. Although I know it's not deeply me, it still holds me back and living life fully. I start to see how I'm doing it, but I cannot make it let go. But I cannot make me let it go. And it feels so slow and as if there is no time, yet I don't see any other way than to try to soften more. So Kate, you and Frida are asking a similar question, and it's such a good question. It's really a crucial question, right? Here's the thing. This is something we all come across. I would say to supplement what I'm about to say, for those of you that have not listened to the past podcasts that I've done, there's a lot in them that will support what I'm about to say. And because there are a hundred of them, we spend more time with it. The ones on PTSD, there's four of them, I think, three or four. And again, that's just the beginning. But what it speaks to is that some of these things get locked in our system and they just don't let go. And it's more like a muscle cramp than it is a thought. And so you could meditate forever. And if you had a muscle cramp in your calf, that's not the right approach to let that cramp go. Meditation isn't always the best approach. It's partially the best approach, but maybe there's some other things to do as well. The first thing that I can say for both Kate and Frida, how to tame the ego, and then Frida goes into more specifics. What we call the ego, it's our coping skill because we have cut ourselves off from ourselves on some level, not completely. See, all of you right now, probably at times, can feel peace or happiness or joy. There's only one joy, only one happiness, only one peace. And that comes from oneness. That comes from the infinite. It's not an emotion, it's a quality of being. And that is sneaking through and shining through the cracks. It's shining around these other objects that we've created called emotions and thoughts. We've created them, but we haven't known to discreate them. So they're still, it's like space junk, meteorites and all sorts of stuff floating in outer space. We have all sorts of stuff floating on our inner space. So the only way this inner space can dissolve, these objects can dissolve first is from the place of oneness, which is any peace that you find within yourself. That is the oneness, any joy, even if it's just a little flicker, put your attention there for a while, get used to that. That is who you are because if all that space junk, all that emotions, if all those thoughts melted away, they would just reveal more of relaxation and peace, which is what you are. It's just that you're covered up and a lot of your energy and attention is being drained by all these quote unquote emotional space junk. When there are emotions floating around on the inside, they create lots of thoughts because what are the thoughts? We hallucinate thoughts, we create thoughts, and we do that in order to try to manage these emotions that are floating around that we don't know what to do with. So we get a lot of thoughts going on because there's a lot of emotions underneath them going on. So the way that you work with that is first, no resistance. You hear acceptance, right? This is such a complicated subject because I'm going to address it in maybe some different ways. First, you start with where you are and maybe that means you have to manage some of these emotions. Maybe it's good to see a therapist or maybe it's good to talk to yourself or to journal or to go for a jog or things like that. There's a hundred different things you could do and that's to just calm things down a bit and manage them so you're not hurting others or yourself and you're relieving a little of the pressure. Meditation can start to dissolve these things as well. Often it can dissolve them completely but if they're really stuck then we'll get to the PTSD part in just a minute. But meditation is always good. So first start with that. The second thing is as things calm down a little bit or maybe mixed in with these other techniques to manage things, what you're ultimately looking for is resolution to dissolve these things so there's nothing left to work with or to manage. You're looking for them to dissolve. The only way they can dissolve is if they're completely trust and can receive that trust. Any tension that completely trusts and can receive that trust will relax and in total relaxation there's total dissolution, total dissolving. When you get a massage somebody rubs your your tensions. If you relax and receive and receive and receive suddenly your tensions are gone and there's nothing left to work with. That tension is gone out of your body so there's nothing to manage anymore. It's gone. Same with your emotions. As they receive they dissolve. Now they only can receive if you allow them to be in the forefront. You have to own them. I am anxious, not I'm somebody who has anxiety. That's like, you know, I'm fine except for my stomach kind of hurts. I'll work on my stomach. No, I am my stomach. I feel horrible. That's what I mean. Own it. Why? Because first of all it's true. You're not repressing anymore. It's I feel bad because you do. If you let yourself you'll find that all of us have some stuff that doesn't feel good. Let it up. I feel bad. When it's on the surface that's the only time it can breathe in relaxation. When it's disconnected over to the side and not allowed to fully exist you can't work with it. You can just manage it because it can't really breathe in fully because it's not allowed to. It's not allowed to come to the forefront. It's over behind. I keep it at bay so it can't connect to oneness really. So I have to own it. I hurt. I hurt all over. I feel anxious. I'm