Speaker 1: To really experience your awake ground of being is not
Speaker 1: that hard. It does not take that much time, but
Speaker 1: it takes what anything else takes. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good Wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is locke Kelly, a meditation teacher, psychotherapist, author,
Speaker 1: and founder of the Open Hearted Awareness Institute. As a
Speaker 1: licensed psychotherapist, Lock has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians, and
Speaker 1: practicing awareness psychotherapy in New York City for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Locks book is Shift into freedom, the science and practice
Speaker 1: of open hearted awareness. I also wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: we've heard from some of you who had trouble with
Speaker 1: the survey last week, so we've tweaked a few things
Speaker 1: and it should be more streamline now, so we would
Speaker 1: really appreciate it if you try to complete it one
Speaker 1: more time. Thanks so much for being willing to participate.
Speaker 1: It means a lot to us. And here's the interview
Speaker 1: with Lock Kelly. Hi, Lock, Welcome to the show. Thank
Speaker 1: you great to be here. I'm really excited for this
Speaker 1: conversation because I don't remember where I came across your work,
Speaker 1: but I was immediately very intrigued by the way that
Speaker 1: you are presenting awareness. The way that you're presenting i'll
Speaker 1: use the word mindfulness. That's not exactly what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but it's in the neighborhood. But the way you're going
Speaker 1: about it is very different than most things I've read today,
Speaker 1: and I was very intrigued by it and have really
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading the book and doing some of the exercises
Speaker 1: that that you have, and we're going to do a
Speaker 1: couple of the's in the show. But before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let's start like we always do. With the
Speaker 1: parable of the two wolves. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins, And the grandfather says, is the one
Speaker 1: you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking
Speaker 1: you what that parable means to you in your life
Speaker 1: and in the work that you do. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: that's great. As I looked at this parable, I thought
Speaker 1: of the way that traditionally in UH theology, parables have
Speaker 1: always had four interpretations. So I would say, first one
Speaker 1: would be a literal level, second would be we'll call
Speaker 1: it a mental level UH or a psychological level, and
Speaker 1: then maybe a moral level. And then the fourth would
Speaker 1: be a spiritual level. So the one that I'm going
Speaker 1: to focus on is the spiritual level. And by spiritual
Speaker 1: I don't mean transcendent. I don't mean something bypassing the
Speaker 1: other levels. It's actually that which includes the other levels.
Speaker 1: So from from here I would say that the two
Speaker 1: wolves and the one who feeds them is actually of
Speaker 1: the psychological, mental, moral levels, and it is part of
Speaker 1: what I would call the small self or the ego identification.
Speaker 1: And that so, so anytime we're in a kind of
Speaker 1: dualistic mind, we tend to divide things into good and bad,
Speaker 1: and we tend to feel like there's someone here who
Speaker 1: is the one who needs to choose or needs to feed,
Speaker 1: and it is that system that continually keeps us at
Speaker 1: a level um of a small self. On one level,
Speaker 1: certainly there are things, you know, positive thinking is better
Speaker 1: to feed the negative thinking, etcetera, etcetera. But what I'm
Speaker 1: proposing is the possibility that if we drop out of
Speaker 1: those three parts of ourselves and into a larger, more embodied,
Speaker 1: spacious dimension of consciousness, that will see that there aren't
Speaker 1: actually good and bad parts. That often what's called the
Speaker 1: bad or evil part is a scared part or herd part,
Speaker 1: a protective part, and that they're all energies and they're
Speaker 1: when they return to their natural condition. Uh, they all
Speaker 1: will serve your true nature or true self or open
Speaker 1: hearted awareness. That's a great way to transition into your work,
Speaker 1: because I would say the main thing that your book
Speaker 1: is about is the idea of awareness. You say that
Speaker 1: we've been searching for an amazing life source. Although this
Speaker 1: essential nature is beyond our ability to accurately describe in words,
Speaker 1: We've given it many names truth, God, peace, source, love,
Speaker 1: true nature, enlightenment, unity, or spirit. But the simplest name
Speaker 1: is awareness. Help us understand that a little bit more. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: in some ways, um, we tend to think of awareness
Speaker 1: as something between us and the world. So I am
