Speaker 1: Awakening is waking up out of that dream that you
Speaker 1: are your thoughts or your feelings. 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 Wolfe, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is a Mota Ma, a contemporary spiritual teacher and author.
Speaker 1: She's the author of How to Find God and Everything,
Speaker 1: Change Your Life, Change Your World, and Radical Awakening. Her
Speaker 1: new book is Embodied Enlightenment, Living Your Awakening in Every Moment. Hiamoda,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me on the show. I'm happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your book is called Embodied Enlightenment, living your awakening in
Speaker 1: every moment, and I really enjoyed it. And we will
Speaker 1: get into the book here in just a moment, but
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. It sounds to me that the bad wolf
Speaker 1: is the ego self, the part of us that's seeking
Speaker 1: to protect itself on a psychological level. It's one thing
Speaker 1: protecting ourselves on a physical level, but on a psychological level,
Speaker 1: which leads to blame, attack, defense, all the armoring that
Speaker 1: we put up to to to protect our sense of
Speaker 1: self as a separate self. That's the first thing that
Speaker 1: jumps out out at me about the parable. I would
Speaker 1: not call that bad, though I would not call that evil.
Speaker 1: And that's where I would digress from from the parable.
Speaker 1: Certainly in the work I do and in my own life,
Speaker 1: I think it's true that we do in some sense
Speaker 1: feed one or the other, the other being who we
Speaker 1: really are, beyond ego self, who we really are as
Speaker 1: an expression of being, as the one consciousness. So I
Speaker 1: guess one is born out of separation and the other
Speaker 1: one is born out of non separation. And I think
Speaker 1: it's true that we do feed one or the other.
Speaker 1: We feed the sense of self as a separate me
Speaker 1: when we are defended, when we relate to the world
Speaker 1: from a defended place, where we see an enemy out there,
Speaker 1: when we see ourselves as either superior or inferior to
Speaker 1: what's out there, when we are reactive, responding from reactivity
Speaker 1: from condition self, and if we unconsciously give our attention
Speaker 1: to that, then that's the wolf we're feeding, and that's
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the collective ness that we currently
Speaker 1: find ourselves in. And then if we give our attention two,
Speaker 1: something that is more more deep, deeper than the surface
Speaker 1: of who we are as a separate me. If we
Speaker 1: give our attention two, not the beliefs in our in
Speaker 1: our minds, not the conditioned responses, but if we give
Speaker 1: our attention to the tenderness of the heart, then we
Speaker 1: come to know ourselves as the open space, which is
Speaker 1: the place from which love and compassion and kindness and
Speaker 1: generosity flow from. And if we keep giving our attention
Speaker 1: to that, which is quite a challenge mostly, but as
Speaker 1: we feed that more and more, then actually it becomes,
Speaker 1: at least in mikes orients and also you know that's
Speaker 1: part of my teaching. It becomes the natural state. It's
Speaker 1: not a battle anymore between the two, because infinite intelligence
Speaker 1: or innate intelligence lives in and as the depth of
Speaker 1: who we are, and that is far more preferable, far
Speaker 1: more natural than the training and reactivity that we've had
Speaker 1: through social, cultural, parental conditioning. So to me, it starts
Speaker 1: to become like an endless river that flows, so it's
Speaker 1: no longer a battle. Yeah, excellent. UM, let's talk about awakening,
Speaker 1: because awakening is a lot of what you talk about. UM.