so sad. That feels terrible. That's why we don't do it so much. But then baby steps. I started in this earlier in this podcast saying you can't force yourself. You have to just do a little every day. You ask yourself because now you're the hurting stomach. So it's not like you're even asking the hurting stomach. You're asking yourself how much can you receive? What would feel good to you? What would feel good to me? Well maybe if I sat outside in the sun for just a little while. How much? Not very long. See you don't have any preconceived notions like I need to be on this program and I need to do one hour of yoga every day and three hours of meditation and go for a jog and do those are good things and maybe that does work for you. But when this part comes up what I'm saying is you ask it which now you're owning so you ask you what do you want and you listen. Sometimes that part has never been asked so it doesn't know. It just comes to the forefront and I don't know. I don't know what I want. What would feel good? I have no idea. So you might ask questions. Well would it feel better or worse if we went outside? Just kind of yes or no questions. Well I guess better. Okay. When you get outside you say does that feel better? Yes. Well then can you soak it up a little bit? Would you would that feel since it does feel good can you just enjoy it a little bit? You breathe it in. That part that's hurting will start to let go a little bit. So this is baby steps. You don't try to have it let everything go all at once. It's just what can it handle today? In the final analysis when you get close to awakening when you are really deep into this it doesn't get better. It often gets worse because you're right up against the deep emotions. But I will tell you this it does feel better in other ways. It feels better in other ways because by that time you've usually dissolved some of this stuff inside of you. A bunch of it has dissolved into trust. In pure trust there's only love and peace and well-being. So there's less of these objects floating around. So in that sense it feels a lot better. It's like wow this is a big one but you know what I don't have a hundred other ones floating around like I used to. So it actually does feel better in some ways. But on that specific big one you really feel it intensively. So Frida says how you describe the baby steps resonates. Thank you. Thank you Frida. So these baby steps Muktananda in his yoga says just do what feels good to you. If a stretching pose, if you only feel like stretching halfway just listen to yourself. Only stretch halfway. See the goal is to feel good not to accomplish a task, right? It's to open up. Yoga means union with God. Union with oneness. Union. So union is complete openness. It's like in your massage you're completely open. You're one for a moment after that massage or during the massage. Same with yoga. Just open. Don't push. Same with your inner world. You just open. Just what feels good. And your inner, your baby step might say, your hurting stomach might say that's enough. That's enough. That's enough. As you get closer to awakening the light is so brilliant and these are not metaphors. I mean the light is so brilliant. You know how when you see a bright light and your your eyes have been closed or in the dark it's you can't see. It hurts. It kind of hurts. Well your emotional body kind of hurts as it opens. Like the last barriers are opening and it kind of hurts. You don't want to do it so fast. So you listen and the part that wants to open even in the beginning stages long before awakening you listen to yourself and you open what feels good today and you just trust that that's enough. Now as you do that more and more guess what dissolves. The troubling part of your quote-unquote ego. See we all need an ego to get through life. To say hi to people. To get to the grocery store. We need a personality. There's nothing wrong. They're good. Personalities are good. The troubling part is within our personality if we're hoarding hurt, fear, anger and by hoarding I mean we just haven't known what to do with it. Maybe it's stacked up inside when we were small or if you want to go with past lives way back and now they're all dissolving. I have to say one thing. Kate says I seem to cry a lot but not in sadness. I like that Kate. Me too. I cry both ways but yeah there's a lot of joy out there and there's a lot of profoundness and that brings tears. I do cry that way a lot. Just tears. You know when my father passed away on March 1st we were in India and we we didn't know he was going to pass away. He was sick and they said well he looks like he's getting better and then suddenly he took a turn for the worse and we were coming back in a week anyway and we thought things were fine. That's what they were telling us but then suddenly they said whoa no it's not looking good. Could be days or could be a week so we quickly changed our ticket and tried to get home but it wasn't so easy to get home. It took us two days and there weren't any seats available so we had another day or two of waiting. So I was sitting on my porch in India with the holy mountain Arunachala next to us and all this beauty in the air you might say or in the vibration and unexpectedly to me you know what happened? Brilliant light and I could see my father laughing and happy and his body had been in a lot of pain and he had some emotional stuff going on. A lot of pain inside outside. Brilliant light and I got a blessing from my father. It was so so powerful. Pure light. That's what you are. That's what causes me to cry. Okay that kind of thing and that I suspect is what