Speaker 1: aware of the lamp, or I'm aware of another person,
Speaker 1: And therefore the the way of knowing or identity is
Speaker 1: actually tied up in conceptual thinking. You know, you might
Speaker 1: uh think of I think, therefore I am. So it's
Speaker 1: almost as if we create a thinker, or a thinker
Speaker 1: is created by looping patterns of thought, emotion, and ego function.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a type of identity that's almost
Speaker 1: like there's a mini me or a little entity. It
Speaker 1: feels like there's an entity in our head behind our
Speaker 1: eyes that isn't even our personality. Or are um, you know,
Speaker 1: ego functioning. It's actually a little looping a constellation that
Speaker 1: when it relaxes, instead of having a thought based identity
Speaker 1: and a thought based way of knowing, we can discover
Speaker 1: an awareness based way of knowing. And this awareness has
Speaker 1: been called source of mind or spirit, and it's a
Speaker 1: it requires that we step beyond belief that we that
Speaker 1: we discovered directly a kind of spacious, alert, non thought
Speaker 1: based awareness that's not sleepy, and it's not dissociated. It's
Speaker 1: actually inherent within us. But it's learning how to tune
Speaker 1: into this awareness. And when we step out of the
Speaker 1: little mini me and into an awareness based knowing and
Speaker 1: then include our thoughts, feelings and sensations from within, there
Speaker 1: seems to be a kind of freedom from suffering and anxiety,
Speaker 1: uh continual searching, a perpetual dissatisfaction. And so this awareness,
Speaker 1: because it's not a thing, we've missed it, we've we
Speaker 1: pass it by because it's empty and yet awake. And
Speaker 1: yet so my whole book is really how can we
Speaker 1: actually palpably directly and intentionally learn how to feel this, no, this,
Speaker 1: be this, and then live from this. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things you just said there. I mean, at
Speaker 1: one point in the book you you yet a line
Speaker 1: that I really liked, and you said that awakening is
Speaker 1: not about simply believing that is all as well. It's
Speaker 1: about shifting into the level of mind that knows and
Speaker 1: feels all as well. And I think that's you know,
Speaker 1: on the show a lot we talked about positive thinking
Speaker 1: and how in a lot of cases it just doesn't
Speaker 1: it's not really effective. You know, you're trying to believe
Speaker 1: that all's well, but there's another part of you that
Speaker 1: feels and knows that's not necessarily the case. So I
Speaker 1: like that. And the other thing that I like about
Speaker 1: what you're doing here, if I understand it correctly, is
Speaker 1: that traditionally, in practices that talk about this idea of
Speaker 1: a fixed self, that that we've got this we've got
Speaker 1: this concept of ourselves is a separate thing, and that's
Speaker 1: the source of a lot of suffering. It tends to
Speaker 1: be presented as you're going to go on this long
Speaker 1: journey and you're gonna do all this work and all
Speaker 1: this meditation and all these practices, and if you're really lucky,
Speaker 1: someday you might get to feel that. And what you
Speaker 1: are proposing and doing in the book is saying, no,
Speaker 1: this feeling, that awakening from that limited feeling of being
Speaker 1: a self is available right here, right now, and that
Speaker 1: if you get the proper you you call them, and
Speaker 1: I think the tradition of which you learn this call
Speaker 1: some pointing out instructions, I point out how to see
Speaker 1: this thing. Your your contention is that we can start
Speaker 1: to experience some of that stuff now, not after meditation.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, the premise I almost present it like
Speaker 1: it's a scientific approach, which is to say, the hypothesis
Speaker 1: is a wake awareness or your true nature is, as
Speaker 1: many of these traditions say, is already here, equally available
Speaker 1: to each of us as each of us, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be created or developed. Therefore, if that's so,
Speaker 1: then do we have a set of experiments to give
Speaker 1: you that you can directly see whether you can for yourself, uh,
Speaker 1: shift out of the current mode of perception, knowing and
Speaker 1: identity directly into this which is already here, and then
Speaker 1: see and be from awareness. And my experience has been
Speaker 1: that of people in an hour and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: walking off the street in New York City, coming into
Speaker 1: a room can have a glimpse of this. So glimpses
Speaker 1: doesn't mean, you know, instant awakening, but it means that
Speaker 1: Buddha nature, that true nature, that consciousness is revealed to
Speaker 1: be who you are, and people report this, um, this
Speaker 1: has experienced, and then the practice becomes small glimpses many times.