Speaker 1: I think you use the word awakening sort of interchangeably
Speaker 1: with enlightenment. But talk to me about awakening. I want
Speaker 1: to read a line that you have here first to start,
Speaker 1: because I really like this is a description. Awakening is
Speaker 1: the discovery of that which is still here and unchanging
Speaker 1: even when thoughts and feelings change. Yes, awakening is the
Speaker 1: waking up part of the dream of separation, where in
Speaker 1: thinking and in feeling, when we're identified with our thoughts
Speaker 1: and we're identified with our feelings. In other words, I
Speaker 1: I feel bad and so I am bad, or I
Speaker 1: feel good and I am good, or um, you know,
Speaker 1: having negative thoughts, we tend to beat ourselves up about
Speaker 1: that and think that we failed or haven't got it right,
Speaker 1: or we need to improve ourselves. So we're identified, we're
Speaker 1: are thinking, and we're identified with our emotions, both on
Speaker 1: the negative side and the positive side. And then we
Speaker 1: attempt to change our thoughts and change our feelings in
Speaker 1: order to become a better person and or to become
Speaker 1: a good person, or to become an improved perfect person,
Speaker 1: or to become a spiritual person or whatever. But waking
Speaker 1: up awakening is waking up out of that dream that
Speaker 1: you are your thoughts or your feelings. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: not taking responsibility for thinking and feeling or being just
Speaker 1: a passive passenger in that, but it does mean that
Speaker 1: our route identity is in a much more profound place
Speaker 1: within ourselves, not on the surface of our human experience,
Speaker 1: and waking up out of the dream of separation frees
Speaker 1: us from the idea of being me here and the
Speaker 1: world out there. Everything is inside. I recognize what you're
Speaker 1: saying a lot, but I have a question for you
Speaker 1: that I sometimes wonder, and your book brought the question
Speaker 1: up again for me, because some of what you're describing
Speaker 1: sounds like being more psychologically healthy. Right, I don't see
Speaker 1: the world as a threat, I don't feel bad about myself.
Speaker 1: I'm more psychologically healthy, and I don't think that's what
Speaker 1: you're referring to here. So can you help me understand
Speaker 1: the distinction between sort of just being psychologically not so
Speaker 1: hard on myself or not feeling so endangered by life
Speaker 1: versus what awakening is. It actually doesn't matter what your
Speaker 1: psychological state is. You could still wake up out of
Speaker 1: the dream of separation. So I'll just backtrack. As awakening
Speaker 1: flows into one's life after awakening, then let's call it
Speaker 1: psychological health or psychological wholeness becomes more likely, but it's
Speaker 1: not a precursor for awakening, if at quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: Very often that very traumatic situations or experiences, very dark
Speaker 1: personal experience is can wake us up out of the
Speaker 1: dream of separation. And certainly that was the case in
Speaker 1: my in my experience in that psychological suffering became my
Speaker 1: doorway to liberation. And I was somebody who didn't have
Speaker 1: strong self worth and I didn't feel good enough, didn't
Speaker 1: feel loved enough. So it doesn't matter what your psychological status.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's very different. It'll be described in
Speaker 1: different ways, but for me, it was emerging with the
Speaker 1: totality when I finally stopped looking for an answer to
Speaker 1: my psychological pain by becoming a better person, by improving
Speaker 1: myself and working on myself, and actually surrendered two the
Speaker 1: brokenness of it, to the darkness of it, to the
Speaker 1: existential abyss of it. There was a deep let go,
Speaker 1: a deep surrender, a surrender of the need to uphold
Speaker 1: myself as anything, and that was the route of the transformation.
Speaker 1: So if anything awakening is a surrender, is a surrender
Speaker 1: of psychological self, right, right, It certainly does seem to
Speaker 1: be that ability to let go completely is the basis
Speaker 1: of lots of transformation and awakening being one of them,
Speaker 1: and the desire to control things. You say that personal
Speaker 1: evolution begins when the desire to be free of the
Speaker 1: tyranny of ego is greater than the need for psychological safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess that's what I was just touching on.