causes you to cry. My example is a dramatic one but it's the same light that shines through the trees, through the cats and the dogs, through nature and art. Maybe just listening to some beautiful words causes you to cry. Kate says I agree. Yes that's your essence. Let everything else go. That's called awakening. Does awakening have to wait until everything else is gone that you've let it go? No. It's a progression and we awaken deeper and deeper on our path. We let more and more things go but these awakened masters they still have stuff to let go. Somebody, thank you and thank you. Gurus, they still have things to dissolve. You are your own guru. You're awake right now. Somebody asked Ramana about awakening and he said he was, that's where I go in Theravada. I'm lied to his ashram. He was like equivalent to Buddha in southern India. He died in the 1950s. Very powerful. But somebody said to Ramana, what about awakening? Jennifer says I love Ramana. Jennifer's traveling and she came to India for the first time. Very powerful. We had a wonderful time. But somebody said to Ramana, tell me about awakening. Why are you awake? What do I do? And Ramana said the only difference between you and me is I know that I'm awake. Wait for it. He says, and you think you're not. I know that I'm awake and you think you're not. And when people told me that before, you know, I'm struggling. I'm pulling myself up by my own bootstraps. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm meditating for all I'm worth and everything. But now it makes so much sense. That part of you that I said that we all experience inside of you, even if there's a world of hurt somewhere in there, you'll feel some peace. There's a sliver of peace somewhere or joy or calmness, or just maybe quiet somewhere, a nugget. That's you. Everything else you let go of. And if you focused on that one piece, that piece, that little part of you and you stay there, that's your center. That is who you are. If you just kind of stay there, let your awareness stay there is what I mean. You're awake and you claim it. You're awake. Does it mean you still have things to let go? Yes. All those other nuggets of emotion. Yes. Those you still have to let. It would feel better to go through life if you let those go. Right. But all the gurus have that. Jesus had that. You know, he was out in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, letting this stuff go. And Bible talk, that means an extremely long time. I'm guessing years and years and years and years. And if you've listened to my podcast, somebody asked me to describe when Jesus appeared to me and I wrote on it on my website. If you go there, you can just you can read it or go to the podcast that has that in the title. One of the things he showed me that he said, you know, you and I are the same, except for you have these four or five little black dots inside of you. If you let those go, you'd be totally the same as me. That's the only difference. And he showed us our nervous system together, an overlay one on the other. And it was exactly the same, except for these four or five black dots. Same for all of us. Well, what else are we doing in this life? But let those black dots go. Those are those things that we're talking about, that space junk or those inner emotional blocks, we call them. But you're awake. You just have some dots also. And we've got this whole lifetime and then the next lifetime and the next lifetime to let those four dots go. We can do it slow or fast. There's no hurry. So take your time. But if you feel to go quickly, go quickly. It's not like there's a moral imperative, you know, there's you only have one life and it's to wake up and blah, blah, blah. No, that's what they say. But I don't think so. Enjoy your life. You don't have to wake up in this lifetime. Enjoy it. That's the drama of not being awake. Now, the problem in your in our dramas, the only reason we believe we're an individual self is because we're cut off from the oneness. And in being cut off, we have separation, anxiety, abandonment, pain, hurt, and we're angry deep inside. So there's a lot of pain and suffering. Buddha was right when you're cut off. So sometimes that motivates us, does me, you know, tired of it. So I'm quite happy to go a little more quickly. I think a lot of you are and have. I know a lot of you already have. It's just nice to listen to people talk about what you already have and are experiencing. So that's why these live sessions can be good. But back to these baby steps. And if you have any more questions, bring them on. But about these baby steps and PTSD, I alluded to that a little earlier. Peter Levine, one of the early workers with PTSD, he has a great book, Healing Trauma. Another good approach, by the way, is inter-family systems. It's a completely different approach. I have some podcasts just touching the surface on those as well to point you in that direction. You can Google and look on YouTube and get a lot of information on this stuff. The trick is if you work on your personality, not to get so involved in it to think that all you're doing is releasing blocks. You're not your personality. So don't get lost in that forever. Just use it as a way to gently, gently, gently let your ego relax. Like Kate was talking about, gently dissolve your ego. But back to this PTSD and baby steps. So you pendulate, Peter Levine would say, that is you own your hurt. You go very slowly. Ow, I hurt. I have anxiety. Very slowly. Maybe I'll just journal and that's good enough. But then on another day, maybe you pendulate your anxiety. You let it go outside and take a breath of its choosing, a