Speaker 1: That was going to be one of the things I
Speaker 1: was going to bring up, is the small glimpses many times.
Speaker 1: Let's do this instead of just continuing to talk about this,
Speaker 1: I'd like to I'd like to have you lead us
Speaker 1: through one of these glimpse practices so that people get
Speaker 1: a sense of in general what we're talking about. And
Speaker 1: then um, I got a bunch of questions about how
Speaker 1: and and practical things and different things from there. But
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and start with one, and um, we'll
Speaker 1: pick up from there. So if you want to lead
Speaker 1: us through this, that would be great. So let's do
Speaker 1: one that picks up where I started, which is describing
Speaker 1: what's in the way or what obscures the awakeness that's
Speaker 1: naturally here. So we might call this the mini me
Speaker 1: or this little pattern of looping thought, this constellation of
Speaker 1: consciousness that creates this feeling of entity in ourselves, as
Speaker 1: if this thought has co opted the boundary survival program
Speaker 1: of our body so much so that it takes itself
Speaker 1: to be a physical entity in our mind. And when
Speaker 1: it does that, as if it had a body, it
Speaker 1: craves satisfaction. It wants to, you know, protect itself, as
Speaker 1: if it's a physical creature, and it wants to go
Speaker 1: and get satisfaction like food. And because it's not, this
Speaker 1: little tiny self is perpetually dissatisfied. It's always trying to
Speaker 1: solve a problem. It's looking for a problem. It's trying
Speaker 1: to solve a problem. What's the problem of why I'm dissatisfied?
Speaker 1: How do I solve that problem? What's the problem of
Speaker 1: my feeling that I'm being threatened? Where's the threat? There's
Speaker 1: no threat because there's no me that can be hurt.
Speaker 1: But I've got to continually feel there's a problem to solve.
Speaker 1: And even when there's not a problem, for a moment,
Speaker 1: it feels, oh my god, that's definitely a problem. So
Speaker 1: that problem solving identity is kind of the root of
Speaker 1: the whole picture here. So it's the it's what is running.
Speaker 1: It's a program running that keeps this false um, sense
Speaker 1: of mistaken identity, looping and in charge. And when that relaxes,
Speaker 1: let's see what is here? What people report, what you feel?
Speaker 1: So if we simply inquire in this short glimpse, just
Speaker 1: allow your awareness to look back to yourself as you
Speaker 1: ask yourself this simple question, what is here when there's
Speaker 1: no problem to solve on the level of identity? So
Speaker 1: just nowhere to go, nothing to understand or do, just
Speaker 1: relaxing that job of solving a problem and then feeling
Speaker 1: or letting awareness discover what is here? Who is aware?
Speaker 1: What's this awareness like now when there's no problem to solve,
Speaker 1: and just not looking up to thought and not going
Speaker 1: to down to sleep, let awareness just include everything. What's
Speaker 1: here when there's no problem to solve, what's the feeling
Speaker 1: of what's absent? What's the quality of dimensionality? And what
Speaker 1: are the qualities that show up for the sense of being?
Speaker 1: So most people report some kind of spaciousness because the
Speaker 1: little point of view has relaxed, So there's some kind
Speaker 1: of openness, spaciousness, boundlessness, there's some kind of sense of
Speaker 1: relief from the exhaustion of that problem solving. To see
Speaker 1: if that's true for you. Some people report sense of peace,
Speaker 1: a piece that passes understanding, others, joy, a kind of
Speaker 1: bliss or liveness within your body, dancing, effervescent, quality of
Speaker 1: knowing your body from within rather than from your head.
Speaker 1: Maybe a sense of presence or interconnection with everything, a
Speaker 1: unity or sense of love. But for you, you may
Speaker 1: discover each person will have a different experience of less thoughts,
Speaker 1: more space, more grounded in some ways, more fluid flowing.
Speaker 1: And here's the rest of the interview with Locke Kelly.