Speaker 1: That the need for psychological safety is what gives rise
Speaker 1: to the egoic movement towards becoming something more, or having
Speaker 1: something more, or getting something more. In other words, the
Speaker 1: hope of salvation or the opposite direction of running away
Speaker 1: from what scares us, hiding from what scares us, retracting,
Speaker 1: contracting um, staying in the in the personal comfort zone
Speaker 1: psychological comfort zone. And that movement, which I call a
Speaker 1: horizontal movement, the horizontal movement of egoic mind, is that
Speaker 1: unconscious desire for psychological safety that keeps us trapped in
Speaker 1: the sense of being a separate me here that needs
Speaker 1: to protect itself from the world out there, and then
Speaker 1: that gives rise to all sorts of things like greed
Speaker 1: and judgment and division, seeing seeing the world through the
Speaker 1: eyes of division, good and bad. Wrong and right gives
Speaker 1: rise to righteousness, and righteousness always has defense and attacking it,
Speaker 1: and so starts the war, the war within and the
Speaker 1: war in the world, and at some point the pain
Speaker 1: of that because it creates personal suffering, the suffering of discontent,
Speaker 1: the suffering of fulfillment, and then the loss of that
Speaker 1: fulfillment and the seeking of that fulfillment usually from the
Speaker 1: external world, but eventually it turns into the internal world,
Speaker 1: and that never brings any real fulfillment. And finally we
Speaker 1: might have the courage and the willingness to turn our
Speaker 1: attention two. What is unknown? Because beyond that psychological safety,
Speaker 1: it's an unknown dimension, and then the possibility of surrender
Speaker 1: is available to us. You say that the true purpose
Speaker 1: of the question who am i? Is to serve as
Speaker 1: a pointer to dive in into the unknownness of this
Speaker 1: unbounded moment. So you're talking about the tradition there of
Speaker 1: some degree of self inquiry, right of asking who am I? Yes,
Speaker 1: and it can really be any question. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be who am I? And any question that arises
Speaker 1: from the depths about being, like why am I here?
Speaker 1: What am I? What is my purpose? Where is true
Speaker 1: happiness or whatever the question is. It's all forms of
Speaker 1: the same arrow of self inquiry, and its purpose isn't
Speaker 1: to find an answer. It isn't to land on some
Speaker 1: absolute truth that is satisfactory or satisfying to the mind. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's about coming up to the edge of mind,
Speaker 1: the edge of mind that cannot find anywhere to stand.
Speaker 1: It's a groundless place, and that's when the possibility of
Speaker 1: real transformation in the sense of waking up out of
Speaker 1: the dream of separation, is possible. But that that edge
Speaker 1: means that we come up to what I call an
Speaker 1: existential abyss, where the not knowing of who I am,
Speaker 1: what I am, the not knowing of whether I exist
Speaker 1: or don't exist, it actually brings up a lot of
Speaker 1: primal terror, but the capacity to face that within oneself.
Speaker 1: And when I speak with people about this, most people
Speaker 1: don't understand intellectually what I'm saying, but they understand it
Speaker 1: somewhere in their being nous, because terror comes up at
Speaker 1: that place of deep let go of self. So that's
Speaker 1: the place that if we can just soften into and
Speaker 1: not turn away through this egoic mechanism that wants to
Speaker 1: pull us in this horizontal way, then we can drop
Speaker 1: into the verticality of being. And that's where freedom is.
Speaker 1: And it sounds complex or it sounds out of reach,
Speaker 1: but it's actually very available to us. It's actually just
Speaker 1: a willingness to soften and open right here, right here,
Speaker 1: wherever you are. Yeah, as humans, we don't like not knowing.
Speaker 1: It's not culturally smiled upon, and in general I think
Speaker 1: we we don't like it. I just did a mini
Speaker 1: episode probably out by the time listeners hear this, but
Speaker 1: it was about there's that old kal quote about you know,
Speaker 1: living the questions, you know, about not always having to
Speaker 1: know the answer, but being able to live your way
Speaker 1: into the answer. And I think that's what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: is that I have no idea what the point is,
Speaker 1: or what the purposes or all those different things, and
Speaker 1: I don't turn away. Yes, I don't grasp for an
Speaker 1: answer that doesn't really exist. Yes. And and um, I'll
Speaker 1: add something to that, which is it's about not having
Speaker 1: an agenda of the outcome. If we examine when we're
Speaker 1: doing things, or acting or making decisions or just meeting reality,
Speaker 1: meeting our life circumstances, it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: big decision thing or a goal thing. But just when
Speaker 1: we're meeting life, we tend to have an agenda of
Speaker 1: the outcome. If I open to this, if I soften
Speaker 1: to this, if I open my heart towards this experience
Speaker 1: in my life, there's a hidden agenda. I want something back.