small breath. You ask, does that feel good? Ah, yes, a little bit. Then soak it up. Feel that that does feel good. In that soaking up to the degree, that little bit of soaking up, it dissolves a little of the anxiety. That's what soaking up goodness does. It dissolves because what is the goodness? That is the oneness. And what is the part that's melting? That's the illusion that you're not the oneness. That's what anxiety is. It's the illusion that you're not oneness. So when you breathe in a little goodness, like you hug a tree or you hug your cat or your dog and you breathe it in, that dissolves something because you're one. So you pendulate, you just pendulate. You own the anxiety and then you let the anxiety swing like a pendulum to something you can trust. As you do that, you start to loosen up on the inside because more of the anxiety is dissolved. As more of it's dissolved, you can breathe in more goodness. As you breathe in more goodness, you become clearer on the inside because more has dissolved. As you become clear on the inside, you can see more clearly on the outside. You can experience more clearly on the outside. When you experience more clearly on the inside, you can see what you experience already and sometimes it's the other way around. You experience on the outside so that lets you heal on the inside but it's a loop and as you do that more and more and more ultimately and you can just melt into the infinite the oneness the nature of the universe and beyond which the universe is you and so on the final analysis you trust because who are you trusting yourself and you're gonna take care of yourself you are the universe in ultimate oneness and ultimate you can't have oneness unless you have ultimate trust right you can't you can't you have to receive it ultimately you can't receive things ultimately unless you've first taken those baby steps and you've owned everything in your world because now it's on the surface like we just talked about and now it can receive everything which is the universe in that reception everything melts again you don't do it all at once you do it in baby steps and then at some point maybe maybe a lot happens all at once also does that make sense am I I'm making some sort of sense so that's what the past hundred podcasts are about thank you Kate says yes thank you Kate that's what our past 100 so podcasts are about so if on some level maybe it doesn't all make sense maybe none of it makes sense go back and listen to start with number one and move forward they're pretty easy they're fairly short in general some of them are a little bit longer and then we'll meet every so often and do these live sessions I can't always meet every two weeks but often we do and that's a good time for you to bring up your questions on your practice so all of this is very simple find the light that you are somewhere inside your peace let everything else dissolve how do you let it dissolve you let it come forward let it breathe in baby steps a little at a time let it breathe in love peace and well-being let it get what it wants ask it what do you want I'm hurting so what do you want I want nurturing what would be nurturing to you journaling would feel good hugging a tree would feel good going for a jog would feel good looking at the sky lying in the grass putting walking in the grass with no shoes walking on the beach and receive it as it receives just like in a massage your tensions get worked out and they dissolve they're gone all masters that's what they talk about let go first you have to accept in order to let go and often our focal point is in going in the wrong direction I would feel good if so and so would say hi to me they hurt my feelings I really need to get them to be nice to me that would be a good thing and I hope that can happen but sometimes it doesn't happen what's more important than them being nice to you you be nice to you even if they're not you be nice to you you say hi to yourself you feel how good that feels regardless of what the other person does that other habit that says that we need somebody else to do something that's what forms our personality the pathological parts of our personality that's what forms it that's a hypnosis it's not true we don't need them to say hi I know you already know this but on some level we forget so Frida says I'm gonna read some things and just touch base here Kai says hi just joined and happy to be here welcome thank you for joining thank you so much Frida says it makes sense to me I listened to one of your podcasts that's how I found my way here oh thank you Frida one of my podcasts about PTSD she says well great remember those are just a beginning to alert you of what's going on YouTube Peter Levine or some others and you can go into it more deeply if you need to I don't want you to get lost in the weeds though better to stick with your meditation and gently massage out these other things then to overdo the psychological aspect but it's good not to underdo it also so I know it's tricky so I was saying it's very simple awakening tune into the part of you that already I want to say it this way I heard a teacher a famous teacher Buddhist teacher and that said about awakened people said you know there's something about them they just stay in their center all the time no matter what that to her was the crucial part of awakening you stay centered in who you are well I'm gonna add to that just a bit you always are centered in who you are you always are who you are I mean you might be distracted and caught up in your dramas in your internal emotions or your thoughts or your perceptions your delusions things that