Speaker 1: The first time that I heard you do this practice,
Speaker 1: I had a relatively profound experience. That's when I first
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I gotta talk to this guy
Speaker 1: because I had a I had a moment where it
Speaker 1: kind of like that problem solver did go away, and
Speaker 1: I was outdoors and it was you know, it was
Speaker 1: in sort of like wide open farm country, and I
Speaker 1: definitely had the experience. My question for you. And so
Speaker 1: I've gone through a bunch of the other glimpse practices,
Speaker 1: and sometimes when I do them, I get a little
Speaker 1: of it, and other times, you know, the thinker is
Speaker 1: still right there kind of the whole time. Are these
Speaker 1: practices in the sense of you practice them and you
Speaker 1: get better at them, yes, in the sense, and and
Speaker 1: just to say something about your experience. Um, it's a glimpse.
Speaker 1: And the word reason I use glimpse is because it's
Speaker 1: not a meditation state that you're having, but it actually
Speaker 1: is a glimpse or of falling away, so that what's
Speaker 1: revealed or who is here is is the peaceful, spacious you,
Speaker 1: the loving, open hearted you are the one that's seeing
Speaker 1: whether you're in the country or whether as I am
Speaker 1: many times on the subway in New York City, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to me at all. It's exactly the same
Speaker 1: sense of interconnection, freedom, profound peace. Um. And then what
Speaker 1: I call system one or the system of the two
Speaker 1: wolves and the feeder takeover. And and you intentionally learned
Speaker 1: through different glimpse practices. I've kind of designed them for
Speaker 1: different types of learners. I also kind of stack them
Speaker 1: so they build on each other if you do them
Speaker 1: in a series, particularly if you get the audio, which
Speaker 1: is not an audio book, it's actually just the audio
Speaker 1: of the practices in the book, which is you think
Speaker 1: what I have and I've been enjoying using for sure,
Speaker 1: So you can go through that. Once you start to
Speaker 1: get a feel for it. It It is a learning, so
Speaker 1: it's you're practicing like you're learning to balance on a bicycle.
Speaker 1: So at first it's hard, it seems like new, it's
Speaker 1: a little difficult, uh. But eventually as you practice, you
Speaker 1: start to discover for yourself how to get there and
Speaker 1: what what shifts out of your mind and what shifts
Speaker 1: into which is just as important the awareness, so you
Speaker 1: don't get caught in kind of a gap of not knowing.
Speaker 1: You want to actually find in imediately than not knowing
Speaker 1: that knows. So it's there's a kind of new intelligence
Speaker 1: available to function from immediately, so that in that way
Speaker 1: there is kind of a practice like becoming. The Tibetan
Speaker 1: word for meditation is familiarized, so you're familiarizing yourself with yourself.
Speaker 1: One of the main concepts you use in the book
Speaker 1: is um. You call it the foundation of both you know,
Speaker 1: how we know and who we are, which is awake awareness.
Speaker 1: So help me understand what awake awareness means. So what
Speaker 1: it means is um. This is the great question, and
Speaker 1: this is the question of what I spend most of
Speaker 1: my time both trying to get at by bringing in neuroscience,
Speaker 1: by bringing in psychology by bringing in academic psychology, like
Speaker 1: what's called the flow state, which some people know as
Speaker 1: you know, being in the zone. Can you say that
Speaker 1: guy's last name chick sent ma Hi, I'm impressed. All right.
Speaker 1: That's always that's my litmus test for any guest who's
Speaker 1: on the show, because I can never do it. So
Speaker 1: so he's a Chicago UM academic psychologists who discovered the
Speaker 1: people functioning at optimal levels, from musicians to people you know,
Speaker 1: sports figures to um people in business or all sorts
Speaker 1: of professions shift out of the mental thinking about thinking
Speaker 1: and they shift into a what they call flow. And
Speaker 1: the flow has a sense of being in the now.
Speaker 1: It has a sense of not being in your ego centeredness.
Speaker 1: You feel interconnected, you feel like you have mastery over
Speaker 1: your subject without without micromanaging, and you actually feel at peace,
Speaker 1: and you feel a sense of joy and lists in
Speaker 1: doing it. And this is the way, this is the
Speaker 1: sense of what awakening is like. It then extends not
Speaker 1: just to the task that you do well or the
Speaker 1: job you do well, but can't extend through your life.