Speaker 1: I either want peace, I want goodness in terms of
Speaker 1: feeling good. I want goodness in terms of what I
Speaker 1: might get on a physical level, on an emotional level,
Speaker 1: on a security level. So we have an agenda around
Speaker 1: opening ourselves to our experience and really meeting it as
Speaker 1: it is, and it's a very tricky place. Once we
Speaker 1: start to see that, then we have a choice, which
Speaker 1: is to meet it as openness. Meet it in openness,
Speaker 1: which is a great vulnerability without any agenda. That's the
Speaker 1: not knowing. I don't know what it will give me.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it will be good or bad,
Speaker 1: or safe or unsafe. I meet it anyway, And that's
Speaker 1: that's the feeding of the good wolf. Because as we
Speaker 1: do that more and more, we start to live life
Speaker 1: without a safety net, without a mental safety net, without
Speaker 1: a mental agenda, without a mental emotional strategy, and that
Speaker 1: brings us into real intimacy with what is, and that
Speaker 1: intimacy is love, and that love is intelligence, and that
Speaker 1: intelligence is goodness, and everything changes. Not only are we
Speaker 1: free from the divided inner state, but we're free from suffering,
Speaker 1: and that brings such a depth and richness to life.
Speaker 1: It becomes exquisite whatever is happening. So we're not lost
Speaker 1: on the surface on the waves. We're actually operating as
Speaker 1: the open hand of the ocean, which has no boundary.
Speaker 1: And initially that feels very vulnerable, but actually it's the
Speaker 1: place of our invincibility. It's the place of our true strength,
Speaker 1: not the strength of an ego self, but the strength
Speaker 1: of let's call it divinity or that. That's not a
Speaker 1: word I would normally use, but you know, the strength
Speaker 1: of of life's intelligence, which is what is always moving
Speaker 1: us anyway. So let's talk about getting to that point, because,
Speaker 1: as you said, not having an agenda is one of
Speaker 1: those things that sounds relatively easy to do, but as
Speaker 1: a human it almost feels like an endless loops. Are
Speaker 1: times like, okay, I don't want to have an agenda
Speaker 1: because but it all circles back in some level to
Speaker 1: reaching towards pleasure, recoiling from pain, which is so very fundamental,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious, from your perspective, what are
Speaker 1: ways to help people get to that point where they
Speaker 1: can be open without having an agenda. The word that
Speaker 1: comes to mind for me a lot is curiosity, right,
Speaker 1: because when I'm curious about something, I'm less agenda driven.
Speaker 1: I'm much more like I just want to know. But
Speaker 1: it's not entirely there. And I also think, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you can just wrap this in your response also,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us come to the spiritual journey
Speaker 1: as a place of moving away from pain, and then
Speaker 1: comes this point where the pivot almost has to happen
Speaker 1: where we say, okay, whatever I find for myself very
Speaker 1: difficult to get to pure places of motivation, Like I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, most of me I think is pretty pure here,
Speaker 1: but then there's that other part of me that just
Speaker 1: wants to feel better. You know, it's it's it seems
Speaker 1: like it's it's very difficult to find that place, which
Speaker 1: I guess is is why so few people maybe do
Speaker 1: find it. Yeah, there's no real abc. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: there have been attempts to provide a method, a roadmap
Speaker 1: how to I find that that doesn't work. That's not
Speaker 1: how it works. There's there's almost a ripening that happens
Speaker 1: in the individual. That ripening is when you finally had
Speaker 1: enough of running away from pain. Finally, because you've run
Speaker 1: away from pain your whole life, in all sorts of strategies,
Speaker 1: hidden and not so hidden. When you've seen and felt
Speaker 1: in the depths of your soul that you've used this
Speaker 1: strategy of running away from pain for lifetimes, then there
Speaker 1: comes a point when you're sick and tired of it
Speaker 1: because there's no relief in that, there's no final freedom
Speaker 1: in that. That's what I call the ripening of the soul.
