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Our potential is to realise our uniqueness and allow ourselves to be who we are: Love and delight.
So, a reminder for this Christmas that it is not so much the present that we give another, it is our presence we can gift each other.
Transcript:
Kira:
This morning you got the emails in acknowledging this woman in Canada saying … that this level of acceptance that she’s realized, other persons saying that they wouldn’t be where they are without having done the groups. And I just wondered what does that does that touch in you? What does that evoke?
Paul:
Well, the first response that comes to that is … is sort of not personal in a way. It’s … so I’m always “I”, whoever “I” is. There is a watcher, watching all the time what goes on in Paul. And it really is like somebody watching on the outside, what goes on with him. And the main thing that’s going on with him at the moment is – and then, none of the words are big enough, they’re not … they’re too restricted – but it’s love for people, caring for people, feeling for people.
And so, whenever I see on television or hear about somebody like this woman today saying, she had this epiphany, this realization that she now accepts her son, who has cerebral palsy, for just who he is and how she is. She’s not trying to change him or … she just loves him. And whenever I hear of somebody being loved, I feel not only for the person being loved but the person that is loving as well, that they had just got something in their life. So I’m always so happy when somebody has a breakthrough or sees something or feels love or feels cared for, feels acknowledged, feels seen – an uplifting feeling for me.
And then, when I hear somebody being grateful for one of the Paul Lowe groups that they attended, there is a feeling for them, happy for them, happy for the situation and a sort of detachment from Paul, grateful for Paul. A sort of detachment as though, that’s not me personally. And then flashed in at that moment is, oh Paul is a conduit. Everybody’s a conduit. That’s right. Everybody’s a conduit for … let’s say [laughs] – old fashioned word – a blessed energy. That we are all blessed and somehow we are blocking that blessing. We’re blocking what it can do for us in practical ways. But what it can do for us is a sense, a feeling, a blessing and we block it by what we’re still holding inside. Of course that’s from the past, and what we’ve gone through and what’s happened to us. So we’re blocking this. We’re blocking.
And our complaint is a contraction. And that contraction is in the way of this … flow of energy that wants to flow through us. And as it flows through us, it blesses everybody around, but in the process we feel blessed as well. And eventually, the bless … the blessing gets very thin because there’s a realization … that the blessing is not from somewhere else. We are the blessing. We are the blessing. We’re everything. We’re one with everything. There is only one. I know this will sound very abstract, but it’s very … real to me. We are all one, just having different levels of experience for some reason. I have absolutely no idea. I have no idea what it’s all about, but just a sense of what’s happening.
So, somehow Paul seemed to have been born with a curiosity. “What’s it all about and why is this like this, and why’s that person acting like that, and why am I feeling this in this circumstance?” And through this curiosity and allowing the curiosity to be the primary energy, something has kept evolving. And as it evolves, things have dropped away. They’ve got out of the way.
And thus, about what happened in the groups, well, the more we allow to fall away, the more pure we become for this energy just to pass through us. And it’s not even what we say, it’s just our being-ness. It’s like we feel here when we get close to a koala or a wallaby, we feel blessed. It’s just like there’re blessing us with their presence, ‘cause it’s so pure, especially being vegetarians. It’s pure and then, what’s that purity? Well, we could call it love. And we just look at each other and when I do that, I feel blessed. Not that they’re doing anything. They’re being something. And what are they being? They are being … empty. They’re just allowing. They are a conduit. And we respond to that. And it’s a blessing.
So back to the practical, it keeps coming back to the same thing. The more we’re aware of ourselves in each moment, the more we see … what’s getting in the way … of love. So, it’s that complaint. Its, yeah, not being here, now.
Kira:
So, I’ve got an additional question, ’cause it’s Christmas today and many people are back home with their families and the old patterns and dramas can kick back in, ‘cause they’re in their family home or family situations. What might you suggest to help people to come back to here and now, to this being, to what you were saying, conduit?
Paul:
Being with the family is, is, is very useful, is very creative, because when we’re away from the family we start to develop ourselves in a different way. When we go back to the family, suddenly all our childhood things, through our parents, through our siblings, through our friends, we start to … realize a bit more, if we’re present to it, about how our past has formed us. And we’re here to let go of all form, in all ways and just be.
So when we are with family, it’s totally being there and … just being aware, a form of watching. But when I say watching, I don’t mean a separation. I mean a watching and being there and seeing how, when that person, maybe that parent, says something and how they say it, what goes on in us, to be more aware of ourselves of how we’re influenced from the past, even when we’re not in their presence.
And what we’re talking about is, realizing our own uniqueness. And we forget that. We forget that each one of us are utterly, totally and delightfully unique. In the family, we can start to recognize what we’ve adopted, “Oh that’s my father’s laugh. Oh that’s my mother’s remark. Is that me?” If it is, wonderful, but if it isn’t, “Ah, so I don’t need to do that. I need to see it and not reinforce something that’s old and not me.” And start to see … and delight in … our uniqueness.
Now, when I say that, I think of so many wonderful, delightful, beautiful people who are always criticising themselves, are always judging themselves. Yes, you do have that. Yes, you do that and that’s not who you are. You are this delightful, wonderful, unique, unique being. You’re not supposed to be like anybody else. You are unique. And so being with the family can help to see that. And if ever there’s a little contraction inside or a reaction there [breaths in deeply] take a breath and see this other person, ‘cause there’re probably even more trapped than you are in their behaviour that they have adopted from their parents and their background.
So seeing ourselves through other people can help to see ourselves more clearly of who we really are. And I’ll tell you what will happen when you do that. From my experience so far, so far, you become love. You are love. You can’t be anything else. You can’t not love this person, no matter what they’re saying to you, no matter what they’re doing to you. You cannot not be love. You cannot not love them. It’s just a something that happens inside, just a … a release. And that’s what you feel all the time. You don’t have (laughs) an alternative. You can’t be angry if you want to. It becomes more of a smile.
So Christmas could be seen as an excuse. It doesn’t matter what we think it’s about, or whether it’s true or whether it isn’t true. It’s an excuse. Giving presents can be an excuse, because, oh, hardly anybody loves themselves. Hardly anybody sees who they really are. And we can help that by sharing our love and our caring, and not wrapping it up, just being there.
So it’s not the presents. [laughs] It’s not the present, it’s the presence of you, sharing your appreciation for this person, not out of duty, not out of automatic habit, but you in this moment as you hand that present across, seeing this person, appreciating this person, being grateful for this person in your life.
Any of the things that are not being comfortable and not confident, just disconnection from that and just looking into the eyes, into the face of this person, allowing yourself to be who you are, allowing yourself to see them as they are.