Speaker 1: So a wake awareness is not on the map. So
Speaker 1: even in the flow state, it's not really on the map.
Speaker 1: The effects are described on the map, but a wake
Speaker 1: awareness is a type of or dimension of consciousness that
Speaker 1: is called sometimes the source of mind or thought free
Speaker 1: awareness or wisdom mind, or simultaneous mind, which means that
Speaker 1: it's that the awareness is foundational prior to thought, and
Speaker 1: also post thought, meaning that there's a a sense of
Speaker 1: you being able to function and almost like continuous intuition,
Speaker 1: or the way that you can stand on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain or in a field and feel alert and
Speaker 1: clear and bright and free of worry and free of striving,
Speaker 1: and then imagine if you then could add functioning and
Speaker 1: relating to that feeling, then awareness, awake awareness would be
Speaker 1: the foundation of your new um way of knowing and identity.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that we talk you know,
Speaker 1: comes up on the show a lot, is this idea
Speaker 1: of being able to get some distance between you your
Speaker 1: thoughts and your emotions. And you say in the book
Speaker 1: that one of the most important things is to learn
Speaker 1: to separate awareness, which we were just talking about, from thinking,
Speaker 1: and then we can see that thoughts and emotions are
Speaker 1: not the center of who we are. So are these
Speaker 1: these glimpse practices are ways of learning to separate that
Speaker 1: awareness from thinking. Is that a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about this type of practices, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the first step. So in that way, it's similar
Speaker 1: to mindfulness. The mindfulness move is to step back and
Speaker 1: observe and realize that thoughts are coming and going, and
Speaker 1: that you're not your thoughts. Even if the thought begins
Speaker 1: with I I don't think I'm understanding what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Can go through your mind like it's a train going by,
Speaker 1: and you realize, oh, well, I'm aware of my thoughts,
Speaker 1: but I'm not my thoughts because my thought just arose
Speaker 1: and it just passed. So that's kind of the first move.
Speaker 1: Then the second move is to become then to make
Speaker 1: the awareness the subject and the object, so you actually
Speaker 1: begin instead of being aware of the contents of your thought,
Speaker 1: you turn awareness back or rest back, so you feel
Speaker 1: a kind of pure awareness, uh that is alert and
Speaker 1: awake and primary, and then you actually come back and
Speaker 1: include your thoughts and emotions. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: radical move is once you are grounded in awake awareness,
Speaker 1: you come back that awareness is now both spacious and pervasive,
Speaker 1: inherent within your emotions and thought. And yet you have
Speaker 1: this huge support of identity and awareness that's not based
Speaker 1: on a small ego, and you can then people report, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm having the same feeling, but I'm have such
Speaker 1: a different relationship to it. I'm actually closer to it.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling the sadness, but I'm not worried about the sadness.
Speaker 1: It's not overwhelming me because I'm bigger than it. But
Speaker 1: I'm within it, I'm welcoming it. I'm you know, with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a great practice on the audio of sort
Speaker 1: of doing that starting with an emotion, a difficult emotion
Speaker 1: um and taking progressive steps with it of how to
Speaker 1: relate to it differently. And I really like it because
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about you know, it comes up
Speaker 1: on this show. It's a lot of places like, well,
Speaker 1: you should get some distance between your your thoughts in
Speaker 1: your minds. But that is that's one of those things
Speaker 1: that's incredibly easy to say and incredibly hard to do
Speaker 1: when you are in the midst of a really strong emotion.
Speaker 1: And I really like how you how you laid that out.
Speaker 1: So you talk about the idea of local awareness, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the practice is at least the early
Speaker 1: ones that I went through is a lot of directing
Speaker 1: this local awareness. So what is local awareness? So local
Speaker 1: awareness is kind of the unique thing that I've defined
Speaker 1: a wake. Awareness is you know, called there is appears
Speaker 1: in many traditions as pure awareness and come by many names.
Speaker 1: In Hinduism is called turia. Tibetan Buddhism is called rigba.