Speaker 1: Then the willingness to meet that pain with curiosity, which
Speaker 1: is the same as openness. It's okay being curious about
Speaker 1: something that isn't so scary, But when it comes to
Speaker 1: something that's terrifying, whatever that might be a feeling in ourselves,
Speaker 1: an emotion that comes up, you know, a dark space
Speaker 1: within ourselves, then it's not so easy to be curious.
Speaker 1: But at some point, because it can't be approached with
Speaker 1: the mind, it's like the mind strategies finally come to exhaustion.
Speaker 1: Then it's as if the ego lays down its weapons,
Speaker 1: it bows down to the unknown and sacrifices itself on
Speaker 1: the altar of that unknown nous. That's called surrender. Then
Speaker 1: there can be am urging of the small me, the
Speaker 1: separate me, the ego self, with the totality which we
Speaker 1: can also call the god self, the vastness of existence,
Speaker 1: consciousness itself being nous. And all these words are going
Speaker 1: to mean different things to different people, so I always
Speaker 1: use them in many different ways, but not getting attached
Speaker 1: to the words. But to sacrifice the ego on the
Speaker 1: altar of that which is greater than ego self, which
Speaker 1: is always unknown to the ego. Therefore it is frightened
Speaker 1: of it, terrified by it, and we'll run away from it.
Speaker 1: But finally that can happen. That isn't something that we
Speaker 1: can do, that is grace. But we can ask ourselves
Speaker 1: the question when something comes up that we're frightened of
Speaker 1: and we notice our contraction are tightening, our resistance, are
Speaker 1: turning away from our manipulation, are begging and battering and
Speaker 1: bullying with reality. T in that situation, in that circumstance,
Speaker 1: in that feeling, when we notice that we can ask
Speaker 1: ourselves am I willing to meet this as it is?
Speaker 1: Come what may, even if that means I am annihilated
Speaker 1: as for me that I think I am. Am I
Speaker 1: willing or not? And it doesn't matter what the answer is.
Speaker 1: There's no right or wrong. There's no spiritual brownie points.
Speaker 1: There's only the self honesty. Now that's self inquiry, never
Speaker 1: mind the question who am I? This is self inquiry.
Speaker 1: Then we can start to be honest, and that's what
Speaker 1: starts to change it because finally, at some point we
Speaker 1: might say, yes, I'm willing. I don't know how, but
Speaker 1: I'm willing, and that is when grace enters. I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by this idea of trying not to try, or you know,
Speaker 1: the zen idea of like, well, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: perfect as I am, why do I meditate? You know?
Speaker 1: Just this magic sort of place that you talk about
Speaker 1: with the openness or something that you say that speaks
Speaker 1: to this a little bit. And I love this phrase
Speaker 1: you talk about true fulfillment being an emptying of the
Speaker 1: spiritual shopping basket, because I think that you said earlier,
Speaker 1: when we get to the point where we realize there's
Speaker 1: no running away from our pain, and I think most
Speaker 1: of us come to the spiritual path because the obvious things. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not money, Okay, it's not sex. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: not you know this or that I've I've tried that,
Speaker 1: and for I've either tried it and failed or tried
Speaker 1: it and succeed. But whatever reason, I've seen through that
Speaker 1: and now I come to the spiritual search. But my
Speaker 1: mentality is very much the same as it was before,
Speaker 1: and I think, at least for me, that has been
Speaker 1: a long journey of finding my way through that. Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like I picked a different channel on the TV,
Speaker 1: and frankly, I picked a channel that's more likely to
Speaker 1: lead me to the truth. Right, I'm at least in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood now, But ultimately I have to let go
Speaker 1: of that resistance. And for me, it's been the moments
Speaker 1: when by whatever method, and it isn't a method, but
Speaker 1: by whatever thing happens that I truly let go, that
Speaker 1: something usually fairly magical happens. But trying to let go
Speaker 1: is still trying. So it said, it's that paradox, like
Speaker 1: you said, And there is no ABC, and yet I
Speaker 1: ask everybody because I want one. Yeah, the ABC or
Speaker 1: it's not an ABC, it's just an AU. Is the
Speaker 1: ability to see. When you start seeing the strategies such
Speaker 1: as the one that you described, then there's a possibility
Speaker 1: of something fundamentally changing from the horizontal dimension of consciousness
Speaker 1: to the vertical dimension of consciousness, which is where true
Speaker 1: change and transformation happens. And much of the time, yes,
Speaker 1: the spiritual search is still on the horizontal dimension. The
Speaker 1: shopping basket I refer to is not just the accumulation
Speaker 1: of practices and techniques and tools and methods and teachings
Speaker 1: and ideologies, although it's definitely that's a large part of it,
Speaker 1: but it's also the shopping basket mentality where we're filling
Speaker 1: ourselves up with or accumulating agendas, the agenda for the outcome.