aren't true but in the core is always you that never leaves when I say find that little part of peace or joy or love or whatever that's you it's always there and when all the other stuff covering you or distracting you melts away all that it it's nothing changes it just simply expands because your attention isn't distracted by all this other stuff going on inside it turns out you're there all along that's why people when they awaken they start laughing sometimes oh because before awakening chop wood and carry water after awakening job wouldn't carry what it's all the same you're there the whole time you just do your life duties is that you're not distracted by your dramas as much when you're awakened and as I said earlier you still may have some more nuggets to let go of even after you are quote-unquote awakened who says that you're awakened only you if you know who you are you this light inside of you you find you it's there all the time and you just we're mostly identified in our culture with our personality with all that we're not with our constructions with our hypnosis and so on so as long as we're centered in that we're not awake because we're just hypnotized we think we're like chickens or something at a stage show and we think we're a personality but after a while of meditating and sitting still and just looking within you find this piece inside of you and once your focal point actually does chain you keep your attention there you just that's the natural thing to do that is your central central focal point once that happens you're awake even if you have a thousand blocks inside now as these blocks melt we might call that more fully awakening because you're you're flowing more gracefully in this world you're exuding more light because it's not getting soaked up by all these inner dramas but you might be awake well before most of those are dissolved so don't postpone like oh when I get all those taken care of then I'll be awake so I'll really work on them now and I'll postpone till later no now you you're just as awake as you'll ever be you're just covered up with stuff some of you some of you are completely radiant beings right now most of us are in the middle so as I started to say it's very easy find that light inside of you and just get used to seeing yourself as that and don't get caught up in all these internal and external dramas start to let them go all masters talk Jesus would talk about why then that's another word for letting go right let go of that stuff that was his big thing forgive and then what his other big thing is you love everybody you're not caught up in your dramas because you've forgiven them what's left that light love so express it flow with it that's his thing that's it that's the path others describe it in more detail but find your own path what works for you you're your own guru right yes Frida says to relate to ourselves as light is very interesting to explore yeah if you let all your thoughts go if you go to a therapist and you let a thought go you're still here right if you knit let so you're not your thoughts if you let enough of them go all this left is light maybe a few thoughts popping up here and there and I don't want to fixate on light because for me in the later stages I would see more and more light earlier maybe it's happiness or peace I remember when you were a kid did you ever just look at the sky and just happy for no reason or maybe you do now or you look at art and for a moment you're happy or you walk on the beach or something I don't know happiness peace these are all qualities of being qualities of being these are the energy that this be that our being exudes peace happiness joy well-being love calmness patience well when we soak that up in our personality what happens our personality let's go it releases it relaxes we calm down because now we're flowing from our Center rather than the fear and hurt and anger of being separated by not flowing from our Center when we're not flowing from our Center we have a lot of dramas and that's where we flow from hurt fear and anger anxiety you can tell if there's any tension in your body that's something that is not centered it's okay you can still be awake with tension in your body as I described but who wants that life is there to bring it up meditation is there to bring it up when you sit still it comes up why is that a good thing because that's what's required to heal and let it go you have to see it has to come up so that it can breathe in peace and wellness and happiness and then it can relax release and let go if it doesn't come up it can't breathe it can't exist in the now in order to breathe in goodness in order to relax so to heal you have to see it you have to feel it you and to feel it it feels bad you wouldn't have repressed it if it felt great so it usually feels real bad and people shy away from that maybe we try to relax we take a deep breath we begin to relax that's got its place but in the end you got to go deeper and feel it and that's not relaxing as it releases it's relaxing okay I hope that was good for you thank you for the opportunity to talk with you and it's so nice to see you we'll meet again April 1st in the old days by the way that was the first day of the new year back in the old Druid days so that's when we're gonna meet again 1030 in the morning and thank you Kate thank you all I look forward to talking to you again and I'll post this by the end of the week thanks a lot take care great questions and thanks for listening in oh if you follow me on insight timer you'll be notified every time I do one of these live sessions or post a podcast okay take care bye