Speaker 1: But it's basically means true nature awareness, mind, natural mind,
Speaker 1: source of mind, non conceptual thought. But local awareness is
Speaker 1: the focusing aspect from from natural mind. So from non
Speaker 1: conceptual awareness you have intentionality and focus. And the unique
Speaker 1: thing is in this method which is rather than a
Speaker 1: kind of a sitting method or what I call a
Speaker 1: resting method of just letting yourself sit in meditation, it's
Speaker 1: more of an inquiry method in which you can do
Speaker 1: this in three to eight minutes. These practices in them
Speaker 1: with your eyes open or closed. You can do them
Speaker 1: on the subway at work at a break because you
Speaker 1: can unhook awareness which is identified with thought, and have
Speaker 1: it drop and then open and to the field of awareness.
Speaker 1: And then once you are looking from the field awareness,
Speaker 1: you can come back and include your thoughts, feelings, and
Speaker 1: emotions from a new a new ground. It takes a
Speaker 1: little a little time to learn, but not it's you
Speaker 1: know this this method, you know, though it's kind of
Speaker 1: a you know what's called you know, advanced or the
Speaker 1: final method, but it's often taught as direct recognition with
Speaker 1: gradual unfolding. I found it's not any harder than learning
Speaker 1: anything else. For for most people, it's I've taught mindfulness
Speaker 1: to a basic mindfulness. I've taught other sports, I've taught
Speaker 1: I've taught other things. And as a skill that takes
Speaker 1: habit and practice and certain number of days, it's to
Speaker 1: really experience your awake ground of being is not that hard.
Speaker 1: It does not take that much time, but it takes
Speaker 1: what anything else takes. Well, why don't we do a
Speaker 1: short practice? You know, you talk about unhooking local awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, and so moving local awareness through a couple
Speaker 1: of the different senses it is a good way to
Speaker 1: get the idea of what you're talking about about what
Speaker 1: it means to be directing that awareness. So maybe if
Speaker 1: we could spend you know, three or four minutes, Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do. We'll do a couple of short practice. In
Speaker 1: some ways I do the short practice is because you
Speaker 1: kind of can't understand how you're unhooking anymore than you
Speaker 1: can understand how you're balancing on a bicycle. You have
Speaker 1: to say, okay, you're ready, go, And so I kind
Speaker 1: of do it what seems like it's quickly, but I'm
Speaker 1: kind of doing it what I call the Colombo approach.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of saying, oh, and by the way, just
Speaker 1: downhook awareness and move it to your ears and not
Speaker 1: be aware of space, and and just kind of follow
Speaker 1: it as if Okay, well, I don't know, but I'll
Speaker 1: just try and you know, have kind of beginner's mind
Speaker 1: and trust that you can try it. And then if
Speaker 1: if you don't get it now, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: download the audio, read the book, and you'll after a
Speaker 1: couple tries, you'll you'll probably get it. So I'll do
Speaker 1: it in a way that we're just kind of playfully
Speaker 1: feeling what it's like. When it works, it's it's dramatic
Speaker 1: and profound. You'll you'll feel like, WHOA, that is amazing,
Speaker 1: and you'll realize how close it is, how simple it is,
Speaker 1: how intentionally it's possible to shift your entire experience of
Speaker 1: your consciousness. And these methods don't take you into like
Speaker 1: a gap that's scary, and they don't take you into
Speaker 1: unconscious unloading of deep unconscious. It's it's pretty fascinating because
Speaker 1: we're we're going to supportive consciousness that's more supportive than
Speaker 1: your ego consciousness. So let's let's try that. So just
Speaker 1: feel as as you're listening to me talking and as
Speaker 1: you're hearing words that you are aware of understanding them
Speaker 1: and thinking about them in your mind, and feel as
Speaker 1: if you can feel awareness is identified or attached to
Speaker 1: thought in your head. So as you think your attention,
Speaker 1: your awareness is identified and attached. And just see if
Speaker 1: you can unhook awareness from thought and just have it
Speaker 1: move a little bit, to have awareness moved to another
Speaker 1: of the senses with it, which is seeing. So just
Speaker 1: instead of just thinking, just seeing the awareness and seeing,
Speaker 1: not focused on what you're seeing or thinking about seeing,
Speaker 1: just seeing, and just feel that shift that awareness has
Speaker 1: moved and intentionally changed your perception. And just as awareness