Speaker 1: If I'm on the spiritual path and I follow it
Speaker 1: and I dedicate myself to it, then there is an agenda,
Speaker 1: the agenda that I will become enlightened, or the agenda
Speaker 1: that I will be free from suffering and pain, the
Speaker 1: agenda that I will become a better person. And I
Speaker 1: say very often, but I actually think I mean always
Speaker 1: that the core agenda is worthiness. If we examine everything
Speaker 1: that we believe we're going to get from doing something
Speaker 1: or immersing in ourselves in something or following something. The
Speaker 1: core belief that drives that, the core agenda that drives
Speaker 1: that motivation, is the need to feel worthy, the need
Speaker 1: to feel good enough, and that is rampant in spirituality
Speaker 1: as well as in the rest of the world and
Speaker 1: the secular world. That if I wake up, I'll be
Speaker 1: more worthy, if I find spiritual fulfillment, I'll be more worthy.
Speaker 1: Somehow we believe ourselves to be worthy in that, and
Speaker 1: so that just perpetuates the polarity, the ping pong between
Speaker 1: worthiness and unworthiness. Then if we don't achieve that, if
Speaker 1: we don't get that, if we don't have that experience,
Speaker 1: if we don't get there, we're still carrying a belief
Speaker 1: that we're not good enough. Now that has to finally
Speaker 1: be surrendered. And that's a big one. So that's all
Speaker 1: part of the spiritual shopping basket. The accumulation of either
Speaker 1: things physical things, structures, ideas, beliefs, or the accumulation of
Speaker 1: good feelings, the accumulation of self identities me as a
Speaker 1: good person, me as a spiritual person, me as an
Speaker 1: awakened person. That all comes tumbling into the spiritual basket
Speaker 1: along the search. Pretty much unconsciously, we're not aware of this.
Speaker 1: But as we start to see that and examine that,
Speaker 1: then true inquiry can start, and then we can start
Speaker 1: to clear the shopping basket and eventually throw the shopping
Speaker 1: basket away itself, so we're no longer shopping for anything.
Speaker 1: In other words, we don't have an agenda, the motivation,
Speaker 1: the desire for simply meeting life as openness in which
Speaker 1: I am totally undefended. I have laid down all my
Speaker 1: weapons of defense and attack, and I meet reality as
Speaker 1: it is, come what may, even if it destroys me.
Speaker 1: That's no shopping basket, no contents to the shopping basket.
Speaker 1: But that becomes the motivation, for that is for its
Speaker 1: own sake. It's not for my sake, it's for its
Speaker 1: own sake. What does that mean? That means that love
Speaker 1: is seeking itself, Love is seeking to know itself, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes a very pure motivation, if you like,
Speaker 1: and that changes everything. But that's a kind of purification
Speaker 1: that happens over time, and there is no abc. There's
Speaker 1: only pointers, support, guidance, listening and speaking from the truth.
Speaker 1: I listened to people that come to my gatherings, I
Speaker 1: really listened to them in ways that they probably can't
Speaker 1: listen to themselves. And and then from that place they speak.
Speaker 1: And so it's listening to the truth and telling the truth.
Speaker 1: That's the purification process. Yea. And I think that that
Speaker 1: last piece about telling the truth is also telling the
Speaker 1: truth about where we are if we might still have
Speaker 1: the motivations, the agendas, all that, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: being willing to say I'm still there, or that's where
Speaker 1: I'm at, not even I'm still there, but that's where
Speaker 1: I'm at, Because then is that's the truth. And and
Speaker 1: it's like you said, there's only there's only pointers and
Speaker 1: I love the word ripening. I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: a slightly different question here and then, because we're nearing
Speaker 1: the end of our time. But you say silence is
Speaker 1: ever present in everything? What does that mean? It means
Speaker 1: as you start emptying yourself of agenda, as you start
Speaker 1: emptying yourself of all the negotiations and contortions around one's
Speaker 1: own experience to protect oneself, to push something the experience away,
Speaker 1: to to possess the experience, and so on and so on.
Speaker 1: When all that comes to an end, there's only silence.
Speaker 1: That's not a silence in the head. It's a silence
Speaker 1: of being. It's the silence of openness and brings a
Speaker 1: great piece. And that silence is always here, whether there's
Speaker 1: something noisy going on or not. It's it's a it's
Speaker 1: an inner silence. And I think the best way I
Speaker 1: can point to it is exactly that which I said.
Speaker 1: When all the mental and emotional acrobatics around one's experience,
Speaker 1: especially when it's not wanted, when it hurts or it's difficult,
Speaker 1: or it's challenging, or it's irritating or it's threatening, that's
Speaker 1: when we create a whole barrage of inner noise, the
Speaker 1: inner reactivity to protect ourselves from that, to push it away.
Speaker 1: And when that comes to an end, all there is
Speaker 1: is the open space of what is and that silence.
Speaker 1: And I love in the book the way you talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that silence is kind of always there,
Speaker 1: even as you said, if there's a noise outside, or
Speaker 1: even if my brain is busy, and and I first
Speaker 1: heard this from from Audi Ashanti, and he pointed out,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, it hit me that it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, silence is the space that all this stuff
Speaker 1: is moving in. It's always there. And I kept looking
Speaker 1: for or waiting for the moment that silence would appear
Speaker 1: or okay, all this stuff would shut up so I
Speaker 1: could have some silence. And there was really interesting for
Speaker 1: me to start to say, oh, wait a minute, silence
Speaker 1: is there. There's just this other stuff that's sort of
Speaker 1: on top of it, but silence is all around it. Um.
Speaker 1: It just was a different way of of seeing for
Speaker 1: me and really helped me be able to touch a
Speaker 1: slightly i don't know, deeper place. Yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: about seeing and experiencing the world reality once one's experience,
Speaker 1: one's inner experience and one's outer experience from an undivided state,
Speaker 1: the divided states says this is not good, this is good.
Speaker 1: I don't want this, I want this, This shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 1: This should be happening. And that's a primary one and
Speaker 1: that divides us. We so we so we live from
Speaker 1: an inner noisiness that division. But when there is no
Speaker 1: shouldn't be happening in our experience, then we meet reality
Speaker 1: without any resistance. That's lack of resistance itself is the silence.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter whether it's thinking or feeling, because when
Speaker 1: there's no resistance, our attention isn't caught up in the
Speaker 1: thinking and feeling. Thinking and feeling happens just like the
Speaker 1: waves on the ocean. But that's not where our sense
Speaker 1: of self is attached. We are the space within which
Speaker 1: all that happens, and that that brings such a such
Speaker 1: a freedom, such a piece that hasn't got anything to
Speaker 1: do with whether we're um, you know, having a challenging
Speaker 1: experience or a or a gentle experience. Excellent, Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a post show conversation here in
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes where I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: about dealing with irritation and about the books that are
Speaker 1: on your bookstand back there. But for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this conversation, we are done, and so listeners, if you
Speaker 1: want to hear the conversation afterwards, uh, supporters of the
Speaker 1: show get to hear it. But amoda, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking with you,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed your book, which again is called
Speaker 1: Embodied Enlightenment, Living Your Awakening in every moment. Thank you,
Speaker 1: it's been a pleasure. Okay bye. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation
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