Speaker 1: can move from thinking to hearing, see what a big
Speaker 1: difference it is if you unhook awareness from seeing and
Speaker 1: have awareness come to one of your ears, and as
Speaker 1: awareness unhooks and moves through your face it can come
Speaker 1: to focus on the sensation and vibration of hearing at
Speaker 1: one ear, so neither here nor heard, just hearing and
Speaker 1: notice how thinkings faces in the background and even seeing
Speaker 1: faces in the background when awareness is identified and focused
Speaker 1: in the small area of hearing, and that in itself
Speaker 1: can be a great relief. But just as awareness can
Speaker 1: unhook and focus in a small area of sensation vibration
Speaker 1: at one ear drum, notice what it's like if awareness
Speaker 1: unhooks from hearing at the ear and opens to the
Speaker 1: space in which sound is coming going So a let
Speaker 1: awareness become big and noticed the sound, but then become
Speaker 1: interested and merge with the space in the room. Open
Speaker 1: to that space, aware of open space, open the awareness
Speaker 1: two space until you feel that you come to the
Speaker 1: walls and turn around until you feel like awareness merges
Speaker 1: with spacious awareness. And now see what it's like if
Speaker 1: you're aware from space back to your thoughts, feelings and sensations.
Speaker 1: So just feel the difference. If you were to inquire,
Speaker 1: am I aware of spacious awareness or am I the
Speaker 1: spacious awareness aware of thoughts, feelings and sensations within my
Speaker 1: body and mind? So you feel the spacious and pervasive,
Speaker 1: feel like you're the awareness includes everything below your neck,
Speaker 1: and you feel as if you've moved from head to heart.
Speaker 1: You're both open and embodied. You can breathe in and
Speaker 1: smile and feel as if you're operating from kind of
Speaker 1: heart mind where you're knowing non conceptually, without looking up
Speaker 1: to thought, without looking down from thought, without going to sleep,
Speaker 1: feel the open and embodied, interconnected field of being. And
Speaker 1: that was another glimpse practice that you can see how
Speaker 1: you feel after you shifted this sense of center and
Speaker 1: allow yourself just to include all love, your feelings, sensations
Speaker 1: and thoughts as you open your eyes if they're not open,
Speaker 1: and allow yourself to remain in this open hearted way
Speaker 1: of being and seeing excellent. Well, that was a really
Speaker 1: nice practice, and I like, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: it a little bit earlier that sometimes these glimpse practices
Speaker 1: take the very first time you do it. You do
Speaker 1: it and you you have an experience, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: might need to do them a couple of different times
Speaker 1: for for you to get the experience. And there's lots
Speaker 1: of what I like about what you what your your
Speaker 1: audio courses, there's lots of different glimpse practices. So if
Speaker 1: this one doesn't really work, there is one that you
Speaker 1: know that I find others that do. So I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: working my way through them. Great. Yes, yeah, they're each
Speaker 1: short and some of them build on each other, and
Speaker 1: they're just ways of navigating your own consciousness so that
Speaker 1: you begin to inhabit another dimension of your own being
Speaker 1: and kind of move that subtler, more spacious and loving
Speaker 1: dimensional consciousness from the background into the foreground. And there's
Speaker 1: a number of doorways that you can do that with
Speaker 1: that I provide for different learning types like h emotional types,
Speaker 1: kin aesthetic types, visual types, even intellectual types, so that
Speaker 1: you can shift out and then into uh the through
Speaker 1: these doorways into this open hearted awareness. Excellent. Well, Locke,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to come on
Speaker 1: the show. I really enjoyed talking to you. Like I said,
Speaker 1: i've ever since I heard you on another show, I've
Speaker 1: kind of been captivated by your work and been spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time on it. So it was great
Speaker 1: to get you on. And I'll have links in the
Speaker 1: show notes to where people can get to your website,
Speaker 1: see your books, your audio courses, etcetera. Great Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Eric, you really enjoyed meeting you and talking
Speaker 1: to you. Excellent wealth, Take care all right bye. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about this podcast and lock Kelly at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash Kelly